Composer Ennio Morricone Wants Us To Know He’s Really A Modernist (Despite All Those Film Scores)

“[Playing in the avant-garde improvisation group] Nuova Consonanza really reunited me with the love of my life — composing absolute music, music that is not related to a film, or to a pop song. One of our rules was to avoid anything that was melodic, anything that was usual. We had to produce very strange sounds, very complicated sounds, because we wanted to get as far away as possible from the so-called traditions of classical music. The experience with them really helped me to bear the burden of working in the commercial sector.”