Below the header of the blog, I’ve included a quotation from Stanley Kubrick, “To ‘explain’ a Beethoven symphony would be to emasculate it by erecting an artificial barrier between conception and appreciation”. This has been lifted from a lengthy interview that he did with Playboy Magazine in 1968 or 1969 just after the release of his mammoth of a film 2001: A Space Odyssey. At this point in his career, Kubrick had refused to try to tell people what he thinks his work “means”, partly because it’s kind of an absurd thing to do, and for the most part because he thought his film, 2001: A Space Odyessy, was filled with deep philosophical and emotional content that penetrated audience’s subconscious rather than appeal to their intellect. But Kubrick also foresaw that completely bypassing intellectual discourse is a rather pretentious idea, and agreed that there would be a large amount of thoughts and ideas about the film passed around through discussions, articles, and whatnot, but only second to the experience of the film itself.
Kubrick made quite a few really valid points through this interview, one of them being comparing his works of film with music, stating that “to ‘explain’ a Beethoven symphony would be to emasculate it by erecting an artificial barrier between conception and appreciation”. I’ve been trying for the past few days to find a copy of the full transcript, because it offers some really interesting points and insight into Kubrick’s oeuvre, but I’ve had no luck as of yet, and I will post it up to Rollaroll as soon as I can.
Since we’re discussing music in some capacity, I think I might point out the obvious which is to state that Kubrick’s use of music in 2001: A Space Odyssey was enormously influential. I recently saw Pixar’s WALL·E, a visually amazing sort of post-apocalyptic space-age animation, and it was amazing to see that 40 years later, Johann Strauss’ The Beautiful Blue Danube and Richard Strauss’ Also Spake Zarathustra were being used as part of the score, alluding to 2001: A Space Odyssey, which really popularised both of those pieces within popular culture. I think one of the major achievements of Kubrick’s score, however, is his use of compositions by Jewish-Hungarian composer Gyorgy Ligeti, who recently passed away. His micropolyphonic works are some of the most creepy, absorbing, consuming pieces of music I have ever heard.
If you have never heard anything by Ligeti, I recommend that you start with the following; a four CD boxset of his works from everything from compositions for piano, horns, orchestra, and so on. Released in 2006 on Deutsche Grammophon, shortly after the death of Ligeti, this boxset aimed to commemorate the work of this wonderful late 20th Century composer, as well as bring together his complete recordings for this label. Download it here and make sure you purchase the record from Amazon or other places if you really enjoy it.
Filed under: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Gyorgy Ligeti, Johann Strauss, Richard Strauss, Stanley Kubrick, WALL-E
