Too many films are blighted by lacklustre music, with directors failing to grasp the potential of a great score to enhance the viewing experience, one of cinema’s most revered composers has said.

Ennio Morricone, 88, criticised the use of “amateur” composers or synthesised sounds, rather than real instruments, in what he called a misguided attempt to cut costs.

While acknowledging the many directors who understood the emotional power of music – with Hans Zimmer (Gladiator) and John Williams (Schindler’s List) among the industry’s most brilliant composers – he said: “The standard of composition for film has deteriorated. I have suffered a lot in watching many films because of that.

“There are some directors who actually fear the possible success of music,” he added. “They fear that the audience or the critics will think the film has worked because there was a very good music score.”

Over a 60-year career, the Italian maestro has written some of cinema’s most memorable scores, from Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly to Oscar-winning classics such as The Mission and Cinema Paradiso.

Ennio Morricone wrote the score to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1967), starring Eli Wallach, left, and Clint Eastwood. Photograph: Alamy

Morricone revolutionised the way music was used in westerns, creating a wild west soundscape of gunshots, eerie whistling, twanging guitars and dissonant harmonicas that matched the unsettling heat and tension of Leone’s parched desert landscape, and its heroes and villains, portrayed through long shots and close-up cinematography.

The Hollywood Reporter once observed: “There aren’t many composers whose music is immediately identifiable after just a couple of whistled notes.”

Morricone went on to collaborate with directors on both sides of the Atlantic, including Bernardo Bertolucci and Brian De Palma.

He spoke to the Guardian ahead of an announcement on Wednesday that he is planning a world concert tour from next January.

This month, in his home city of Rome, he will conduct a special mass dedicated to Pope Francis. Commissioned by the Jesuit order to commemorate the 200th anniversary of their reformation, it will be performed at the Jesuit Church of the Gesù.

Morricone is not religious but he said inspiration came from his admiration for the pope. “He has brought about a kind of revolution at the Vatican, trying to correct some of the things that were totally wrong.”

Morricone has written hundreds of scores for cinema and television, and is one of the only film composers to have received an honorary Oscar for his lifetime achievement.

Such is his popularity that a recent European tour played to more than 150,000 people in 22 cities. There were standing ovations and critical acclaim, including a five-star review of his London concert.

The world tour will feature classics such as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, which he wrote half a century ago, yet still rides high in any list of the best-known film soundtracks.

Leone once said that “music is more expressive than dialogue”, and Morricone sometimes wrote his music before the cameras even started rolling.

Other directors with whom Morricone collaborated had shown “different levels of understanding music”, he said: “Some directors understand the technicalities … Others understand the emotional side.”

But he criticised film-makers who “do not understand fully” that music “needs time to convey its message” on screen.

“If you have a 20-second music piece, you cannot really express anything … It can just signal maybe a scene change … If you allow it to develop, the music can do its job in telling what is not said and showing what you cannot see.”

He blames “the deterioration of standards” on cost-cutting: “The respect for a musical score must come from the director … If the director has no power and has to surrender to budgetary constraints, this is where we have the problem.”

Synthesised sounds are cheaper than live musicians, but he said: “Electronic instruments flatten everything. Maybe you can do everything with [them], but the result is quite similar – a kind of standardised music.

“The fact that people today tend to use too many electronic instruments or amateur composers is because they want to spend less money.”

Having written for almost every genre of film, from dramas and comedies to historical epics, he is frustrated that some people still associate him with westerns – “even though western films account for just 8% of my production”.

“What I would like to avoid today is to write music for western films.”

He acknowledges that if he had lived before the invention of cinema he might have composed differently. Film music “shouldn’t disturb the audience too much”, he said, noting that he sometimes avoids making his scores “too complicated”.

Ultimately, he believes, music is there to serve the movie. While good music cannot save a bad film, “even bad music” cannot ruin a good film, he said.

Tickets for My Life in Music at The O2London on 16 February go on sale on Friday: www.livenation.co.uk Morricone will appear in 3Arena, Dublin, on 14 February.

• This article was amended on 8 June 2015. An earlier version said that Morricone was the only film composer, rather than one of the only composers, to have received an Oscar for lifetime achievement.

