# Blue Danube in 2001: Yay or Nay?



## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

I know Strauss Jr. is considered light classical, but do we enjoy how it's used in this movie?

I for one love it, and think it works great with the imagery.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

I love it. It's a great waltz as is the composer himself who is universally known today as one of the great composers on waltz.

The _Kaiser-Walzer_, Op. 437 (Emperor Waltz) is also great for its purpose. People knew how to behave then when music like this was being danced to.


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

Like almost everything about 2001, it is great.


One of the first classical discs I actually bought myself was a compilation of classical music and film scores from Kubrick films (including the funky synthed up Beethoven 9)


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## MatthewWeflen (Jan 24, 2019)

Every year, please.

People who pooh-pooh stuff like Blue Danube or Eine Kleine Nachtmusik must not get invited to many parties, because they're self-serious downers.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

MatthewWeflen said:


> Every year, please.
> 
> People who pooh-pooh stuff like Blue Danube or Eine Kleine Nachtmusik must not get invited to many parties, because they're self-serious downers.


I'm talking about the movie, A Space Odyssey and it's of the music in that film.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

*Blue Danube in 2001: Yay or Nay?*

I don't want to seem I'm just waltzing through an explanation, but I think Kubrick was trying to tell us that if the European river actually starts flowing into space, we'll have much more to worry about than what musical selections appear on a movie soundtrack. At least that's what Zarathustra told me the last time I went to visit the obelisk.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

SONNET CLV said:


> *Blue Danube in 2001: Yay or Nay?*
> 
> I don't want to seem I'm just waltzing through an explanation, but I think Kubrick was trying to tell us that if the European river actually starts flowing into space, we'll have much more to worry about than what musical selections appear on a movie soundtrack. At least that's what Zarathustra told me the last time I went to visit the obelisk.


lol, hahahaha. :lol:


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

I'm not a big fan of the piece itself, but in the movie its use is absolutely perfect. I think that Kubrick wanted to express the optimism and the comfort that technology and modernity brought to men, even men in space, men who can relax as they were on a beach. He could have put there for instance a Girl from Ipanema for the same reason, but obviously Blue Danube is a more solemn piece (altough I definitely prefer the bossa nova song) so it's a perfect choice. And it works also in the contrast with the later scary discovery of the unknown.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

norman bates said:


> I'm not a big fan of the piece itself, but in the movie its use is absolutely perfect. I think that Kubrick wanted to express the optimism and the comfort that technology and modernity brought to men, even men in space, men who can relax as they were on a beach. He could have put there for instance a Girl from Ipanema for the same reason, but obviously Blue Danube is a more solemn piece (altough I definitely prefer the bossa nova song) so it's a perfect choice. And it works also in the contrast with the later scary discovery of the unknown.


It's a bit of a superficial piece, but it's fun and produces a floating effect on the listener making it perfect for the floating objects in space that we see as the music is playing.


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## MatthewWeflen (Jan 24, 2019)

Captainnumber36 said:


> I'm talking about the movie, A Space Odyssey and it's of the music in that film.


The music in 2001 was used beautifully, from Strauss to Strauss to Ligeti. Only a curmudgeon could fail to see the waltz being a perfect accompaniment to the graceful movements of the Pan Am spaceliner, or the Ligeti underscoring the unsettling atmosphere.


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

Captainnumber36 said:


> It's a bit of a superficial piece, but it's fun and produces a floating effect on the listener making it perfect for the floating objects in space that we see as the music is playing.


Absolutely. The Blue Danube waltz is flowing music that conjures up a lovely romanticized world of people (or perhaps stars) dancing happily, or perhaps, "floating" and swirling.


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

Yay. It's my current favorite Strauss waltz and I think that it matches perfectly the optimism of humanity in the moment of the movie in which it appears.


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

Allerius said:


> Yay. It's my current *favorite Strauss waltz* and I think that it matches perfectly the optimism of humanity in the moment of the movie in which it appears.


Oh, he wrote some other waltzes?


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

pianozach said:


> Oh, he wrote some other waltzes?


Sure. And when people talk about a certain _Ode to Joy_, they are always thinking in Strauss, of course.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

It's perfect. And it shows that Kubrick knew better than anyone what a score for the film should be. Blue Danube was his temp track while Alex North was writing the "real" score. Listening to the North score on CD and you realize how much greater a composer Strauss (both R and J) was than North. The movie did more for Ligeti than anything else.


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## Alfacharger (Dec 6, 2013)

MatthewWeflen said:


> The music in 2001 was used beautifully, from Strauss to Strauss to Ligeti. Only a curmudgeon could fail to see the waltz being a perfect accompaniment to the graceful movements of the Pan Am spaceliner, or the Ligeti underscoring the unsettling atmosphere.


All the classical pieces that Kubrick used were originally "temp tracks" for composer Alex North. He did complete a score for the film but Kubrick used the temps. Here is North's score to the scene temped by "The Blue Danube". North reused it in his score to "Dragonslayer".

I think Kubrick made the right decision.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

Not to throw this thread off course but since Alex North's music for the movie has been referenced: it was a great shock to North when he attended the New York premiere of the film and discovered only then that none of his music had been used.


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

I am not a fan of Strauss or the Blue Danube, at all.

But it just works in 2001.

So, it is a YAY for me.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

I think The Blue Danube works wonderfully. At any rate, it is far superior to North's music which to me verges on kitsch.


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## Mark Dee (Feb 16, 2021)

It's easy to get snooty about popular pieces. It's just a great piece of music. Here endeth the lesson...


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## Amadea (Apr 15, 2021)

It's simply perfect. It made the scene memorable. The spaceship was dancing in the space, perfectly synchronized to the waltzer's tempo. That's the scene that made me fell in love with Kubrick.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

_Frühlingsstimmen_ op. 410 is also delightful. This is true dance music.


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## MatthewWeflen (Jan 24, 2019)

Alfacharger said:


> All the classical pieces that Kubrick used were originally "temp tracks" for composer Alex North. He did complete a score for the film but Kubrick used the temps. Here is North's score to the scene temped by "The Blue Danube". North reused it in his score to "Dragonslayer".
> 
> I think Kubrick made the right decision.


I did know this, and I agree it was the right choice. It was likely one of those situations where you hear it one way and then can't "unhear" it. Which, given the high level of artistic quality in the music, makes sense.

I do however, quite like Alex North's scores, especially Spartacus and Cleopatra.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

ArtMusic said:


> _Frühlingsstimmen_ op. 410 is also delightful. This is true dance music.


A lovely piece!

I also like it in this arrangement for soprano, flute and piano.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Alfacharger said:


> All the classical pieces that Kubrick used were originally "temp tracks" for composer Alex North. He did complete a score for the film but Kubrick used the temps. Here is North's score to the scene temped by "The Blue Danube". North reused it in his score to "Dragonslayer".
> 
> I think Kubrick made the right decision.


Wow, I never knew that. It's not bad, but the composition isn't anywhere near as fitting as Danube.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Haydn70 said:


> A lovely piece!
> 
> I also like it in this arrangement for soprano, flute and piano.


I enjoyed this version more.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Its use was perfect, but the film itself has always had more problems than people give it credit for.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

MarkW said:


> Its use was perfect, but the film itself has always had more problems than people give it credit for.


That's a unique stance to take.


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## MatthewWeflen (Jan 24, 2019)

Captainnumber36 said:


> That's a unique stance to take.


It's an extremely polarizing movie. I like it, but I recognize that there are extremely long stretches without dialogue or action and that there are very few characters to "like" in it.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Captainnumber36 said:


> That's a unique stance to take.


\
I read science fiction my entire youth. 2001 came out the summer of my sixteenth birthday, so I took an afternoon off, took public transit into Boston and treated myself to a matinee at one of the Sack theatres with a big curved screen. The photography was excellent, as were some of the scenes, and the special effects. But the story was cold, and that's how it left me.

Kubrick is an extraordinary, and extraordinarily self-in indulgent craftsman. When he gets hold of a new technique or new technology, he shows it off endlessly and without mercy. I.e the stargate sequence of 2001 (endless color negatives of aerial shots of Western canyonlands); the SteadiCam shots in The Shining (following the car up into the mountains; the Big Wheel circumnavigation of the hotel corridors); the endless candlelit interiors in Barry Lyndon. He seems to think that ordinary people, transacting ordinary daily business, do it completely without affect. Neither his films, nor any of the characters in them, have souls. They are cold, like Escher prints.


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

Actually one person in Barry Lyndon does have a soul - Bullingdon, the guy in the dual at the end. It's actually part of the whole arc of the work, Bullingdon comes across as the only genuine human being in the film who is shocked and appalled at the mannered cruelty of the world he's in. It's like he wanders in three quarters into the film and can't believe that he's surrounded by mannered, polite, cruel pod people. It's a fascinating film.


e) I'll fully admit that Kubrick can absolutely come off as aloof, though. For my money, 2001 is one of those works which just transports me into its own world more successfully than any other film I've seen.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

I don't know your age, but if you weren't around in '68 when it came out you missed one of the great cultural phenomena in the last 100 years. Everyone was talking about it, trying to explain the meaning. Those of use who read Clarke's The Sentinel were a bit more aware of the story, but man it was exciting. Now, one thing that I really remember well: the soundtrack recording (on Polydor) was everywhere; you saw it in drug stores, groceries -- it was all over the place. It sold millions and likely the only classical album a lot of people ever purchased. It seemed that every high school marching band played the opening: Also Sprach Zarathustra for half time shows the next season. All while our recent grads were geting slaughtered in Viet Nam. What a time it was!


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

I agree with keeping _The Blue Danube_.



mbhaub said:


> It's perfect. And it shows that Kubrick knew better than anyone what a score for the film should be. Blue Danube was his temp track while Alex North was writing the "real" score. Listening to the North score on CD and you realize how much greater a composer Strauss (both R and J) was than North. The movie did more for Ligeti than anything else.





Haydn70 said:


> Not to throw this thread off course but since Alex North's music for the movie has been referenced: it was a great shock to North when he attended the New York premiere of the film and discovered only then that none of his music had been used.


Kubrick himself later said laconically that the composers in Hollywood were no match for the masters of the past. This and the unheralded nature of the rejection of North's score made the entire event very infamous among the leading composers in the industry, many of whom knew North personally.

A few years later, George Lucas planned his _Star Wars_ and contemplated following Kubrick's path if he failed to find a composer who could do better than North did on _2001_. After discussing this with Steven Spielberg, he was introduced to John Williams, coincidentally a friend of North's. It is very likely to me that Williams wanted to avoid his friend Alex's fate, which made him extra-motivated to one-up any classical temp track thrown his way.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

I have to admit that the opening of Zarathustra, although very effective, was already hackneyed, because the Hayden Planetarium at Boston's Museum of Science had already used it in one of their shows several years earlier!


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I can't hear it now without picturing space craft manoeuvring. It is perfect.


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