Once Upon a Time in the West

Once Upon a Time in the West Artist: Ennio Morricone
Label: Disky Records
Category: Music


Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Format: Soundtrack
Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 1


UPC: 724348543424
EAN: 0724348543424
ASIN: B000023XI7


Release Date: 1999-02-21

Once Upon a Time in the West


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Tracks:

  1. Once Upon a Time in the West [From Once Upon A Time in the West]
  2. Chi Mai [From Chi Mai]
  3. Mission [From The Mission]
  4. Once Upon a Time in America [Cockey's Theme from Once Upon a Time ...]
  5. Gabriel's Oboe [From the Mission]
  6. Sacco and Vanzetti [From Sacco and Vanzetti]
  7. Vent, le Cri [From the Professional]
  8. Falls [From the Mission]
  9. Good, the Bad and the Ugly [From the Good, the Bad and the Ugly]
  10. Baci Dopo il Tramonto [From LA Vanexiana]
  11. Marginal [From le Marginal]
  12. Estate [From Free My Love]
  13. Lontano [From "God with Us"]
  14. Man With the Harmonica [From Once Upon A Time in the West]

Album Description

14 of the famous Italian soundtrack composer's works to hit films since the '60s. Includes music from 'The Mission','Once Upon A Time In America', 'The Good, The Bad & The Ugly', 'God With Us', 'Free My Love', 'The Professional' andothers. 1999 release.

Album Details

Soundtrack featuring Ennio's compositions.

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars Ennio Morricone's grand musical score for "C'era una volta il West".......2005-09-10

John Williams gets a lot of the credit for the revival of the motion picture film score, mainly on the strength of his work for "Jaws" and "Star Wars." I can remember reading the linear notes for the double-album of the later which explained how each character had a theme and how Williams wove these all together. That was all impressive, and "Star Wars" is certainly on my list of Top 10 soundtracks of all time, but I saw "Once Upon A Time In The West" a decade earlier and so I know that Ennio Morricone had already done that. For me in the decade of the Sixties the only other comparable film scores for an epic film are what Maurice Jarre did for "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Doctor Zhivago." Still, I will maintain that no film score in that decade was as important to the story being told as Morricone's score for "C'era una volta il West."

Pertinent Aside: There is much to be said for composers who work with particular directors to great success. This would obviously include John Williams and Steven Spielberg, Maurice Jarre and David Lean, Bernard Hermann and Alfred Hitchcock, and Ennio Morricone and Sergio Leone. For that last pair, "C'era una volta il West" represents each at their peak. No wonder this Spaghetti Western is a mythic representation of the Old West.

I am still fascinated by how Morricone employs variations of his themes. The main title theme sounds like a classical composition, with the soaring voices of the Modern Singers of Allessandroni, but then comes back as a simple violin piece for "A Dimly Lit Room." "As a Judgment" uses the fuzz of an electric guitar to establish the movie's "showdown" theme, while "Farewell to Cheyenne" weaves together whistling and the rhythm of a horse clopping along the trail. Morricone strips down the latter to be "The First Tavern." "Man With a Harmonica" has the wailing of the title instrument but with the underlying theme of "As a Judgment" working through it until we finally find out at the point of dying why Harmonica wants Frank dead. But the composer also strips the underlying music down farther in "The Man," while the harmonica becomes totally distorted in "Death Rattle." Morricone even anticipates the "Star Wars" music for the Cantina band with his own "Bad Orchestra."

Of course, now that I have listened to the score again I have to follow up by watching the movie, which remains my favorite western (and the first classic in the genre I actually got to see in a movie theater as opposed to discovering on television decades later). But I have to do that because ultimately it is a grave disservice to divorce the soundtrack from the movie, because there are so many key sequences where Morricone's music replaces the dialogue. This is especially true of the climatic duel between Harmonica (Charles Bronson) and Frank (Henry Fonda), and the entire end title sequence where Jill (Claudia Cardinale) brings out the water to the men working on the railroad. In fact, I think I can make a very good case that no other film score in movie history is as important to the story and as prominent in the overall equation of the film as what Morricone composed for "C'era una volta il West."

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  4. Seventh Sin
  5. Black Windmill ~ Roy Budd
  6. Return of Superfly ~ Original Soundtrack
  7. The Best Of Shaft (Soundtrack Anthology) ~ Isaac Hayes
  8. Stallone: Music From The Films Of Sylvester Stallone
  9. Madlax O.S.T. 2 ~ Yuki Kajiura (composer)
  10. Morricone-Belmondo: Le Marginal (1983 Film) / Le Professionel (1981 Film) / Le Casse (1972 Film) [3 on 1] ~ Ennio Morricone

Music Album

Music Album

Music

Atmospheric Drum & Bass V.4 ~ Various Artists

Caribbean Voyage: Brown Girl in the Ring ~ Various Artists

Celeste ~ Celeste

Instrumental Variations ~ David T. Chastain

Dropped ~ Mindfunk

The First Time ~ Kawika Regidor

Un Autre Monde ~ Daniel Balavoine

Let's Groove ~ Wind & Fire Earth

High ~ S.O.a.P.

Eyemoon ~ Yano & Aeon (Terumin) Yuki