Three gunmen, three sounds
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) · Ennio Morricone
When Sergio Leone and Morricone made the Dollars trilogy, the Hollywood western sounded like a big orchestra. Morricone filled the desert with sounds nobody linked to the West: whistling, bells, choirs, an ocarina and an electric guitar.
The main theme of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly opens with two notes that mimic a coyote's howl, and that howl is shared out among the three leads: a flute for Blondie, the Good; an arghilofono, a kind of ocarina, for Angel Eyes, the Bad; and human voices for Tuco, the Ugly. The melody stays the same; what changes is who sings it.
Behind it are names few people know. Bruno Battisti D'Amario played the electric guitar. The whistling is Alessandro Alessandroni's, and his choir, I Cantori Moderni, provides the voices. Bruno Nicolai conducted the orchestra.
At the end, in the cemetery, comes 'The Ecstasy of Gold': Tuco runs between the graves looking for the money and the music swells until it nearly drowns him. It is so powerful outside the film that the Ramones played it to close their concerts and Metallica has used it for decades to open theirs.