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I went to a talk by composer turned academic Stephen Deutsch the other day about the unused score for Kubrik's 2001.
The basic story is that a studio afraid forced Stanley to hire the respected Alex North (who he'd previously worked with on Spartacus) as the pre recorded classical stuff he wanted to use was a bridge too far in this space opera without explosions and lasers and half an hour of monkeys at the start.
The North score was recorded but Kubrik blatantly never had any intention of using it and turned in what he wanted anyway. The first North knew of it was at the premiere.
Deutsch played us bits of the score over some sections of the film. It's hard to have any kind of objectivity because the music we all know is so welded to the film but my general impressions were that North had tried hard to replicate the feeling of Also Sprach and Blue Danube to please Stanley but there were too many instruments and it was too much.
One of the interesting things was that North had scored the monkey (yes-I know but I just prefer the word monkey to ape) sections. The music here enforced a sadness and structured a narrative (monkey's eating bushes, slapping away pig things, asserting their place in the food chain, Big Cat eats monkey, asserting their place in the food chain) which was obviously there but less…traditionally 'dramatic' in the 'real sound version'. For me any road.
Anyway, what I wanted to talk about was…
One of the points of Deutsch's talk was the encoding power of music.
Also Sprach Zarathustra references Nietzche. Ape-man-superman/eternal recurrence (the revolving planets/space station/orbiting star child)
The Blue Danube is a waltz, the first dance where men and women could touch and hold each other for the duration, playing over the machine sex of the shuttle docking in the space station (the hooped space station referencing the hooped dresses of the waltz period as well as the more obvious anatomical references).
He also brought up some other interesting things I didn't know. The opening music to the Shining is from a Gregorian Chant the Latin of which translates as (paraphrasing) 'The Day of Wrath'…the day Hell opens it's gates. Which is exactly what the film is about.
The music at the start of Raging Bull is from an Opera about a pig headed Scicillian male who brings tragedy upon his community.
All of this I found fascinating and yes, gave me a deeper appreciation of the film and desire to educate myself about music beyond 50's doo wop and Mr Bungle.
So I was wondering, mighty multi brained Barbelith…is there anything else I'm missing…
In the vein of the above are there films you know of that use music in a similar way, to encodify the meaning of or comment on the film that in my musical ignorance I may be missing? |
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