I've already got the score on digital download so I can't see me dusting off my old record player any time soon, although I did read that the unused original score for the movie written by composer Alex North was given a limited release of 2001 copies on vinyl a few years ago. Listening to the opening theme he composed, to me it does bear a slight passing resemblance to Also Sprach Zarathustra.
As we're so used to hearing the classical pieces during the film its sometimes difficult to imagine how things would have been if director, Stanley Kubrick had decided to use Alex North's music. I think most people might agree that Kubrick ultimately made the right choice, but that doesn't diminish Alex North's talent, a composer who wrote several epic film scores including Spartacus and Cleopatra. He also co-wrote the theme song , 'Unchained Melody' for a little known prison film called Unchained in 1955, which became a huge hit for The Righteous Brothers.
Here's Alex North's jaunty version of the Orion III docking sequence.
I listen to a lot of film scores and classical music. When I recently read a couple of books on Kubrick's 2001 (A book of essays and a making-of book) I listened, as I read, to the classical score, the Alex North music, Alex North's "Africa" (Between that and "Shoes of the Fisherman", North managed to re-use the bulk of what he wrote for 2001) and a number of pieces by Ligeti which are not unlike what was used by Kubrick.
ReplyDelete