The Italian composer Ennio Morricone, who famously wrote music for Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns and Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight and Once Upon a Time in America, has died in Rome aged 91 in the early hours of July 6. Morricone was hospitalized after having fractured his femur in a fall a few days ago.

Morricone has created over his seven decades long career some of the most iconic pieces of music for the cinema. He found fame in the late 1960s with the music he scored for Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns, such as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and A Fistful of Dollars, that revolutionized the western genre. Following his success with Leone’s films, Morricone became a prolific film composer, scoring more than 500 soundtracks, working with - and not for - the greatest directors. Despite being offered to move to the U.S to work in Hollywood, Morricone never left Rome.

He received an honorary Oscar in 2007 for his career, but, almost a decade later, he finally won an Oscar for the soundtrack he composed for Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight in 2016 at the age of 87.

His music has the ability of anchoring the images in a film, bringing them further depth, even though he composed most of his scores from the film’s script. His music never forms part of the background. His music was inventive and showed an incredible range.