Happy Birthday Wendy carlos

[Prospero]

Wendy Carlos who should be an icon to the world of transgender is 72 today. Wendy born Walter transitioned in 1972. She is the composer of many film scores - most famously the electronica of Clockwork Orange. But as Walter her best known recording was Switched on Bach. A pioneer of the Moog.

[tsadriana]

Happy Birthday Wendy !!!!

[Stavros]

I confess I had forgotten about her, glad to know she is still alive, and I hope using the vastly improved technology musicians now have. It was cutting edge in the 1960s of course; and interesting to compare her version of the March from the Funeral Music for Queen Mary with Purcell's original, even if its impossible to follow (and maybe only by changing its tone and format...)

THE FUNERAL OF QUEEN MARY - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqTfaaBVquY)


Purcell - March / Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary (Funeral Sentences) Z. 860 - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWRcx9LHBJU)

[Prospero]

But this is the version from the opening of the film ....full of menace....


A Clockwork Orange - Intro [HD] - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI-mDTdeKR8)

[Prospero]

And a final taste of a clockwork orange...

A Clockwork Orange - Ode To Joy - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HdFTOl8uiE&feature=related)

[Stavros]

Menacing indeed, and probably what Kubrick asked for; but a characteristic violation of Purcell's original intention -Alex after all is a low-life, Purcell was writing for a Queen. One of the many reasons that explain why Kubrick is not a great director is his inability to match music to his films, I don't believe he ever commissioned an original score but poached music that suited him even if it had nothing to do with the film -2001 being a notorious example. Individually, the Irish folk music, Telemann, and Schubert give Barry Lyndon (his second-best film) a lot of character, but the Irish music is out of place in a sequence which is actually about the British in Ireland, the Telemann is supposedly there to reinforce the lame idea that the Germans are/were militaristic, and the Schubert because its pretty and the dresses Marisa Berenson wore were pretty. If the songs in Paths of Glory (his best film) and Full Metal Jacket work it is because for once they are of their time. But Kubrick was a pasticheur, and not interested in originality.