Unlike many other avant-garde/experimental composers, who I generally can’t stand, Ennio had an ear for a beautiful melody. He could weird you out and then make you swoon in love.
Very Italian in that regard.
So that explains my Sicilian husband….
Like the horrible brutality and violence accompanying this beautiful song.
He rarely went whole hog, kept it within the bounds of audience comprehension. Although sometimes he did, but he was subtle enough that people often don’t realize it. Like the beginning of Once Upon a Time in the West, when the bad guys are waiting in the train station. He composed that scene. He had recently started sinking his teeth into musique concrète and when Leone gave him the script he said he had an idea and they put it together. But it’s all built around the sounds, the dripping water on the hat, the buzzing fly, the squeaking windmill, the morse code tapping.