2001: A Space Odyssey | Soundtrack Suite (Alex North) [Rejected Score] 

Pretty much.

Paul Abdallah u de h Cnoruw Chorus dombasle chorale chorus 2000

Merci à mon tour de vous remercier pour vos chants choisis

0chor Choru s 2000

To some extent, though Goldsmith explicitly wrote Apes score in serial style, which I don't recall North embracing.

Alex North was reported to have been very supportive of younger talent: like Goldsmith, John Williams, Dominic Frontiere [who said Alex & Alfred Newman caught him in the basement going thru one of Alex North's scores.. According to Frontiere, North told him essentially, "Go ahead kid, take it home with you, make it your own..."]

True. I hear really parts of The Shoes of The Fisherman.

As well as "Dragonslayer".

I would be too. Worked hard on a score only for Kubrick to remove it.

Hurting North's feelings or producing a sub standard film, no brainer, good score though in my opinion.

I would be quite upset too, especially since he didn't even tell him. However, I have a feeling my thoughts might've changed once I saw the movie. The Ligeti compositions work so well you could almost believe that they were made for the movie. An absolute dick move with extraordinary results. Typical Kubrick.

It's fine work but Kubrick made the right choice in going for the music that he selected. And lots of people usually end up disappointed by a director's choices to cut out scenes and drop music choices, etc.. In fact, I think that Kubrick cut out an art class scene which had his own daughters in it.

Yes - I got a sense he realised Kubrick was already pretty glued to his temp tracks

I now see why Kubrick did not use it, sounds too much like the “Planet of the Apes” Soundtrack.

@@Bigmike1266exactly

Hard to picture Space Station Docking or Bones in an Indiana Jones film...

@@applescruff1969 You must have missed Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

I think it sounds like a tweaked alien score.. the beginning has that Indiana jones feel I do agree.. but listen to alien and aliens sound tracks.. this sounds like adventure thriller…

Is is g but reminds me of his "Cleopatra" score. However to quote Q, "Space is not for the timid. It is dangerous"

Or even James Stewart

Brant had a long standing relationship with Alex North. They were best friends and deeply admired each other's work. Brant definitely orchestrated Alex's film music. I can't speak for the "other orchestrators," but Henry Brant was not Alex's copyist. (I would know; I was married to Brant for nearly 20 years.)

I think you mean 'Coplandesque' rather than 'Coplandian'.

rumen junior Alex North and Henry Brant (his orchestrator for 2001) were best friends and together they were certainly genius. (They worked together on Cleopatra, Dragonslayer and Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf?)

Thank you Kathy, it is very important for me...

rumen junior You are most welcome. I meant to say: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

I bought the CD the last month...Amazing ! Thank you!

That's hardly a good enough reason to use it though. What Kubrick created was high art. THANK GOD HE DIDN'T USE THIS. Sounds like some 60s TV theme, "That Girl" or some shit.

Mike Landrau North got paid unlike Ligeti:, 25 minutes of his music used in the film without permission or payment.

@@johnoldland7841 Wrong. It's complicated because the Soviet Union did not respect Western copyrights, so the West did not recognize theirs. Ligeti's work was written while he was a Hungarian citizen, so the studios cleared the copyrights on this fact. After the fact, Ligeti did sue and did settle with compensation, so retroactive permission and payment was granted.

@@straightpipediesel what is your source for this? Hungary might have been in the Warsaw Pact but not the Soviet Union.

@@johnoldland7841 Hungary had aligned its copyright laws with the USSR and in 1967, signed a treaty with them that made it explicit, "Convention of the Reciprocal Protection of Copyright".

The use of Strauss waltzes was a bad idea. All those wonderful waltzes carry emotions and connotations that have nothing to do with the film. This is not the only film ruined by directors who are illiterate about music.

@@violintrapper You're a total moron, beyond stupid. Your understanding of the use of music, classical or otherwise, is so pathological that I just stopped laughing long enough to reply to your pathetic attempt at your critiquing anything even remotely cinematic. Music only serves only one purpose, to create the mood of the scene, with the Strauss waltz doing it far better than anything else, in fact, making this scene one of the greatest and most memorable in all of film history. "Emotions and connotations" are not written in stone, in spite of your pathetic attempts to make them so. Evidently, you need to watch the films of Sergio Leone, where Ennio Morricone used lush, beautiful orchestrations juxtaposed against even the most most violent of scenes. But mindless imbeciles such as yourself would prefer a funeral dirge or rock music in such cases, no doubt.

@@tiffsaver that is one of the most unnecessarily hostile comments i've seen. violintrapper had an opinion different than yours, and as intellectual as you tried to sound you ruined it all by basing your argument around ad hominem attacks. based off three sentences that disagree with yours, you assume he's a moron, beyond stupid, and you assume that his understanding of music is pathological - again, all based off a simple comment. any credence your argument may have had is ruined when you unleash this much emotion and irrationally make assumptions against him

@@user-qm3ll3ut4n Dear Stupid: Using question marks as your username is the perfect metaphor for your general confusion. Only someone with the genius and ingenuity of Stanley Kubrick could have dared use Strauss waltzes in this picture, and become an enduring piece of cinema history as a result. His choice of classical music over what was commonly used at the time was considered "pure genius," and all of the film literature of the day confirms this. But evidently both of you "movie music experts" have evidently missed this small detail. I allow ALL of my comments to stand, as is, and will simply allow movie history to either confirm, or deny, the validity of my statements. Now go away.

@@tiffsaver um, i never claimed to be a "movie music expert", so i don't know why you put that in quotations. i know next to nothing about movie music, actually. i wonder why you're calling me stupid when i'm simply pointing out the fact you're being very rude to someone with a different opinion than yours. you ignored everything i said - my argument was concerning your irrational, rude, ad hominem response, but instead of answering that you continued to speak about movie music.

Exactly. Doesn't even come close to fitting the film.

Just curious: I noted your too "romantic" comment..In your opinion, do you think a more "avant garde" approach would have been more appropriate for the movie??? Or maybe something else??? I hope you'll reply..

Hans 'Preset' Zimmer

Blue Danube is not by Richard Strauss, and it was performed by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Karajan. All the other orchestras were top class as well, so probably you watched the film in a theatre (or TV set) with a broken sound system.

Oh, please continue. This would be an epic crossover film.

North, in fact, re-used some of this rejected score in "Shoes of the Fisherman".

un petit pas pour le ytb de France Un grand pas pour Raak

FRENCH TOUCH MAGGLE!

Ah bon? Moi je trouve cette BO plutot bonne et North était une pointure

Disons que Kubrick avait un talent rare pour faire les bons choix musicaux, je veux dire intégrer des musiques existantes qui collent si parfaitement au sujet qu'on a l'impression qu'elles ont été composées pour. Dur dans ces conditions, j'imagine, pour le compositeur de défendre sa vision de la BO face à des chefs d'oeuvre de la musique classique qui donnaient l'impression d'avoir été écrits pour le film. D'autant que ce qu'avait fait North, au demeurant très bon musicalement, faisait plus penser à de la musique de péplum.

Well, AI was a Stanley Kubrick project that he never completed. Steven Spielberg took it over, and so John Williams doing an homage to Alex North's music would be appropriate.

All? Why the caps? Being a professional record label producer, I would not think differently if Alex's score had been used.

@@josephcarlbreil5380 We Disagree. So what?

some was used in THE SHOES OF THE FISHERMAN

Lawrence Chalmers No Penderecki in 2001 . There is some in The Shining ( and more Ligeti + Bartok)

One guy with a film budget isn't going to be able to come close to music picked from the best classical composers in history.

I disagree. I think that the music choices that Kubrick made are timeless. Many sections of North's pieces definitely have a '60's sound to them and just aren't appropriate for a movie like "2001: A Space Odyssey".

Jerry Goldsmith also performed North's 2001 score in his own album with the National Philharmonic Orchestra.

No. It sounds a bit like Jerry Goldsmith's score to the Planet of the Apes.

Of course. Some of the rejected 2001 tracks were used in Dragonslayer.

Alex North was paid.

CAPS LOCK!!!!!!!!!

It certainly sounds like a movie I'd love to see... in fact I'm nearly sure I have...it sounds, at times very much like J Williams music from Star Wars or at times like ET. If I'm imagining things... no matter. It's still a fantastic piece of work.

The movie IS dated, with or without this score.

@@lesliegompf7163 I know. Just take a look at Pan-Am, or Howard Johnson's, or IBM, or...well, you get the point.

Of course, North got paid. He composed a score according to his contract with MGM.

Thanks for that brilliant insight.

This aged like fine wine. Listen to Space Station Docking.

+L2084 It's good, and the music of Ligeti and Strauss is fantastic! You are wrong!

I'm glad Kubrick dropped this.

Toralf Willy Nørbech I know it's a bit provocative to say that this movie isn't good but I don't know what the fuss is all about. It's long, annoying at times and I'm not convinced people don't see more than there is to see. And I prefer movies with original soundtracks. I find it less lazy than to use great classics.

I usually preffer original scores but in this particular case, 2001 had the best possible music, Kubrick made a wise decision!!!

Stanley Kubrick used classics in his films, because he wanted to make the best possible film. He once said that he prefered to use classics, because they are classics for a reason.

you suspect wrong. i go to a well-regarded conservatory of music for classical music composition and have yet to meet one person-and ive talked to multiple professors and students about this-who takes the North soundtrack even remotely seriously. the ligeti, richard and joseph strauss pieces beautifully help 2001 achieve the effect of acting on a cosmic scale that isnt even vaguely approached by North's soundtrack. Things "lining up" for each moment is not really important at all for this film-you can tell this by the pacing of it. The type of dramatic emphasis at play here is not that of a cheesy space opera, which is what North wrote for, I'd even argue that North clearly either really had no conception what the film that he was writing for was really about or just wasn't able to execute it. by the way, the idea that Kubrick's decision to use 20 minutes of ligeti in a film (mind you he should have gotten permission first), was done because of the "marketing department of a film studio" is delusional. Also, your assertation that it's a classical music greatest hits jukebox is actually very historically misguided! Ligeti's music was virtually unknown outside of the circle of contemporary classical music before the film, and the fanfare of the Richard Strauss piece was actually not well known at all until it was popularized by this film! It is so arrogant of you to make these judgments when you are so misinformed!! what are you on about with this "written for the film and not the audience" thing???

@@neve6772 we disagree. That's why people love Britten and others prefer Bax. I dislike this trend in Various Artists in movies masquerading as music for a film as opposed to one composers image of the music. But prejudices against film composers continue - this is why so called composers today spew forgettable works leceirks that no one will remember. So much of the "world premiere" works I've suffered through at the concert hall are more interesting on paper than to the ear. So many composers of merit in the 20th century are never performed because instead we get the marketing driven deck of academic exercises reinforced by tired marketing campaigns of newness for its own sake. Rag on Alex North you want but the temp tracks used in 2001 ALWAYS take me out of the movie - and into the world of music not composed for film. I would've preferred Kubrick chose another composer to score the film than what he did w the temp tracks. The Blue Danube for goodness sake is not about a space station......

​@@NealSchultz ho boy and of course it always comes back to lazily dissing 20-21st century concert music...say whatever you want, come to whatever internally unchallenged conclusion you feel like, the fact is that much of the music that you claim is "better on paper" (not that this means remotely anything at all) has moved, and continues to move some people, so whether or not you like it, the claim that these pieces are "academic exercises" is false. When I was 17 or 18 years old and I first heard the music of berg and webern-and stockhausen too, for that matter, I was left speechless and today when I listen to Boulez or Lachenmann I continue to be moved by what you call "academic" music. This started before I had any remote grasp on analyzing the works or even had the resources to see it on paper, and the only reason I'd analyze some of my favorite pieces now is because I appreciate the sound further, not because it doesn't hold up when listening. There is something to appreciate in this music, and there is nothing in the entire universe that you can say that will move the fact that plenty of this music was composed with immense passion and is listened with respective passion. That doesn't mean you have to like the music, but the claim that their works are just academic exercises is insulting and inane. I consider the works of a composer like Bax to be indulgent and lazy, that doesn't mean I think that it wasn't composed genuinely. Therein lies the difference, you can have aesthetic debates without making distorted claims about what the music is and why it was written. Back to the debate at hand: what you are saying does not hurt my point. The Blue Danube is indeed not about a space station. And yet, when you see this image of a space station, are you really supposed to be feeling and thinking about this space station? The precise details of the object aren't important. Most movements and gestures made by people and objects are engulfed by the more cosmic movements of the film. Using music precisely composed for the film's every in and out centers the focus of the movie on the plot and the little interactions between people that ultimately don't matter in the movie much at all. The classical music is timeless, and as we drift throughout space, we are set in the midst of motions that move without relevance to ordinary interactions, until quite literally, the movie descends out of time and into a void. Imagine the "star gate" sequence, except scored to achieve maximum dramatic impact. Hopeless! And the music works in substance- think of the ligeti, its movements are extremely slow and linear, so it doesn't feel as if it was just shoved in there. In the same way that a classical art song set to a text doesn't necessarily appropriate the text, a film that uses a piece of music doesn't necessarily appropriate the music. Actually, it is quite possible that Kubrick actually created the film with the music in mind. Think of the moment where Ligeti is used in Eyes Wide Shut; there it was definitely pre-planned. In 2001, it seems not far-fetched to imagine Kubrick listening to the Strauss when coming up with the idea...

It's not a nightmare. It's 2001: A Space Odyssey in an alternate universe.