The composer Ennio Morricone, who during his lifetime created famous and wonderful melodies, died on 6 July 2020. He was born on 10 November 1928 in Rome, where he spent his entire life.

His wife Maria  Travia was born in 1932 in San Giorgio di Gioiosa Marea (Messina-Sicily), on the last night of the year, 31 December. However, as early as 1933 her family moved to Rome, where Maria grew up. She was a friend of Adriana, Ennio's sister.

Shortly before his death, he named her in writing as the one to whom he had entrusted everything: "Last, but not least, Maria. With this I renew the extraordinary love that has held us together, and I am not glad that I must leave her. The most painful thing is to say goodbye to her."

He and Maria married in Rome on 13 October 1956 and had four children: Giovanni, Marco, Alessandra and Andrea. Throughout all the years of their marriage, Ennio Morricone was deeply in love with his wife, to whom he remained devoted and faithful. For a famous figure in today's world, this is an extraordinary testimony.
We can truly say that she was, as it were, the soundtrack of his life, for, as in a film, it is the music that supports, underlines and enhances the performance of the film's protagonist. Maria, as his companion, was for Ennio the soundtrack of presence, strength and care. In his book Inseguendo quel suono, Ennio Morricone confirmed the story that the inspiration for his famous melody "Se telefonando", a song Morricone wrote in 1966 which became an enormous hit, came to him while he was waiting in a queue with his wife to pay a petrol bill.  The eternal appears even among the bills we have to pay, if, on a beloved face, we recognise that it speaks to us out of love. Love is the echo of invisible eternity.
Perhaps the musical talent that was so powerful in Morricone sprang from a love that had strong and deep roots. He recalls one lovely family custom, during which, as a child, he would often fall asleep listening to his mother praying the rosary while, close by, bombs fell during the Second World War. In that memory we see the interweaving of word and sound, perhaps the seed of an inclination towards music that accompanies a story and enriches it. To write a soundtrack, you must be sure that the plot of the story will unfold from beginning to end, and then, at the close, find its final resolution. Something similar happens in married life, in which you promise yourself "forever" to another person before God, without thereby trying to avoid moments of uncertainty or drama.
Maria was his inspiration. When Morricone received the Honorary Academy Award in 2007, he said: "I dedicate this Oscar to my wife Maria, who loves me very much, and I love her in the same way, so this award belongs to her too." He said something similar in 2016, on receiving the Oscar for the score of The Hateful Eight by Quentin Tarantino, thanking his wife: "I dedicate this award to my wife Maria, my mentor."

"Maria was the one who first gave her judgement on every piece, before anyone else. My wife would first listen to all the possibilities.  Then she would give me her opinion: 'Keep this; throw that out. Ennio, this is nothing special.' She has no technical knowledge of music, but she has the same instinct as the audience. From the moment Maria began giving me her comments and criticisms, the directors ended up, in the end, with only the best music, music she had already approved beforehand."

In these words one senses a great love for a woman who allowed him to cultivate his talent fully, while caring for the family but also making a creative contribution to the music Morricone composed. Maria Travia was the author of the lyrics for the song in Nuovo Cinema Paradiso and, together with her husband, adapted part of the score for Once Upon a Time in the West.

 

Music: Ennio Morricone

Lyrics: Audrey Stainton Nohra and Maria Travia

Performed by: Andrea Bocelli

 

[The song "Your Love"

is not reproduced here,

in keeping with copyright

and this assignment's brief.]

 

Music: Ennio Morricone

Lyrics: Audrey Stainton Nohra

and Maria Travia

Performed by:

Andrea Bocelli

 

Readers who wish to hear

the song in full

are encouraged to seek out

a licensed recording

or an authorised lyric source.

In an interview for Corriere della Sera he was very clear, when asked how he could live with the same woman for 70 years: "You would have to ask my wife that question. Living with someone who does my job is not easy. Military discipline and focus. Strict schedules. Whole days spent composing without seeing anyone. No one was allowed into the study except her. That was her special privilege. When I work, I'm under pressure until I finish what I have to do. That can be hard for those around me. Maria accepted and supported me exactly as I was."

"I am demanding above all with myself, and then with those around me. Otherwise, the results would not come. Success certainly comes from talent, but even more from work, experience and, I repeat, devotion. To my art, as much as to my wife. I made it a rule for myself to give everything I have - always. Even if I don't manage every time to achieve what I want."

I wake early in the morning, at 4:00. Every morning I fight against laziness, but in the end I always get up. That is the only solution – getting up early, then stretching exercises and reading the newspapers so as to keep up with what is happening in the world. After that I shut myself in the studio and work. I usually use the afternoon to rest when I have nothing to do, but even today I always have so many pressing deadlines. . . . In the evening I exercise, every day. All in all, I do around fifty exercises, combined in sets of three. In this way I have tested the efficiency of my joints, and I felt happy when I realised that my body was responding well. You have to take care of all these practical things throughout your life, unless you want to end up a stiff old man.

His family was with him in his final days in hospital. He remained lucid until the end, and was able to speak with his wife. It is mysterious and touching that their love actually began in a hospital. He liked her from the start, but what really brought them together was an unfortunate event: she was seriously injured in a road accident with her father and was then hospitalised, put in a cast from her neck to her waist.

In that situation Ennio, who stayed close to her, won her heart: "She was in great pain. I stayed close to her. And so, day by day, drop by drop, I made her fall in love. In love, as in art, constancy is everything. I don't know whether love at first sight exists, or some supernatural intuition. I know that constancy exists, consistency, seriousness and endurance. And, of course, fidelity." In a certain sense, every true promise of love begins "in the hospital" of life - that is, in the mutual acknowledgement that both spouses are fragile and weak, and yet long to walk hand in hand through life.

There was not only music in the life of Ennio Morricone. The composer was, above all, a passionate man. He loved football, chess, friends and family.
On the role of music in film, he recalled what his friend Gillo Pontecorvo once told him: "Behind every film story there is a real story. The music has to find  a way to bring out the value of that hidden story. Music 'helps feelings to be conceptualised, and concepts to be sentimentalised', as Pasolini used to say."
"I don't write for success. I write for myself. When I write, no one can help me, because a writer has something personal to say. Music requires you first to look within yourself, and then to express what has been worked out in the score and the performance."

He particularly highlighted the idea of dynamic stillness, that is, an almost invisible energy that in this way becomes noticeable and present, as, for example, in a dancer when movement stops and then new energy is released in the performance. Something similar happens with Christians who could not openly profess their faith. Dynamic stillness is an inner faith stripped of outward signs, a preservation that will, in time, lead to transformation.

"So the sounds you chase are not connected only with music. In this case, sound is presence. . . The fundamental presence is Maria, and the powerful love I hold for her, the one who accepts me exactly as I am.  And that, for so many years. She has constantly encouraged and driven me to keep creating."

He played chess passionately. And with great names of world chess. Chess is connected to mathematics, and mathematics is connected to music, as Pythagoras claimed. In the end, music, chess and mathematics are all creative activities. They rely on graphic and logical processes that also involve probability and unpredictability: "Well, I would say that chess is the best game precisely because it is not a mere game. Everything is at stake: the rules of morality, life, caution and determination in a bloodless struggle, the determination to win, and to do so the right way - through talent and not mere luck. While my children were living in Rome, I often played chess with them. For years I did everything I could to pass on my love of chess to them, and in time Andrea became better than me."

Above all, he loved  Maria Travia, the great and only love of his life, to whom he dedicated the only poem he ever wrote. It was called "Inseguendo quel suono", and it evokes the connection between the invisible and the human, God's echo in our life and in our relationship with the person we love, which resounds within us like some dear, familiar voice:

[The poem Ennio Morricone wrote for Maria is not reproduced here,
in keeping with copyright and this assignment's instructions.
Its Italian title,
Inseguendo quel suono,
means "Following That Sound":
it speaks of a beloved voice
reaching through the air
like an echo of the Unseen,
turned into an eternal moment,
an echo that enters the heart,
and of searching for oneself
in the wake of that sound,
alone, in the echo's yearning.]