ENNIOMORRICONE.IT

I only know the track Atto di dolore and that's very good. You mention several other tracks from this CD - I would like to know what they are like: mostly melodic or rather suspense music? (Sometimes Morricone's suspense music can be very melodic, I know.)
I'd like to hear some opinion of the style of Ogro before I decide to buy it.

Hi Daniel,

Yeah, you're probably right in that the organ piece isn't an original composition by Morricone (could be
Bach or one of his contemporaries). Anyway, it's great to hear that the sound quality is much better
than on the old vinyl LP. Unfortunately the same can't be said about the expanded release of Il Prato
which was recorded around the same time. There's a slight improvement to the sound but the music
still sounds dull and distorted in places.

Hello,
If Daniel is the great specialist I suppose he is, he is always (or nearly) right.
To reply to Keky, we could summarize Ogro's music as rather suspense music but very refined and with stylicism.
Here the drama or suspense or fear, etc, are not illustrated by lengthy strings pieces or only distorted sounds or voices, but by a thin writing for atmosphere with original rhythms and sonorities, waitings and dynamics/tensions together with humanity and hope.
There is not only sad music, but also up tempo like Missione compiuta and Canto basco, and some calm and slow pace strings with pauses (Chiesa di S Francesco in Borya).
It is a very important music, as a proof of his friendship with Pontecorvo ans as a prequel of his mafia' style.

Patrick

Patrick, thanks for the answer! I think I will give it a chance.

Do you like organ? It's the king of all instruments. It's my instrument. For this, I'll write few lines that I hope you'll find quite interesting about this misterious organ piece contained in the last scene of OGRO.

I don't know who is the composer (not Morricone) of the piece for organ, but I know the one who surely is not: J.S.Bach. This is for sure beyond any doubt.
At first sight, it should be a fragment of a choral. This piece doesn't belong to none of the four famous J.S.Bach's organ chorals collections, neither to the less famous Kirnberger collection and neither to those chorals (about 90) which don't belong to any collection. It is not a prelude or a fugue or a toccata and fugue or a single fugue or a single prelude, neither a trio, a fantasia, a partita or any other Bach's organ work: nothing of all this.
Then, the style is too flat to be by Bach. And neither it can be a transcription of one of his beloved pupils as Gerber, Kittel, Muthel, Doles or Krebs who often recopied, as exercise, some Bach's works expecially those for organ and clavier.

He could be a contemporary of Bach, but listening carefully this piece, I think to be able to say, for a lot of reasons long to explain, that the composer is before Bach and, in any case, not a northern german organist, surely a southern one.
North german organ writing differs from the german southern one, primarily by virtue of its extremely virtuistic character, not only in the works of the most famous among the northern masters, D.Buxtehude, but also in those of N.Bruhns, V. Lubeck, J.A.Reinken, G.Bohm, M.Weckmann. So we can exclude all these organ masters.

On the contrary, south German organ writing is relatively complicated and always transparent, largely influenced by the specific sound of the south german organs.

So I think that we must search for a southern german organ master before Bach, let's say between the 1685 and 1700, when Bach was still a boy. Re-listening the piece, I think about just one name: Johann Pachelbel, the composer of one of the most famous piece of music of all centuries: the CANON in RE. Pachelbel composed approximatively 250 organ works: chorals, preludes, fugues, toccatas, two ciacconas...

I think that the final track of OGRO comes from one of these pieces. From which one I cannot say it, but about the name of the composer, I am rather sure: Johann Pachelbel.

Ciao, ATK

Thank you for an interesting read, Altnikol
And yes, I love the organ! You could very well be right in that the final track
of OGRO is by Pachelbel.

I have identified the organ piece now and it turns out to be Bach's Chorale Prelude
"Herr Gott, nun schleuss den Himmel auf", from the Orgelbuechlein:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4hDp4n3-x4

cheers,
Micke

Yes, Micke, it seems to be it, but...
The Orgelbuchlein collection, you know, contains 45 chorals and the BWV 617 is more and more longer than the fragment utilized in OGRO. After the first 18 bars, the choral completely changes.

Now, Bach, during all is life, took pieces, long, short or very short from other composers as everybody did. An example for all: in the second "air" of the cantata BWV 134 he took 30 second of music without changing just one note, from the second adagio of the "concerto per la notte di Natale" OP. 6 di Arcangelo Corelli as he took 14 bars from the same composition in the "sonata" of the cantata BWV 182.

From Johann Pachelbel, that Bach considered as his most important master, we find more than one trace in 3 organ chorals from the collection Dritter Teil der Clavier-Ubung, but also in 2 chorals of the Neumeister collection, in at least 7 chorals which don't belong to any collection and even in the very famous "choral of death", BWV 668, from the collection Achtzehn Chorale von verschiedener Art that, being completely blind, in the dark of the room, he dictated to his brother-in-law few hours before he died. These are only some examples.

So we could say: it could be by Bach, but it also could be not despite to an apparent evidence, because remains the doubt that Bach "borrowed" the main idea from the great organist of Nurnberg.
Now, to try to identify the origin of the BWV 617, if there is an origin, among all Pachelbel's compositions...would be a terrific and titanic effort.

Anyhow, do you like organ chorals? Listen to the most beautiful, according to my tastes, of the ORGELBUCHLEIN : the BWV 622 and listen from where Morricone has taken the finale of not less than 200 his compositions (I mean as musical architecture)...but also listen to BWV 633 and BWV 641.
It's always a pleasure for me to talk about organ works.

Ciao, ATK

@ Micke,

Good find (about end titles).

Can anyone tell me, what the difference?

Beetween........

1) OGRO (track 1 and track 18)
2) Il Lungo Silenzio (track 1 and track 18 on CAM's 1993 CD)

Absolutely same tracks....... or i can't hear some small things in the sound?

I can't feel any difference...... To include 2 same tracks on one CD?

I think not for nothing, and these tracks has difference........ Let me know.

Hello Eldar and the others,
Me too, I hear no difference between the 2 pairs of tracks mentioned.
Even if it is other takes upon the same arrangement (which obviously is at least the case !), I find un-understandable to put such repetitions on an official CD, like bad "b...legs") . There are more examples in Morricone's CDs, more subtletly hidden...
And do you know that the CD missed some minor tracks ? Some short variants of "Canto basco" heard 2-3 times in the film.
I have to add that Daniel Winkler who often edits and remasters CDs like this one surely wouldn't have proposed this "omission", as a fair and great specialist of EM's music. There are certainly other reasons.

Patrick