Luis Bacalov

Luis Enrique Bacalov earned an Academy Award in 1995 for scoring the motion picture The Postman, an honor that represented one of his infrequent acknowledgments inside the United States. Across Europe, however, he had already established himself as a prominent creator of film music through extensive composition and arrangement work on numerous Italian productions. After relocating to Rome during the final years of the 1950s, Bacalov sustained a continuous and productive professional trajectory. In his initial twelve months there, he performed piano on a soundtrack written by Chico Marselli; the resulting song “La Ragazza con la Viglia” achieved popular success throughout Italy, prompting RCA to engage him for pop-song arrangements. He went on to create and shape material for Italian vocalists including Gianni Morandi, Sergio Endrigo, and Rita Pavone. Bacalov deepened his involvement in film music in 1958 by serving as assistant to composer Ennio Morricone. Although he supplied scores for the dramatic features Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo, La Noia, and Extraconiugale in 1964, his most distinctive contributions appeared in spaghetti-western pictures such as Sugar Colt (1966) and Lo Chiamavano Mezzogiorno (1972). For Sergio Corbucci’s 1967 western Django he produced what would become one of his best-known scores; Quentin Tarantino later honored the work in Django Unchained (2012) by incorporating two of Bacalov’s original cues, just as he had earlier placed two additional Bacalov compositions in Kill Bill nine years previously. Even though Django stands among the most consequential films of its genre—having remained prohibited in England until 1993—and features one of its most enduring soundtracks, it was Bacalov’s music for Federico Fellini’s La Città delle Donne (likewise 1967) that first brought him wider international notice. Outside the cinema, Bacalov also gained recognition as a composer of classical and sacred works. His 1997 Misa Tango recast the traditional liturgical Mass in Spanish, setting it to the tango rhythms of his native Argentina while revising the standard liturgical text to embrace and represent all Abrahamic traditions. The piece received its premiere in Rome in 2000 with Plácido Domingo as tenor soloist and was subsequently recorded by Deutsche Grammophon featuring Domingo (tenor), Ana María Martínez (mezzo-soprano), and bandoneonist Héctor Ulises Passarella. Its American premiere took place in 2002 at Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre. Bacalov further composed Cantones de Nuestro Tiempos (Psalms for our Times: The Cambridge Psalms) in 2006, scored for baritone and soprano soloists together with orchestra and chorus; the Cambridge Community Chorus under William E. Thomas presented the world premiere at Sanders Theatre.