ROME: Ennio Morricone, one of the world's best-known and most prolific film composers, died in Rome on Monday at the age of 91.

Tributes poured in for the man who composed the music for about 500 films, including his old childhood friend Sergio Leone's 1966 spaghetti western "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" and Quentin Tarantino's "The Hateful Eight" for which he finally won an Oscar in 2016.

Morricone died in hospital where he was being treated for a fractured femur following a fall, according to a statement from lawyer and family friend Giorgio Assuma.

Born on November 10, 1928, Morricone began composing at the tender age of six, and at just 10 he enrolled in trumpet school at the prestigious Saint-Cecilia conservatory in Rome.