Un tranquillo posto di campagna

Although the score was very striking at the time—and led Elio Petri, who had always changed composers in previous films, to rely on Ennio Morricone as an essential collaborator in all his remaining movies—it was not released commercially. We had to wait a decade for a suite to be included on a compilation LP that brought together some of the composer’s most experimental work for the cinema. In 2003, the Saimel label released the first official edition of the soundtrack, with a generous running time of 64 minutes and a program supervised by Morricone himself. The sound was entirely in mono, just as the tapes had survived. A few years later, GDM released a 40-minute CD with the recently discovered mock-up program for a General Music record that had been planned in 1968 and eventually canceled. It had less music, but it was all in stereo. For this Quartet edition, remastered by Chris Malone from the original master tapes, we have included the program for the stereo album, followed by a suite in four movements, the first three of which contain the music as presented in the movie, including unreleased cues, followed by a fourth movement containing unused and alternate tracks. Supervised by Claudio Fuiano, the release features a booklet that includes Simeone’s famous original painting on the cover and an essay by Miguel Ángel Ordóñez discussing the film and the score.