![]() Timestamp: 0:49 | Scene: Everybody goes into the pit and touches the stone. Timestamp: 0:19 | Scene: The satellite glides through space. Timestamp: 0:03 | Scene: The opening credits. Kubrick could have easily bowed to the pressure or second-guessed his decision to use no-name modernists and frilly waltzes to underscore his vision, but his cheeky use of dusty old melodies may have made a great film into an all-time classic.Also Sprach Zarathustra - Richard Strauss Really, that sort of wild juxtaposition speaks to the whole legacy 2001 leaves behind - first thought, best thought. What would Johann Strauss or Soviet composer Aram Khachaturian say if they knew their works, with their romantic-music contexts, would go on to be irreverently recontextualized as music of the spheres by a nutty film auteur in the ’60s? While purists must have balked that this effervescent ballet music was used to show astronaut Frank Poole running on a massive human hamster wheel in white boxer briefs, once again, it couldn’t be more gorgeous in this context, illustrating both human disconnect in the vastness of space and the giddy anti-gravity of it all. “Gayane Ballet Suite (Adagio)” by Aram Khachaturian While Ligeti’s feelings were understandable, it may have been an ends-justifying-the-means situation, as Kubrick taking the opportunity to yank his work ended up greatly benefiting both artists. However, Ligeti was still irked by his usage not only was it lifted without the composer’s permission, but he was offended that his work would be taken out of context and put in proximity to Strauss. Kubrick never asked for permission to use either Ligeti’s “Aeterna” or the gravity-defying “Atmosphères,” although the latter ended up appearing its entirety in the film. “Lux Aeterna,” an eerie, atonal choral piece, is used as space scientists in a glumly blue-lit lunar shuttle nervously praise the fillings in their prepackaged sandwiches to distract themselves from mortal terror. Yet, his cinematic infatuation with Ligeti’s dissonant, droning pieces would begin in 2001. Kubrick would later return to the well of Ligeti, a Hungarian avant-garde composer, over and over in his career from, The Shining to Eyes Wide Shut. “Lux Aeterna” and “Atmosphères” by Gyorgy Ligeti The cumulative effect 50 years later is similar to the Strauss piece - could this scene have been soundtracked by anything else? As with so many other aspects of 2001, it’s also been endlessly parodied - younger viewers may be even more acquainted with “The Blue Danube” through a 1994 episode of T he Simpsons in which Homer crunches potato chips in zero gravity to the lilt of the song. Thank goodness.Īfter the beautifully arrogant co-opting of Strauss’s bombastic piece as his film’s intro, Kubrick’s use of the wedding waltz “The Blue Danube” to accompany the film’s jump into the future - and a spaceship gently docking at a station - was a second stroke of brilliance as it captured the weightlessness of space and a sort of archetypal courtship between the spacecrafts. As for poor Alex North, he didn’t realize his probably-very-nice score had been tossed until he attended the film’s premiere and was aghast to hear Strauss booming through the sound system rather than his original melody. Luckily, Kubrick’s uncommon perception led to the decision to use “Zarathustra,” a majestic tone poem that is now utterly inseparable from its use in Kubrick’s vision - in fact, it’s one of the world’s most recognizable classical pieces strictly for that reason. To think that we were almost denied “Also sprach Zarathustra” - and you know the one, the ascending duhn-duHN-DUHN! - as the opening fanfare of 2001 is an X-factor of cinematic history on par with Dirk Starkiller. However, genius struck as Kubrick entered the editing stage, when something clicked - the assortment of old classical melodies he’d used as temporary placeholders didn’t just work, they were perfect. ![]() In fact, Kubrick had commissioned the highly regarded film composer Alex North, known for his work in Spartacus and A Streetcar Named Desire, to compose an original score. “Also sprach Zarathustra” by Richard StraussĢ001’s aesthetic didn’t include established classical epics by design. ![]()
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