Kubrick Use The Atmospheres In The Film, 2001: A Space Odyssey

Throughout the film 2001: A Space Odyssey the director Stanley Kubrick uses 3 orchestral pieces of music composed by Gyorgy Ligeti. Born 28th of May 1923 in Hungary Gyorgy Ligeti he grew up wanting to be a musician. Starting out as a freelancer working in the Electronic Music Studio where he was then appointed a professor after many years of lecturing. It wasn’t until Ligeti released his “Atmospheres” when he was recognized worldwide of his musical talents. But this was all about to change when Stanley Kubrick decided to use his work in the film 2001 A Space Odyssey. Throughout this document there will be references to three of Gyorgy Ligeti’s pieces that Stanley Kubrick used throughout the film. These are, Atmospheres, Lux Aeterna, and Requiem and will be raising points such as why these particular songs were used, as well as how …show more content…
Frank Pool and three other crew members are being transported to the site of the Monolith. If you were to critically analyse the song both in terms of composition as well as the overall message that the music delivers, the audience would describe the song to being similar to “Atmospheres”. The music encompasses an eerie feel from using the high pitched sounds ringing in the audiences ears which raises the suspense because we are unsure what the Monolith will do to the humans. This raises contrast to the film’s opening during the, “Dawn of Man”, when the apes touch the Monolith for the first time. At this point the audience are feeling “creeped out” because of this and are unsure if the Monolith will influence the bad side in the humans much like it did with the apes . At this point the audience will have ideas of what might happen if the humans touch the Monolith. This is where the music succeeds, as (Darrius, P, 2001) claims that 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