Listening to Stanley Kubrick (17 page)

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 outer 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 Zarathustra
36

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.

Strauss’s tone poem
Also Sprach Zarathustra
is loosely based on the eponymous literary work by Friedrich Nietzsche, which the author had completed in 1885. The novel follows the fictional prophet Zarathustra (who shares only his name with the Persian Zoroaster), who travels and teaches his ideas about morality. In the prologue, Nietzsche explains that humans are the link between apes and a new type of being, what Nietzsche calls the Übermensch, or superman. This concept of the development of the human into a being that has achieved its full potential is particularly resonant in the narrative of
2001
, since the monoliths are an external stimulus that helps apes and later humans (as represented by Dave Bowman) achieve such a self-actualization. Again, it is worth noting that Kubrick was not much concerned with the story, but one must admit that, in this case, it fit rather well.

It was the concept of evolution that inspired Strauss’s tone poem. The composer explained:

I did not intend to write philosophical music or portray Nietzsche’s great work musically. I meant rather to convey in music an idea of the evolution of the human race from its origin, through the various phases of development, religious as well as scientific, up to Nietzsche’s idea of the
Übermensch.
37

The section of the tone poem that appears in the film is just the introduction to a work that lasts about thirty minutes. There are nine sections in all, which Strauss named after chapters in Nietzsche’s book. The piece begins with the famous introduction, which has the alternate title of
Sonnenaufgang
, or Sunrise. The fanfare in the trumpets begins with three notes, C-G-C. These elemental pitches that form a fifth and an octave represent the beginning of the overtone series, an acoustical phenomenon in music. Strauss has directed the first entrance of this theme to be played “feierlich” or solemnly. These three notes have been called both the dawn motif and the nature motif. All of the instruments in the very large orchestra play the final fortissimo chord at the end of the introduction, although the organ’s sonority, because of its long decay, is heard last. One measure of rest separates the introduction from the second section, “Of those at the back of the world.” Seven sections follow including
Das Grablied
(the Grave Song, or Dirge) and
Von der Wissenschaft
(Of Science). The latter of these features a fugue with a theme comprised of all twelve notes of the chromatic scale (with the repetition of only two notes), something that would be developed decades later in the twelve-tone music of Arnold Schoenberg.

What must have intrigued Stanley Kubrick in the Sunrise section was its elemental nature. Its builds up from single notes into a bright sonority, like the first hints of sunlight over the horizon into a brilliant blaze of sun. An added bonus of using this section is its brevity. It also comes to a resolution at its end. Kubrick did not have to cut it because it is already self-contained. Furthermore, it is not necessary for the audience of
2001
to know the program of the tone poem because the essence of its meaning is conveyed so well in the music and so appropriately through the visual images.

The use of Richard Strauss’s
Also Sprach Zarathustra
has garnered a lot of attention and has become closely associated with the film; once one has seen the movie, it is difficult to hear this work without thinking of the Dawn of Man sequence or the striking visual tableau—moon, earth, and sun—of the opening. Kubrick biographer Vincent LoBrutto argues that the piece adds depth to the philosophical attitude of the narrative.
38
Kubrick had originally planned to have narration over the opening sequence, but it’s hard to imagine that now. It’s also hard to believe that any words could be more eloquent than the music and the images alone.

The power of the film as a pop culture artifact is clear when one realizes that the opening to
Also Sprach Zarathustra
(and not the rest of the tone poem) has become a well-known piece of music largely because of its inclusion in this film. It has been repeated and parodied and used in animation and advertisement. The film and Strauss’s opening gambit for this tone poem have become intertwined, for good or for ill. In Jan Harlan’s documentary,
Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures
, Tony Palmer says of this film: “I never knew if the images arose out of the music or the music arose out of the images, but perhaps the true thing to say is that they became, in his imagination, clearly, and so have become in ours, totally inseparable.”
39

Johann Strauss:
Blue Danube
waltz

Appearances:

0:16:02–0:21:21 Shuttle docking with the Orion space station

0:29:20–0:36:18 Trip to the moon

2:20:26–2:28:37 End credits

Kubrick chose for the scenes of spacecraft flying and docking perhaps the most famous waltz by Johann Strauss, the so-called Waltz King. Kubrick had previously used a waltz by Strauss in
Paths of Glory.
For the scene in which Kirk Douglas’s Colonel Dax goes to the house of Major General Broulard to plead for the lives of his men, we hear Strauss’s
Künsterleben
, or “Artist’s Life.” Here the waltz provides a contrast with the stark percussion of the battlefield. In
2001
,
The
Blue Danube
waltz, or
An der schönen blauen Donau
, provides accompaniment to movement.

Johann Strauss composed the work in 1866, and although it is best known as an instrumental work,
The Blue Danube
had words written by the poet of the Vienna Men’s Choral Association, Joseph Weyl. There was also another set of words written by Franz von Gerneth, which speak of the beauty of Vienna. The instrumental version, which premiered at the Paris World’s Fair of 1867, became extremely popular, becoming something of a nationalistic anthem for Austria. It remains popular today, not just in Vienna but all over the world. In the film score guide to
2001
, Carolyn Geduld mentions that this waltz had been used in the film
A Night to Remember
, which takes place on another ship, the
Titanic
. The regularity of a waltz, in this case a specifically well-known one, offers the viewer something of a comfort. Space travel is no longer a white-knuckled adventure for the highly trained. Now it’s like flying to an international location. Geduld calls this travel “measured, polished, choreographed, routine.” The music reflects these qualities.
40

The Blue Danube
is comprised of short sections with different waltz melodies, and Kubrick uses every one of them over the two space travel sequences. Immediately after the Dawn of Man section, Kubrick starts the cue with the introduction to the waltz. It is not strictly in time yet and it outlines the opening theme, while the strings glisten with tremolos and the woodwinds provide accents. This opening passage is in the key of A major, which is the dominant tonality for D major, the key of the waltz. This key area sets up the feeling of expectation, a sense of anticipation that Kubrick could not have explained theoretically but that works perfectly to transition from the silence of space to the movement of the craft. Each waltz has its own character, and many of the sections have repeats. Kubrick omitted a couple of these repeats in order to make the length of the music fit the length of the visual sequence. The cutting of repetitions, which is sometimes done even in formal performances, is a very unobtrusive way to shorten a piece, and as we understand, Kubrick was loath to make cuts in the middle of melodies, or at any point that was not an organic resting place.