Why the Italian icon of film music hears the term Spaghetti Western as an “insult”.

In all probability, you will be remembered by generations to come as a composer of film scores, rather than a composer of so-called “serious” music. Does that bother you in any way?

It does slightly, but I don’t think it’s quite the case. Those who will want to study Morricone the composer will have to take into consideration both aspects of my work.

But it’s true that your film scores will always be more readily available to the general public.

Absolutely. But musicologists who want to explore my work will obviously have to give equal weighting to both these activities. Naturally, film music is a fundamental musical and creative exploit of our time, of this last century. It’s a part of our daily lives. It’s a medium where all the arts coalesce in an ideal that I often like to define as “Wagnerian”. And so historians will have to study film music in conjunction with all other arts that make up the cinematic medium in order to make sense culturally of this age.

You’ve worked on many “Spaghetti Westerns” or “Italian Westerns” as...