1. Ennio MorriconeThe Mission
I first heard this as a child, or maybe as a pre-teen. And I’m sure – although I did watch The Mission later on – the score came first. At the time, I was very close with my teenage brother, and he would bring a lot of music home. On the way to school, we would listen to albums in the car together. I remember him playing this to me and being completely flooded with emotion. I had encountered Morricone before, mostly through all the Western stuff he’d done. But this particular film score set something off in me, something that was beyond my comprehension. This record embodies the overwhelming power of music to wrench your soul. No matter how many times I’ve heard it – even listening again this morning – it always makes me sob. It just gets to me in a truly visceral way. The film is set in this awe-inspiring tropical environment with incredible scenes of cascading waterfalls, which is captured so perfectly by the soundtrack. Morricone creates this pure feeling of love. The film is based on the experiences of a Christian missionary in 18th-century South America, a brutal and controversial thing to engage in. Still, there’s beauty present in this music. I’m obsessed with its strangeness; the melodies and the main theme, which isn’t in a measure that is easy to play or to move to. Musically, it doesn’t even make that much sense. I’d love to know more about why he wrote it in that particular way. The fact that it’s utterly unpredictable is haunting.
