Alessandro Alessandroni - Prisma Sonoro

Composer: Alessandro Alessandroni

Title: Prisma Sonoro

Year: 1974

Those familiar with the work of Ennio Morricone might know Alessandro Alessandroni as the multi-instrumentalist whose Fender guitar and beautiful, clear whistling can be heard on some of Morricone's most iconic work. What they might not know is that Alessandroni was a masterful composer in his own right, scoring over 40 films and releasing countless albums of absolute music. Of those albums, Prisma Sonoro is perhaps the finest and the only non-soundtrack album for which Alessandroni had access to a full orchestra. Regarding the instrumentation, Alessandroni said:

"The editor gave me total freedom, so I composed for a great orchestra with 16 violins, 4 violas, 4 cellos, it was truly fun. It isn't often that a producer leaves you free to compose whatever you want."

As with much of the Italian soundtrack music of the 70's, Alessandroni doesn't limit himself to just a traditional orchestra here: it is often driven by drum set and electric bass and frequently employs electric guitar, harpsichord and wordless female vocals.  As often heard in Morricone's work, Alessandroni makes significant use of doubled melodies on Prisma Sonoro (two instruments playing the same melody in unison), which contributes to the lushness of this impeccably orchestrated work.

Though it has similarities to much of the Italian soundtrack work of the period, Prisma Sonoro enjoys the distinction of having each track be a unique composition with no repetition and variation of themes.  As such it is one of the most pleasurable albums to listen through from start to finish among his work and among the genre at large.

Ennio Morricone - Giù la testa

Composer: Ennio Morricone

Title: Giù la testa (Duck, You Sucker!) [OST]

Year: 1971

Italian director Sergio Leone, known for his Spaghetti Westerns, including the iconic The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, directed only six films between 1964 and his death in 1989 and each of those is beautifully scored by the peerless Ennio Morricone, a former schoolmate of Leone's whose rise to success was defined by their collaboration.  To say Morricone's music is essential to Leone's films would be an understatement; indeed they define the films as much as the breathtaking cinematography, the gritty violence or the stories they tell.  In fact, their approach to the music was one that is very unique in film history: in some cases the music would be written before the films and Leone would play the music for the actors on set to inform the mood he was striving for.

Though the Dollars Trilogy, Once Upon a Time in the West and Once Upon a Time in America, get the bulk of the attention among their collaborations, Giu la testa (or Duck, You Sucker!) is a remarkable and epic film with an equally masterful score, mostly overlooked by history.  Starring James Coburn and Rod Steiger, the film is considered a Zapata Western, a variation on the Spaghetti Western that typically focuses on a Mexican revolutionary partnering with a money-hungry Caucasian.  The score here ranges from grand and emotional orchestral pieces to light-hearted small-ensemble pieces that highlight the happy-go-lucky sentiment into which the film briefly wanders.  As always, Morricone leverages his imaginative sense of instrumentation, at some points employing what seems to be essentially a man burping as a percussive accent.   There is a particular feeling of nostalgia in this work as a whole, which both fits the film and the then quite mature partnership between Leone and Morricone.

Nino Rota - Giulietta degli Spiriti

Composer: Nino Rota

Title: Giulietta degli Spiriti (Juliet of the Spirits) [OST]

Year: 1965

Among the great director-composer partnerships, that between Federico Fellini and Nino Rota ranks as one of the most fruitful and prolific, resulting in 17 films scored over a 26-year period.  An argument could be made for Giulietta degli Spiriti being the finest among those scores, a delightful circus of music intelligently pairing heavenly electric organs, electric guitar and wordless vocals with nimble slices of the orchestra.  Rota draws from his extraordinarily colorful palette to vary recurring themes in unexpected and dreamy ways, allowing ample and deserved opportunity for their beauty to be explored and sink in.