Customer Reviews

Rediscovering Lost Scores 1

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In between her pioneering classical transcriptions and her groundbreaking explorations of new timbres and tunings, Carlos was also called upon to score a few films. Of these only one, "A Clockwork Orange," has been adequately represented by an official soundtrack album and a second album of original music written for the movie. Her score for "Tron" wasn't released on CD by Disney until 2001, NINETEEN YEARS after the film. All of the other scores have been, lamentably, totally missing.

Until now.

Carlos is no stranger to neglect. She has had to single-handedly rescue her classical pieces from the dumpster, and most of the rest of her catalog never saw Original Master re-releases until she herself undertook the project. It seems her New England stubbornness is triggered by disrespect, which in a way is lucky because nobody does Wendy better than Wendy herself.

She's done it once again with these soundtrack albums, volumes 1 and 2. Most of her fans know she wrote a complete score for Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining," although only two short pieces made it to the soundtrack LP (which has never been reissued). Here she FINALLY shares the rest of her score (minus the two tracks in legal limbo), and they are just as wonderful as everyone suspected. Witty and urbane classical reworkings are interposed with original horror music of astonishing power. Of particular note is a track where she overdubs and treats Rachel Elkind's voice until it sounds like a swarm of bumblebees!

She's also discovered three more "Clockwork Orange" cues, which are a delightful addition to the existing canon.

Volume 2 includes additional music from "Tron" and her unreleased score to "Woundings," and both volumes include several shorter pieces for various independent films.

Overall these discs are everything you'd expect and hope for in documenting Carlos's cinematic career.

Let me start out by saying that I (and probably most people) bought this for the Shining portion of music, and is what I am discussing here. Wendy's original score to the Shining was mostly left on the cutting room floor and only a few tracks made it into the final film. (The same happened to her Clockwork Orange soundtrack, although more of that was used.)

Once I heard that all of her original score to the Shining was being released I immediately became excited about the prospect of finally hearing the high-pitched music while Halloran "shines" on his bed, the long suite of twisted vocals and heartbeats as Jack yells at Wendy, dismantles the radio, etc. Upon receiving the CD I was a little disappointed, however.

There are basically 3 tracks on the CD that sound even remotely like her music in the movie:

*Track #2 ("Rock Mountains") - This is the music that can be heard while the family drives to the Overlook and continues throughout the Donna Party discussion. This track is a SHORTENED VERSION of the one heard in the film, but covers the main musical points.

*Track #10 ("Heartbeats & Worry") - This is SIMILAR to the music heard at various points throughout the film, (during Jack's "Shoveling out driveways" speech, Wendy trying to wake Danny up, Halloren on the plane, etc) but is much shorter and lacks many of the musical elements heard in the film. This track is the same general idea, and has some extra layers not heard in the film version.

*Track #21 ("Danny Bells Ascending") - This track also has ELEMENTS of the music heard in the scenes above, just without the heartbeats. (It also has some extra layers thrown in.)

That's about it from the movie. I kind of figured I would be disappointed because I usually am with any commercial releases of film scores. I always expect to get ALL the cues exactly as they appear in the movie, but this very rarely happens. Most soundtracks usually have certain cues omitted (usually my favorite ones) and they either join several cues into a suite of music or add extra stuff into the cues. Why they do this I'll never understand. In the case of the Shining, the music editor may have combined several different Carlos cues for the movie, but one thing I am certain - all of Wendy's music from the film is not on this CD. (I'm pretty sure they won't be on the second volume either, based on the samples I've heard.)

Another criticism I have is that I wish they released just the Shining music from both Volumes 1 and 2 as "Wendy Carlos's score to the Shining" (as they did with A Clockwork Orange), and put the UNICEF and Clockwork Orange stuff on a separate release.

Having said all that, the music on this CD is top notch, as is anything Wendy Carlos has done. I'm glad this stuff has finally seen the light of day! But if you're expecting a note-for-note version of the music from your favorite scenes in the film, you may be in for a disappointment...

As a longtime fan of Stanley Kubrick and "The Shining" this collection really piqued my interest. I have always thought that the score to "The Shining" was some of the eeriest and most effective music in cinema, and have kept my eye out for years for a soundtrack album. For fans of the movie this is as close as you're going to get to a legitimate soundtrack, but to echo the sentiments of other reviewers this disc does not contain a note for note recreation of the music used in the movie by Stanley Kubrick. Many of Wendy Carlos' ideas were used in snippets by Kubrick in the film, but no one piece was used in its entirety. In that respect, one might see this collection as a disappointment; I for one did not. The liner notes were written by Carlos and individually detail her ideas behind the soundscapes and the instruments she used in trying to meet Kubrick's vision for the movie. I found Carlos' breakdown of the instrumentation used as well as insights into her work with Kubrick to be fascinating, and her creativity in creating ambient music to be impressive. And while each track was not used in its entirety by Kubrick in the film, you do catch familiar passages here and there which were edited by Kubrick (and often reassembled) and used to great effect in the movie. For anyone interested in composing for film scores, this collection would be of great interest and is highly informative. For fans of "The Shining" like myself, it is also great to hear some haunting music that was not used in the film but is as equally creepy as what made the final cut. "A Ghost Piano" comes to mind in this respect. My only complaint with this collection is that Carlos' music from "The Shining" was not included on this disc in its entirety, and was split between this disc and Volume 2. I was not as interested in hearing outtakes from "A Clockwork Orange" or the music from Carlos' work on documentary films in the 70's for Unicef, which are included here. However, for fans of Wendy Carlos this collection will not disappoint as all the music on this collection has never before been available.

Since "Switched on Bach" album in the 1960s Walter/Wendy Carlos has been in the forefront of electronically created popular music. Often this kind of music can be musically blatant, relying solely on the electronic sonorities, with not much solid thematic content. Not so with Carlos: this disc of hers offers a lot also musically. The way she creates genuinely creepy and frightening musical mindscapes keeps you hooked into the CD all through its entire listening time. Especially so, if you are a fan of Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining", now you have the opportunity to hear - and imagine - how this modern horror movie masterpiece might have sounded with Carlos' unused musical tracks. Many of them are sure to give you creeps, even without the images they were intended to underscore.

A question for Wendy Carlos is in order. I have just re-read a 32 page article and interview given to her by Carol Wright some years ago via telephone.

Will Ms. Carlos provide some audio clips for us to gain an earfull of intrigue, if i can say that. Thank You :)