Search - Joan Baez :: Sacco And Vanzetti: Original Soundtrack From The Film

Masterful Music from Italian Maestro

René van Os | Beek & Donk Netherlands | 06/17/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Ennio Morricone is well known in the film music business for his westerns and mafia film scores. But in his enormous output one can also find gems in many other genres. Sacco and Vanzetti was a film by Italian director Giuliano Montaldo about the execution of two apparent political agitators in the 1920s. With this film Morricone found a wonderful opportunity for blending his masterful melodramatic themes with a vocal performance of enormous magnitude: that of Joan Baez. Baez, also a socially active voice in the early sixties (at those times in good company with the likes of Bob Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel), complemented Morricone's main theme in such a way that it has transcended the borders of film music and has become an immortal ballad for freedom and liberty for all. Her three part ballad is heartwrenchingly beautiful and poignant, even thirty years later. The lyrics are based on the texts of the liberties and rights of the individual in the USA ("give me your tired and your poor" refers to the inscription at the base of the statue of liberty). Morricone underscores her vocal performances almost in counterpoint but does not distract from the effectiveness of Baez's vocals. Morricone did not employ a large orchestra; his usual orchestra for Italian movies in the seventies varied from 25 players to about 55 players. Here, the sheer simplicity of thematics, combined with an extremely effective orchestration, clearly shows an optimal effect of dramatic scoring, as the music lives on far beyond the reach of the film itself. The hopelessness for Sacco and Vanzetti is wonderfully depicted by heavily melancholic strings and woodwinds and Morricone's innovativity even reaches as far as creating a theme for the electric chair, consisting of a synthesizerlike sound, resonating and undulating with a chilling intensity. (In previous themes there is some reference to this sound, as if looking forward to an ominous ending.) The Here's To You finale again repeats some of the finest moments of thematical material, accompanied by Baez's unique vocal talents. If anyone does not know this particular piece, this is certainly the chance to hear Morricone at his very best! Although Ennio Morricone has done some remarkable things with vocal performers, this collaboration with Joan Baez is one of his most successful endeavors. A modern masterpiece of film scoring!"