Ennio Morricone: “Adonai”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — October 1, 2025

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

1,737) Ennio Morricone: “Adonai”

All good, no bad, no ugly by Ennio Morricone, just the sacred and the profane. Jonathan Broxton tells us:

[“Adonai” is] a driving piece of orchestral rock music led by a heavy electric guitar riff, modern percussion, a screaming trumpet, and an incongruous but brilliantly-incorporated harpsichord. The whole thing is topped off by yelping vocals performed by I Cantori Moderni di Alessandroni. It’s quite brilliant. . . . a maniacally upbeat rock track . . . .

https://moviemusicuk.us/2020/07/09/ennio-morricone-reviews-1961-1967-supplemental/

The Listening Post Blog adds:

[This] Ennio Morricone piece [was] originally composed for Silvano Agosti’s 1967 flick Il Giardino delle Delizie (a.k.a The Garden of Delights) . . . . Despite the fact that the film was an existential flick based around a man’s ruminations over marriage and childhood, Morricone still managed to get at least as much drama and energy into his original “Adonai” as a track for a – say – a spaghetti western about multiple bounty hunters all trying to get the drop on one another.

https://thelisteningpostblog.wordpress.com/2020/10/24/song-of-the-day-ikebe-shakedown-adonai/

John Bender rhapsodizes:

“Adonai” from Ennio’s score for the extremely bizarre socio-psychological rumination, Silvano Agosti’s 1967 film . . . . [It] still represents, practically alone and unchallenged, an iniquitous fun-house mirror distortion of 20th Century popular music, a magnificent idea that both melds and mutates the mundane with the ethereal, the vulgar with the sacramental. It will forever be the ultimate irreverence, the final blasphemy, the most ecstatic and enduring insult. Morricone left us “Adonai” so that we may never forget just how ludicrous we were, we are, and we will be. “Adonai” exists as a lasting portrait of the succulent abnormalities of a tempestuously advanced species.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/retroeurocultfilmscore/posts/3662773690633393/

As to the movie, Jonathan Broxton writes:

Il Giardino Delle Delizie is an introspective Italian drama written and directed by Silvano Agosti. It stars Maurice Ronet as a man named Carlo, unhappily married to Carla (Evelyn Stewart), who begins to question his life, his relationships, and the ethical and moral and ramifications over the course of a surreal night with his wife; as the night progresses he struggles with the decision over whether to stay with Carla, or leave her for his mistress (Lea Massari). It’s all very Italian, and never gained much of an international reputation.

https://moviemusicuk.us/2020/07/09/ennio-morricone-reviews-1961-1967-supplemental/

To learn more about Morricone’s life and musical career, check out: https://cnmsarchive.wordpress.com/2013/06/21/ennio-morricone/

Here is a cool clip from the film:

Here is “Magic and Ecstasy”, Morricone’s devilish reinterpretation:

Here is Ikebe Shakedown’s cover:

Here is Snakefinger’s:

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