By 1968 Sergio Leone was so confident in the ability of Ennio Morricone’s compositions to shape the tone of his films that he let Morricone create the music first and then had the actors take it all in on-set. With a main theme that sounds like a fairy-tale lullaby take on the endless-sky grandeur of Aaron Copland, a series of immortal character motifs that culminate in a showdown between dust-weathered harmonica and serrated fuzz guitar, and knowing takes on traditional Americana and Western-movie cliches ranging from saloon-drunk slapstick to clip-clop cowboy-strut swagger, this is a definitive gunslinger symphony that elevated Morricone to the ranks of the 20th century’s greatest composers — in or outside of film.