Ennio Morricone's Moscow Farewell (from Mosca Addio) - A Brief Music Insight

I first listened to this piece of music in the late 90s as part of some compilation music CD. Didn't think much of it. Came back to it a year later. Didn't think much of it. Came back to it a while later. It struck a chord then. It made me wonder. Could it have been composed for a love scene? Imagination took hold. Two people who meet in a bar go to his place. Or her place. There is no hesitation. No awkwardness. No wasted chit chat. All that was already done. They know what they want. They have done it before. They start making love. More gentle than rough. Like it was something more than the sex that they both needed this time. Vulnerabilities abound. They are noticed. And accepted. The rest of the city starts to switch off. It starts snowing. Probably the next morning, the roads will be full of the brown stuff on the sidewalks and snarling rush hour traffic and office worker bees clamoring in and out of their favorite coffee shops. But the lovers are not thinking of those things now. They are experiencing a different world.

Well, I just found this music on YouTube. So much for imagination. Turns out to be an Italian movie with a Russian theme. It looks like this music might have been played during the climax. Different kind of climax than what I had had in mind for twenty years. I am not familiar with Italian cinema. So an Italian movie about Russia is an odd combination for me. Like the guitar and the sax in the music itself. Maybe there is more to Italy than soccer and the Tuscan sun and Professor Langdon running around. Rome in her heyday. The premise of the movie is intriguing enough that I don't want to watch it. Lest it ruin my impression of the music. And the music itself is as fresh as when I first heard it twenty years ago. There are only a few instruments involved. Its minimalist music at its best. Full of clarity. Like a lone blue flower against a black background. The only other composer who could have rivaled Ennio Morricone on this back in the day would have been Jerry Goldsmith. Maybe Alan Silvestri on a good day. Today, it would be Hans Zimmer. Any day. This is not music for the headphones. As that indicates physical presence in a distracting environment. Like in a green line train. This is music meant to fill a living room. This requires tower speakers. And a center channel speaker. Tiny and humongous living rooms. With the cat in its own world. Doesn't matter. It may all be too melancholic for most people in the end.