Behind the music of Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’
Even people who have never seen 2001: A Space Odyssey know it better than some of their distant relatives. The 1967 science-fiction epic boasts some of the most memorable moments in cinematic history, whether that be HAL’s slow deactivation, the super trippy ending sequence, or that iconic opening scene in which Richard Strauss’ ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra’ ushers in a planetary sunrise. The movie is so deeply embedded into our cultural heritage that its iconography is inextricably linked to our collective consciousness. So how did Stanley Kubrick establish the film’s unforgettable score?
The answer to that question lies with Michael Benson, the author of Space Odyssey, a comprehensive look at the making of Kubrick’s masterpiece. During an interview with Vox, Benson explained that Kubrick originally wanted an original score but quickly fell in love with his temp tracks, much to the dismay of the composers he hired to score the picture.
Of course, Richard Strauss’ 1896 tone poem isn’t the only memorable cue from 2001. There’s also the music of Hungarian avant-garde composer György Ligeti. According to Benson, “that movie would not be remotely the same if Kubrick hadn’t stumbled on, via his wife and [visual effects designer] Con Pederson’s wife, this Ligeti music,” he commented. “Christiane Kubrick and Con’s wife [Charleen Pederson] were working together, making sculptures of aliens for Stanley. We’re talking now fall of ’67. They were listening to the BBC, and on came this music, which was so unearthly and spooky and powerful and majestic that they immediately had to find out what it was”. They waited in hushed anticipation for the host to announce Ligeti’s name “but it took [Kubrick] weeks to hear the piece because Ligeti was almost completely unknown then,” Benson added.
Kubrick began using Ligeti’s music as a temp track, but English composer Frank Cordell had already started piecing together his own score. “He was brought on in the beginning,” Benson said. “But Kubrick didn’t know what he wanted. Cordell was brought on and given a contract and given pay but not given access to Stanley, who didn’t want to talk to him. So it was very bizarre.”
When Cordell finally got the chance to speak to Stanley, he turned around and said: “‘Well, I like Gustav Mahler’s symphony,’ which also refers to ‘Thus Spake Zarathustra.'” Sadly, it didn’t work out with Cordell. The composer left the project, and Kubrick began approaching “various other people whose taste he valued.” When he sat down to cut 2001, Kubrick started lining up the music he’d collected during the production process. “He would watch the rushes and listen to music,” Benson said. “In fact, one of the key catalysts was, when the MGM [head] brass flew in from LA and from New York, Tony Frewin [Kubrick’s assistant on the film], who was 19 years old, the week before the MGM brass flew in, Kubrick said, ‘Tony, get petty cash. Get this much money and go buy all the classical music you can find downtown’.”
“Frewin couldn’t believe his luck because the amount of money he got was enough to buy the store,” Benson added. “He took an MGM station wagon downtown [and back]. He said he was worried the police would pull him over because it was sagging from all the vinyl inside. They sat there that weekend and for days afterwards, and Kubrick would sit there and hand him a record, and Tony would put it on the turntable, and they would listen to the beginning of each track for a period of time.”
MGM, meanwhile, was deeply unsettled by the prospect of Kubrick cutting a picture to anything but an original score. “So they pressured him, essentially, to hire a composer,” Benson said, “And he chose Alex North, whom he had worked with on Spartacus. Originally, when he heard that Kubrick wanted him on, he was thrilled because he understood that there was 40 minutes of dialogue in a two-and-a-half-hour movie, and he naively thought, ‘Oh, that means I have a blank canvas. I can do what I want.'”
North had underestimated Kubrick’s tenacity: “Kubrick said at their first meeting that he wanted to hang on to some of the temp tracks. Alex North persuaded Stanley Kubrick that he could do it, replace the temp tracks with material that would be similar in mood or spirit or what have you, but he was competing against some of the masterworks of the canon,” Benson recalled, noting that North nearly had nervous breakdown competing with Strauss and Ligeti. “He was in a hospital bed on wheels that was rolled into the recording sessions because he had muscle spasms in his back from all of the pressure. He recorded a score that a lot of people say was really very good.”
But Kubrick still didn’t like it. According to Benson, the director didn’t even inform North that’d he’d replace his score with the likes of Ligeti, Strauss and Wagner. “North came to the premiere in New York and was completely shocked and humiliated that not one piece of his music had been used.” Ouch.
