A Conversation with Andrea Morricone – HuffPost 10.10.14

Mike Ragogna: Andrea! You have a major event happening soon, right?

Andrea Morricone: Hey! This event is going to be very, very special for many different aspects. For my music, what I’m going to propose first of all, for the city of Los Angeles, the city where I live, and also for the Italian culture. These are three points that will be blended together in a wonderful show where some amazing artists will be performing under my conduction. So yeah, talking about the context of this concert is very interesting to me even though I’ll always find it kind of hilarious to talk about defining my music.

MR: Well, let’s try to do that. It seems to cross a lot of genres. How would you as the artist describe your own music?

AM: I would describe myself first of all as a very well prepared musician. I know the music. I’ve studied the music a lot for many, many, many years, since I was a kid. I was already listening to the music when I was in my mother’s womb. It was 1964 and there was Per Un Pugno Di Dollari—A Fistful Of Dollars. My music is the result of a lot of thinking and a lot of feelings, I would say. A lot of curiosity also, coming here to the United States has meant to me a lot from this point of view because I’ve had the opportunity to work with amazing players and musicians from all over the country. I have to tell you sometimes I couldn’t understand what was going on, something worth learning, but what was important was where my eyes were bringing me to. I was listening and thinking a lot about many compositions of many American artists also and what I find interesting in these is that many American artists are already the result of a combination of cultures themselves. It was very, very exciting to go back sometimes to Europe through American composers and also to go back to my origins.

MR: You mentioned A Fistful Of Dollars that was scored by your dad, the world-renowned Ennio Morricone.

AM: Talking about my origins more specifically, of course, I adore my father and I think he’s a genius, his music is legendary. He’s a great composer. Life is made of a few very important moments, there are only a few very important moments. Of course, days go on and on but what we remember sometimes in a relationship with people are just some moments. Talking about my relationship with my father, I’m especially talking about music because that’s what it always is about. Here and there he was telling me, “Now I’m doing this, now I’m doing that,” but after many months, maybe seven months or nine months. Every time I would go to see him after many months I had the opportunity to talk to him about music and to see his point of view. That was also a great opportunity for me to understand my point of view and to feel the necessity and the need that my body beyond the soul was feeling to go somewhere else. As a matter of fact I am very thankful to my father. Sometimes I talk to him and I say, “I learned so much from you,” and this sounds wonderful from me because I believe a lot in his idea of tradition.

MR: Naturally, you were exposed to a lot of music growing up in that creative Morricone atmosphere. But you also had your own eras of music since you lived through the sixties, seventies, eighties, et cetera.

AM: Yeah, absolutely! I believe there is a huge gap between me and my father. Now it’s the time of mixing and wonderful samples. All the process of making movies is totally different. The director wants to listen to the music before it’s recorded! Everything is different. What I was talking about was a more general approach to music that is not only linked to the movies. My personality is absolutely extreme to my father. I’m on the other part of the planet, and this is for several reasons which are very, very subtle to explain. What matters for me is my very strong acknowledgement of what I do because there is a stronger theoretic base to what I do. I spend so long working on the internet also, publishing my own books and I have amazing files that are of course copyrighted because they offer me so many ways of sorting out any kind of situation.

MR: What was your first instrument?

AM: The piano. Then I played the orchestra I would say. I love conducting. I can tell you that conducting is very important for a composer. When I conduct I go very much into the details and I really like to spend a long time until I have very clear ideas of everything I want. Musicians love that because they understand that when they have a conductor who knows what they want it’s always beautiful. That brings out the expression from that. Sorry, I’m talking too much, I don’t leave you room for questions!

MR: [laughs] I do the same thing, don’t worry. Andrea, you’re a very passionate person, I can tell from the way you’re expressing yourself. So obviously, your music comes from a passionate place within. But is music spiritual to you as well?

AM: Yeah, I would like to talk a lot about this. Music for me is everything. Music for me is my life, music for me is God. It is the way I believe in God. It is the way I am in every day I live. What I try to bring to the other people is the best part of me. It’s the only part of me that I can get to the other people actually because there’s nothing else. Yes, there is the family, which is very important, and friends. I believe that from my father my music is meant to be also like you say very sentimental, espressivo — That’s fine.

I would like to mention, further to that, I recently composed a piece which is called “Anthem For Faith,” “L’Inno Alla Fede,” which is a piece that was bought by the Fondazione Pro Musica E Arte Sacra. I performed it in Italy last year, they went so crazy about this in the foundation — Close To The Vatican — that they wanted to share it with me. They are working right now on a DVD that will represent the foundation all throughout the world. This DVD contains sacred images of Rome with my music for oboe and strings. Now if I talked to you about a piece for oboe and strings of course you think of “Gabriel’s Oboe” by my father, from The Mission. I would spend like three hours talking about similarities and differences between my music and that one. It’s another cup of coffee, you see what I mean? There are some similarities, but it’s different! You can say, “This is Andrea Morricone, period.” Period! I instruct the players and ask them to do what I want just the way I think the music should be, because I think the music is based on maths — and this is another very important aspect.

The music is based on deep roots, you see what I mean? It’s not only to play just for fun. No, it’s not that. The music has to be based on deep roots. Otherwise it’s not memorable. This doesn’t mean that the music doesn’t have anything to do with being inspired by the heart of the composer of the artist. When I write the theme I can put my hands on the piano and I have this gift that it comes right away. The three notes, like Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. This is a very good example that I always do. But the problem is then how am I going to continue that theme? That’s a matter of technique. That’s not only technique, but there is a place in music where we are definitely going to deal with technique, and that technique is based on deep roots that only a few composers in the world know, I’m sorry to say. Those composers are the biggest. Bartók. Rachmaninoff. Brahms of the Fourth Symphony. What a masterpiece! It took me so many years to do that but it’s fresh, even today. It’s everlasting. This is because music is based on those natural rules that Rousseau was talking about already during the eighteenth century. There is something, which is natural that music also carries inside of itself.

MR: I think one of the clearest examples of that is your work with your dad onCinema Paradiso.

AM: Yeah! Sometimes when people talk to me about that piece, I have to tell you, I can say probably I don’t know anything about music. [laughs] It seems like something that’s in contradiction with what I’ve been doing until now, but people keep talking to me about that piece — and also my father! Sometimes he calls me and says, “Wow, this morning I woke up and I had this tune in my mind.” But how did you make it, the love theme? I believe that there is a special quality in the theme, because I don’t know what reason, but it sounds like that. There is a coming from and a going back, you see? A coming from and a going back, a coming from and a going back, which is beautiful. [hums love theme] Which makes it feel fully rounded. It’s almost as if the sentence is already finished over there but then it keeps going on.

MR: Where does that come from? We’ve been talking technically about all these roots and essentials, but where do you think is the most essential part that you get inspired from when you’re composing and conducting?

AM: You know, the story of my being human. I was meant to be a composer. I would say a big composer. [laughs] A huge composer. I’m glad that you’re showing such interest to me, and now in the city, many players realize how big I am. I have people like Katia Popov, the Concertmaster of the Hollywood Bowl who loves my music, or Andrew Schulman who believes the piece I played the other day is unbelievable — the oboe player who played that tune said, “Wow, this is one of the most beautiful pieces I have ever played. I don’t want to show off, I don’t care about doing that, but my goal is to express myself. My love is meant to be like that. If there was no music for me I would really be lost. This is the truth.

Sorry if I take one more minute to go back to an aspect that you were bringing before. It’s really very important to me. You were talking about spirituality and I was telling you about this kind of approach. This piece, “L’inno Alla Fede” is historical. It’s the first time that I’m sharing a piece with the Vatican. It’s incredible. And there will be a DVD produced by a very important DVD company. But anyway I want to go back to something that you said about spirituality. You must have heard of Liebniz, okay. He was a famous philosopher of the renaissance. He talks a lot about music and he talks a lot about numbers. He talks a lot about spirituality. It all blends together. It all blends together for him in the number one. He talks to us about monads, which means one. God is one. But what is very important about Liebniz is that he talks about music like the most perfect art. He talks about music as it is based on numbers. This is very important because number are so important in music. Believe me, if I didn’t have numbers it would impossible to compose. But of course the inspiration of the first notes of the theme, it doesn’t come from the numbers. This comes from my heart, of course, and also when I’m conducting, but there is this struggle, you understand, that is very important in life and in the performance of the artist.

For example, number two with number three got into the history of music in the twelfth century. They didn’t allow the number three to come in quite so easily. Number two was preferred to number three. And we know what contrasts it makes, the number three against the number two, from an emotional point of view. For example, “La Mer,” by Debussy, there is a section where the brass go in three against the two, which means that the composition is rising to a climax, an emotional climax that really is the main goal of the composer. Sorry I’m talking too much, but I also want to talk about numbers in the experience of the nineteenth century because of course many of the achievements of the school of Vienna are significant to me. There are many ways of making numbers, working in harmonic contexts that could be derivation in a way of the music of the last century where the numbers could really give great results to the composition and could make it very, very brilliant and interesting.

MR: There are so many young people who are driven to make music but they don’t know where to start. I ask everybody I interview this question, what advice do you have for new artists?

AM: I understand. It’s brilliant that you wonder about that. My congratulation to you, because this is evidence that you really care a lot about the younger generation’s people, as I do. It’s a matter of caring for the youngest generation. I’m also very concerned. Very concerned. Because of all that we’ve been talking about. We have experience so we can talk this way and understand each other. But first of all, being a good composer doesn’t mean being a good teacher. Most of the time I would say there’s no good teacher that is not a good composer. [laughs] If you know very well how music works you cannot give up composing at least one piece every day. Every day I wake up and if I don’t compose a couple of pieces I wonder why. For the biggest amount of experience I have on my shoulders I have lots of years of study every day, all the time and I would say also my own.

I’m Andrea Morricone, everyone thinks of me as the son of Ennio, but there is so much diversity between me and him. People should be way more aware of that. You know, the fame of my father because of the movies of the sixties, the seventies, the eighties, everybody knows him because the movies that he also scored were so amazing because of the directors — Sergio Leone, Gillo Pontecorvo, Elio Petri — all of these amazing directors. The point is that people are now stuck to that situation in a way. They still don’t seem to need anything new. Or they’re not curious about anything newer, which instead I want to bring in this concert, because in this concert there will be the first part which is going to be a very unique style of rock, but it’s not rock because it’s arranged for orchestra with strings. I don’t know, it’s classical rock. Then there is Miri Ben-Ari with the violin, these pieces could be avant-garde but they’re always tonal and melodic. Then there is the last section which is dedicated to my scores for movies but there’s not only the themes, there is the very strong concept of the arrangements. I would like to tell you that I am a very free person, and I put together a concert for the second part where I was choosing the music just because I like it. Because it’s beautiful. The best music I had. Actually I would like to maybe finish this wonderful interview, if you agree, telling you the big quality of the music, the big aspect of it, the main difference of it, is if it is good music, we’re talking about good music, or we’re talking about not good music. There are only two ways to be. Whether good or no good, period. This is the only rule that matters. Do you see what I mean?

MR: Yeah…and this concert will only have good music, right?

AM: Yeah. It’s going to be unbelievable. I’ve been working on it for many months. It’s going to be very unique. That’s a word that I would like to say. Very unique. Very fancy. Very appealing to people. When I’m on the podium I like to compose and when I’m writing I like to conduct. This means for me that as soon as I’m on the podium I like to bring the audience on a wonderful journey without letting them fall down for even one second. This is what I want to do that night.

MR: What does the future bring for you?

AM: The future is unbelievable. My expectations are wonderful. I have a concert in San Pietro Borgo now as an honored guest on October the eleventh. Then I have another concert in Santa Monica for next year already. Then another concert in Rome probably, I’ll conduct this piece, and then of course the concert on November the eighth. There are already many other situations that are developing about me in other cities of the country, also because my repertoire needs to be brought to the attentions of the largest crowd of people as possible.

MR: What kind of legacy do you want to leave?

AM: Basically, nothing. I believe that in my personal private life I have put down several periods, just to switch off situations, but what doesn’t switch off in my mind is thinking. My brain never stops thinking. This means that my music keeps flowing in myself in every moment. If I want I can go to the piano right now and start playing and start composing and do that for three or four hours no problem. I am also very strong as a person and so is my father. He’s 85 and he’s in good health. The music is my flow. That’s what I’d like to say. My eyes go straight, they look inside the eyes of the other people, they know what I want. The music flows inside myself and throughout my eyes into the other people. That’s the point. Did I answer your question? [laughs]

MR: Yeah, thanks. [laughs]

AM: I could say more consideration as per my repertoire and not for being the son of Ennio Morricone, which honestly I should tell you my father has never recommended me to any place in two hundred concerts. I’m doing my life on my own, you see what I mean? Like a man, on my own. This I want you to write on the paper. Not the son of Ennio Morricone. “Andrea Morricone, Period.” You understand also my personality, I’m very much open-minded, but I’m very serious. When it comes to work I know what I want. There’s nothing to do with me. As soon as I go to the party they know who they’re dealing with and they are very careful.

MR: This has been a beautiful interview, thank you Andrea. Is there anything else you’d like to talk about?

AM: Yeah, I would like to spend a word for my mother. Usually, everybody talks only of my father. Today, I would like to talk of my mother. My mother is a great woman. A great, great woman who stands on the side of my father and has been able to be on his side for all of my life, giving him all her life and looking after four sons. I want to talk about her just the way I would like maybe people to talk about Andrea instead of Ennio maybe. [laughs] You see what I mean? Seriously, my mother is a wonderful woman and very sweet. I feel myself very close to her because my temperament is sweet, I’m a sweet person. My father is a little more difficult to deal with. It’s been always like that. I have to understand, I am younger, living in another time. My father and my mother were living in the time of the second World War, you understand. So I have to make the effort to understand them. Of course, the temper of my father, I cannot expect to be so easy. This is also perhaps for many other reasons. His relationship with his father was very, very tough. He would go and play the trumpet to make money when he was fourteen already. He has a huge story on his shoulders. When I talk to my father I just say to myself, “Thank God I have these parents who are so wonderful.” But I really want to spend a word on my mother, because she’s really wonderful. Her name is Maria.

MR: That’s beautiful.

AM: And really, my last sentence should be that people have to come to this concert because it’s going to be unbelievable! I’ll make the city of LA blow up, okay? You know the movie by Antonioni? Okay, bye-bye Antonioni, now Andrea Morricone, there is! “Los Angeles will blow up with the music of Andrea Morricone, period!” This is the title, okay?

Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne