Ennio Morricone has passed away, according to the New York Times. The legendary Italian composer whose spaghetti western film scores helped define a whole genre passed away in Rome at the age of 91.
Morricone became famous for his stupendous scores for Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood’s 1960s western classics like A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). He scored hundreds of films over his career, bringing his characteristic expertise to everything he did from The Thing to 1986’s The Mission to his final film project, Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, for which he won an Oscar.
Tributes began pouring in from friends, collaborators and fans on Monday morning. Hans Zimmer told BBC Breakfast that Morricone was “one of a kind.”
“His music was always outstanding and done with great emotional fortitude and great intellectual thought,” Zimmer continued.
