Ennio Morricone/Awesome Music

• The Good, The Bad & The Ugly (Concert) BBC Proms
• Deborah's Theme
• A Fistful of Dynamite
• Ecstasy of Gold
  • Which is not only often covered by Metallica, but also has this fantastic remix
• The Mission (Remains one of Morricone's most memorable pieces.)
• The Untouchables
• Days Of Heaven.
• On Earth As It Is In Heaven
• The Legend Of The Pianist On The Ocean
• The Ballad Of Sacco And Vanzetti
• Casualties of War
• Canone Inverso
• The Big Gundown
• Especially the themes for Sergio Leone's films.
• The Once Upon a Time in the West theme is certainly good enough for Hans Zimmer, who pilfered it for "Parley" in Pirates of the Caribbean At World's End.
  • Which he then pilfered from himself for Rango in the track "Rango Returns".
  • And Muse, who pilfered it as an live opening to one of their songs - just guess which one. Not as a backing track, either, it's played on an actual harmonica by their bass player.
• Il Vizio di Uccidere from For a Few Dollars More. Clearly a precursor to Ecstacy of Gold!
• I challenge anyone to come up with a better 'showdown scene' theme than Sixty Seconds to What? from For a Few Dollars More. Awsome tension-building music and the payoff to a major plot thread in musical form? doesn't get much better than that.
  • "The Trio" is also known as "Il Triello": the soundtrack version is fine, but when you see what the film version plays over...
  • Ecstasy of Gold is just epic enough to be put into any context.
  • This version conducted by Morricone himself is spine-chilling enough, but this one has James Hetfield.
• From The Mission, by Ennio Morricone: Ave María Guarani and Gabriel's Oboe
• From Da Uomo A Uomo, though probably first heard by many on Kill Bill, Death Rides a Horse.
  • If you find the flute annoying, you might prefer this Alessandro Alessandroni version starting at about 3:00 in.
  • And from the sequel, Silhouette of Doom (you heard it in the teaser trailer)
• The film The Legend of 1900 is an entire movie about a pianist who lives on a cruise liner. And yet, for all the film's music, the piece that stands out is, although haunting and powerful, the most simple.
• Morricone is famous for his spaghetti western scores but he is also famous for others too. Among others:
  • Malena. Live performance.
  • Cinema Paradiso.
• These two from Mission to Mars:
• Both the intro and main themes from The Untouchables.
• From John Carpenter's "The Thing":
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  • Perhaps the most impressive bit is how easily it can be mistaken for one of Carpenter's own scores. The man really commits.
• Several scores used to portray the brutality of the Civil War in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, The Story of a Soldier, a heartwrenching ballad as sung by POWs, The Carriage of Spirits, and The Strong.
• For what it's worth, Sergio Leone himself considered Once Upon a Time in America to have the best score of any of his films. A sample.