Italian Western – Violent Image, Savage Soundtrack – The Music of Spaghetti Westerns – Book Review

 

Colonne Sonore

By Massimo Privitera

 

Italian Western – Violent Image, Savage Soundtrack – The Music of Spaghetti Westerns (2025)

Publisher: BearManor Media books

Language: English

Pages. 199

The Western has that sound there: symphonically wild and dirty for Our Cinema, which has shamelessly and brilliantly plundered the North American imagination; symphonically epic and clean for the original American, his father actual master. Surely the Sound par excellence of Spaghetti Westerns (a denomination that I have always despised because it is quite mocking in itself) has remained more indelibly imprinted in the cinephile mind (not exclusively the one) global in spite of that solemn and grandiose classical melodicism born from the enlightened pen of Aaron Copland, musically qualified in 'Americana' style. The Sound of the Italian Western is indissolubly Ennio Morricone and thanks to the late Oscar-winning Roman Maestro who has become famous everywhere, praised, respected, copied by the composers of yesterday and today and analyzed in many books arguing music applied to images. Last but not least, but still uniquely linked to Italian western cinema right from the title, which has generated so many proselytes over the years, the book examined here, written by John Mansell, British film music critic, renowned collector of soundtracks and member of the IFMCA (International Film Music Critics Awards), as well as curator and creator of the film and music criticism site Movie Music International (https://jonman492000.wordpress.com/). "Italian Western – Violent Image, Savage Soundtrack – The Music of Spaghetti Westerns" is a volume only in English, which today is certainly no longer an impediment, not even for those who do not chew the language well (in Italian we refer you to the review of the exhaustive 2017 book "Quando cantavano le colt – Enciclopedia cinemusicale del western all'italiana") which collects, over a period of 25 years, a series of very interesting, exhaustive and anecdotally pleasant interviews with, in order of appearance, Nico Fidenco, Alessandro Alessandroni, Franco Micalizzi, Stelvio Cipriani, Francesco De Masi, Piero Umiliani, Piero Piccioni, Guido & Maurizio De Angelis and Nora Orlandi. As many as 51 central pages of the book of pure black and white iconography, showing posters and photos of directors, actors and above all composers – in the case of the latter categories you have to squeeze your brains hard as inveterate connoisseurs of the genre in question, because no connotative captions are added, as if to set up a sort of mnemonic quiz of Cinema and Western Scoring – and some chapters that probe his historiography in a fluent and pleasant way, the nodal pieces, such as, for example, his singing and solo interpreters, the leitmotifs and related more basic soundtracks, logically the aforementioned Morricone and other profiles, including Bruno Nicolai, Benedetto Ghiglia, Gianni Ferrio, Gianni Marchetti, Luis Enriquez Bacalov, Riz Ortolani, Marcello Giombini, Michele Lacerenza, Vasco Vassil Kojucharov, Angelo Francesco Lavagnino, Berto Pisano, Gioacchino Angelo, Egisto Macchi, Armando Trovajoli, Felice Di Stefano, Ivan Vandor, Carlo Rustichelli and Gianfranco Reverberi.

The preface was entrusted to the composer Susan DiBona who, together with her composer husband Salvatore Sangiovanni, wrote the music of the more or less recent short western, paying tribute to our westerns, Bloody Fury (read the review), which states: <<These are musical themes that make us sit and listen. They create memories and awaken them. The origins of the musical style we all know and love date back to the 1850s. At that point, a recognizable Western musical style began to develop, reflecting the unique mix of peoples who came together in the southwestern United States. The region was a melting pot of Native Americans along with a diverse group of Africans and settlers of Celtic, Spanish, German, and Anglo-Saxon descent.

John Mansell sent me a list of who’s who on pages 86 – 134.

Pages-  86 Sandro Alessandroni, 87 Lavagnino, 88 Bacalov, 89 Cipriani, Orlandi and Coro 4 +4,94 Guido and Maurizio De Angelis, Franco De Gemini, 95 De Masi both photos,100 Edda Dell Orso, 101 Egisto Macchi, Piero Umiliani,  102 Nico Fidenco,104  Franco Micalizzi, 105 Benedetto Ghiglia, Marcello Giombini, 107 Maurizio Graf, 108 Guido and Maurizio De Angelis,  110 Il Cantori Moderni  112 Sergio Leone, 113 Franco Micalizzi in 2012, 114 Michele Lacarenza, Ennio Morricone, 115 Bruno Nicolai, 116 Nora Orlandi, 120 Piero Piccioni, Piero Umiliani, 121 Berto Pisano, Roberto Pregadio, 122 Raul,  123 Gianfranco Reverberi at recording session, 124 Peter Boom, 126 Sante Maria Romitelli 80s, Carlo  Rustichelli, 128 Carlo Savina, Sergio Sollima,  133 Armando Trovajoli,  134 Vasco Vassili Kojucharov, Gianni Marchetti...