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This score is timeless and will influence generations for years to come. Overall a masterful blend of emotions captured in Once Upon a Time in the West.
One is quickly reminded of the epic richness of Gone With The Wind and the rare magic of film when a score like Morricone's elevates the experience beyond the screen. I would go so far as to suggest that the team of Ennio Morricone and Sergio Leone is to Once Upon a Time in the West what Victor Flemming and Max StienerMax Steiner's Classic Film Score: Gone With The Wind were to Gone With the Wind or Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard HerrmannVertigo: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (1958 Film) were to Vertigo.
Ennio Morricone's ingenious score is simply one of the BEST ever composed in the history of cinema. Morricone also amuses the listener with tracks like Farewell to Cheyenne and Bad Orchestra and builds suspense through tracks: The Transgression and The First Tavern.
The sweeping, mellifluous title track and Finale will bring tears to your eyes. As tracks: A Judgment and Man With a Harmonica are bad-to-the-bone and overtly influential with current filmmakers like Tarantino.
Breathtaking.
There's not much I can add to the excellent reviews already posted. What I can say is this music is even more haunting when listened to by itself, with no visuals from the movie to distract you. If 'Death Rattle' and 'Man With The Harmonica' don't make the hair on the back of your neck stand up, nothing will.Ennio Morricone is truly a master.
Right from the wordless choral, heartfelt opening theme through its amended refrain in the finale, this is a score full of humanity, mystery, intrigue, memorable tunes and even dissonance that will captivate fans of modern music.Morricone, whose film score credits include "Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion", the spaghetti western trilogy that ended with this movie, "Mission to Mars" and 1988's "The Untouchables," has an instantly recognizable signature. The Trasgression5. A Dimly Lit Room 8. Man With the Harmonica 7. It will blow out the bass speakers but doesn't always sound realistic. This is a wonderful score full of tricks and turns I never remembered hearing in the film.
If you have an interest in film music, you'll enjoy this score, especially at the bargain basement price Amazon vendors offer it.The one noticeable debit, by 2009 standards, is the in your face overstated production of the music. This is the way they made stuff in 1969, probably using a dozen mikes and mixing everything afterward for effect. Ennio Morricone's score accompanying Sergio Leone's brilliant 1969 spaghetti western "Once Upon a Time in the West" is surely one of the more memorable soundtracks ever produced. Jill's America 11. Farewell to Cheyenne4. The First Tavern 6. Death Rattle 12.
Once upon a Time in the West (opening theme)2. In this score, western musical artifacts including a banjo, out of tune piano, harmonica, cowbell and fiddle all play roles in creating the soundworld both the film's director and musical director wanted to realize.Give a listen to the sound bytes here and you'll have an idea of what's going on in the movie -- from the wistfulness of "Farewell to Cheyenne" to "Man With the Harmonica" introducing Charles Bronson's role to "The Man" defining the ultimate bad guy role of Henry Fonda to "Jill's America" showing the success some had in the movie. Bad Orchestra 9. The dozen contents are:1. As a Judgement3. The Man 10. Finale
A man who wants it all and uses his gun to get it; a prostitute with a heart as big as the west looks vainly for her new husband as the steam train pulls into the station; and somewhere outside the frontier town another gunman stalks the Arizonian desert, knowing that only if he can take the killer and himself out of the picture will civilization stand a chance. when the screen was a silver portal that took you to another place. For those who remember a time when cinema was more than "Cinemax" or something like a plasma only bigger. And as you watched, something essential of the human condition was illuminated right there before your eyes, human destiny and fate in all its fleeting dignity. these recordings bring back that sense of grandeur from one of the last and greatest works of that magical era. The velvet curtains part, the audience hushes, and Sergio Leone begins to assemble the pieces of his masterwork. It never could have worked without Ennio Morricone's musical expressions of the fragile hopes and dreams of those trying to build something on the frontier, and the dance of death that unfolds. Buy it and listen, and let the magic all come back.
I just saw the film for the first time. There is simplicity in its genius and more than that -- it truly depicts auditorily several different feelings and emotions at play in the physical atmosphere of the (south)west. Not only was it spectacularly magnificent, but the soundtrack.the soundtrack. From the wailing guitar during the final showdown to the music playing during the scene when Morten is about to die, hearing the ocean waves he dreamt of seeing, this soundtrack is consistently and brilliantly original. Buy it. Now.
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