The Ennio Morricone Chronicles

AMG Review of The Ennio Morricone Chronicles

Thom Jurek
All Music Guide

Leave it to the Japanese to get the job done when it comes to issuing a box set of a prolific film composer. The Ennio Morricone Chronicles is a full ten CDs-- also including, just for the right fetishistic collector's touch, a 7" EP with a picture sleeve -- of music from 1959 to 1999, from the very beginning of Morricone's stellar career, but Mission to Mars isn't addressed here. Out of the 224 tracks, and the complete discography listed at the back -- the liner notes are almost useless unless you read Japanese, and while most of the films are listed and the song lyrics printed, most of them are in Italian -- the set is quirky in a manner, shape, and form that is telltale of the way Japanese producers think. For instance, over the course of the ten CDs here, while all the major themes are included from the most well-known films Morricone scored, many of those secondary themes are left off. And for some strange reason, all of the material for Once Upon a Time in the West is left until the end of disc ten, while music for Ringo, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, A Fistful of Dollars, and For a Few Dollars More are included in their respective chronological spots. Another oddity is the inclusion, particularly at the beginning of the collection, on discs one and two of material Morricone included in scores but didn't compose! This is particularly true of the score for Luciano Salce's Il Lieto Fine, Morricone's first film project issued in 1959, on which the composer scored two titles in collaboration with others, but whose score is included here almost in its entirety. The Ennio Morricone Chronicles is not confined to film music, however, as there is a substantial amount of material here from the television programs and specials Morricone composed for on both sides of the Atlantic. What is especially noteworthy about the TV material, spread out from discs four to nine, is how revelatory it is in terms of Morricone's development as an orchestrator and as a master of atmosphere. While the film scores show his skills in spades, the shorter episodic nature of television forces a composer to get his ideas across quickly, convincingly, and, toughest of all, unobtrusively in such a small span of time.

In addition to the wealth of familiar and slightly obscure material is the vast amount of unreleased outtakes, themes, songs, and incidental music that is included here. In fact, the balance is just about 50/50 of released to unissued material on this set. The question, "Why?" is an obvious one, but the answers bring up many implications: For starters, none of the material here is substandard. While it is arguable even among Morricone's many fans that some of his music was fluff, none of that is true of the unissued material. These are pieces left on the cutting room floor -- in many cases gorgeous love themes and anthemic chase interludes or variations on other themes -- and this is especially true of the period when Morricone was composing for Sergio Leone. This means, of course, that Morricone is even more visionary, more thorough; he's most uncanny when it comes to the orchestration of a narrative that we previously held true. If even his cutting room floor tapes are worth releasing, it's a wonder what he has in his secret vault to spring on us after he's gone.

The unreleased material is provided for the person who would obsess over the $250 plus price tag of such a set, for the collector who already has everything else. Why would a Morricone buff plunk down that much cash, no matter how hip his trademark mix of classical, Italian folk music, ock, disco, funk, samba, ossa, soul, and pop was if it weren't for the fact that there is literally a ton of stuff here you've never even seen before. This is for the public library's soundtrack collection and the university library's film studies department. Indeed, The Morricone Chronicles are not for everyone. For most of us, the Rhino double-disc anthology was plenty. But there are those for whom this particular violin plays against the sound effect of a nine-car pileup in the middle of a shootout, missing from the film L'Harem. For these precious, precocious, obsessed few, this is more than an essential purchase -- it is the Holy Grail itself. For the film music historian this is a sacred treasure of secrets, myths and texts from the beyond. And, given the Japanese savvy for musical obsession, this set will find its audience and leave them delighted. In all, The Morricone Chronicles is a more than fitting tribute to a giant and a genius, but it is also a mind-boggling collection of tracks nonetheless.