Clockwork Orange, A - Original Soundtrack > Reviews > A Clockwork Orange - The Way Wendy Wanted It

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Advantages:	Highly original realisation, still sounds fresh today
Disadvantages:	None

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I first encountered Wendy Carlos' brilliant electronic realisation of Beethoven's Ninth symphony (entitled "March From A Clockwork Orange") way back in the early 1970's, when a clip from the movie was shown on the BBC's "Film Night” (the part where the anti-hero Alex ambles through the music store, dressed in the “height of fashion”, and looking for willing young ladies to join him in the bedroom ). I was completely bowled over by Anthony Burgess' vision of a moribund future Britain, brought to the screen through Stanley Kubrick's chilling and occasionally shocking visuals, combined with Carlos’ groundbreaking Moog synthesizer soundtrack.

This album contains all of the synthesizer music Wendy arranged and/or composed for the movie. Most of it was used by the director, some tracks were altered in some way, and some never made it to the finished film for one reason or another.

Wendy Who?

Composer/synthesist Carlos, and her collaborator Rachel Elkind were responsible for the Grammy Award-winning “Switched on Bach”, an album released in 1968 to tremendous critical acclaim. Here she had gathered together a miscellany of Bach pieces, some well known, others less so, and performed them on the then revolutionary Moog synthesizer, using multitrack techniques. Never before had the public heard classical music performed in such a unique and futuristic way, not with the aid of computers (which were still in their infancy in the late sixties), but manually, and in real time. As the Moog was a monophonic instrument (i.e. only one note could be played at a time), each track had to be painstakingly constructed over many, many hours. Each individual sound had to be created by connecting together the various “modules” of the huge Moog system by means of “patch cords”, which was an extremely cumbersome and time-consuming exercise, with no guarantee that an interesting patch could be re-created if needed again.

This seminal album was followed by “The Well Tempered Synthesizer”, which featured more wonderful Bach transcriptions, along with works by Scarlatti, Monteverdi and Handel. On that album, she introduced the well-known vocoder singing effect (in which an electronic sound from the synthesizer and a human voice are processed, to create a unique robotic choral effect). The latter escapade was to prove influential in the creation of much of the music for Kubrick’s masterpiece, as we shall see.

The Carlos/Kubrick Connection

It is through pure coincidence that Stanley Kubrick and Wendy Carlos ever met at all. Apparently she had just created the first few minutes of “Timesteps”, an original electronic composition, and had been handed a copy of the Anthony Burgess novel by a friend. She found that the piece began to take on the feel of the opening scenes in the book as work on it progressed, and, on hearing that Kubrick had finished filming the movie, she sent him a copy, in the hope that it could be incorporated in the soundtrack. Kubrick liked what he heard, and the rest as they say, is history……

And Now for the Music…

1. Timesteps (13.50)

This piece is arguably the most avant garde composition on the album, combining as it does the complexities of tribal rhythms, ticking electronic clocks, haunting monk-like vocoder effects, and massive church organ style crescendos. It is used during the “aversion therapy” scene, in which young villain Alex is strapped down in a chair with his eyes clamped open, and forced to view endless scenes of death, rape and destruction, in an attempt to curb his violent tendencies. Timesteps was featured in an abridged form on the Warner Brothers original soundtrack album, something which proved to be something of an annoyance to Wendy.

No particular theme is persistent as the music shifts effortlessly from one passage to the next, each one contrasting superbly with the previous one. Wendy’s experience with Bach has left its mark here, as her obvious understanding of counterpoint pervades the entire piece. Strange unrelated melodies drift in and out, inextricably woven together with unbelievable precision, considering the lack of computer co-ordination. As for the choice of sound textures, she never resorts to the over-the-top “wah wah” effects, heard all to often on synth recordings. The sounds used are subtle yet powerful, restrained yet potent, and always assembled with the utmost care and attention to detail.

2. March From A Clockwork Orange (7.00)

For me, this has to be the highlight of the entire album. Here, Carlos has made use of the vocoder (or “Spectrum Follower”) to magnificent effect, recreating the choral parts of the Fourth Movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in a totally new way (well, for 1972 anyhow). The music is performed as Beethoven wrote it (albeit in an abridged form), but the electronic performance adds a completely new dimension that makes this piece an absolute joy to listen to (well, it is an “Ode to Joy”!). The slow-paced “march” section which follows the opening passage really captures the heart, as it builds from a bass motif, gaining electronic cymbals and harpsichord on the way, then a bouncy melody, followed by the solo male voice representation. Then the “choir” joins in, and as Alex himself might have said, “You can like viddy Bog and all his angels in heaven singing their gullivers off”. It really is a beautiful experience to hear Beethoven and technology performing together in perfect harmony. It is still my all-time favourite piece of electronic music, and I hope it will always be so.

3. Title music From “A Clockwork Orange” (2.21)

This is actually a piece by Purcell called “Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary”, and it really captures the feel of the movie with its dour, doom-laden introduction, and some bizarre sound effects which remind me of the word “tolchock” (Nadsat meaning “to hit”). Perhaps that was Wendy’s intention? You can almost smell the fear and paranoia of an entire nation submerged in “ultra-violence” and youth run amok, as on screen the ominous titles roll over the luridly coloured background.

4. La Gazza Ladra (The Thieving Magpie) (5.50)

In contrast to the previous track, this is a lively, humorous piece of froth by Rossini. This particular recording was not used by Kubrick in the film, instead an orchestral version provided the background music to a gang fight between Alex’s droogs and Billyboys’ scruffy chain-wielding mob. Wendy’s interpretation is light, airy and fun, incorporating some nice string effects (created without the aid of a string synthesizer!) and some convincing Moog snare drums (something that was difficult to recreate in those days). The dynamic range in this track is pretty awesome, and the digital remastering of the album really brings out the subtle nuances of this piece.

5. Theme from “A Clockwork Orange” (Beethoviana) (1.44)

The track may be subtitled “Beethoviana”, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the German master – it is is fact the Purcell piece played in a major key, and re-arranged by Carlos. This is pleasant and rather touching, the melody being played by a harmonica-like synth patch, over a “walking” counter-melody. The solo tune is then augmented by an expansive bank of gently undulating chords, further emphasising the sheer despair and hopelessness of Alex’s world. As with the Queen Mary track, this tune represents Alex’s horrifying environment, but this time we almost feel for him as a victim of an evil world and its political machinations, rather than as an entity of evil in himself.

6. Ninth symphony: Second Movement (Scherzo) (4.52)

Following a vicious beating at the hands of his one-time droogs, Alex is taken in by one of his former victims. On realising who Alex is, the victim plays this piece at a deafening level on a reel-to-reel tape deck, the trauma of which causes Alex to attempt suicide by leaping from a bedroom window.

Again Carlos captures the intensity of the moment. It is a crisp rendition, with nicely contrasting timbres, both imitative and unique. Note that this is an extended version in comparison to the Warner Bros. recording of the same piece.

7. William Tell Overture (Abridged) (1.17)

The purists may wince at this rendition, as it is performed in double time! This Rossini composition was used to accompany the high speed orgy scene in the film, which could have been quite shocking had Kubrick not decided to play it for laughs by filming it undercranked.

I would hazard a guess and say that Wendy recorded this at half speed, and the finished track was played back at double that speed to obtain the required comical effect. She would have needed fifty fingers to have accomplished this otherwise!

8. Orange Minuet (2.35)

Another original Carlos composition, originally intended to accompany the stage scene in the film, in which Alex is shown to be a reformed character following his subjection to “Ludovico’s Technique”. This musical cue was eventually replaced by “Overture to the Sun”, as the latter had become so familiar during editing, it would have been difficult to change it without complications. This is another very pleasant little tune, featuring synth horns and harpsichord in an old-fashioned style.

9. Biblical Daydreams (2.06)

This cue would have been heard as Alex lets his imagination run riot while reading the Bible in prison. Instead, Kubrick opted for Rimsky Korsakov’s “Scheherazade” played by a conventional orchestra. Wendy’s piece conjures up images of marching Roman warriors, harems and sundry Biblical mayhem very concisely.

10. Country Lane (4.43)

This final track also ended up on the cutting room floor along with unused visual material. The music is full of fear and paranoia, and would have been used convey our hero’s confused mental state after the boffins have wrung him through the mangle. In your mind’s eye, you see him staggering from pillar to post, as his ex-droogs give him a savage beating in the open air, miles from anywhere. Incidentally, this is probably the only track which features real, as opposed to synthesized, sound effects i.e. driving rain and thunder. Kubrick eventually asked Carlos to provide some stinging synthetic noises, to simulate the “tolchocks” the droogs were meting out to the former aggressor, now a pathetic victim.

Sound Quality

As all of the tracks have been totally remastered by Wendy herself, the sound quality is exceptionally good (who but the creator of a work of art knows the best possible way to present their masterpiece to the public?). Considering that the source material was created on noisy analogue recording systems way back in the early seventies, she has done a very good job indeed. I noticed subtle differences between the ubiquitous Warner Brothers soundtrack recordings and the material on this CD (for example, the “Theme From A Clockwork Orange” has some almost imperceptible percussive “chiffs” of white noise in the background: I did not even notice their existence on the old analogue mix).

The Cover Art

The original Warner Bros. album cover art has been parodied and modernised for this CD. It features an isosceles triangle (representing the letter “A”), with a caricature of Beethoven inside it, thrusting a glass of milk (probably moloko vellocet!) into the face of the viewer, with a stylised, decorative eyeball motif on the lower left of the triangle, and part of a face with heavily made up eyelashes on the right. Between these two lower figures there is a watch dial on a backdrop of orange flames. The words “Clockwork Orange” are positioned below the triangle, printed in “orange peel” style.

Price and Availability

This is an American import, but it is available from Amazon (UK) for £12.99, and used copies are available at reasonable cost. I have also seen it sell on UK eBay recently for about £9.00.

In Conclusion, O my Brothers….

This is an absolute must for fans of one of the most controversial and innovative movies of the 70’s. I admit, I am more a fan of the soundtrack than of the film itself, but whatever you think of Burgess and Kubrick’s urban horror story, the music contained on this collection will stir your emotions and stretch your imagination in every possible way, and re-affirm your faith in the medium of electronic music as a wonderful means of expression. Forget all that homogenised modern dance music – this is the Moog at its finest.

Manufactured by East Side Digital (American Import).
Produced by Rachel Elkind for TEMPI.