Armando Trovajoli was not a western man. By 1967 he had two decades of work behind him - jazz, sophisticated comedies, orchestral scores for Vittorio De Sica. He knew how to make audiences laugh, how to make them cry, how to write for big bands and strings alike. But dust, horses, guns? That was Morricone territory, Bacalov, Nicolai. Yet when Florestano Vancini called him to score his only foray into the genre, Trovajoli responded with something no one expected.

I Lunghi Giorni Della Vendetta doesn't sound like a Spaghetti Western. There are no howling choirs, no whip-crack rhythms, no whistles cutting through the air. What Trovajoli builds here is closer to chamber music - intimate, wounded, heavy with years spent dreaming of revenge. The main theme doesn't swagger: it bleeds. Melancholic strings intertwine with moments of coiled tension, lyrical passages fade into the silence of men waiting to kill or be killed.

This is a score that alternates between the epic and the mournful with an emotional sensitivity rare in the genre. Themes chase each other - Ombre al Tramonto, L'Attesa, Duello Disperato, Passi Nella Notte - building a sonic architecture where vengeance is not explosion but slow combustion. Acoustic guitar dialogues with orchestra, jazz surfaces and retreats, percussion marks the tempo of waiting rather than action.

At the time, only a single was released in Japan, where the film was a huge success. In the '80s, one side of a collector's LP. Then silence, broken only by CD editions that revealed the depth of a work that had remained too long in the shadow of the genre's giants.

Now, for the first time in a definitive edition: double vinyl in transparent orange 180gr, CD included, and liner notes by Massimo Privitera illuminating one of the best-kept secrets of the Italian western.