Listening to Stanley Kubrick (18 page)

The first space sequence uses all of the waltzes in order from the introduction through the fourth waltz. The sequence covers the docking of the spacecraft and stops just as Floyd arrives at the immigration area at the space station. Kubrick then allows dialogue and the ambient noise of the space station becomes the only sound. The keen ear will hear announcements over the public address system like the finding of a lost cashmere sweater. The human interaction on the space station is as stark and colorless as the decor. It could have been Kubrick’s intention to avoid the emotional baggage that music might have brought to these scenes on the station. In the second space sequence—Floyd traveling from the station to the moon—Kubrick returns to the second waltz and continues through to the end of the piece. The moment of the ship’s landing is timed perfectly to coincide with the grand pause in the waltz that signals the ending section of the piece. While the craft is lowered slowly into the hold on a pedestal, the final section of the waltz plays, a slower, almost melancholy end to the dance, and then a vigorous few measures conclude the piece. There is no feeling of foreboding or even portent in
The Blue Danube
. The feeling is light, joyful perhaps. There is no indication that there might be anything dangerous or questionable about what will happen on the moon.

Kubrick chose the waltz for the end credits as well. Once again, the piece plays in its entirety. Long after the credit sequence is finished and words “The End” have flashed, Kubrick allows a black screen to remain for minutes as the waltz continues all the way to its end.

The Music of Gyorgy Ligeti

Appearances of
Atmosphères

0:00:00–0:2:19 Overture (this is the timing on the DVD; a longer excerpt was played in theaters)

1:52:16–2:00:12 Intermission

2:02:52–2:11:10 Stargate sequence

Appearances of
Requiem
(
Kyrie
)

0:08:20–0:10:54 The monolith appears to the ape creatures

0:50:54–0:54:35 Floyd (and other astronauts) explore the monolith in the Tycho crater

1:56:58–2:02:52 Monolith appears floating in the space around Jupiter, journey through the Stargate

Appearance of
Aventures

2:11:11–2:14:20 Bowman leaves the pod, entering into the Louis XVI bedroom

Appearances of
Lux Aeterna

0:45:33–0:46:51 Floyd and colleagues travel to the Tycho crater on the Moon Rocket Bus

0:49:06–0:50:51 Moon Rocket Bus continues its journey to Tycho and then lands

György Ligeti was born in 1923 into a Hungarian Jewish family in the Transylvanian region of Romania. As a young man, he studied music at the conservatory in Kolosvár. The Second World War interrupted his studies, and Ligeti was forced to work in a labor camp while other members of his family were sent to concentration camps. Ligeti lost both his father and brother in the camps. After the war, Ligeti taught in Budapest, but communism left him isolated from the musical community outside of the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries. In the mid-1950s, Ligeti moved to Vienna, leaving his early compositions behind, many of which were never recovered.

Ligeti moved to Cologne and worked with pioneers of electronic music like Karlheinz Stockhausen, although Ligeti produced only two electronic pieces. Instead, the work of those at the West German Radio studio in Cologne inspired him to write instrumental and vocal music that mimicked textures of electronic music. It was the idea of texture that became the central focus of Ligeti’s creativity. Ligeti’s music would create what he called “sound masses” that he would then shift and manipulate. A sound mass might consist of many notes, five, ten, twenty, or even more, played by instruments or sung by voices or both. The notes are often close together forming a cluster of sound, something Ligeti called “micropolyphony.” Some of the vocal pieces use traditional texts, like the
Lux Aeterna
and the
Requiem
; however, the nature of sound masses renders these words mostly unintelligible.

Although Ligeti was enjoying some notoriety in the 1960s, it was Kubrick’s use of his pieces in
2001
that introduced the composer to a massive audience. Brother-in-law Jan Harlan notes that Kubrick’s choice of Ligeti’s
Lux Aeterna
was precipitated by a suggestion made by Kubrick’s wife (Harlan’s sister) who happened to hear it while painting or sculpting and listening to Radio 3.
41
According to Harlan, the director found the sound of Ligeti’s music “very sophisticated and new.”
42
Kubrick would use Ligeti’s music in both
The Shining
and
Eyes Wide Shut
as well.

Kubrick’s use of Ligeti’s music was not without controversy, however. First of all, there have been conflicting reports about whether (and how much) Ligeti knew about Kubrick’s desire to use his music.
43
According to some reports, Ligeti’s experience of the music in
2001
was the opposite of North’s experience. North watched and was disappointed that his music wasn’t in the film; Ligeti watched and was surprised by how much of his music was used in the film. Ligeti’s publishers were not legally obligated to tell the composer of negotiations with Kubrick’s Hawk Films, although it is not unreasonable to imagine that someone should have communicated the details as a courtesy to him.
44
In September of 1968, Ligeti apparently saw the film and was upset with what he saw as the betrayal of C.F. Peters, his publishers. In a letter he wrote to a friend right after he viewed the film, Ligeti claims that “Peters betrayed me” and that the film “is a piece of Hollywood shit.”
45
There followed a lawsuit in which Ligeti and his representation complained that his music was not “background music,” as the contract suggested, and that the manipulation of
Aventures
(discussed below) violated the contract, which made no provision for tampering.
46

Furthermore, it has been suggested that on a philosophical level, Ligeti was uncomfortable sharing the score with people like Richard Strauss, whose ambiguous position during the Second World War would be offensive to Ligeti, whose Jewish family was torn apart by the Nazi regime. Later, Ligeti spoke about how well he felt the music fit with the images. In Jan Harlan’s documentary about Kubrick, Ligeti, late in his life, seems to have gained some perspective, perhaps understanding how useful Kubrick’s films were in popularizing his music. Of the appropriateness of his music in
2001
, he says that the music and the images suggest great speed, perhaps even beyond the speed of light. “And then we enter in another world.”
47

Ligeti’s music is so unique and so unlike anything else on the soundtrack that it begs interpretation. The music of the Strausses and Khachaturian seems to represent our known world, perhaps even our humanity. But when the characters on-screen are confronted with the monoliths, something alien, we hear this very different kind of music, representing another world, an “other.”
48
In an essay on
2001
, Barry Keith Grant has raised the question of whether or not Ligeti’s music can be heard when the monoliths are present. If we are not sure this music can be heard by those on-screen, we cannot be sure of its meaning. Evidence in the film seems to suggest that the voices that accompany the appearances of the monoliths are not heard by the apes, nor are they heard by the astronauts in the Tycho crater. (From a purely scientific standpoint, the moon has no air or atmosphere and no sound can travel.) Perhaps, as Grant suggests, the sound is the fabled “music of the spheres,” a sound that modern man has lost the ability to hear.
49

Kubrick begins the film with
Atmosphères
, a work that begins with a large cluster of sound played by an orchestra. There is no overwhelming feeling of regular meter or rhythm, nor is there functional harmony that creates a sense of expectation. We simply hear the shift of texture over time, as instruments enter and leave the sound mass. The same piece accompanies the intermission. The lack of regular rhythm, meter, melody, and harmony is perhaps a signal from Kubrick, telling the audience to rid itself of the traditional expectations of narrative film. The piece appears again in the Stargate sequence.

A section of Ligeti’s
Requiem
, the
Kyrie
, accompanies sequences that feature the monoliths. In this piece, the sound masses are created by a soprano soloist, mezzo soprano soloist, and two choruses. The choruses consist of twenty people, essentially four on a part for soprano, mezzo, alto, tenor, and bass. The orchestra for this piece includes full complements of strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion and also harpsichord, harp, and an optional celesta. In the section Kubrick used, we hear the voices primarily, with some instrumental accent notes, although the instruments often double the voices. The shifting texture helps build tension, as the voices grow in intensity and dynamics, gradually becoming higher, shriller, louder. In the first appearance of the
Kyrie
, Kubrick times it so that the music reaches a biting climax just as we see the image of the monolith lined up perfectly with the sun and moon. Kubrick then cuts to the silent landscape, an abrupt stop that jolts the viewer and alerts us that the mysterious episode is over, and life continues as usual. Things, however, are about to change. Kubrick must have been unconcerned with cutting this piece in the middle of a phrase because the abruptness of the silence is powerful and because there isn’t a discernible regular phrase structure to interrupt.

In the second appearance of the piece, in the Tycho crater, Kubrick allows the voices and instruments to grow in intensity, but instead of letting the voices reach a climax of shrillness, the voices remain in the lower range when the monolith emits its high-pitched signal. This harsh sound continues for an uncomfortably long time while the voices of Ligeti’s
Kyrie
fade gently away. When the signal finally ceases, we get a short pause of silence before the beginning of the Adagio from Khachaturian’s
Gayane
.

During the Stargate sequence, Kubrick uses two Ligeti pieces in something of a suite. We begin with the
Kyrie
section from the
Requiem
and seamlessly segue from vocal music into the instrumental
Atmosphères
. In the thick texture of many instruments playing at once, time seems to stand still, although with the special effects on-screen, Kubrick achieves a feeling of motion and speed. Just as his vocal music seems to take the individual humanity out of the voice, Ligeti’s instrumental
Atmosphères
seems to decrease the identification of individual instruments in the sound complex. The result is a sound that seems simultaneously familiar and otherworldly.

When Bowman “lands” in the Louis XVI bedroom, we hear the eerie sounds of Ligeti’s
Aventures
, a work that requires its soloists to chatter, laugh, and sing, say, or yell nonsensical vocables (syllables). (The film’s credits, even on the DVD release, do not mention this piece.) The piece also begins with the soloists breathing heavily in rhythm, which fits in quite well with Bowman’s breathing noises. In the version in the film, the voices appear to be slowed down at first, making them sound less human, almost as if we are hearing the sounds of the aliens themselves as they observe Dave Bowman making his transition. (The “deformation” of the piece was a central element in the legal troubles between Ligeti and MGM.) Then there is no music for a while, as Dave sees himself older, eating at a table across the room. The only sounds are his younger self breathing and the clink of utensils on plates. The older Bowman gets up, his footsteps echoing against the floor. Sitting back down, he starts to eat again only to knock over a glass. The shattering seems to trigger the breathing sound again as Bowman notices an even older version of himself in bed. This Bowman, possibly dying, reaches out to the monolith at the foot of his bed, but this time Ligeti’s
Kyrie
is absent. There is no music at all for a moment. Then, as Bowman becomes the Starchild, Strauss’s introduction from
Also Sprach Zarathustra
begins again.

Khachaturian: Adagio from
Gayane

Appearance:

0:54:38–0:58:02 Exteriors and interiors from Jupiter Mission

1:03:26–1:07:16 Exterior of the ship, Poole’s birthday message, Bowman sleeps, Poole plays chess with HAL, Bowman draws his hibernating colleagues

The history of Aram Khachaturian’s ballet,
Gayane
, is quite complicated. Khachaturian composed music for the ballet in 1942, but it contained elements of an earlier ballet that he composed in the late 1930s called
Happiness
, with scenario by Gevork Ovanesyan. The main character is Karine, a simple patriotic woman who works on a collective farm and whose love interest is a border guard named Armen. The music for
Happiness
contained what Khachaturian identified as seven Armenian melodies and many more musical characteristics that were folklike.
50
In 1942, he began revising
Happiness
, with Konstantin Derzhavin reworking the libretto. Derzhavin retained some characters and settings of
Happiness
but changed the plot. He also changed the name of the ballet to that of the story’s heroine, Gayane. Khachaturian said that about 60 to 70 percent of the music was new.
51
In this ballet, Khachaturian’s music uses Armenian, Caucasian, and Russian folk materials. The melodies, although written in a regular time signature, have unexpected accents to mimic the uneven meters of the indigenous folk music. In the 1950s, a completely new version of the libretto was penned by Boris Pletnyov and Khachaturian revised his music for the work’s Bolshoi premiere (although such changes could hardly be defined as a simple revision of the material). This version made the work more of a psychological drama, and it was this latter version that Khachaturian seemed to feel was the best iteration of his ideas. It is the version he chose to record in 1978, and it is the version that appears in the set of his complete works published by Musikverlag Hans Sikorski, Hamburg.