Although film composer Ennio Morricone is one of the most recognizable artists behind the music of the Spaghetti Western genre, Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight is the first Old West epic scored by the legend since 1981. Tarantino had previously sampled some of Morricone’s iconic musical tracks in his earlier films, and Morricone contributed an original song to Django Unchained. However, The Hateful Eight is the first true collaboration between Morricone and Tarantino.

“[Morricone is] my favorite composer,” said Tarantino in a newly released featurette from The Hateful Eight. “And I don’t mean for movies, I mean Beethoven, Bach, everybody. He’s my favorite…It is literally the dream of a lifetime.”

The short video includes footage of Morricone conducting the music for The Hateful Eight at Abbey Road Studios with Tarantino in attendance. Morricone also remarked in the video that Tarantino gave him complete freedom to write music for the film, which allowed him to compose the score “in tranquility.”

A few moments from the opening scenes of The Hateful Eight are interspersed with the footage of the live orchestra performing “L’ultima diligenza di Red Rock,” the main theme of the movie. In English, the name of that track translates to “The Last Stage to Red Rock.”

As alluded to by Tarantino in the video, Morricone was already conducting the music for another film when Tarantino approached him for The Hateful Eight. Despite his intention to only provide a theme for Tarantino, Morricone ended up writing 50 minutes of original music for The Hateful Eight, with a few tracks from his earlier scores for Exorcist II and John Carpenter’s The Thing used to fill out the music used in the final movie.

All of Morricone’s original tracks for The Hateful Eight are on the film’s soundtrack, which is currently available for sale.

What do think about Morricone’s score for The Hateful Eight? Share your opinions below!

—

Image Credit: The Weinstein Company