Know The Score: Max Richter on 2001: A Space Odyssey

Is it cin­e­ma? Or is it sup­posed to be like an art instal­la­tion? Why is a giant baby float­ing through space? These were some of the ques­tions fly­ing through Max Richter’s head when he first watched 2001: A Space Odyssey as a teenag­er. But even though the film’s high­ly sub­jec­tive plot, which is cen­tred around a mys­te­ri­ous mono­lith guid­ing human­i­ty through piv­otal moments on its evo­lu­tion­ary path, leaves more ques­tions than answers, the Ger­man-born British com­pos­er was cer­tain that direc­tor Stan­ley Kubrick’s use of clas­si­cal music was groundbreaking.

“I was already study­ing the piano but watch­ing 2001 real­ly con­sol­i­dat­ed my love for clas­si­cal music,” says Richter. ​“It’s a film I owe a lot to, it taught me the pow­er of match­ing incred­i­ble images with incred­i­ble pieces of music. Kubrick knew that if there wasn’t a piece of music that could match the pure spec­ta­cle on the screen then it was best to leave things silent, which is prob­a­bly why so much of 2001 is in silence and based around the white noise of space. I learned a lot from that. If silence is more pow­er­ful or sym­bol­ic, then your job as a com­pos­er is to exer­cise some restraint.”

Richter is regard­ed as one of Britain’s great­est liv­ing com­posers, with his records ​‘Mem­o­ry­house’ and ​‘Infra’ among the stand­out achieve­ments of con­tem­po­rary clas­si­cal music. He’s also con­tributed orig­i­nal scores to the the­atre, bal­let and film. His work is ground­ed in raw emo­tion and oth­er world­ly mys­tique, blend­ing elec­tron­ic and clas­si­cal seam­less­ly together.

Whether it’s work­ing with neu­ro­sci­en­tists to ensure his eight-hour mag­num opus, ​‘Sleep’, would allow lis­ten­ers to actu­al­ly doze off, or the mourn­ful lament of ​‘The Blue Note­books’, which chan­nels the avoid­able pain of the war in the Mid­dle East, Richter’s cere­bral pieces are filled with hid­den mean­ing – some­thing he learned direct­ly from Kubrick’s clas­si­cal choic­es. ​“The film is about ask­ing these big philo­soph­i­cal and sci­en­tif­ic ques­tions,” Richter says, ​“and it’s clear Kubrick want­ed to pick songs that reflect­ed their enor­mi­ty. The open­ing, with Richard Strauss’ ​‘Also sprach Zarathrus­tra’, with its direct echoes of Niet­zsche and the idea of the human species tran­si­tion­ing from the ani­mal world to the next evo­lu­tion­ary leap by becom­ing the Über­men­sch, sets up the whole psy­chodra­ma of the film in such a unique way. From Strauss to Györ­gy Ligeti [the film] runs the full gaunt­let of the human experience.”

Kubrick had orig­i­nal­ly com­mis­sioned British com­pos­er Alex North to score 2001, but felt his work was too obvi­ous­ly try­ing to tap into the con­ven­tions of the sci-fi genre. So the direc­tor end­ed up licens­ing the ​“guide pieces” he had cho­sen in the edit­ing suite instead. The leg­end goes that North didn’t find out that his music had been scrapped until he was sit­ting in the audi­ence at the film’s pre­mière. Although this method was ​“clear­ly hor­ri­ble”, accord­ing to Richter, Kubrick’s deci­sion was ulti­mate­ly ​“ful­ly vindicated”.

Richter par­tic­u­lar­ly admires Kubrick’s deci­sion to use Ligeti’s dis­cor­dant and exper­i­men­tal ​‘Requiem’ in the film’s ​‘Star­gate’ sequence, where astro­naut Dr Bow­man (Keir Dul­lea) is pulled into a vor­tex of con­trast­ing colours that sit some­where between bliss­ful acid trip and night­mar­ish assault on the sens­es. As this sur­re­al scene unfolds, the dread-induc­ing music sounds like death rat­tles fil­ter­ing through the wind, as the music slow­ly tran­si­tions from twist­ed hell-scape into strange­ly sooth­ing equanimity.

“Using Ligeti in that scene was such a bold choice,” he says. ​“Remem­ber, this was very exper­i­men­tal clas­si­cal music that was only a few years old [when 2001 was made] and con­fused just as many peo­ple as it enthralled. Ligeti’s music hits you in such a direct way. His music is so sophis­ti­cat­ed in its con­struc­tion. It is a myr­i­ad of inter­lock­ing lines mov­ing through these son­ic mass­es, but it real­ly works with the film’s bold, abstract imagery. The fact that Kubrick even thought to com­bine them says a lot about his genius.”

Richter pro­vid­ed the score for direc­tor James Gray’s 2019 sci-fi Ad Astra, which fol­lows Brad Pitt’s depressed astro­naut as he moves through the solar sys­tem in pur­suit of his father. The plot quite obvi­ous­ly mir­rors the jour­ney tak­en in 2001, and the con­struc­tion of the film’s score spoke pro­found­ly to Richter’s admi­ra­tion for Kubrick’s mean­ing­ful song choic­es. Arguably, Richter went even deeper.

“A lot of the elec­tron­ic music in Ad Astra was made with old mood synths from the late ​’60s so we could direct­ly chan­nel the spir­it of Ligeti’s work in 2001. It’s both an inward-look­ing sto­ry and also this big space epic, so I knew I had to tow the line between punchy sounds and these ten­der, intro­spec­tive moments, where the music has to sym­bol­ise and ele­vate all that iso­la­tion Brad is feel­ing. I knew I want­ed to do some­thing real­ly dif­fer­ent, too.”

He explains fur­ther: ​“I came across the Voy­ager probes, which have been send­ing back data every nine sec­onds while trav­el­ling through our solar sys­tem since the mid ​’70s. We actu­al­ly got our hands on their raw data. We took the plas­ma wave radi­a­tion read­ings of their fly­bys of all the plan­ets and cre­at­ed com­put­er mod­el inso­lence from this data. It means I could trans­form the data into actu­al sounds and then play their sounds like actu­al instru­men­ta­tion. When Brad flies past Sat­urn or Nep­tune, you are actu­al­ly hear­ing mate­r­i­al gath­ered from the Voy­ager satel­lite probes from those plan­ets. The sound­track is quite lit­er­al­ly embed­ded in space.”

This unique approach looks to have been extend­ed to Richter’s upcom­ing new stu­dio album, ​‘Voic­es’, which he says evokes the spir­it of the UN Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights. ​“It is a project that is about the soci­etal changes we have been going through over the last few years, and what we might have lost. I want the music to remind us of some of the good stuff that we have achieved as a species, which is why the piece is cen­tred on the UN dec­la­ra­tion of Human rights. It’s quite amaz­ing that you had this thing draft­ed by thinkers and philoso­phers direct­ly after the dis­as­ter of World War Two. It isn’t a per­fect doc­u­ment, but I believe it points the way.”

Even though it some­times feels like the world as we know it is falling apart, Richter seems fair­ly opti­mistic about the future. Switch­ing back to the sub­ject of 2001, Richter is keen to stress that the film shares the hope that he feels, argu­ing that it’s less root­ed in dark­ness and emo­tion­al dis­so­nance than its rep­u­ta­tion sug­gests. ​“Remem­ber that the gor­geous ​‘Blue Danube Waltz’ lights up an inter­lude that fea­tures space­ships which appear to dance in rhythm to the music. There’s an incred­i­ble play­ful­ness to that sequence and Kubrick’s choice of music. It’s very bal­let­ic. The music and the imagery rep­re­sents every­thing that’s great about human endeav­our and inge­nu­ity, but also joy, too.

“There are touch­es of human­i­ty like this all over the film,” Richter con­cludes. ​“The end­ing is full of poten­tial and chan­nels the spir­it of opti­mism and mod­ernism in the 1960s. It fights against this idea that tech­nol­o­gy will be our down­falls and sug­gests humans can fix their own prob­lems. This is an idea that speaks deeply to where we find our­selves today. It sug­gests that we can change things for the bet­ter, and that there’s a light on the horizon.”