Per un pugno di dollari (A Fistful of Dollars), 45 rpm recording cover. Courtesy of the Frayling Archive. Click image to enlarge.
Sergio Leone collaborated with composer Ennio Morricone on the music and sound design of all his Westerns. When they met, just after A Fistful of Dollars had been filmed, the two men discovered that they had been at elementary school together in the 1930s. Morricone was almost exactly the same age as Leone, had trained at a top music conservatory in Rome - specializing in composition, harmony, and trumpet - and was already well-known in Italy as an orchestral arranger. Together, director and composer evolved a new style of Western score - an up-tempo main theme with unusual orchestrations, choral interludes with incomprehensible lyrics, Fender Stratocaster guitar riffs, the human voice as a musical instrument, and amplified natural sounds; plus a Mexican-style funeral lament, a deguello, played on mariachi trumpet. Also, a melody line which is whistled, much use of the maranzano - a Mediterranean instrument - and assorted bells, whip-cracks, and hammers.
As Morricone put it, “nothing to do with American history, really; to underline the irony and craziness of these Italian characters, I created an ‘Italian sound’.” The landmark score for A Fistful of Dollars proved immensely popular in its own right, and encouraged Morricone and Leone to experiment further with For a Few Dollars More, and especially The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, with its signature coyote howls created by two yelling male voices. Each main character in the story now had his own musical theme and easily identifiable instrument.
C' era una volta il West (Once Upon a Time in the West), 45 rpm recording cover. Courtesy of the Frayling Archive. Click image to enlarge.
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