Further on Ligeti Soundtracks
Moving far away from the trivia of long-since resolved adversarial legal disputes, the composer himself later appeared as an interviewee in Jan Harlan's documentary tribute Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures (2001, 2hrs 21mins):
Ligeti on 2001 [interview from doc "Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures"]: "It was for me, especially the visual fantasy, with the speed, with the colour and light changes when the spaceship goes down on a moon of the Jupiter, yeah? And that the speed is more and more and more, and it was very clear that Dr Einstein pretended that light, velocity is the highest, you cannot go beyond. But in this film it was suggested, as it would be, beyond the speed of light and then we enter in another world."
Until the 1960s, Ligeti's compositions reflected the prevailing language of serialism. Then in 1961, Ligeti's Atmosphéres for orchestra received a very controversial reception with its large washes of huge tone clusters and timbres creating an expressive, even neo-romantic kind of sound painting, the very antithesis of the serialists' obsession with specific intervals. In Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), this piece accompanies the spectacular visuals of the trip to the outermost dimensions that give birth to the Star Child with shimmering clusters, high glissandi, and waves of string harmonics at varying speeds, as if on a celestial highway.
Ligeti's Requiem (1963--1965) employs deeply resonant rhythmic dronings, clusters, expressions of devastation, and the shocking Dies Irae with its frenzied turmoil, Tibetan horn-like sounds, and wild, shrieking vocal and instrumental mellisma. This piece is quoted throughout 2001, and often segues with Lux Aeterna (1966) for 16 solo voices that is the sound signature for the black monolith first encountered in the age of Homo Erectus as the film opens. This mysterious religious work varies between a surface of multi-timbral clusters made from polyphonically accumulations, and short, whispering consonances. The second texture segues seamlessly with Ligeti's Aventures (1962) at various points in this same film. This work employs an artificial language extended by vocal-like instrumental inflections. Ligeti's Lontano (Distance) for orchestra (1967), also quoted in 2001, re-creates the "dream-worlds of childhood," and utilizes horizontal and vertical distancing effects.
Excerpts from various Ligeti works - principally Lontano - are quoted in Kubrick's version of Stephen King's horror classic The Shining (1980), employed in moments of high tension.
Narrative placement of Ligeti's music, which always occurs in those scenes that portray the Monolith - in 2001:
Requiem — dies irae
(Key Images: Monolith’s first appearance — one clan of hominids gather around and touch it — sun, earth and moon in orbital conjunction)
Lux Aeterna
(Key Images: Lunar Shuttle and Lunar landscape)
Requiem, dies irae (signal to Jupiter at end)
(Key Images: Monolith — astronauts enter excavation by foot — astronauts touch monolith —
astronauts group around monolith for photo — signal: astronauts deafened - orbital conjunction)
Requiem, dies irae — Atmospheres fades in at end
(Key Images: Bowman exiting ‘Discovery’, Monolith in space, Jupiter moons in orbital conjunction, Bowman in pod)
Atmospheres (explosions - fade out half way)
(Key Images: Bowman in pod, Bowman’s face intercut with ‘Star Gate’: alien landscapes and formations, Bowman’s eyes and colours intercut with ‘Star Gate’: alien abstractions)
Lux Aeterna - fade out to - (sounds of preternatural voices)
(Key Images: Bowman’s eyes - colours fading, Bowman emerging from pod)
Aventures (sounds of preternatural voices) — fade out to silence before deathbed
(Key Images: Louis XVI rooms, Bowman’s successively aging doubles — in space suite — at the table — in deathbed, monolith, glowing foetus merging with monolith)
Ligeti on EWS [interview from doc "Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures"]: "I was in Stalinistic, terroristic Hungary where this kind of music was not allowed, and I just wrote it for myself. Stanley Kubrick understood the dramatism of this moment, and this is what he did in the film, and for me, when I composed it in the year 1950 it was the best, it was desperate. It was a knife in Stalin's heart."
(Note1: Already at this early stage in his career, Ligeti was affected by the communist regime in Hungary at that time. The tenth piece of Musica Ricercata was banned by the authorities on account of it being "decadent". It seems that it was thus branded owing to its liberal use of minor second intervals; Note2: The Hungarian character of Sándor Szavost in EWS might be an oblique reference to Ligeti, given his full name: György Sándor Ligeti, a Romanian/Hungarian composer of Hungarian Jewish descent - and given Kubrick's own Austro-Hungarian Jewish ancestry).
Because of the political situation in Hungary, Ligeti could not promote his more advanced works, like the Musica ricercata I--XI for piano (1951--1953) in which each piece is generated from progressively more notes; in other words, the most minimal to the most maximal of means. Piece No. II, Mesto, rigido e cerimoniale (melancholic, rigid, and ceremonial), was chosen by Stanley Kubrick for Eyes Wide Shut . Like this composition, the movie contrasts outward formality and habitual behavior with an inner, secret world of tortured emotions. The obsessive alternation of the two notes a half-step apart (with register displacement) creates an almost unbearable tension, the revisited trauma of the formation of subjectivity, of splitting/spaltung.
Dariusz Roberte: "The film begins with a long silence where only the noises of two clans of hominids, some tapirs and a leopard are heard. The first appearance of the monolith introduces the dies irae of György Ligeti’s Requiem, a very challenging and hypnotic piece replete with microtonal clusters, soaring overwhelmingly powerful wordless voices and orchestral sonorities conjuring supernatural states of mind — a sonic wormhole into the infinite. The music is almost too profound for the clumsy and trepid kinaesthetic response of the hominids to the irresistible black surfaces of the monolith. But of course the music is an expression of the inexpressible — the alien intelligence that dwarfs prehistoric man.
"Historically, dissonance — harsh, controversial, disconcerting sounds — has been treated in films as negative factor implying neurosis, evil" [etc.] (Bazelon, 1975: 88). However, in Space Odyssey this music — Ligeti’s — is used to evoke feelings of awe, almost reverence for the unknown, the terror experienced is part of the fabric of wonderment not abhorrence. In this I am certain the music succeeds admirably; this is more a compliment to the composer than to Kubrick, yet it took the director’s visionary powers to fuse it with the image."
Apart from 2001, The Shining, and EWS, these are the other films and documentaries featuring the music of Ligeti [if per chance you know of any others, please post details here]:
Feature Films
Merci La Vie [Thank You, Life] (1991, 1hr 57mins; Director: Bertrand Blier, with additional music by Philip Glass, David Byrne, Jacques Brel, Vivaldi, Arno, Chopin, Puccini, Beethoven).
--------------------(In this frequently surrealistic romp, a satire on sex, politics, and the business of filmmaking, two young women get together after discovering sufficient provocations in their lives to deliberately set out to wreak havoc in the world around them ... Eventually, they set their sights on a "higher" goal and decide to do in an entire town. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide).
Winterspelt (1978, 1hr 48mins; Director: Eberhard Fechner)
Heat (1995, 2hrs 52mins; Director: Michael Mann, featuring Ligeti's Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra (1966)).
Reflections of Evil (2002, 2hrs, 18mins; Director: Damon Packard)
---------------(Cult filmmaker Damon Packard wrote, directed, and stars in this bizarre independent feature about a sugar addict obese watch seller. Packard plays Bob, a man whose penchant for sweets is threatening to send him to an early grave. His dead sister's ghost attempts to help him while he seeks out a mysterious woman he saw in a vision. The legendary Tony Curtis narrates. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide).
Compartment [aka CARMA] (2005, 81mins, award-winning chilling US thriller; Director: Ray Arthur Wang; Tagline: Four is the number for death. Taking place around 04/04/04 over the course of four days ...).
Másnap (2004, 2hrs, Hungarian experimental non-linear narrative crime drama; Director: Attila Janisch)
... aka After the Day Before (International: English title)
Ira, La (1989, 75mins, Spanish drama; Director: Carlos Atanes).)
2010 (1984, directed by Peter Hyams) (from "Lux Aeterna") (as Gyorgy Ligeti)
... aka 2010: The Year We Make Contact
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005; Tim Burton's remake of Willy Wonka and etc) (features Ligeti's "Requiem")
Short Films
Morrer no mar (1984, 12mins, Spanish short; Director: Alfredo García Pinal)
Bruno n'a pas d'agent (1999, 27mins, French short; Director: Chrintine Dory).
Documentaries
Früchte der Arbeit, Die (1977, 2hrs 25mins, German-Swiss doc; Director: Alexander J. Seiler)
Tulevaisuus ei ole entisensä (2002, 52mins, Finnish doc; Director: Mika Taanila)
... aka The Future Is Not What It Used to Be (International: English title)
Stanley Kubrick: A Life In Pictures (2001, 142mins, biographical doc; Director: Jan Harlan).