Listening to Stanley Kubrick
Page 13
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.
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.
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.