The first cue on the Intrada recording, “The Foraging,” was composed for the Dawn of Man sequence. North paints the desolate landscape with a low melody in the cellos, basses, and low woodwinds, which alternate with high pings in the harp. There is a meandering line in the low strings that seems to suggest the disorder of the natural world. Layers of melody eventually work their way up to the higher range and then fade back down again. When the australopithecines arrive on scene, North adds some percussion, a gong, and the texture seems to become a bit more complex. Otherwise, the apes do not have their own music, suggesting that they are just part of this tableau, just another animal in nature, with no special spark. This is made explicit in scenes where the tapirs and australopithecines occupy the same space, show no fear toward each other, and share the same resources. The leopard attack is not dramatized in the music, and this is where the cue would fade out. The alternative cue for “The Foraging” is more heavily orchestrated, more structured, and, one might argue, more dramatic. There are more of the tense, clichéd film music conventions here. Fraught with tension, these musical gestures dramatize the actions on-screen, making it seem like something huge is afoot. There are also echoes of the “Bones” cue.
The next cue, “The Bluff,” is meant to accompany the confrontation between two tribes. The “protagonist,” Moon-Watcher, leads one of the tribes. North characterized the cue as “barbaric” to emulate the fierce competition between the tribes for a rapidly shrinking watering hole. Although “competition” might be too strong a word here, as the australopithecines just shout at each other. Staccato notes of the low woodwinds and strings begin the cue. The use of percussion, primarily gestures of varying length in the timpani, mirrors the aggression of the apes as they beat the ground and flail their arms to scare off the rival tribe. There are also flourishes in the woodwinds that seem to echo the chatter of the apes. The ending of the cue, which features an almost noble-sounding fragment in the horns, Burlingame says, “suggests the fanfare of [the cue] ‘Bones’ yet to come.” “The Bluff” cue is a bit too long for the scene, as this is one of the scenes Kubrick pared down after initial screenings of the film. The horn fanfare occurs after the scene has faded to black.
The next cue, “Night Terrors,” accompanies scenes of the tribe, quiet and frightened, as they try to survive another night. Once again, the low woodwinds create an ominous mood, but instead of the high harp notes of sunrise, the accents are lower. Bass clarinets echo the “Bones” cue. Brass instruments join in—tubas, euphoniums, and flugelhorns—providing warmth with longer-held chords. The music is here is layered, almost as if fear is laid on fear. There are none of the percussive hits of the earlier aggression, although there are two short figures played on timpani, the first for muted timpani marked “near the rim.” The second is simply marked pianissimo. The meter remains indiscernible, another way North shows the uncertainty of these animals’ lives. Emotionally, the high strings, played with harmonics, seem to wail in dissonant anguish, although the apes themselves manage to stay quiet. The addition of prickly gestures on the harp (to be played “near the soundboard”) and the low strings add to the tension. These three cues, “The Foraging,” “The Bluff,” and “Night Terrors,” were not replaced in the film with preexistent music. Kubrick in fact used no music at all, which must have been an additional shock to North. It’s one thing to be replaced by Richard Strauss, but quite another to be replaced by silence.
In the film, the appearance of the first monolith is accompanied by the music of György Ligeti. The intensity of the cue grows as the australopithecines fearfully approach the mysterious object. Finally, after approaching and retreating, Moon-Watcher reaches out and touches the monolith. This is the object that, as Burlingame observes, “will change the destiny of mankind,” and Kubrick’s musical choice here infuses the scene with tremendous dramatic importance. North apparently did not compose a cue for this scene. The previous cue, “Night Terrors,” ends just as the first ape creature wakes up to see the monolith.
“Bones” accompanies the newly enlightened Moon-Watcher as he plays around with some bones. In doing so, he makes the connection that such an implement can be used as a weapon. This scene, so perfectly captured by the introduction to Strauss’s tone poem, is here accompanied by North’s similar fanfare. It shares many musical and structural details with the earlier piece. In both, there is a rising arpeggio figure and the use of insistent brass, and in both the organ gets the final word, hanging on after all the other instruments have ceased. In an interview, North described his take on the Zarathustra music, “I wrote a piece of equivalent length, only more contemporary, dissonant, harsh, and brassy.”33 North and especially orchestrator Brant show a great sensitivity to the brass section here, using the slightly different timbres of French horn, trombone, and euphonium (and others) to create a full, rich sound that complements the open intervals of the composition. The cue, like the excerpt from Strauss, seems to play on the relationship between the darkness of the minor and diminished chords against the brightness of major triads. There are hits on the cymbals and the timpani that also echo the Strauss.
In the scene following the discovery of the monolith, Moon-Watcher and the tribe eat the raw flesh of a tapir that Moon-Watcher has felled with his bone weapon. The following morning, they return to the watering hole. This scene has no score in the film, but North’s cue for the sequence is appropriately harsh to the ears, with strident brass and heavy percussion. Particularly prominent are the timpani. The percussion from “The Bluffs” is here again, even before the confrontation takes place. It foreshadows the upcoming attack and makes the eating of meat seem fraught with portent, as if the meat is responsible for the violence. They eat for a long time, as the sun goes down. The young apes even play with the bones too, the younger generation learning from the older generation. At the watering hole, the two tribes face off. Moon-Watcher steps forward, and a single line in the brass is like his voice, which is then joined by counterpoint. When Moon-Watcher makes the first strike, the music changes. Accents in the piano and percussion alternate with a fast moving line in the strings (doubled by English horns and clarinets). The effect is one of aggression and forward motion, as if the apes will begin to march. North used piano, Hammond organ, chimes, xylophone, and celesta to add color to the scene. As the sense of forward motion picks up, at one point North marks that the piano should play the “five lowest chromatic tones” on the keyboard and that a measure later he or she should play both the five highest chromatic tones and the five lowest. The organ player is told to hit a “palmful” of high and low notes for the same accented cluster. More percussion instruments play, snare drum, cymbal, and bass drum adding to the fracas. Again, Kubrick trimmed this scene, and consequently North’s music is too long for the film version. On the original sketch, North wrote “Ess Fleisch und Morder,” which became the cue’s name after Brant translated it, “Eat Meat and Kill.” In his book The Films of Stanley Kubrick, Daniel DeVries puts it a different way, “I kill, therefore I am.”34
Kubrick’s first choice for the first scene in the space age was the scherzo from Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. Many people, including North, have made the point that Kubrick had gotten so attached to the temp track that it was impossible for him to change his mind, but even though he had been using this tune for a while, Kubrick replaced Mendelssohn with Johann Strauss late in the game. Jan Harlan mentioned a similar circumstance that occurred during the production of Eyes Wide Shut. Kubrick, who had chosen a particular song for use in the film, kept it for a year but then suddenly changed his mind near the end of production. He found something that served the scenes better. To Kubrick, perhaps the Mendelssohn began to seem too contrived for the scene, although he did not remedy the situation by choosing a more obscure piece of music. Instead, he chose The Blue Danube waltz, which is just as recognizable, perhaps even more so.
North’s alternative, a cue called “Space Station Docking,” begins with
a charming and very lively conversation between the strings and woodwinds (strings are both plucked and played with the bow). There are accents on organ, harpsichord, and harp. When the camera gets close to the space station, the music changes a bit, slowing down perhaps to mimic the turning of the station. The harmony becomes more chromatic, and from this point on, dissonant elements never fully leave the harmony. The fluttery lines of the woodwinds are juxtaposed by slower-moving lines in other instruments. Like the waltz, North’s cue is dance-like and mimics the effulgent mood of the Strauss except in harmonic language, which is more defiantly dissonant. North’s cue also foreshadows the uncertainty ahead; it is more suggestive of what is to come and reflects some of the secrecy and uncertainty of the as yet-unrevealed mystery on the moon. The fluttery conversation keeps grinding to a halt for dissonant chords played by the glockenspiel, celesta, harpsichord, vibraphone, chimes, xylophone, two harps, and a marimba. But instead of having a charming, shimmering quality as one might expect from this collection of instruments, the effect is more unsettling, as the innocence of the journey masks the seriousness under the surface.
North’s cue “Space Talk” accompanies the conversation Dr. Heywood Floyd has with his daughter back on Earth. The music of the cue is soft and intimate, meant to underscore dialogue, and features a warm quality with strings, harp, and woodwinds. Trills in the strings seem to add to the magical nature of the cue. There is an underlying sweetness here, with an undercurrent of an emotion Burlingame characterizes as “awe,” which is slightly at odds with Floyd’s businesslike sense of the ordinary. Floyd doesn’t once look out the window to his left to see the Earth passing by. Perhaps North was reflecting his own awe at this future vision. Once again, Kubrick replaced North’s music with silence. As in a work like Paths of Glory, the absence of music sometimes feels like the absence of humanity. By not using North’s sweet music, Kubrick takes some of the humanity out of the scene, and once again Floyd’s businesslike demeanor dominates, even as he talks to his own daughter (Kubrick’s daughter Vivian played the part).
As Floyd continues on to the moon, the cue “Trip to the Moon” (echoing the title of the classic Méliès brothers’ 1902 film), features unique instrumentation, including a harpsichord, two harps, a celesta, glockenspiel, flutes (alto and bass flute included), and strings (without cellos or basses). The delicate orchestration is charming and effervescent. As a companion to the “Space Station Docking” cue, it shares a general overall mood rather than similar musical ideas. Kubrick used The Blue Danube again here, giving Floyd’s trip continuity, even though it was interrupted by his brief “layover” at the space station. The grace of this cue—the harpsichord making it sound particularly stately—does not mirror the motion on the spacecraft (the Aries 1B). Even though the flight attendant is weightless, the gravity shoes she wears causes her to walk somewhat unsteadily as she attempts to keep her feet on the ground or ceiling as she moves through the craft. Although the cue is given a meter of 3/4 (like Strauss’s waltz) it does not share the dance-like quality of Kubrick’s ultimate choice. In fact, North seems unconcerned about the meter being discernible, as the musical colors seem to be the most important aspect of the music. The dissonant interludes of the previous cue are absent here for some reason. There is no music for the next fifteen minutes of film, although it appears that North planned to write a second part for the remainder of the voyage to the moon and the landing of the Aries.
Once on the moon, Floyd travels with others to the site of the newly uncovered monolith. The conveyance, called in the script “Moon Rocket Bus,” lends its name to North’s cue. There is a foreboding mood in this cue, clueing the viewer in to the idea that something important is about to happen. Perhaps the eeriest thing about the cue is North’s use of a wordless line for a solo soprano. The voice sounds far off, as insistent strings play in the foreground. Again, the orchestration is inventive and evocative, here featuring an organ and harpsichord. North’s mixing of timbres in this case results in an otherworldly sound. The woodwind section, featuring English horns, adds warmth to the timbre. The opening theme of the cue returns, with its agitated strings and single voice. The voice, still echoey and somewhat distant, seems to be getting more insistent as well, until it disappears, leaving a dissonant sound mass as the moonbus lands. Once again, North signals us that something is afoot.
The remainder of the Intrada recording includes the other Dawn of Man cue. In this version, the reference to “Bones” that North merely hinted at in “The Foraging” is made more explicit. The final three tracks are additional takes for “Eat Meat and Kill,” “Space Station Docking” (middle section), and “Docking” (coda). The Intrada disc was given a small pressing of three thousand copies and has been out of print since. It is therefore a somewhat rare, but very important, artifact in this story.
One must make note of how often North attempted to capture the mood of Kubrick’s chosen pieces. There isn’t a one-to-one correlation for all pieces because some of the cues, especially in the Dawn of Man sequence, were replaced by no music at all in the final cut. But there are sufficient similarities in, say, “Bones” (Zarathustra) and “Space Station Docking” (Blue Danube waltz) to show that North was trying to make good on his promise to provide cues equivalent to those on Kubrick’s temp track. In an interview with Michel Ciment, Kubrick, however, claimed that North just didn’t get it. Kubrick explained that although he had gone over his selections with North and that the composer agreed to use them as a guide, “he nevertheless, wrote and recorded a score which could not have been more alien to the music we had listened to.” Furthermore, Kubrick dubbed the score “inadequate.” None of this came up during the recording sessions, when Kubrick was in and out, making suggestions to North and Brant. Perhaps he felt it was too late to make changes, or perhaps he knew the music would not ultimately be used. It’s hard to figure out what Kubrick was doing here. He can certainly be forgiven for making choices that ultimately served the film, but it seemed that his reticence lead North on, to a certain extent. Also, he explains to Ciment that North’s inadequate score left him in an uncomfortable position. “With the premiere looming up,” he said, “I had no time left even to think about another score being written.”35 With this statement, he makes it sound as though using the preexistent music score was a measure he was required to take, out of practical need. Although I don’t think anyone at MGM would argue that if Kubrick had wanted to commission another score, the date of release might have been pushed back yet again.
Even though Kubrick was not the first director to discard a newly written score for a film, and he was certainly not the last (other famous examples include the scores for Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain and William Freidkin’s The Exorcist), after 2001 he was more cautious in his collaborations with composers. The three composers who contributed to his last four films—Wendy Carlos for A Clockwork Orange and The Shining, his daughter Vivian for Full Metal Jacket, and Jocelyn Pook for Eyes Wide Shut—all had a better understanding of how to collaborate with Kubrick.
2001: A Space Odyssey: The Soundtrack
The initial soundtrack release from MGM was far more successful than anyone at MGM could have hoped. It was so profitable that MGM released a second album, this one featuring “Music Inspired by MGM’s Presentation of the Stanley Kubrick Production.” As its first track, this album included the introduction to Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, but no other cut on the album appears in the film. The rationale for this—besides the obvious profit-making opportunity—is that the original soundtrack had inspired in the public a new interest in art music. What better way to serve the public than to put out an album of selections that the public might like as much? MGM included an alternate piece by Ligeti, Lontano (which Kubrick would use in The Shining), his organ piece Volumina, and another excerpt from Requiem. There is also another part of Strauss’s Zarathustra and waltzes from his opera Der Rosenkavalier. The liner notes explain that these waltzes are “spacious music for ou
ter space.” Also included is the “Berceuse” section of Khachaturian’s Gayane Ballet Suite. In addition, there is a piece by Leo Delibes, “Coppelia,” “Entflieht auf Leichten Kähnen” by Anton Webern, and “Margarethe” by Charles Gounod. In addition, Columbia Masterworks (CBS) released an album called Selections from 2001 featuring recordings by the Philadelphia Orchestra (under Eugene Ormandy) and the New York Philharmonic (under Leonard Bernstein) of most of the music from the film, including the introduction to Also Sprach Zarathustra, Ligeti’s Atmospheres and Lux Aeterna, and Strauss’s Blue Danube waltz.
Richard Strauss: Also Sprach Zarathustra36
Appearances:
0:00:00–0:01:22 Credit sequence
0:11:40–0:13:10 Discovery of bone as weapon/tool by Moon-Watcher
2:07:35–2:09:03 Dave Bowman becomes the Starchild
Richard Strauss wrote Also Sprach Zarathustra in 1896. It falls into the genre of the tone poem, a single-movement work with multiple sections and an extra-musical program. Strauss composed a number of these tone poems early in his career, beginning a few years after Strauss left the University of Munich. His first effort in the genre was Aus Italien from 1886, followed a few years later by tone poems about Don Juan and Macbeth. This particular type of piece had been pioneered by Franz Liszt in the mid-nineteenth century. The symphony itself had declined in popularity after the deaths of the great symphonists Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, and composers began to experiment with new ideas, including writing purely instrumental music meant to function in a narrative sense. Liszt attempted to expand the concert overture, a one-movement musical piece with a dramatic or evocative program, to a piece with as much motivic complexity as a symphony. He was therefore inspired by Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony (the Pastoral), and Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture. Liszt completed more than a dozen of these pieces, with subjects such as Orpheus, Hamlet, and Prometheus. Although Liszt’s symphonic poems have not becoming overwhelmingly popular nor are they often performed, they inspired similar works by subsequent composers, Richard Strauss among them, that have entered the standard repertoire.
Listening to Stanley Kubrick Page 12
