A Clockwork Orange - OST

“It had been a wonderful evening and what I needed now, to give it the perfect ending, was a little of the Ludwig Van.”

This is the absolutely fantastic electronic/orchestral soundtrack to Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece, A Clockwork Orange, based on the 1962 novel by Anthony Burgess.

Walter Carlos (now called Wendy Carlos after undergoing a sex change operation in 1962) studied music and physics and worked in New York as a recording engineer. She worked with Robert Moog, using one of his first keyboard synthesizers in the early 1960s.

Carlos’ first album, Switched-On Bach (1968) was an LP of electronic interpretations of Bach’s classical music. It was a huge success, winning three Grammy awards and staying on the classical music charts for more than 300 weeks.

After the success of her Switched-On Bach album, Wendy Carlos and her long-time producer Rachel Elkind began working with a spectrum follower – a device that converts sounds, such as speech, into electronic signals that mirror the overtones and rhythms of the original. The idea: To create the first electronic “vocal” piece. The piece selected for translation: the Choral Movement from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

Whilst working on an introduction to this peice (called Timesteps), a friend gave her a paperback copy of A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. Carlos fell under the spell of Burgess’ vision of a slightly futuristic world filled with ultra-violence. She also noticed that her Timesteps peice seemed to capture the feeling of the opening scenes of Burgess’ book. Timesteps eventually evolved into a sort of musical poem based on Clockwork Orange – a peice that, as Carlos says, was an “autonomous composition with an uncanny affinity for Clockwork.”

After hearing that Stanley Kubrick had just begun production of Clockwork, Carlos Wendy and Elkind began to share the same day-dream…

Once production on the movie had finished Carlos airmailed the tapes of Timesteps and Beethoven’s Choral Movement to Kubrick who requested that they both they come to London and discuss the use of Wendy’s music in the film.

Singin’ In The Rain was used by Malcolm McDowell during the infamous rape scene as it was the only song that he knew all the words to…

We seriously love this soundtrack. Play it loud – it’ll sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence.

01 – Title Music from a Clockwork Orange – Walter Carlos
02 – Thieving Magpie [Abridged]
03 – Theme from a Clockwork Orange (Beethoviana) – Walter Carlos
04 – Ninth Symphony, Second Movement [Abridged]
05 – March from a Clockwork Orange (Ninth Symphony, Fourth Movement) [Abridg – Walter Carlos
06 – William Tell Overture [Abridged] – Walter Carlos
07 – Pomp and Circumstance March No. I
08 – Pomp and Circumstance March No. IV [Abridged]
09 – Timesteps [Excerpt] – Walter Carlos
10 – Overture to the Sun
11 – I Want to Marry a Lighthouse Keeper – Erika Eigen
12 – William Tell Overture [Abridged]
13 – Suicide Scherzo (Ninth Symphony, Second Movement) [Abridged] – Walter Carlos
14 – Ninth Symphony, Fourth Movement [Abridged]
15 – Singin’ in the Rain – Gene Kelly