A Beautiful Work of Music

The Ecstasy of Gold is from the score of the movie The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, which is an awesome western.  It’s called Ecstasy of Gold because it is taken from a scene where one of the characters is hurriedly looking for the gold he knows is hidden in a certain grave in a huge graveyard. This version is from an album in which Yo Yo Ma plays Ennio Morricone’s music from many of his movie scores (which includes the movie this is from).

I feel that this song expresses the feeling of striving to reach any goal, starting out slow and then gaining momentum until it reaches its peak, symbolizing the final attainment of whatever the person set his/her mind to.  I think this song works with any goal, physical or theoretical. I personally enjoy jogging to it. I know, exercising to classical music sounds weird, but this song really pumps me up when it accelerates.

Is it beautiful? I think it is. It has so many parts and while it starts out low and slow with an instrument or two, as it gains in tempo and crescendo, more instruments are added until its a full fledged orchestra. It sounds stunning. If you pay close attention you can hear all the individual parts yet also the bigger picture. Also, it has a lot of string instruments which tend to add soul to music and Yo Yo Ma plays the cello amazingly which is a real bonus.

Hear it for yourself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bI6zLayBeJQ