Ennio Morricone passes away

Italian composer Ennio Morricone, one of the world's best-known and most prolific film composers, has died in Rome, Italian news agency ANSA said on Monday.

Morricone, who was 91, died in hospital in Rome where he was being treated for a fractured femur following a fall, the reports said.

Born in Rome in 1928, Morricone wrote scores for some 400 films but his name was most closely linked with the director Sergio Leone with whom he worked on the now-classic Spaghetti Westerns as well as “Once Upon a Time in America”.

Morricone won his Oscar for his work on Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight (2015) and also was nominated for his original scores for Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven (1978), Roland Joffe’s The Mission (1986), Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables (1987), Barry Levinson’s Bugsy (1991) and Giuseppe Tornatore’s Malena (2000).

Known as “The Maestro,” he also received an honorary Oscar in 2007 (presented by Clint Eastwood) for his “magnificent and multifaceted contributions to the art of film music,” and he collected 11 David di Donatello Awards, Italy’s highest film honors.