One of the most lyrical Western movie scores from one of the all-time greatest movie Westerns. Unlike the slightly more cartoonish music (in the Raymond Scott sense) for Sergio Leone's earlier "Man with No Name" Westerns starring Clint Eastwood (Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly), Once upon a Time in the West is epic in scope and elegiac in tone. Composer Ennio Morricone uses a haunting, wordless female vocal on the main theme (and in the equally beautiful soundtrack for Leone's companion gangster epic, Once upon a Time in America, many years later) that sends chills down your spine and may even bring tears to your eyes. --Jim Emerson