Gabriel's Oboe (The Mission)

Morricone scored Roland Joffé's The Mission in 1986, a film about the Jesuit reductions among the Guaraní and their destruction after a treaty divided the territory between Spain and Portugal. He built it from three musical worlds the plot keeps colliding: a Baroque oboe line for the European priest, Guaraní drums and voices, and Spanish liturgical polyphony — eventually sounding all three together. Gabriel's Oboe is the melody the missionary plays to the people who are deciding whether to kill him. The score lost the Academy Award that year and has outlived most of what beat it.