Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange has a unique soundtrack that is classically composed and still holds up exceptionally well today. The juxtaposition of the beautiful classical music to the extreme brutality on screen still gives audiences that same disgusted yet mesmerized feeling that it did 50 years ago.
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Classical music plays a vital role in A Clockwork Orange, an adaptation of Anthony Burgess’ 1962 novel. Burgess loved classical music and, according to anthonyburgess.org, stated that he used Beethoven for Clockwork because: ‘I accepted the Beethoven symphony as a kind of musical ultimate, something that the composers of our own age could not aspire to. His sonatas and symphonies were dramas, storm and stress, revelations of personal struggle and triumph. The Messiah from Bonn […] belonged to a world that was striving to make itself modern.”
Right off the bat, the protagonist, 15-year-old Alex DeLarge (Malcolm McDowell), is fascinated by classical music, especially Beethoven and Italian composer Gioachino Rossini. Even though he is characterized as a sociopath, he is also intelligent. At the beginning of the film, he refers to Beethoven as “Lovely Ludwig Van.” He goes to his tidy room loaded with books and art, and he lies on his bed, daydreaming about murder and sin, or as he calls it, “Ultra-Violence.”
Alex is just a teenager but is already an extreme threat to society. At night, he and his friends, or “droogs,” as Alex calls them, go to the Korova Milk Bar, where they sip on milky drugged drinks before committing crimes. As he commits these crimes, he sings Singin’ in the Rain, which McDowell improvised. A song as uplifting and nostalgic as Singin’ in the Rain being sung by a sociopath as he beats someone up still puts chills down one’s spine.
The film opens with Wendy Carlos’ synthesizer version of Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary, initially written by English composer Henry Purcell. The song immediately sets the dark, grim atmosphere of the film. After the bloody, bright red opening credits, the camera focuses on Alex’s iconic eye with his fake eyelashes. The camera then zooms out on Alex and his droogs, clearly not sober, at the Korova milk bar. The synthesizer adds a modern element to a classical song, and the bizarre naked women mannequins set the immediate tone. Alex’s deadpan voice then arrives, introducing the audience to his droogs and his lifestyle. His twisted language and the peculiar setting work perfectly with the distorted synthesizer version of the opening track.
Whenever Beethoven’s music arrives on the scene, the audience knows that something sinister is about to begin. He explains that he and his droogs are to do ultraviolence for the night, breaking into other people’s houses and committing violence on them. As he knocks on someone’s door, Beethoven’s 5th symphony begins to play. He asks to borrow a phone and immediately begins committing crimes upon entering, in which the synthesizer version of Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary begins. Just as Alex distorts and ruins the peaceful music of Beethoven, Wendy Carlos’ synthesizer version also distorts and changes the original beautiful feeling.
One night, Alex and his droogs break into a wealthy lady’s home. Alex begins to stab her repeatedly with a phallic sculpture, highlighting Alex’s fascination with sexual violence. When sirens are heard, Alex tries to run away, but one of his droogs, Dim, throws a bottle at him, and the other droogs escape. It is confirmed that the woman has died, and Alex is convicted of murder and sentenced to 14 years in prison.
Two years pass, and Alex is asked to be part of a new experiment, the new Ludovico technique, a type of aversion therapy for rehabilitating criminals. Alex is strapped to a chair with his eyes pried open, forced to watch grotesque images. As he is forced to watch violent films, the music of Ludwig van Beethoven is heard. Just as the audience associates beautiful classical music with violent images, Alex soon does too. Kubrick uses music to condition the viewers in the same way that the Ludovico technique conditions Alex.
As the first part of the film focuses on Alex committing crimes on innocent people, the last half is about those same people getting their revenge. This includes the husband of the woman he killed, who drugs Alex and locks him in a bedroom, blasting Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. As Alex used to relish in this music, he is now nauseated and even jumps out the window.
The film ends with Alex awakening from a hospital bed, showing that he is still alive. He goes through many psychological tests and realizes that he doesn’t hate violence and sex anymore. The camera zooms in on Alex’s face while Beethoven’s Ninth begins to play. Alex starts to have thoughts of violence yet again; his sinister smile widens, and Alex thinks to himself, “I was cured, all right.”
In the end, the role that classical music has in A Clockwork Orange is enormous. How music can tell a story and be such a large part of a novel where people can’t even listen to it is remarkable. Even more impressive is how Stanley Kubrick truly brought the book to life.
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