Listening to Stanley Kubrick (27 page)

14. Alexander Walker,
Stanley Kubrick Directs
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972), 270.

15.
His Master’s Voice Records
(October 1914), 3, quoted in Lewis Foreman, “The Winnowing-Fan: British Music in Wartime,” in
Oh, My Horses! Elgar and the Great War
, ed. Lewis Foreman (Rickmansworth: Elgar Enterprises, 2001), 121.

16. Randy Rasmussen,
Stanley Kubrick: Seven Films Analyzed
(Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2001), 113.

17. Pauline Kael,
Deeper into Movies
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 376.

18. Sam Johnson, “‘What’s It Going to Be Then, Eh?’ Deciphering Adolescent Violence and Adult Corruption in
A Clockwork Orange
” in
Portraits of the Artist in
A Clockwork Orange:
Papers and Music from the Anthony Burgess Centre’s International Symposium ‘The Avatars of
A Clockwork Orange,’ December 7–8, 2001, ed. Emmanuel Vernadakis and Graham Woodroffe (Angers, France: Presses de l’Université d’Angers, 2003), 32.

19. Rasmussen,
Stanley Kubrick: Seven Films Analyzed,
118.

20. Richard Osborne, “La Gazza Ladra,” in
New Grove Opera
, ed. Stanley Sadie (New York: Macmillan Press, 1992), 366.

21. Rasmussen,
Stanley Kubrick: Seven Films Analyzed,
113.

22. Jan Dawson, “A Clockwork Orange,”
British Film Institute Monthly Film Bulletin
39, no. 457 (February 1972): 29. Similar points have been made in both Kenneth von Gunden and Stuart H. Stock,
Twenty All-Time Great Science Fiction Films
(New York: Crown Publishers, 1982), 232, and in David Zinman,
Fifty Grand Films of the Sixties and Seventies
(New York: Crown Publishers, 1986), 215.

23. Thomas Allen Nelson,
Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist’s Maze
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), 153. The music Alex hears in the novel is “a bar or so of Ludwig van (it was the Violin Concerto, last movement)” (
A Clockwork Orange,
53).

24. Arthur Gumenik, “
A Clockwork Orange
: Novel into Film,”
Film Heritage
7, no. 4 (Summer 1972): 12.

25. The original vinyl album releases of the soundtrack and its “sequel” list Walter Carlos as the composer. All subsequent rereleases list Wendy Carlos. Where the original credits are listed, Wendy will appear in brackets, as it is the composer’s legal name.

26. Peter J. Rabinowitz, “A Bird of Like Rarest Spun Heavenmetal: Music in
A Clockwork Orange,
” in
Stanley Kubrick’s
A Clockwork Orange, ed. Stuart Y. McDougal (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 124.

27. Rasmussen,
Stanley Kubrick: Seven Films Analyzed,
113.

28. Nelson,
Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist’s Maze,
160

29. Siegfried Kracauer,
Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1960), 159–160.

30. Kracauer,
Theory of Film
, 162.

31. Scans of the score of
Timesteps
are available on Wendy Carlos’s website,
http://www.wendycarlos.com/+wcco.html#t-steps
.

32. Rabinowitz, “A Bird of Like Rarest Spun Heavenmetal,” 118.

33. Sam H. Shirakawa,
The Devil’s Music Master
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 271–279. See also Celia Applegate and Pamela Potter, “Germans as the ‘People of Music’: Genealogy of an Identity,” in
Music and German National Identity,
ed. Celia Applegate and Pamela Potter (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 1–35.

34. David B. Dennis,
Beethoven in German Politics, 1870–1989
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 149.

35. Dennis,
Beethoven,
151–152. See also Dennis, “‘Honor Your German Masters’: The Use and Abuse of ‘Classical’ Composers in Nazi Propaganda,”
Journal of Political and Military Sociology
30, no. 2 (Winter 2002): 273–295.

36. Ciment,
Kubrick: The Definitive Edition,
163.

37. David Levy,
Beethoven: The Ninth Symphony,
revised ed. Yale Music Masterworks Series (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 8.

38. Levy,
Beethoven: The Ninth Symphony
, 5–8.

39. Nicholas Cook,
Beethoven: Symphony No. 9,
Cambridge Music Handbooks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 81–83.

40. Susan McClary,
Feminine Endings
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), 128–129.

41. Bruno Nettl,
Heartland Excursions
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 31. The political use and reception history of this work has been the subject of Esteban Buch’s
Beethoven’s Ninth: A Political History,
trans. Richard Miller (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).

42. This clip seems to be an outtake from the 1965 film
Cat Ballou
(1965). A very similar scene occurs at 1:34:07 in which Cat is hanged but is then rescued by a friend hidden underneath the gallows.
Cat Ballou,
prod. by Harold Hecht, dir. by Elliot Silverstein, 97 min, Columbia/Tristar, 1965, DVD version 2003.

43. Rasmussen,
Stanley Kubrick: Seven Films Analyzed,
127.

44. Nelson,
Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist’s Maze
, 153. This point is stressed by Sam Johnson in his article “What’s It Going to Be Then, Eh?” 32.

45. Ellen Shamis Roth, “The Rhetoric of First Person Point of View in the Novel and Film Forms: A Study of Anthony Burgess’
A Clockwork Orange
and Henry James’
A Turn of the Screw
and Their Film Adaptations,” Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1978, 206.

46. A picture of this statue appears on the website “Meet Beethoven at Heiligenstadt,”
http://www.lvbeethoven.com/MeetLvB/AustriaHeiligenstadtStatueHanlein.html
.

47. Burgess,
A Clockwork Orange,
x.

48. Robert Hughes, “The Décor of Tomorrow’s Hell,”
Time
magazine
,
December 27, 1971, reprinted in Mario Falsetto, ed.
Perspectives on Stanley Kubrick
(New York: G.K. Hall, 1996), 185.

49. Royal S. Brown,
Overtones and Undertones: Reading Film Music
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994) 30.

50. David A. Cook,
A History of Narrative Film,
3rd ed. (New York: Norton, 1981), 350.

51. Quoted in Royal S. Brown’s “Film and Classical Music,” in
Film and the Arts in Symbiosis: A Resource Guide
, ed. Gary R. Edgerton (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988) 206.

52. Scott Timberg, “Is Bach Playing? Look Out!”
Los Angeles Times,
August 24, 2003, sec. E, 34–35.

53. Thomas Harris,
The Silence of the Lambs
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988), 234–237.

54. Ariel Dorfman,
Death and the Maiden
(New York: Penguin Books, 1992). The film
Death and the Maiden
(1994) was directed by Roman Polanski and stars Sigourney Weaver and Ben Kingsley.

55. An article in the
Los Angeles Times
states that in London Underground stations where classical music is played, robberies have been reduced by 33 percent, assaults by 25 percent, and vandalism by 37 percent. Scott Timberg, “Halt, or I’ll Play Vivaldi!”
Los Angeles Times,
February 13, 2005, sec. E, 35 and 40.

56. See Christine Gengaro, “‘It Was Lovely Music That Came to My Aid’: Music’s Contribution to the Narrative of the Novel, Film and Play A Clockwork Orange,” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Southern California, 2005. See also Jim Clarke, “‘Homesick for Sin’: Why Burgess Revisited
A Clockwork Orange,
” in
Portraits of the Artist in
A Clockwork Orange:
Papers and Music from the Anthony Burgess Centre’s International Symposium ‘The Avatars of
A Clockwork Orange,’ December 7–8, 2001, ed. Emmanuel Vernadakis and Graham Woodroffe (Angers, France: Presses de l’Université d’Angers, 2003), 69–78.

57. In an unpublished prologue to the play found in the Anthony Burgess collection at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas, Austin, Alex is Adam in the Garden of Eden. Eve is Marty, Alex’s girlfriend at the end of the play. Beethoven’s Ode to Joy appears at the moment at which Marty eats the forbidden fruit, appropriately, a ticking orange. See Paul Phillips, “Alex in Eden: Prologue and Music to Burgess’s Dramatization of
A Clockwork Orange
” in
Portraits of the Artist in
A Clockwork Orange:
Papers and Music from the Anthony Burgess Centre’s International Symposium ‘The Avatars of
A Clockwork Orange,’ December 7–8, 2001, ed. Emmanuel Vernadakis and Graham Woodroffe (Angers, France: Presses de l’Université d’Angers, 2003), 113–129.

58. Beethoven’s personal struggles with deafness have been noted in, among others, William Kinderman,
Beethoven
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 60–64.

59. Anthony Burgess,
This Man and Music
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982), 82.

60. Trevor Pinch and Frank Trocco,
Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 132.

61. Pinch and Trocco,
Analog Days
, 132.

62. Quoted in Mark Prendergast,
The Ambient Century: From Mahler to Trance—The Evolution of Sound in the Electronic Age
(New York: Bloomsbury, 2000), 71.

63. Interview with Jon Weiss in Trevor Pinch and Frank Trocco, “The Social Construction of the Early Electronic Music Synthesizer,” in
Music and Technology in the Twentieth Century
, ed. Hans-Joachim Braun, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 75.

64. Prendergast,
The Ambient Century
, 70.

65. The album peaked at position 34. Joel Whitburn,
Billboard: Top Albums 1955–2001
(Menomonee Falls, WI: Record Research, 2001), 1002.

66.
Walter Carlos’s Clockwork Orange
peaked at 146 on the Billboard chart. Joel Whitburn,
Billboard: Top Albums 1955–2001
,134.

67. Chris Nelson, liner notes to
Walter Carlos’ Clockwork Orange
, prod. Rachel Elkind, Columbia KC 31480, 1972, record album.

68. These are the track lists exactly as they appear in the liner notes of the original albums.
Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange,
produced by Rachel Elkind, Warner Brothers 2573, 1972, record album.
Walter Carlos’ Clockwork Orange,
produced by Rachel Elkind, Columbia KC 31480, 1972, record album.

69. Wendy Carlos, “Looking Back at
Clockwork,
” from the liner notes to
Wendy Carlos’ Complete Score
for
A Clockwork Orange
, prod. Rachel Elkind, 1998, ESD 81362.

70. Jeff Bond, “A Clockwork Composer: Wendy Carlos,”
Film Score Monthly
4, no. 2 (March 1999), 21.

71. Johnson, “‘What’s It Going to Be Then, Eh?’” 32.

72. Rabinowitz, “A Bird of Rarest Spun Heavenmetal,” 110.

73. Burgess,
A Clockwork Orange
, 21–22.

74. Walker,
Stanley Kubrick Directs,
271.

Chapter Five

“I Was Lucky Enough to Have Superb Material to Work With”

Barry Lyndon

Stanley Kubrick’s work on
A Clockwork Orange
seems to have greatly influenced his next film,
Barry Lyndon
. Although on the surface, the two films might seem very different, there are aspects of the adaptations and the stories themselves that seem to suggest a connection between them. First, they are both period pieces—
Barry Lyndon
takes place in the eighteenth century, while
A Clockwork Orange
occurs in some unspecified future time. Second, they feature protagonists who are callow and selfish young men. And third, in both cases, Kubrick changed or omitted small details from the source material to make the protagonist more sympathetic. The music in
Barry Lyndon
likewise seems to bear the marks of Kubrick’s experience with the music in
A Clockwork Orange.
His collaboration with Wendy Carlos must have convinced Kubrick that what he truly needed on
Barry Lyndon
was an arranger—someone to manipulate Kubrick’s chosen excerpts in a way that would suit the film without interfering with the music’s integrity. By setting out to hire an arranger, Kubrick was fully embracing his method of “scoring” films using preexistent sources while also assuring that he would have the musical expertise of a composer without having to deal with a composer’s ego.

Once again, Kubrick drew from a literary source, this time William Makepeace Thackeray’s 1844 novel
The Luck of Barry Lyndon
, later published as
The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq.
In both
A Clockwork Orange
and Thackeray’s book, the main characters’ points of view are strikingly similar. Both novels are narrated in first person, and both main characters are rogues, who, despite their selfishness and questionable morals, can, at times, be charming. They are unreliable narrators in that they rationalize their behavior, fully believing in the rightness of their actions. In
A Clockwork Orange
, Kubrick achieved a great intimacy between the protagonist and the audience by letting Alex narrate his own story, as he had in the book. Kubrick decided against this in
Barry Lyndon
. Instead, we have three title cards and an unnamed narrator. We lose some of the intimacy with the character, and sometimes Barry’s motivations remain obscure, whereas we are hardly ever in the dark about why Alex is doing something. The Redmond Barry of the book is very honest and forthcoming about his motives, and he is usually driven by greed or revenge.

In an interview with Michel Ciment, Kubrick explained his decision to give the voiceover announcements to a neutral narrator. While acknowledging that Thackeray’s use of the unreliable narrator made the book “more interesting,” he claims that such a device “could not be repeated on the screen. It might have worked as comedy by the juxtaposition of Barry’s version of the truth with the reality on the screen, but I don’t think that
Barry Lyndon
should have been done as a comedy.”
1
Ciment does not ask about the use of the device in
A Clockwork Orange
, which does sometimes add comedic elements, but does not in any significant way turn the film into a comedy. Kubrick retains much of the language of the book in the film’s narration, thereby retaining some of Thackeray’s tongue-in-cheek descriptions.

In
Barry Lyndon
, Kubrick—as he did in
Clockwork Orange
—changes the intended ending and, in the process, alters Redmond Barry’s fate. In Thackeray’s book, Redmond narrates his story from prison, where he spends nearly the last two decades of his life. In Kubrick’s film, the narrator states that it was rumored that Barry traveled to the Continent, mentioning only that he continued to gamble, unluckily. We are therefore spared specific knowledge of his low demise, and his fate is left to our imaginations. The narrator’s final words are, “He never saw Lady Lyndon again,” a choice that suggests the real tragedy of Barry’s life was his lost love and failed marriage. While Thackeray’s novel is a satirical look at an antihero who wants nothing more than to become a gentleman, Kubrick’s film ends up being what one writer calls “an elegy for the destruction of the low-born hero by an unyielding class system.”
2

Early Ideas for the Score

The music in
Barry Lyndon
performs a multitude of functions. As in many films, music acts as an element of setting, denoting times and places. In
Barry Lyndon
, Kubrick also uses music to differentiate motifs and phases in the life of Redmond Barry.
3
As is typical of his style, Kubrick relies on the visuals and music to tell the story, allowing the music to fill in gaps that would normally be filled by dialogue. In the opening scene of the film, for example, Redmond Barry plays cards with his cousin, Nora Brady, a woman for whom Redmond has developed romantic feelings. The two characters speak very little, but there is subtext, and the music does much to complement the work of the actors. Instead of allowing the emotions of the characters to be explicitly stated in heavy-handed dialogue, the quiet, yearning cue conveys what the characters cannot say to one another.
4
The musical cues in
Barry Lyndon
also provide connective tissue that draws together two, three, and even four scenes. Kubrick interviewer Michel Ciment says that this function of the music turns “music into a textual mark of significant fragments, a creator of textual patterns.”
5

To find music for the film, Kubrick cast his net wide, starting with composers contemporary with the story. Kubrick’s attention to detail, as always, was astonishing, and his desire for authenticity was of paramount importance, although as we will see, he was willing to make allowances when he felt it served the film. Finding the music for the score for
Barry Lyndon
was a complicated process, as was the search for an appropriate arranger for the music Kubrick would end up choosing. Correspondence saved in the Stanley Kubrick Archive at the University of the Arts in London paints a picture of a production interested in exploring many options. At one point, Kubrick considered hiring André Previn to “conduct and orchestrate the score” for $32,500. About two weeks after Kubrick floated this idea, executive producer Jan Harlan informed him that Previn was too busy to participate on the film.
6
Kubrick’s next choice for musical director appears to have been Nino Rota, who is best known for scoring films by Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti. (Rota went on to win an Academy Award for the score to
The
Godfather Part II
in 1974.) An interoffice memo dated 31 July 1975 from Larry Marks to Stanley Belkin at Warner Brothers states that Nino Rota was to be engaged to “write, arrange, orchestrate, adapt and conduct the score for the motion picture for a flat fee of $32,500.” From the beginning, Rota was concerned that Kubrick intended to include little to no original music. Riccardo Aragno, the man who translated Kubrick’s films into Italian, conveyed Rota’s sentiments to Kubrick in a letter from Aragno in August of 1975. (Aragno ostensibly translated Rota’s original letter, which must have been in Italian.) Kubrick’s camp, while suggesting that there might be an opportunity for some original composition, had clearly stated that Rota’s main duty would be to arrange and orchestrate the director’s choices. According to Aragno, Rota expressed worry that any music he did write might be thrown out at the last moment (à la Alex North’s score for
2001
), and also stated that since Kubrick really wanted an arranger, the job might be better suited to a less well-known composer. Aragno finishes the letter, “So Nino came to the conclusion that—in all friendship, mutual esteem and graceful accord—it would be better for him to bow out at this point.” Aragno seemed intent to make it clear that Rota still felt warmly toward Kubrick and in no way had hard feelings about the situation. There isn’t a formal response from Kubrick in the archive, but there is a half-typed, half-written letter to Rota. It is not signed and bears no date. The written-in edits are underlined and the crossed out portions appear crossed out in the draft of the letter:

Although I do understand how you feel, I am nevertheless d
isappointed and a little
sad about the way things have ended.
Aside from being one of the nicest people I have ever met
, I think you are the best film composer in the world, and if you were prepared to do the film, it I would have been
a very good very fortunate thing indeed. I appreciate everything you have done, and how far you tried to bend in order to.
I hope that in the future I will do a film where classical themes are not what I want, and that you will still be willing to work with me.
Good luck and love from everyone
…

Before Kubrick ironed out the details about who would be the musical director of the production, he was busy choosing musical cues for the film. He was aided greatly in this endeavor by executive producer Jan Harlan. In a letter from 29 August 1973, Harlan corresponded with Hans B. Eggers from Deutsche Grammophon:

As we discussed, we will need a large amount of all types of 18th century and 17th century music—dances, folk songs, minuets, gavottes, etc. I think it would be a marvelous idea if Deutsche Grammophon could provide us with a large choice of what’s available along these lines, including all the big master works for orchestra and chamber music of this extremely rich period.

Harlan also asked Polydor Records for a list of early Italian operas, and Hanno Rinke from Polydor A&R wrote back on 21 April 1975 with a list of “Italian Opera Repertoire from Monteverdi Till Early Verdi.” Between 1974 and 1975, Harlan also corresponded with Stan Hibbert, the assistant secretary from the Musician’s Union about the use of certain recordings for the film. About one piece, dances by Mozart (K. 605), Hibbert stated:

The Union does not, as a matter of course, authorise the use of gramophone records for use in the sound-track of films; we prefer that special sessions are mounted for the recording of music for specific feature films. However, we are prepared to accede to your request, subject to a payment of 18 pounds to each of our members involved in the original gramophone recording session.

Dominic Frontiere from Leslie Stevens Productions sent a lengthy letter to the production team of
Barry Lyndon
(2 July 1973) suggesting music for the film that would be historically accurate and noting that the most popular composers of the historical time period were Handel, Purcell, J. C. Bach, and Scarlatti. Frontiere also suggests that Kubrick might find that the music of composers anachronistic to the story might be equally as effective as those from the time period, including Frederick Delius and Hamilton Harty. He adds, “You have many choices in styles of music to choose from [appropriate for the time period]: harpsichord and organ music was very popular; religious music abounded; thousands of hymns were composed.” He ends with: “Enclosed are some of the songs that were popular at the time of the Seven Years’ War. If there is any specific research you would like done, please write.” Included with this correspondence is the sheet music for the following pieces: “Johnny Cope,” “The Marquis of Granby,” “Why Soldiers Why,” “Hot Stuff,” “Tenth Regiment,” “See the Conquering Hero Comes,” “The British Grenadiers,” “Over the Hills and Far Away,” “Lilliburlero.” Of these songs, Kubrick ended up using only “The British Grenadiers” and “Lilliburlero.”

The archive also contains lists of records they wanted to obtain, and one list (undated) includes Haydn, Johann Melchior Molter, Beethoven’s German dances, Mozart’s dances, Purcell trumpet tunes, Purcell’s
Fairy Queen
, and Vivaldi’s Trumpet Concerto and
The Four Seasons
. Another list (from 12 June 1975) includes numerous Haydn symphonies, “Nina Pazza Amore” from Paisiello’s
Barber of Seville
, Mozart piano sonatas, selections from Gluck’s opera
Orfeo
, Mahler’s
Songs of a Wayfarer
, and Donizetti’s
Elixir of Love
. Because the beginning of the film takes place in Ireland, Kubrick was interested in having authentic Irish songs on the soundtrack. The production team was in contact with arrangers familiar with this repertoire, including Dermot Graham and Patrick J. Power.

As for finding an arranger, Kubrick eventually got in touch with Leonard Rosenman after the film had been completed. Rosenman (1924–2008) had majored in music at UC Berkeley, earning a B.A., and he went on to study composition with twentieth-century masters Arnold Schoenberg and Roger Sessions. Around the time he turned thirty, Rosenman began to write scores for film and television. One of his first assignments was the Elia Kazan film
East of Eden
. One of his most famous scores was written for another James Dean film,
Rebel without a Cause
. Occasionally still writing for films, Rosenman moved on to television, much like former Kubrick collaborator Gerald Fried.
7
Rosenman composed scores for episodes of
The Twilight Zone
,
The Alfred Hitchcock Hour
,
The Virginian
, and
Marcus Welby, M.D.
He taught and composed into the 1990s when he was diagnosed with degenerative dementia.

Despite his impressive credentials as a composer, Rosenman’s skills as an arranger were what Kubrick wanted. Certainly one of the high points of Rosenman’s career was working on
Barry Lyndon
, especially because he won an Academy Award for the film, for Best Original Song Score and/or Adaptation. The collaboration with Kubrick was not without difficulty or friction, but in the final tally Rosenman did an admirable job. He, at one point, expressed concern that Kubrick had perhaps overused one of the cues,
8
a sarabande attributed to Handel that Kubrick featured (in slightly different variations) no less than ten times in the course of the film. But when Rosenman was asked if he deserved an Oscar for his efforts, he responded, “I’d have been an idiot to turn it down. . . . My award was for best adaptation, and I was lucky enough to have superb material to work with.”
9