Prolific Italian composer Ennio Morricone dies aged 91

Legendary Italian composer Ennio Morricone has died aged 91, his lawyer Giorgio Assumma has confirmed.

Morricone's symphonic scores back everything within the film realm, from westerns and romance to horror and sci-fi.

Born in Rome in 1928, he began playing the trumpet early and wrote his first composition aged just six.

Later studying classical music and graduating from university, he started writing scores for radio and theatre.

The talented composer and conductor was hired as an by the label RCA in Italy and also began writing for pop artists Paul Anka, Françoise Hardy, Demis Roussos and the Pet Shop Boys.

Morricone also made boundary-pushing avant garde music with Gruppo di Improvvisazione di Nuova Consonanza - an innovative collective of experimental, improvisational composers.

Renowned for his film scores, he began in the mid-1950s as a ghostwriter on films credited to others.

Working in almost every genre, his melodies became more famous than many of the movies themselves.

His collaborations with Luciano Salce, beginning with Il Federale (The Fascist), established Morricone as a composer to watch.

Among his successes were Morricone's 'Come Maddalena' and 'Chi Mai' for Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s 1971 film Maddalena, later reused in the BBC drama series The Life and Times of David Lloyd George, and his 1960s Sergio Leone scores in the Dollars trilogy.

“The music is indispensable, because my films could practically be silent movies, the dialogue counts for relatively little, and so the music underlines actions and feelings more than the dialogue,” Leone has said.

His work on Leone’s 1984 film Once Upon a Time in America remains one of his best remembered.

Quentin Tarantino hired him for his western The Hateful Eight, earning Morricone his first Oscar outside of his lifetime achievement award. - as well as action films Kill Bill, Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained.

Other projects he worked on include The Thing , The Battle of Algiers, Days of Heaven, The Untouchables, the La Cage aux Folles trilogy, The Sopranos, The Simpsons and The Mandalorian.

He sold more than 70 million albums worldwide, and won four Grammy awards and six Baftas along with his two Academy Awards.

Overall, Morricone scored over 520 screen projects, and has left an incredible legacy.