Wendy Carlos's Clockwork Orange

Infobox Album | Name = Walter Carlos' Clockwork Orange
Type = Album
Artist = Wendy Carlos


Released = 1972
Recorded = 1971
Genre = Electronic music
Length =
Label = Columbia Records
Producer = Rachel Elkind
Reviews =

"Walter Carlos' Clockwork Orange", first released in 1972, is an album of electronic music by Wendy Carlos. All the pieces in the collection were composed or performed for the film A Clockwork Orange (1971). Although Carlos worked closely with director Stanley Kubrick during production of the movie, much of the work was not used, or used only in abridged form. The official soundtrack album also omitted much of Carlos' work.

Under the original title "Walter Carlos' Clockwork Orange" (Carlos went through sex reassignment treatment at about the same time) the album included full-length versions of the flagship piece "Timesteps", originally intended as a lead-in to a full realization of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony for electronic instruments. Among the instruments used for the album was a spectrum follower, the prototype for the later vocoders used in electronic music. This device reproduced the overtone spectrum of an input sound and overlaid it on another sound, which for practical purposes meant that it could alter an instrumental sound and convert it to the sound of a human voice. Since the Ninth Symphony has a chorale section in the finale, Carlos felt is was an appropriate challenge for the new device.

According to the album notes, shortly after beginning "Timesteps" Carlos also began reading the book "A Clockwork Orange", and noticed that the opening themes reflected the feeling of the first chapters of the book. Thereafter the piece developed, in Carlos' own words, into "an autonomous composition with an uncanny affinity for 'clockwork'", the last word being Carlos' way of referring to the book. When the film version was announced Carlos and producer Rachel Elkind made a demonstration recording for Kubrick, who became interested and invited them to meet him in London.

The final outcome was not entirely satisfying to Carlos in terms of total contribution to the film, but there remained the opportunity to present the music in a separate album, which led to this collection.

Album cover

The record label did not attempt to use images from the movie on the album cover. The image chosen was a surrealistic collage of objects and images representing ideas in the movie. These included a rifle, an image of Beethoven inside the numeral "9", various mechanical images including a clockwork mechanism superimposed on a sliced orange, dancers representing the classical themes, and so on. This again was not entirely to Carlos' and Elkind's liking.

For the CD re-release, an image parodying the film's own logo was created and used on the cover, with the original cover image on the back cover of the included booklet.

Track listing

Original release (LP)

* Side 1
# "Timesteps"
# "March from A Clockwork Orange", based on the choral movement of the Ninth Symphony by Beethoven.
* Side 2
# "Title Music from A Clockwork Orange", based on "Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary" by Henry Purcell.
# "La Gazza Ladra" (The Thieving Magpie), by Gioacchino Rossini. Not actually commissioned for the movie, but inspired by the movie's use of the orchestral version.
# "Theme from A Clockwork Orange (Beethoviana)", the title theme reset in the style of Beethoven and played using flute-like tones.
# "Ninth Symphony: Second Movement", an abridged electronic version of Beethoven's Scherzo.
# "William Tell Overture (Abridged)", by Gioacchino Rossini.
# "Country Lane", an original piece originally intended to be used in a scene where the protagonist, Alex, is taken into the country and beaten by police. It restates themes from other compositions and also quotes the well-known "Dies Irae" theme. The words of the "Dies Irae" are also used, rendered through the vocoder.

CD release (1998)

All the above tracks, plus:
* "Biblical Daydreams", originally written for the scenes where Alex imagines himself acting out the battles described in the Old Testament.
* "Orange Minuet", originally written for the scenes where the brainwashed Alex is paraded in front of an audience.