Bloodshed and Beethoven: Music as a conscious element in A Clockwork Orange.

A Clockwork Orange (1971) is a seminal crime thriller directed by Stanley Kubrick, adapted from Anthony Burgess’s novel of the same name. So scandalous was the film on release it was banned in Britain in 1973 and was not rereleased until 2000. It follows bloodthirsty Alex (Malcolm McDowell) and his three ‘Droogs’ as they cavort around a dystopian Britain, doing ‘a bit of the old Ultraviolence’. The film discusses themes of youthful delinquency and political and social morality. Kubrick’s body of work undoubtedly displays his emphasis and attention to scoring his films and A Clockwork Orange is no exception, with Alex’s strange devotion to Beethoven a central theme of the film's narrative. We encounter Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony that Alex loves so dearly both in its original form and arranged and performed on a synthesiser by Wendy Carlos’ who scored the film's original soundtrack. This mix of ‘high art’ (a highly regarded classical composer and symphony ) and ‘low art’ (a synthesiser, a relatively new instrument) in the film's soundtrack directly represents Alex himself. In this, the music becomes an essential and necessary part of the film. The Classical Hollywood music style and conventions described by Claudia Gorbman “bonds spectator to spectacle” (Gorbman, 1988, pg 55) Gorbman, Claudia (1988) ‘Why Music? The Sound Film and its Spectator’ in Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music , London, BFI Publishing, pgs 53-69 . Gorbman describes how by using music instead of dialogue to express passion in love scenes, it avoided “male embarrassment” (Gorbman, 1988, pg.55) Bibliography Gorbman, Claudia (1988) ‘Why Music? The Sound Film and its Spectator’ in Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music , London, BFI Publishing, pgs 53-69 in the audience. This developed into the use of music as a narrative cue, to complement the images on screen and become unconscious in the background to the spectator. A Clockwork Orange breaks these conventions lined out by Gorbman within the first sequence and throughout the film as music is the focus and the spectator is often encouraged to engage more with the audio elements of the film than the visual.

The film opens with the theme, the music for the Funeral of Queen Mary originally written by Henry Purcell but arranged and performed on a synthesiser by Wendy Carlos. The original score is haunting enough, yet Carlos’ version brings a sinister intensity to the piece and immediately establishes Alex's character as dark and frightening, especially with the poignant use of a funeral march. It begins first with only a deep red colour filling the screen, almost the colour of blood. The haunting opening notes of the synthesiser are instant, a deep unsettling tonal soundscape which already unnerves the listener, even before the credits have begun. This conscious choice forces the viewer to focus solely on the film's theme. As the credits start, the title cards even change depending on the beat of the music, further encouraging the conscious listening to the theme.

The first minute or so of the film has no dialogue, only a slow zoom out of Alex’s face.His deep unblinking tilted stare directed right at the camera, later donned ‘The Kubrick Stare’, as Brett Lamb discusses in his Lesson Bucket article Lamb, Brett (2016) ‘The Kubrick Stare’ in Lessonbucket, (1980 )., accessed,10 March, 2023 , a signature move from his characters once they have reached pure insanity. Alex reaches his derangement in the beginning of the film and the distorted synthesiser tones create such an oddly beautiful yet disturbing version of a classical piece, showing Alex has already been tainted by violence and darkness. This emphasis and focus on the music and the mixture of two such different styles is a conscious choice by Kubrick and strays far from the conventions of Classical Hollywood, where music took the backseat.

He drinks a glass of milk, something normally seen as clean, pure and representing childhood. In his later monologue we discover it is milk ‘plus’, infused with drugs, further polluting Alex’s character and working along with the music to establish his insanity. Yet as Alex sips this symbol of purity and innocence, the opening section of the ‘Dies Irae’ or the ‘Death Hymn’ plays, a mediaeval poem and death hymn meaning ‘day of wrath’, and frequently used in popular media to signify death or destruction to come. A prime example of this is the theme for the Shining, also directed by Kubrick and scored by Carlos. This sequence of notes from the Dies Irae is not in the original Purcell score, a clever addition by Carlos to foreshadow the violence and death that is later committed by Alex and his band of Droogs. This Dies Irae is accompanied by a cacophony of sound effects, perhaps chosen to unsettle the spectator even more and immerse them in this destructive dystopian future. This choice relies on the viewer being consciously engaged with the theme, further breaking the conventions of classical Hollywood as laid out by Gorbman.

Another scene in the film involves Alex and his Droogs brutally raping and beating up a couple whilst singing and humming ‘Singing in the Rain’ from the film of the same name. This juxtaposition is significant due the musical's image as a family friendly and ‘wholesome’ film with national treasure Gene Kelly, who was horrified by the film. It is also significant due to the themes of happiness in the song, and the melodic and beautiful music itself. Kubrick and Carlos have embedded this audio and visual juxtapositioning throughout the entire film, not just the opening sequence.

The composer of Three Colours Blue (Krzysztof Kieslowki, 1993), Zbigniew Preisner described the film as a “Musical but not in the Hollywood Sense” (Paulus and McMaster, 1999, pg 65) McMaster, Graham & Paulus, Irena (1999) ‘Music in Krzysztof Kieślowski's Film "Three Colors: Blue". A Rhapsody in Shades of Blue: The Reflections of a Musician’ in International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, Vol 30, No.1, Croatian Musicology Society, Pgs 65-91 . The same can be applied to A Clockwork Orange. The soundtrack is a vital part of the narrative and like TCB oftentimes the audio experience is far more important than the visual. As Irena Paulus and Graham McMaster describe in their article on TCB, the film has a ‘dreamlike quality’, and often incorporates the idea of metadiegesis; the music appears almost in the characters head. This same metadiegesis principle can be observed in the opening sequence of A Clockwork Orange, as Alex’s direct engagement with the camera implies he can hear the sinister tones setting the scene for his character. Overall, A Clockwork Orange expertly intertwines the high-brow and low-brow and images the spectator consciously with the music, allowing it to be a main focus of the film and suitably establish the character of Alex as sadistic and psychopathic.

by Emily Costello, April 2023.

Filmography

A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick, 1971)

Singing In the Rain (Kelly & Donen, 1952)

The Shining (Kubrick, 1980)

Three Colours Blue (Kieslowski, 1993)

Bibliography

Gorbman, Claudia (1988) ‘Why Music? The Sound Film and its Spectator’ in Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music , London, BFI Publishing, pgs 53-69

Lamb, Brett (2016) ‘The Kubrick Stare’ in Lessonbucket, (1980 )., accessed,10 March, 2023

McMaster, Graham & Paulus, Irena (1999) ‘Music in Krzysztof Kieślowski's Film "Three Colors: Blue". A Rhapsody in Shades of Blue: The Reflections of a Musician’ in International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, Vol 30, No.1, Croatian Musicology Society, Pgs 65-91