Then I Will Burn
I followed the lines,
of the lone desert
Like I followed the lines,
all across my palm
At night I had the stars,
to show and guide me
At daytime I sang myself,
for you so many psalms
There’s such a bitter taste
There was just no way,
I could ever return
If they ever knew just,
what I was thinking
Then in the pyre of hell
and then I will burn
One of the greatetst pieces of film music ever composed, is Ennio Morricone’s them from “Once Upon A Time In The West”. It was purely instrumental, and so the challenge was to create a song around it’s beautiful haunting theme.
I opened the challenge to Glen Cooper to come up with some lyrics, which he did, and I didn’t feel they were right, so he came up with some more, and I didn’t feel they were right either, this happened many times until, the right words were in place, then we finally had the song.
The original film version had a soprano voice taking the lead, which I just had to include as the intro, that posed a small issue of finding someone that could sing that high, so huge thanks to Rachel Bosomworth for the soprano line we recorded.
As the original written melody was instrumental, it had quite a range, two octaves in fact, right up to top A, so another thanks to Steve Roberts for finding those top notes when needed.
This is a beautiful melody, creating an emotional song, so all the credit must go to Ennio Morricone for creating this melody.
Andy Horrell