The Legend of 1900
For a pianist born at sea who never once set foot on land, Morricone built a floating ballroom on the Atlantic, where an orchestra and a jazz piano live side by side.
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
The makers ⏳🌊
- ComposerEnnio Morricone
A longtime collaborator of Tornatore, he won the Golden Globe for Best Original Score for this film.
- DirectorGiuseppe Tornatore
He adapted Baricco's one-man play into a large-scale English-language film, writing the screenplay and directing.
- ComposerAmedeo Tommasi
A jazz pianist who co-wrote the film's jazz cues with Morricone and performed them himself.
- LeadTim Roth
He played 1900, born on the ship and playing piano aboard it all his life.
- LeadPruitt Taylor Vince
He played Max Tooney, the trumpeter who is 1900's friend and the story's narrator.
I. The Legend of 1900
(Source) The film grew out of “Novecento,” a one-man play written by Alessandro Baricco. Novecento is Italian for “the 1900s,” that is, the twentieth century. It was a stage piece in which a single actor, alone, tells the story of a pianist said to have been born aboard the Virginian, a liner plying the Atlantic, and never once to have stepped off the ship. Director Giuseppe Tornatore expanded this short monologue into an English-language film of more than two hours, released in Italy in the autumn of 1998 under the title “La leggenda del pianista sull'oceano.” (Composer) The music fell to Ennio Morricone. Born in Rome in 1928, he grew up under a father who played the trumpet, and he studied trumpet and composition at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory. He made his name with Sergio Leone's westerns, yet he moved freely among experimental music, pop arrangements and pure orchestral writing, scoring hundreds of films. (Companion) He had worked with Tornatore since “Cinema Paradiso,” and taking on this film was a continuation of that long partnership. What set this project apart was that the music does not stay in the background but becomes the hero's very gesture. The hero speaks through the piano and loves through the piano. So besides the orchestral music running beneath the scenes, Morricone had to prepare, separately, the pieces the hero actually plays. The jazz pianist Amedeo Tommasi co-wrote those jazz cues and played them himself. The piano in the more classical pieces was played by Gilda Buttà, a longtime Morricone collaborator. (Lineage) “The Pianist,” covered earlier in this series, was also a film that illuminates one person's life through a single piano. Where that work leaned on real music, Chopin's, this film had to invent from scratch the music of a pianist who never existed.
A cue named after the title of the original monologue. Folding the sea, the piano and one man's life into a single piece, it lays down in advance the emotional ground of the whole film.
- Listen to the texture of the piano rising above a broad carpet of strings. The orchestra seems to take the part of the sea, and the piano that of a single person afloat upon it.
- Record reviews point to passages where a jazz-flavored piano, in the manner of the American composer Gershwin, seems to square off against the orchestra. It is, in effect, the hero's place between classical and jazz, rendered in sound.
- Fragments of this theme's melody return throughout the film, serving as a signal that points to the hero. A device like this, in which a short recurring melody stands for a character, is called a leading motive (leitmotif).
- This score won the Golden Globe for Best Original Score at the 2000 ceremony.
II. The child of the coal bunker
(Frame) The story begins when the trumpet player Max Tooney walks into a run-down music shop to sell his instrument. When he asks to play one last tune, the shopkeeper recognizes the melody and brings out a broken record. The film is built from Max's recollections of the man that record belonged to. (Discovery) On the first day of 1900, Danny Boodmann, a stoker who shovels coal, finds an abandoned newborn on top of the piano in the first-class ballroom. Danny raises the child in secret in the engine room and, after the year of his birth, calls him 1900. The boy is on no passenger list and in no country's papers. The world he knows, from beginning to end, is this one ship. (First notes) One night, following the sound of a piano drifting from the ballroom, they find little 1900 seated at the keys. No one has ever taught him, yet his hands move on their own. The music does not inflate the moment into a miracle. The child's playing is plain and careful, and the orchestra simply supports it gently from behind. So the seed of every piece the film will go on to play first sounds at the fingertips of a child. (Sea) Morricone's theme paints the sea less as great waves than as a broad, slow breath. The strings stretch out long beneath, and above them the piano quietly rises. It is as if the music accepts, before anything else, that for a child who never knew land the sea was not a threat but home.
A piece to hear alongside the years when the child raised in the coal bunker first meets the keyboard. On the album, this cue is singled out as the one that blends orchestra and jazz most naturally.
- Listen for the simple melody rather than any dazzling technique. It begins as plainly as the hands of a child no one ever taught.
- Reviews call this a rare cue in which orchestra and jazz do not go their separate ways but melt into one. It sounds like the first appearance of 1900, a man who carries two different worlds in a single body.
- It never swells in volume, keeping a quiet breath to the very end. Here lies the sense that, for a child who knew nothing of land, the sea was not a place of fear but home.
III. A ballroom in the storm
(Meeting) In 1927 a young trumpet player, Max, joins the ship's band. Caught in a storm on his first voyage and reeling with seasickness, Max meets a man strolling the deck as if nothing were amiss: 1900, the pianist who has become the ship's legend. (Waltz) 1900 leads Max into the empty ballroom, releases the locks on a grand piano set on casters, and sits down. Each time the ship lists, the piano glides across the polished floor with the two of them aboard, the chandeliers sway overhead, and chairs come tumbling. 1900 plays in time with the rolling, and Max bursts out laughing. It is a scene in which the storm becomes a dance partner. Some say that Tommasi's “Magic Waltz,” on the original album, suits the mood of the scene, but no record confirms that the piece and the scene correspond. What is clear is that here the music does not fight the rhythm of the sea; it rides on top of it. (Band) From then on the two are inseparable. 1900's playing does not follow the score. In first class he plays dances for ladies and gentlemen; in the third-class quarters, the lively dances of emigrants. Sometimes he watches a passenger and, on the spot, turns that person's gait and expression into a tune. Morricone and Tommasi drew this versatility in short pieces that range across ragtime and swing, waltz and folk dance. (Gaze) For 1900 the piano is a window onto the world outside. He has never left the ship, but he imagines the world through the smells, dialects and gestures the passengers carry aboard. In Max's recollection, his music is always turned toward someone.
A piece found only on the original Italian album. It recalls the wide repertoire of 1900 as he moved between first class and third, playing different music for every passenger.
- The tarantella is a fast dance from southern Italy, driven breathlessly by a meter that splits the measure into threes (6/8 time). It is a rhythm ingrained in the bodies of emigrants leaving home for the New World.
- The words “third class” in the title matter. In a single piece, it shows that even aboard the same ship, music differed by social class.
- Listen to the instruments that drive the rhythm alongside the piano. Unlike an aristocratic waltz, the sound seems deliberately chosen to be rough and festive.
IV. The jazz duel
(Challenge) Word of 1900 spreads all the way to land, and Jelly Roll Morton, who boasted of having invented jazz, boards the ship in person to challenge him to a piano duel. Passengers gather around in a ballroom thick with cigarette smoke, and the two men take turns at the keys. (Opening move) When Morton leads off with a showy number, 1900 unexpectedly plays “Silent Night,” as simply as a child. It is the playing of a man with no wish to compete. Morton takes it as mockery and plays his own “The Crave,” slow and sensual, bringing tears to 1900's eyes. A piece the real Morton left behind was used as is in the film's duel. (Counterattack) Then 1900 plays back the piece he has just heard without missing a single note, and moves on to his own “Enduring Movement.” Both hands race madly across the keys, and the notes pile up layer upon layer as if he had three hands. When he finishes, he lights a cigarette against the red-hot piano strings and hands it to Morton. Morton leaves the ship without a word. (Meaning) This is the most dazzling scene in the film, but what the music does is not simply declare victory. At first 1900 had no thought of fighting at all, and only after being truly moved by his rival's music does he give everything he has. What he shows is closer to pure absorption in music than to a competitive spirit. That purity foreshadows every choice he makes afterward.
The piece with which Jelly Roll Morton brings tears to 1900's eyes in the piano duel. It was not newly written for the film; it is the real Morton's own.
- Over a slow, dragging rhythm, the left hand lays on its weight. Morton called this flavor, laced with the rhythm of the Cuban habanera, the “Spanish tinge” of jazz.
- Set it beside the “Silent Night” that 1900 deliberately played so simply just before. It becomes clear that the duel's tension comes from emotional depth rather than flash.
- On the album, the piece is played by Tommasi. The hands of a real jazz pianist revive the touch of 1920s jazz.
- 1900 hears the piece once and plays it straight back. It is a device that shows his gift for taking in music by ear and remembering it whole.
The original piece that 1900 pours out after echoing Morton's. When it ends, he lights a cigarette on the red-hot piano strings.
- Follow the tempo that drives on without pause from start to finish. The notes are so dense it sounds as if three hands are playing, not two.
- The album includes a separate piece called “Study for Three Hands.” The title lets on that the film's piano music playfully tries to push past the limits of what human hands can play.
- In the scene, the music shows absorption itself rather than boasting of victory. The silence after the playing ends lingers as long as the playing.
- Tim Roth, who plays the lead, is known not to have actually played the piano on screen. The piano sound came from the album's performers.
V. The girl beyond the window
(Recording) A record company brings equipment aboard to record 1900's playing. He sits down at the keys reluctantly, and at that moment a girl passes beyond the round porthole. 1900's hands falter, and then a melody no one has heard before flows out. As he watches her, the playing becomes, just as it is, a declaration of love. It is the very piece that appears on the album as “Playing Love.” (Refusal) When the recording is done, 1900 asks for the master back. He does not want his music wandering the world without him. He means to give this one-of-a-kind record to the girl, but when the ship docks in New York he is swept along by the crowd and never manages to hand it over, and she vanishes onto land. He smashes the record. (Gangway) Some time later, 1900 announces for the first time that he will leave the ship. He wants to find the girl, and to see the sea from the other side. As his shipmates see him off, he descends halfway down the gangway and stops. Before him stretches a city with no visible end. He tosses his hat into the sea and goes back aboard. (Crisis) A cue from this period, “The Crisis,” presses two adjacent keys together to make a deliberately clashing sound. Breaking in among the beautiful themes, this harsh resonance signals that something in 1900 has begun to go awry. The heart of the passage is that the melody of love and the sound of unease come from the same piano.
The love theme 1900 improvises on the day of the recording, after glimpsing a girl through the porthole. It is the film's signature piece, and the album includes two versions of it.
- The first few notes come haltingly, as if hesitating, then gradually join up. The music follows exactly the process by which an improvised thought settles into melody.
- In the album version, the melody passes among several instruments and ends with a trumpet solo. The trumpet is Max's instrument. The choice of instrument tells us ahead of time that 1900's love song will ultimately live on as his friend's breath.
- Listen to it alongside the late scene in which Max plays the record of this piece again on the empty ship. The same melody shifts in meaning from confession to longing.
- The piece is still widely performed as a solo piano work and often appears in concerts devoted to Morricone's best-known scores.
VI. The record left behind
(Years) Time passes, and Max leaves the ship. The war comes and goes; the Virginian serves as a hospital ship, then grows old and is decommissioned. She is to be blown up at sea. Believing 1900 is still aboard, Max goes looking for him. (Reunion) Inside the empty ship, Max plays “Playing Love” throughout the hull on a record and gramophone borrowed from the music-shop owner. It is a signal calling to an old friend. Drifting through the rusted hull and the deserted ballroom, the melody sounds far lonelier than it did on the day it was first recorded. The same piece is no longer a confession of love but a song summoning time gone by. (Choice) 1900 tells Max why he turned back on the gangway that day. The keyboard has only eighty-eight keys, so it has an end — and because it has an end, one can make infinite music on it. Before the endless keyboard of the land, he confesses, he could not play. What he chooses in the end is best seen for yourself. Here Morricone is as sparing with music as he can be. Only after the words run out does the orchestra quietly return, and thanks to that silence each remaining note rings out with weight. (Afterglow) The film returns once more to the music shop. It is Max who pieces the broken record back together so it can be heard again, and Max who carries this story to the world. 1900 never wanted his music to outlive him, yet in the end it survives in a friend's memory and on a single record. The English-language album closes with a song sung by Roger Waters, which retells the story's lingering echo in the language of popular song.
The final track of the English-language album. Morricone wrote the music, and Roger Waters, formerly of Pink Floyd, wrote the lyrics and sang it himself.
- The lyrics portray, in a quiet first-person voice, the calls of those who have lost their way and been left behind. Rather than retelling the story, the song follows the feelings that linger after it.
- Eddie Van Halen played guitar on it. It is a rare pairing: rock guitar laid over Morricone's orchestral melody.
- Listen to how the film's main theme finds its way into the form of a pop song. It is a chance to compare what stays and what changes when film music becomes a song.
Lesser-known stories
(Source) The film's starting point, Novecento, was a one-man show first staged in 1994, with the actor Eugenio Allegri alone onstage under the direction of Gabriele Vacis. Baricco is said to have described the text as something poised between a stage play and a story meant to be read aloud. That is why in Italy it is still remembered first as theater. Audiences who know only the film are often unaware that the story was originally carried by a single actor's voice. (Two versions) Both the film and the album exist in two versions. The American distributor Fine Line demanded that more than 30 minutes be cut before release, so the American version is much shorter than the Italian one. The same goes for the album: the original Italian release carried 29 tracks, the American one 21. Pieces found only on the original — “Third Class Tarantella,” “Enduring Movement,” “Magic Waltz” — remain comparatively little known to English-speaking listeners. (Co-composition) The film's music is usually credited to Morricone alone. Yet the album credits show that many of the jazz cues, such as the hero's frenzied improvisations, were written with Amedeo Tommasi, and “Magic Waltz” is listed under Tommasi's name alone. The jazz 1900 plays on screen, in other words, came from the hands of a real jazz musician. (Real figure) Jelly Roll Morton's swagger in the film has a basis in fact. In a 1938 open letter to the press, Morton claimed to have invented jazz in 1902, and that same year he recounted his musical life at length in recordings for the Library of Congress. Jazz historians do not take the claim at face value, but they acknowledge that he was the first to set early jazz down systematically in notation. That the film paints him as an arrogant challenger yet lets his piece “The Crave” bring tears to 1900's eyes reads as a choice to hold both of his faces at once.
Notes on terms 📚🔎
Leitmotif (guiding motive)
(Etymology) The German Leitmotiv means a leading (leit) motive (Motiv). A motive here is the smallest melodic fragment from which music is built. The Korean term yudodonggi (誘導動機) ('guiding motive') carries over the same sense: a motive that leads the way. (In film·musical scores) A technique that brings back the same short melody whenever a particular character, place or feeling appears, so that the audience calls it to mind from the sound alone. In this film the love theme first appears as a piano confession and later returns as longing, on a record echoing through the empty ship. It is like a game in which the same music plays whenever the boss appears, so you tense up from the sound alone before you even look at the screen.
Ragtime
(Etymology) The English word rag means a tatter, a worn scrap of cloth. A widely repeated explanation holds that the name comes from rhythm that seems torn out of step (ragged time). (In film·musical scores) A style of piano music popular in America from the late 19th century into the early 20th. The left hand walks steadily, oom-pah, oom-pah, while the right hand bounces off the beat, deliberately nudging notes a little ahead or behind. Scott Joplin is its leading composer, and his “Peacherine Rag” is used in this film. Picture skipping rope: the rope turns at a steady pace, but your feet play around, deliberately landing half a beat off.
Improvisation
(Etymology) The Korean jeukheung (卽興) ('on-the-spot inspiration') means the inspiration (興) that arises right where one stands (卽). The Latin root of the English improvisation, improvisus, means unforeseen. (In film·musical scores) Making up music on the spot as one plays, without a score. It is the core skill of jazz, and the film's hero plays nearly everything this way. Even the love theme he plays while watching the girl is presented as born of improvisation. Just as in a word-chain game with friends you cannot settle your next word in advance but must pick up right after the player before you, an improviser listens to the sound just made and chooses the next one. (Elsewhere) In theater or comedy, acting on the spot without a script is often called ad-libbing.
Dissonance
(Etymology) The Korean bulhyeophwa (不協和) ('non-harmony') means not (不) in harmony (協和). (In film·musical scores) A combination of notes that sounds harsh or unsettling to the ear when sounded together. In “The Crisis,” Morricone presses two adjacent keys at once to make them clash on purpose. Wedged between beautiful melodies, the sound signals that cracks have begun to form in the hero's mind. Just as you flinch at fingernails scraping a blackboard, dissonance makes the listener uneasy and heightens the tension of a scene. (Elsewhere) In everyday speech, a clash of opinions or a conflict between people is likewise described as dissonance.
On-screen music (source music)
(In film·musical scores) Music that actually sounds within the world of the story, audible to the characters as well. A song coming from a radio or a piano played by a character belongs here. Background orchestral music heard only by the audience, by contrast, is called off-screen music. In this film most of 1900's playing is on-screen music, so the music does the work of the character's own dialogue. Think of a school play: if an actor plays a recorder onstage, that is on-screen music; background music cued from the wings to fit the scene is off-screen music.
Tarantella
(Etymology) The name comes from Taranto, a city in southern Italy. It is also tied to an old legend that anyone bitten by the region's wolf spider, the tarantula, had to dance without rest to drive out the venom. (In film·musical scores) A dance from southern Italy that drives forward in a quick meter, each bar counted in threes (6/8 time). In this film it serves as the rhythm the third-class immigrants brought from home, telling us through sound who is aboard. Just as your feet start tapping on their own when fast music plays at a school sports day, the tarantella sets the body moving so much that it is hard to sit still.
Broken chord (arpeggio)
(Etymology) The Italian arpeggio means playing as if on a harp (arpa). The harp is an instrument whose strings are plucked one by one in turn, letting a chord flow out. (In film·musical scores) A way of playing in which several notes are not pressed at once but spread out one at a time in a flowing line. In the film's piano music, these unfolding figures rising and falling like waves seem to merge with the swell of the sea. Strike C, E and G all at once and it is a chord; touch C, E and G one by one, like climbing stairs, and it is a broken chord.