On Earth as it is in Heaven, The Falls & Gabriel’s Oboe (The Mission,1986) – Ennio Morricone

Our life, our life, our life, our life, so they cry.
Our life, our life, our life, our life, they cry like this.
Punishment, punishment, our strength, our punishment, cry out like this
Punishment Punishment Our Strength Our Punishment So So So So Cry

The film The Mission featured here back in September. It is a British period drama film about the experiences of a Jesuit missionary in 18th-century South America. In the comments section of that post a fellow blogger Bernie from Reely Bernie who is an instructor of music at University mentioned the following:

Ennio Morricone’s best. The motif is so soul-reaching that it became my favourite part of the movie. I play it often as a piano transcription at weddings. A great tribute movie to Jesuits as well. They never get a fair shake.

I realised from our conversation I was missing some of the soundtrack’s better tracks including On Earth as it is in Heaven, Falls and Gabriel Oboe which I have since listened to and added as well. The Italian song Nella Fantasia (“In My Fantasy”) is based on the theme “Gabriel’s Oboe” and has been recorded by multiple artists.

The Mission soundtrack combines liturgical chorales, native drumming, and Spanish-influenced guitars, often in the same track, in an attempt to capture the varying cultures depicted in the film.

Interesting Trivia:

Morricone’s score for The Mission did not win the Oscar for Best Original Score, losing to Herbie Hancock’s Round Midnight. The award is considered one of the most controversial in that category, because it beat out James Horner’s score for Aliens, Jerry Goldsmith’s score for Hoosiers and that of Ennio Morricone for The Mission. In his review of the score to Hoosiers, Christian Clemmensen of Filmtracks.com stated: ‘The awarding of the Original Score Oscar for 1986 to Herbie Hancock for Round Midnight is considered one of the greatest of the many injustices that have befallen nominees for that category. Ennio Morricone and, to a lesser extent, James Horner were worthy of recognition that year, though Goldsmith’s Hoosiers stands in a class of its own because of its immense impact on the picture.’ Morricone, who did not win a competitive Oscar until 2015 (for Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight), said in an interview: ‘I definitely felt that I should have won for The Mission, especially when you consider that the Oscar-winner that year was Round Midnight, which was not an original score. It had a very good arrangement by Herbie Hancock, but it used existing pieces. So there could be no comparison with The Mission. There was a theft!’. As a result, the music branch of the Academy decided to “tighten up the rules” so that “Scores diluted by the use of tracked (inserted music not written by the composer) or pre-existing music” would no longer be eligible for award nomination.

References:
1. The Mission (soundtrack) – Wikipedia

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