Just a few years into his career, Morricone was already starting to show off. Here we get a title theme that did heretofore little-heard strange and exotic things with whistling and harmonica-harmonizing coyote-howl voices to chillingly eerie effect. And then there’s the climactic piece, “The Ecstasy of Gold,” that did more to evoke an almost spiritually cathartic sense of violent mortal reckoning and exhausting desperation in just over three minutes than anything Wagner ever dreamed of. Even putting aside its two most renowned selections, Morricone’s sense of emotionally heightened beauty and dread shines through the whole score, whether it’s the desert-bound heat fatigue of its shorter cues or the stirringly tragic folk-opera “The Story of a Soldier,” one of the few examples of a lyrical work in his catalogue.