n 1968, Walter (now Wendy) Carlos created Switched-On Bach, an influential electronic album that introduced the futuristic sound of the Moog synthesizer to music aficionados. Ironically, that same year Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey was also released. That inspirational motion picture presented many science fiction fans with their first opportunity to hear the beauty and grace of classical works by composers such as Richard Strauss, Johann Strauss Jr. and Gyorgy Ligeti.
Three years later, Carlos and Kubrick joined forces for the soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange, and this collection of 10 tracks, available in its entirety on CD for the first time, presents the ingenious synth-based score for that movie. Half of the cuts are versions of classic melodies, including abridged renditions of both the second and fourth movements of Ludwig van Beethoven's "Ninth Symphony," a composition that plays an important role in the film. The remaining five tunes include the brief "Theme from A Clockwork Orange," built upon Beethoven's motifs, and two completely original numbers, "Biblical Daydreams" and "Orange Minuet," that were previously unreleased.
The booklet that accompanies the CD includes extensive background information on the music, the recording process and the history of the collaboration. The disc also features a CD-ROM component that provides additional details about the artist and her oeuvre.
A sound worth a thousand pictures
The juxtaposition of powerful imagery and classical music was a technique that Kubrick perfected in 2001, and while A Clockwork Orange featured numerous orchestral cues not included on this album, Carlos' electronic contributions were a vital and often overlooked element in the success of the project. Within the context of the film, these synthesized tunes sounded familiar yet foreign, helping to simultaneously entice and repel viewers as the ultraviolent exploits of the protagonist and his gang unfolded.
The most innovative number on the CD is clearly "Timesteps," a 13-minute-plus track that to this day is occasionally used to accompany high-tech laser shows. The movie actually only contained a small portion of the work, but the composer's use of a vocoder (a device that processes human speech) on that cut and others paved the way for the artificial choral effects heard in contemporary scores from synthesizer wizards like Christopher Franke (Babylon 5) and Vangelis (Blade Runner).
A Clockwork Orange was certainly not the first motion picture to employ either electronic or classic compositions, but the fusion of the two styles was undeniably inventive and, at the time, quite revolutionary. Technological advances have made a few of the selections rather passé, but for hard-core devotees of either soundtrack or synthesizer music, Carlos' imaginative melodies are historically and harmonically important.
