The maestro

‘Had I not become a composer, I would have wanted to be a chess player, but a high-level one, someone competing for the world title.’ So said Ennio Morricone, who died earlier this month at the age of 91. Looking back on a lifetime of work, you don’t doubt that he could have done it. The Italian ‘maestro’ was best known for his transcendent film scores; the coyote howl theme from Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, came to symbolise the Italian Western genre.

Less well-known is that Morricone composed ‘Inno degli scacchisti’ (‘Chess players’ anthem’) for the Turin Olympiad in 2006. He was, in fact, a keen chess player, who picked up the game as a boy, but dropped it when it began to interfere with his music studies. Returning to the game in adulthood, he studied with Stefano Tatai, who went on to become a 12-time Italian champion.