Ennio Morricone, Italy's legendary film composer, said on Thursday that a decision to award him an Oscar had "corrected an oversight."
Reacting to Wednesday's announcement that he would receive an honourary Oscar at the Academy Awards ceremony next February, Morricone said: "I've been given a host of awards - the only one missing was the Oscar."
The 78-year-old maestro, whose signature soundtracks for Sergio Leone's 1960s spaghetti Westerns brought him instant fame, said the decision had nonetheless caught him by surprise.
"I really wasn't expecting this. I'm overjoyed," said Morricone, adding that he would travel to Los Angeles to receive the award in person on February 25.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which grants the Oscars, said that it had been "responding not just to the remarkable number of scores that Mr. Morricone has produced but to the fact that so many of them are beloved and popular masterpieces."
Academy President Sid Ganis said that Morricone, who is considered one of the greatest film composers of all times, had made a "magnificent contribution" to the cinema music repertoire.
Morricone has scored more than 500 movies and TV films in a career spanning 45 years and has been nominated for an Oscar five times.
He has frequently expressed disappointment at the Academy's omission, particularly after it overlooked his poignant score for Roland Joffe's epic tale of 18th century genocide in South America, The Mission.
"That score really deserved the Oscar and everybody thought it would get it... The music to that film really represents everything I am - both on a technical and spiritual level," Morricone once told the BBC.
Instead, the 1986 music Oscar went to Round Midnight, a film about a self-destructive jazz artist.
Morricone said afterwards that it had been a "theft", especially since the Round Midnight score was mainly based on existing pieces. Other Oscar nominations were for his music to the Richard Gere-starring drama Days Of Heaven (1978), the Brian de Palma Mafia movie The Untouchables (1987), the gangster movie Bugsy (1991) with Warren Beatty, and Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore's 2000 film Malena featuring Monica Bellucci.

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