Ennio Morricone, the Italian composer who wrote the coyote-howl theme for The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, is to receive an honorary Oscar at the Academy Awards ceremony on Feb. 25.

Morricone, 78, has composed more than 300 scores and been nominated for an Oscar five times, but never won.

Italian composer Ennio Morricone, shown in October 2006, first came to international renown for his music for spaghetti westerns.
(Alessandra Tarantino/Associated Press)

"I certainly did not expect anything of the sort," Morricone told reporters in Italy, where he lives. "By now, with great tranquility and peace of mind, I had given up on this.

"This is a great, very important recognition, which I deem of great value."

During his 45-year career in film, he composed the score for many of director Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns, as well movies ranging from Cinema Paradiso and La Cage Aux Folles to The Untouchables.

The theme for Leone's 1966 western The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, which starred Clint Eastwood as one of three gunmen searching for gold, was one of the most memorable scores of its time.

Born in Rome in 1928, he became friends with Leone at school and they forged a memorable director-composer partnership through films such as A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More.

Morricone was trained in Italy as a composer and trumpeter and noted throughout his film career for his use of unusual instruments to get a distinctive sound.

He has worked with directors such as Bernardo Bertolucci, Lina Wertmuller, Brian de Palma and Roman Polanski.

He was nominated for Academy Awards for original score for Days of Heaven (1978); The Mission (1986); The Untouchables (1987); Bugsy (1991) and Malena (2000).

Morricone's next score is for the film Leningrad, about the siege of the city by the German army during Second World War.