Nuova Consonanza – Komponisten improvisieren im Kollektiv (Nuova Consonanza: Composers Improvise Collectively). 1967. West Germany. Directed by Theo Gallehr. With Ennio Morricone, Mario Bertoncini, Walter Branchi, Franco Evangelisti, John Heineman, Roland Kayn, Frederic Rzewski, Ivan Vandor. In German; English subtitles. DCP. 47 min.
As this rare German television program so tantalizing reveals, Ennio Morricone was a member of Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza (“The Group”), a radically experimental collective of composer-musicians who banded together in Rome in 1964 in a utopian spirit of nonhierarchical improvisation. The Group combined classical instrumentation with new electric technologies, musique concrète and jazz, seriality and noise, and in 1968 collaborated with Morricone on his score for Elio Petri’s A Quiet Place in the Country.
Giotto: Il Libro dell'Arte (Giotto). 1967. Italy. Directed by Luciano Emmer. In Italian; English subtitles. 27 min.
In addition to his beloved series of television commercials, Carosello (Carousel), Luciano Emmer was also noted for his excellent short documentaries on art. Ennio Morricone scored a number of these, and Giotto, about the late medieval painter’s miraculous frescos in Assisi’s Church of San Francesco, is an evocative example, with its allusions to period music.