Greed here is not small or sly; it becomes a religious state. In the film, this music carries Tuco’s frantic search through a cemetery for the grave hiding the gold, and Morricone makes that scramble feel absurdly exalted: a man chasing money among the dead, lifted as if by revelation.

The wordless soprano is crucial because it refuses ordinary speech. There is no argument to make, only appetite turning into vision. The steady, driving pulse keeps the body running with Tuco, while the suspended harmonic warmth and widening orchestral mass make the chase feel larger than any one thief. That contradiction is the piece’s strange grandeur: the music knows the quest is grubby, but it also understands how desire can flood the mind until it feels sacred. By the end, the “ecstasy” is both joke and truth — gold has made a cathedral out of panic.