Today, FilmmakerIQ posted the following snippet of Alex North‘s original score for Stanley Kubrick‘s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The score was ultimately rejected and, in the case of the film’s opening title sequence, the score was replaced by Richard Strauss‘s “Also sprach Zarathustra” composed in 1896.
There are a couple ways to look and listen to this piece, but I think the best is to consider just how much we’re all likely to prefer Kubrick’s decision on which music to go with, especially once you you consider the following interview snippet from an interview in which Michel Ciment noted, “You have abandoned original film music in your last three films.”
Kubrick’s response:
Exclude a pop music score from what I am about to say. However good our best film composers may be, they are not a Beethoven, a Mozart or a Brahms. Why use music which is less good when there is such a multitude of great orchestral music available from the past and from our own time? When you’re editing a film, it’s very helpful to be able to try out different pieces of music to see how they work with the scene. This is not at all an uncommon practice. Well, with a little more care and thought, these temporary music tracks can become the final score.
When I had completed the editing of 2001: A Space Odyssey, I had laid in temporary music tracks for almost all of the music which was eventually used in the film. Then, in the normal way, I engaged the services of a distinguished film composer to write the score. Although he and I went over the picture very carefully, and he listened to these temporary tracks (Strauss, Ligeti, Khatchaturian) and agreed that they worked fine and would serve as a guide to the musical objectives of each sequence he, nevertheless, wrote and recorded a score which could not have been more alien to the music we had listened to, and much more serious than that, a score which, in my opinion, was completely inadequate for the film.
With the premiere looming up, I had no time left even to think about another score being written, and had I not been able to use the music I had already selected for the temporary tracks I don’t know what I would have done. The composer’s agent phoned Robert O’Brien, the then head of MGM, to warn him that if I didn’t use his client’s score the film would not make its premiere date. But in that instance, as in all others, O’Brien trusted my judgment. He is a wonderful man, and one of the very few film bosses able to inspire genuine loyalty and affection from his film-makers.
The clip is also a lesson in just how much a score can change the tone of a scene. Give it a watch below.
…and, for sake of comparison…
…as well as…
NOTE: Alex North was nominated for an Oscar 15 times without winning for films such as Spartacus, Cleopatra and A Streetcar Named Desire. In 1986 he was awarded an Honorary Oscar “in recognition of his brilliant artistry in the creation of memorable music for a host of distinguished motion pictures.”
