Score: Ennio Morricone · Film: Sergio Leone, 1966 · 177 min at the Italian premiere
Most film scores follow the picture. The music for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was built to lead it: according to the film's production history, Leone and Morricone developed the principal themes before shooting began, and Leone often played them on set, planning camera moves and cutting to match. That one decision explains why the score feels less like accompaniment than like a fourth lead. This piece is about how that fourth lead is put together, and how to hear it.
The main theme is built on a two-note call that critics have long compared to a coyote's howl. It is the film's signature sound, and the clever part is what Morricone does with it: the same motif is handed to a different voice for each of the three title characters.
As the score is usually described, the flute stands for Blondie ("the Good"), an ocarina-type instrument for Angel Eyes ("the Bad"), and human voices for Tuco ("the Ugly"). Before you read on, try it yourself: pick the character you think each sound belongs to.
The flute
The ocarina-type instrument
The human voices
Right so far: 0 of 3
It is a neat piece of character writing because it needs no dialogue. Whoever is on screen, the tune tells you which of the three you are being invited to think about, and the colour of the instrument does the rest: the flute is the lightest of the three sounds, the voices the most human.
The credits on the soundtrack album read like a roll call of Rome's session world. Bruno Nicolai conducted the orchestra, Alessandro Alessandroni supplied the whistling and led the chorus I Cantori Moderni, Pino Rucher played the electric guitar, and Edda Dell'Orso is the soprano heard in the sweeping vocal lines. The instrument list is unusually wide for a western: flute, English horn, trumpet, harmonica, two kinds of guitar, percussion and voices.
Only the cue names and what they do musically; nothing about how anyone's story ends. Two pieces carry the last stretch of the film. "The Ecstasy of Gold" is the one almost everyone knows. It scores a character's frantic search and, in one reviewer's description, opens with a hesitant English horn and twinkling piano before building to a joyful climax. It is Dell'Orso's vocal that lifts it. It has outlived the film by decades, and the cue is still used in other films, adverts, covers and live shows.
The standoff music, "The Trio", works differently. One critic hears it alternating two ideas: a trumpet motif for the men's lust for gold and a piano-and-guitar motif for their fear. Whether or not you hear it that way, notice that it is organised like an argument between two feelings rather than a tune that simply swells.
You do not need much to hear a layered score properly. A decent pair of closed-back headphones in the range of around €100 will already reveal separate lines; wireless models with noise cancelling run around €100–300 and above. The picks below are chosen for listening to music like this, not for scoring anything.