Spaghetti Western (The Original Masters)

Anyone who thinks that Ennio Morricone's best work in the spaghetti Westerns is centered in Sergio Leone's "Man With No Name" trilogy hasn't heard this delightful volume, which assembles the composer's music for nine Italian Westerns made between 1964 and 1972. There's not a dull note of music anywhere in here, and quite a bit of it is fascinating on an intellectual and musicological level. Morricone is known for his long, Puccini-like melodic lines and his use of wordless male choruses, whistling, and electric guitars to carry a melody, but on the early scores here, he uses solo trumpets and reed instruments (especially the oboe) — clearly "The Slaughter" from A Gun for Ringo owes something to Dimitri Tiomkin's scoring for Rio Bravo. The title theme from At Times Life Is Very Hard, "Isn't That Fate" is, by contrast, an amalgam of pop and classical music, like an air freshener commercial that suddenly takes a detour through Giuseppe Verdi territory and gives more than a wave to Aaron Copland's "Billy the Kid." "McGregor's March," from 7 Guns for the McGregors, seems like a military march version of the old "Texaco theme" ("we are the men from Texaco..."), re-scored for heavy brass and pipes, with a whistled break. And other title themes resemble mid-'60s Euro-pop music. There are several songs here that are noteworthy as broad, satirical expressions of the Western ethos: "Angel Face," "A Gringo Like Me," and "Lonesome Billy" are parodies of songs like "High Noon," sung in a declarative style midway between Hollywood and the operatic stage, and they have to be heard to be fully appreciated.