Listening to Stanley Kubrick (26 page)

Composed by: Arthur Freed, Nacio Herb Brown, Robbins Music ASCAP

Performed by Gene Kelly, an MGM Recording 2:36

[Wendy] Carlos’ A Clockwork Orange: 1972

Side 1

1. Timesteps—[Wendy] Carlos
   

(BMI—13:50)

1. March from A Clockwork Orange
   

(BMI—7:00) (Beethoven: Ninth Symphony: Fourth Movement, Abridged)

Articulations by Rachel Elkind

Arr. [Wendy] Carlos

Side 2

1. Title Music from A Clockwork Orange
   

(BMI—2:21)

(from Purcell’s “Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary”)

[Wendy] Carlos and Rachel Elkind

1. La Gazza Ladra
   

(P.D. 5:50)

(The Thieving Magpie, Abridged)

Gioacchino Rossini

1. Theme from A Clockwork Orange
   

(BMI—1:44)

(Beethoviana)

[Wendy] Carlos and Rachel Elkind

1. Ninth Symphony: Second Movement
   

(P.D.—4:52)

Ludwig van Beethoven

1. William Tell Overture, Abridged
   

(P.D.—1:17)

Gioacchino Rossini

1. Country Lane
   

(BMI—4:43)

[Wendy] Carlos and Rachel Elkind

In 1998, Carlos and Elkind released
Wendy Carlos’s Complete Original Score
of
A Clockwork Orange
. In addition to “Country Lane,” this album features two additional tracks that were left unused for the film: “Orange Minuet,” which was composed for the stage scene after the Ludovico treatment (Terry Tucker’s “Overture to the Sun” was used instead), and “Biblical Daydreams,” which was intended to accompany Alex’s fantasies while in prison. Carlos describes these pieces in the liner notes to the re-release and she also explains why Kubrick did not end up choosing them:

A few other cues were left “on the cutting room floor.” One was Biblical Daydreams, to underscore the images Alex fantasizes while reading the Bible in the prison library. That scene had an amusing incongruity that we picked up on using subtle musical “wink-nudges” (for the crucifixion procession the music nastily jokes “I love a parade,” while in the harem it slyly observes “I want a girl, just like . . . ”) Instead Kubrick used Rimsky’s
Scheherazade
, the same temp track we’d tried to replace. That often occurs in film making; Stanley Kubrick is hardly alone. One often gets locked into whatever is seen or heard the first several dozen times (while editing), which makes anything else at all, no matter how good, seem not to work as well. Kubrick and his lovely wife, Christiane, had become quite excited by an old fashioned style Orange Minuet cue I’d written for the stage sequence. They definitely wanted it in their film and even suggested a single (!) of it. But by now the scene’s Overture to the Sun temp track had begun to sound like the “only possible cue,” so our piece was left out, as no other suitable location could be found (they did try, and regretted the loss).
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Also in 1998, Carlos recorded
Tales of Heaven and Hell,
which featured “A Clockwork Black” a piece featuring choral samples and references to the borrowed music of the film.

When
A Clockwork Orange
premiered, the sound of the Moog was already familiar to many in the audience, and critics of the time lauded the synthesizer’s innovative sound. Although it must have been a “futuristic” sound for audiences in 1971, the Moog now dates the film as a product of late 1960s and early 1970s aesthetic. Carlos’s realizations combined an eerie-sounding prescience with a detachment from humanity (the synthesized voice in the Ninth Symphony emphasizes this quality) that proved a good fit for the film. Because of Kubrick’s penchant for using preexistent music in his films, Carlos was a good choice for collaborator; she was able to offer, transformed through the synthesizer, some of the preexistent pieces he wanted to use. Carlos explained, “[Kubrick] was getting his cake and eating it too.”
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Kubrick’s choice of the Moog may have served, at least in 1971, Burgess’s desire to keep the story free of any reference that would anchor it in the past. When Anthony Burgess wrote
A Clockwork Orange
in 1961, he was inspired by the argot of the “mods” and “teddy boys” as he wrote the story. However, Burgess knew that he could not actually use this slang for the story; to use it would be to freeze the action of the story into a definite time in the past. Instead, Burgess invented the Nadsat slang for Alex and his friends. He also used fictional composers who might—in his imagination—be contemporary to the story, but chose not to name any composers who were alive when he wrote the novel. Burgess achieved a sense of timelessness in the story, one that makes it more able to survive as a relevant cultural artifact. The characters in the novel, especially Alex and his friends, use this timelessness as a way to relieve themselves of responsibility to contemporary society; they transcend it through their mode of dress, speech, or action. The droogs are timeless and therefore not subject to the laws and rules of their time and place.
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Alex’s quirk, his love of classical music, is also carefully crafted in the novel to keep the reader from associating Alex with a particular time period. This ahistoricism is a key part of fables and parables. Burgess mentions the canonical figures of Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven but he also mentions fictional composers: Otto Skadelig, Geoffrey Plautus, Adrian Schweigselber, and Friedrich Gitterfenster. In addition to allegorical meanings in the names, the author is able to suggest the scope and breadth of Alex’s love of music. The character’s passion for music is not just limited to canonical composers or the old masters; the composers Burgess mentions might be writing during Alex’s time. These fictional composers also offer a wistful window into a world of music that does not exist, and through this window the reader comes to trust Alex as an authority on this music and the only person who can truly speak of its beauty.
72

There is a further possible meaning to the use of Moog versions of certain pieces. The second movement of the Ninth Symphony appears in both orchestral and synthesized versions. The first time the piece appears is after a typical night of ultra-violence for the main character, Alex. When it appears a second time—this time in the Moog version—Alex can no longer enjoy it. He has undergone the Ludovico treatment and classical music makes him so physically ill that he wishes for death. The scene ends with Alex attempting suicide. The transformation of the work in the second occurrence can be seen as an analogue to the character, Alex. He has been changed, altered, mechanized in some way because the Ludovico treatment has taken away his freedom of choice, and thus—according to Burgess—his humanity. The title
A Clockwork Orange
, described by F. Alexander (the author of the eponymous book-within-a-book), refers to “the attempt to impose upon man, a creature of growth and capable of sweetness, to ooze juicily at the last round the bearded lips of God, to attempt to impose, I say, laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation.”
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Since Alex has been changed and mechanized, the music—also mechanized—reflects this.
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When Alex chose music for himself, it was the traditional orchestral version; as accompaniment for the Ludovico films or as torture for Alex (its most unpleasant forms) it appears transformed in the Moog version.

If viewed in this respect, the music through the Moog represents an ungodly transformation. Just as Alex has been contaminated by the treatment and removed from his original state, the music has been transformed through mechanical “contamination.” Yet this reading is at odds with the positive response to
Switched on Bach
both critically and commercially. The negative implication of the synthesizer sound may also be tempered by some sequences in which the Moog is heard and Alex is happy. Alex seems to enjoy the Moog version of the alla marcia section from the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony the first time it appears in the film. The alla marcia excerpt first appears as the accompaniment to Alex’s trip to the Music Bootick. The meaning of the Moog realization as a contaminated version of something organic fits better during the second appearance of the alla marcia
.
It appears as the score to one of the films Alex is forced to watch in the Ludovico clinic. Once again the music is ecstatic, yet the film depicts images of violence perpetrated by the Nazis.

The familiar music of Beethoven played on a Moog synthesizer, especially in the case of the alla marcia section of the fourth movement and the main theme of the second movement, turns from an enjoyable experience for Alex to one of torture, yet the Moog versions of these excerpts may sound even more ecstatic than their orchestral counterparts. What version of the music does Alex hear? Is he aware of the difference between the second movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony that is heard in the first third of the movie and the version used to torture him later in the film? Perhaps the difference in the versions is meant to signify for the audience the way that the music sounds to him at the time of his torture. The music has ceased to be an organic product, hewn through the genius of his beloved “Ludwig van” and played by many talented hands. It becomes the output of a machine, the product of one human hand, playing a note at a time, with voices—disconnected from their humanity—ironically singing about universal brotherhood. However, the argument that the Moog realizations are Alex’s perception of music after the Ludovico treatment would be sounder if the alla marcia excerpt did not appear in Moog version while Alex circled the Music Bootick.

In many of the scenes, the music is clearly sourced, as in the Ludovico sequences or those in which Alex makes verbal reference to the music. There are other scenes, however, in which it is unclear whether or not Alex can hear the music. As mentioned earlier, Alex seems to speak louder over the music that may or may not be sourced. In the slow-motion fight sequence at the waterfront, Alex proclaims that he heard music through an open window, but the audience cannot be sure that the music he describes is the piece on the soundtrack. Some scenes, like the fantasies he indulges in while in prison, are accompanied by music, perhaps from Alex’s own mind. The music he imagines, an excerpt from Rimsky-Korsakov’s
Scheherazade
, for example, is played by a traditional orchestra.

The sound of the Moog opens the film and is present before any significant visual image. Wendy Carlos’s realization on the Moog synthesizer of the march from Henry Purcell’s
Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary
begins the film. As the accompaniment to the first scene, the synthesizer performs an important function: with one note, the audience is told to be on its guard for strange things. At the time of the film’s release, the first few seconds must have seemed to explain that the story to follow is not about the present time, but a time in the future, a time in which the cutting edge of technology is used to play music. The transformation of the music, in this case, is as much a part of setting the scene as costumes and furniture. Purcell’s music continues as the scene opens in the Korova Milkbar. Alex and his friends are drinking “milk plus,” which Alex describes as milk infused with drugs like “synthmesc” and “drencrom.” It is not clear whether the music in the scene is sourced or scored, and one may wonder if the Moog version of Purcell’s funeral music is what Alex hears through his “milk plus” high.

A Clockwork Orange
, which is considered by many to be controversial for its depictions of rape and violence, may act as a kind of Ludovico treatment, causing the audience to associate the sound of the Moog with violence. For today’s viewers, the age of the Moog as cutting-edge technology has long passed. Yet the success of the soundtrack and its offspring, the continued success of Wendy Carlos’s work, and the use of the Moog by contemporary artists indicate that the age of the synthesizer is still ongoing. Perhaps it is best to say that the timbre of the Moog indicates a concept of the future. To those in the 1960s and 1970s, the Moog hinted at a possible future still to come; to the audience of today, it suggests a quaint retro-future vision that exists only in clothing, design, and music.

Notes

1. Anthony Burgess devised an argot for the book he called Nadsat. It combines English with some Russian words, Cockney rhyming slang, and neologisms. It is spoken by Alex and his friends. The word “nadsat” is the suffix meaning–teen, as in seventeen.

2. Andrew Biswell,
The Real Life of Anthony Burgess
(London: Picador, 2005), 338.

3. Biswell,
The Real Life of Anthony Burgess
, 338.

4. John Baxter,
Stanley Kubrick: A Biography
(New York: Carroll and Graf, 1997), 247–248.

5. Anthony Burgess, “On the Hopelessness of Turning Good Books into Films,”
The New York Times,
April 20, 1975, 2, 15.

6. David Hughes,
The Complete Kubrick
(London: Virgin Publishing, 2000), 172.

7. A complete synopsis of the film can be found in appendix B.

8. Michel Ciment,
Kubrick: The Definitive Edition,
trans. Gilbert Adair (New York: Faber and Faber, 1999), 157.

9. Anthony Burgess,
A Clockwork Orange
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1962; reprint, New York: Norton, 1986), 186. All page citations are to the reprint edition.

10. Claudia Gorbman,
Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 83.

11. Burgess,
A Clockwork Orange
, 42.

12. Burgess,
A Clockwork Orange,
43. There is a similar line in the film. The names refer to fictional singers, but the eighties synthpop band Heaven 17 took their name from the film.

13. Interview between Stanley Kubrick and Penelope Houston quoted in Vincent LoBrutto,
Stanley Kubrick: A Biography
(New York: Donald I. Fine Books, 1997), 339.