Singing the script: le filastrocche iperdiegetiche di Ennio Morricone

In the scholarly literature on film music, hyperdiegetic sounds are those that draw attention to themselves and have a symbolic effect, assigning a particular meaning to objects, characters, actions. Starting from this connotation, I would like to propose the idea of hyperdiegetic song or nursery rhyme, analyzing some peculiar works by Ennio Morricone featuring lyrics have clear references to the film’s plot, recounting events that have taken place before or will take place after such music is played. In the films discussed in this paper, hyperdiegetic songs are used as scores or as source music. In all cases, the narrative connection is established by the lyrics, which clearly re- fer back to the story. In this way, hyperdiegetic music brings out something that we cannot simply attribute to the flair of the composer or to a direct diegetic cause, and seems to have been written by the film’s authors themselves. These songs are an affront to the canonical functions of music in film: as the lyrics anticipate or recall the events on screen, the ‘ontological distance’ between the score and the events is denied, and an uncanny realism breaks through.