Image: Morricone at work in Hungary with the Failoni Chamber Orchestra.
Loony is probably the wrong word here because this particular cultural squidge says a lot about orchestration and the enduring power of a driving rhythm.
It took a while for the relentless hoofbeat cadences of Ennio Morricone’s work with Sergio Leone to make it into the canon of cliches, but now they are ubiquitous, helped on perhaps by the massive drumbeats of Hong Kong and Japanese cinema.
