The Music of 2001: A Space Odyssey - The Today Show 1993
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ก.ค. 2019
- The Music of 2001: A Space Odyssey - The Today Show
A Today Show feature story from 1993, featuring Our Man In Hollywood Jim Brown interviewing composer Jerry Goldsmith and producer Robert Townson, with an archival interview with composer Alex North from 1986.
Piece features footage of Goldsmith conducting the January 1993 Varèse Sarabande recording of Alex North's legendary unused score for Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. The recording was performed by the 105-piece National Philharmonic Orchestra in London at Abbey Road Studios.
Video introduction by Bryant Gumbel
Lean more about the story behind Alex North's 2001 ...
Beyond The Infinite: Charting The Music of '2001: A Space Odyssey'
filmschoolrejects.com/2001-a-...
![ลักพาตัว เอาลูกเอิร์นกลับมา...!! [เอิร์นไดเม่]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/f4NVKlZ5qkk/mqdefault.jpg)
Fabulous score, and seeing North and Goldsmith on screen... wonderful. Thanks.
What an wonderful composer like Jerry Goldsmith, who was an Emmy and Oscar winner.
I'm always looking for stories by my dad, Jim Brown. Thank you for posting.
Wonderful! Your father was an exceptional reporter and storyteller! He did amazing work and is so very missed.
@@roberttownson9459 He was also a wonderful father. Thank you for your kind words.
He did a great job championing my hero, Jerry Goldsmith.
Wow! Many thanks for this!
Kubrick had Alex North flown in from LA to have a studio in NY. He nearly had a breakdown scoring the movie, he did finish the score. Kubrick never heard a piece of his original music. Thanks to North's wife Anna and the genius of Jerry Goldsmith, Robert Townsend, Varese Sarabande Records, along with the National Philharmonic Orchestra, to bring North's excellent composition to fruition.
Also sprach Zarathustra, and I quote: "This late 18th century work ..." You gotta be kidding me.
It's outrageous, isn't it.
It was reeeeeeeaaalllllllly late in the 18th Century :D
@@stevenwatchorn9816 19th century. 1800s
Alex North's waltz approaching the rotating station is truly beautiful. When I finally heard the piece in 2001 (actual year) it sent chills as it was genuinely stirring.
Strauss's Thus Spake Zarathustra was late 19th century, not, as the narrator says, late 18th century.
Yeah, the 1800s being the 19th century really threw whoever wrote the copy.
Nothing compares to a thematically synergetic, original score, written expressly for the film. As Goldsmith -- The GOAT film composer -- has observed, preexisting music brings with it a history that, instead of more deeply involving an audience in a picture, prompts listeners to think about whatever their prior associations are therewith. Worse even, a jukebox approach to film "scoring" -- even with great classical pieces of music -- leads to a disjointed hodge-podge of musical ideas that shortchanges the communicative potential and potency of carefully integrated and plotted thematic material. Would anybody argue that PSYCHO would be better for having classical pieces haphazardly slapped onto it? The rather 2001-like STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE? BACK TO THE FUTURE? CHINATOWN? PLANET OF THE APES? Each of these scores is as effective and praiseworthy as it is precisely because of a principal musical idea/signature repeated, varied, and developed from start to finish -- an idea with which an audience can build a symbiotic, organic relationship, specifically within the viewing experience itself.
I'm not as big an Alex North fan as Goldsmith was, but I strongly believe that 2001 would have greatly benefited from his grandly cohesive, indigenous music. With the possible exception of SPARTACUS (also for Kubrick), 2001 was North's masterpiece.
North had composed the score for Kubrick’s film Spartacus in 1960. I do not know if the director took issue with North’s score for this epic film. Yet, clearly the experience of 2001 only demonstrates Kubrick’s arrogance and insensitivity toward Alex North, a composer of considerable skill and understanding of music’s dramatic possibilities in the cinema.
Kubrick's issue was not with the music that Alex North composer. Kubrick had made the decision that North's music would not be used in the film before he even hired him! He just never told Alex of his intentions. The whole thing was a fraudulent sham. Unconscionable.
@@roberttownson9459 Why would he commission him to write the music & have no intention of using it? He's have to pay him something for his work even if he didn't end up using it so why would he waste precious budget resources on purpose & annoy the financiers of what was possibly one of the most expensive films made at that time if not the most expensive?
@@paulbrocklehurst7253 Because the studio, MGM, had insisted on it. They were certain that the film needed an original score. They suggested North, but did not mandate him. But having an original score was mandated. Kubrick did the whole thing to fake-out the studio, surprising them when it was too late to do anything else. He did not care about what he was doing to Alex North. Unconscionable and cruel.
@@roberttownson9459 Oh okay but if the _studio_ were insisting on it how _else_ could Stanley have gotten around that problem because the film suited the music he chose far better than Alex North's soundtrack & it's use of Strauss etc. is what made the film so iconic. I'd go as far as saying that i cannot think of a film with a better use of music than 2001 myself.
@@paulbrocklehurst7253 Keep in mind that you have and will never have the opportunity of seeing the film for the first time with North's music and there are parts of the film that North was never shown, so he never even wrote the music for those scenes. There can never be a fair comparison. For me, knowing those classical pieces, it actually took me out of the film and, I felt, worked against the film in that way. That is the primary argument for people who disagree with your take on the musical use. Admittedly there are more people who agree with you, but again, that is based on the 2001, with all of that classical music, being the only 2001 that people have ever known. Another thing to be aware of is that much of the music in the film, that you feel fits it so perfectly, does not actually represent Kubrick's first choices. In place of The Blue Danube, Kubrick's choice had been the scherzo from Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream. Elsewhere his plan was to use Mahler's Symphony No. 3. Strauss' Zarathustra had been part of his vision from early on, however and even he asked North to emulate it, for whatever reason, since he already ken he was planning to license a recording. Perhaps just in case there was a licensing issue. These changes were all made late in the post-production process so they were not part of any original concept of the film that Kubrick had. Kubrick just wanted total control, and this was shown in his later films as well. Here is a quote from Stanley ... "However good our best film composers may be, they are not a Beethoven, a Mozart or a Brahms. Why use music that is less good when there is a multitude of great orchestral music from the past and from our own time?" To me, this exhibits a staggering lack of understanding of the entire film scoring art and process.
From the bits I've heard on TH-cam and in this video, I think Kubrick might've jipped North out of an awards nom.
If I was a composer who'd worked on a score for two years like Alex North did and having Kubrick dump my score
like he did I'd have kicked Kubrick in the balls. At least the score survived for Goldsmith to resurrect it and North's music lives on.
The reclusive director made the right decision.
I agree.
You can 'hear' that North followed Strauss 3 part stanza for his version of the main title..each stanza more climactic than the last and he also ends the cue with an organ chord just like the Strauss does
I'm sorry Alex, but Stanley's selection of pieces by the acknowledged masters of Western art music was simply sublime. There is no shame in being eclipsed by Strauss, Strauss II, Khachaturian, and Ligeti. That said, Stanley obviously could have handled the situation better.
The truth is : I absolutely love Richard Strauss’ magnificent piece, that became instantaneously associated with 2001 Space Odyssey. Perfect fit by all means ! It could have been the very first film score ever written, without the film being even invented yet ! Along with Holst’s The Planets it became a benchmark of “how to” by countless of film composers ever since. Hands down to a decision by Kubrick to retaining it in the film permanently. Indeed : Stanley should have handled the situation in more subtle ways... Totally agree with you.
What bothers me is not whether the Richard and Johann Strauss' music works better than North's music in the film, but the fact that neither Strauss wrote his music for Kuberick's benefit and, at least in the older Strauss' case, the director wouldn't have had to pay a cent in royalties for its use.
Kubrick was dead wrong. North composed a masterpiece.
North’s score may be a great score but it just doesn’t fit the movie the way the Kubrick chosen music does. The 2001 score resembles the score for Spartacus which in that movie it works. North’s 2001 score is too bombastic compared to the classic music Kubrick used in 2001 and doesn’t work with the scenes in the movie.
North's music is good; but the juxtaposition of the Strauss and other late Romantic pieces with the view of the future, works magic.
So, I'm just a layman here, but Mr. Kubrick as we all know was a very unorthodox director.... I have seen a youtube video of someone that synced North's music with the 'space station' scene, and it's impressive, but...yea there's a but... what I noticed is that now, it comes off as very 'dated' and has that lilt of the strings from the 60's (similar to Star trek theme of the same era). Where as the scene screened with the Blue Danube score seems timeless, and awe rendering. As if it signifies the sophisticated jump from let's say, baroque music to classical, and the majestic synchronized dance movement of the spacecraft and the space station like the waltz suggests. Just 1 man's opinion...
exactly
The 19th-century European waltz piece doesn't sound dated??
Kubrick has always been a director who doesn't show empathy or raw human emotion. Kubrick is cold, controlling and a technological genius with a camera, but Kubrick has no ability with the spark of human emotion. He too clinical and cold. I do enjoy Barry Lyndon, as a painting, but the acting is rigid and very cold throughout. Again, emotionless.
The waltz that North composed, sucks! Who says it's better than the Blue Danube by Strauss? Strauss has stood the test of time. North? I had never even heard of him, or any of his, "famous?" works. What famous works? Duh!
Wow. I would hate to say that you are full of yourself as I don't even know you, but you certainly seem comfortable painting everyone else with the same brush of ignorance that your own words profess as applying to yourself. Just because you don't know something, doesn't mean that nobody else does. I suppose it must be comforting to feel that your own knowledge and opinions represent an authoritative and definitive truth about such things.
What intelligent person in the world compares North to Johann Strauss II? Only an Ignorant, non-musician, who can't read music, like you, would say something STUPID like you do. What world famous piece did North write? Off the bat, I can name at least 10 world famous compositions that Strauss wrote, that are played by orchestras from all over the world:
1. Tales from the Vienna Woods, Op. 325
2. Emperor Waltz, Op. 437
3. Voices of Spring, Op. 410
4. Wine, Women & Song, Op. 333
5. Artist's Life, Op. 316
6. Vienna Blood, Op. 354
7. Roses from the South, Op. 388
8. Treasure Waltz, Op. 418
9. Vienna Sweets Waltz, Op. 307
10. Love Songs, Op. 114
LMAO at your STUPID statements.
@@jazzmaan707 frankly nobody heard of those Strauss things either, lol.
And everyone else heard of "Unchained Melody" which North composed the melody. Just search for any singing competitions singers that used it as their competition piece.
@@jandreidrn When you say, "frankly nobody heard of those Strauss things either, lol," that tells me that your are, Musically Challenged and ignorant.
"Unchanged Melody?" The version you always hear is the 1965 version recorded by the Righteous Brothers, and made world famous by them, and them only.
The lyrics were written by Hy Zaret in 1955, and the music composed by North. Both of them wrote the song for a 1955 film, "Unchained," which Flopped. The song also flopped, and was never heard of again. Then the song was recorded by the Righteous Brothers in 1965 for their 4th album, and it was they who made the song world famous.
Ask any person on the street today, who wrote "Unchained Melody," and they won't know what song that is, unless you sing it to them. Then they will tell you, "That's the Righteous Brothers, and they used that song in, "Ghost." Even today, on any cd/album/recording, Zaret's name is listed first for the credits.
Ask any one on the street, to name just one hit recorded by Alex North, and you'll get a blank stare with, "Who? Never heard of him." LMAO!!!
@@jazzmaan707 musically challenged or ignorant? This from a guy who doesn't bother delving into North's works but goes to great lengths being a populist praising Strauss' rather boring light music and waltzes. Lol!
lol if that street is in Vienna. If you ask anybody who is Strauss today they would ask "who"?
That doesn't diminish North's legacy if one only remembers the singers of the song. Just like it doesn't diminish Dolly Parton's legacy if nobody remembers it was her who composed and originally sang "I Will Always Love You" that Whitney Houston took as her own and everybody today only remembers as her song. It still remains a fact that the song North composed to still remains a popular audition piece in any television singing contests is a testament of its popularity. Whereas who's playing Strauss in TV nowadays outside of boring symphony concert programs nobody would watch unless they want to fall asleep? Lmao!