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Live performances of the terrifying nightmare music Kubrick selected for The Shining
10.21.2015
09:48 am
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It may have warped me to a degree, but as a kid in a house with cable and HBO in the 80s, I was subjected, one summer, to at least a dozen viewings of Stanley Kubrick’s horror masterpiece, The Shining.

To this day, I rank The Shining in my top five favorite films. I consider it a near-perfect piece of cinema, and a great deal of what I love and admire about the film has to do with its brilliant utilization of music.

The use of modern classical is similar to Kubrick’s “we’ll use what’s in my record collection” method of scoring 2001: A Space Odyssey. Though Kubrick selected the repertoire, music editor Gordon Stainforth can take credit for painstakingly matching musical passages to the motion picture. Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind-Tourre additionally recorded new original works specifically for the film.

Before I had ever heard any avant-garde experimental or industrial music, this was the music that really spoke to me—as a (weird) kid—searching for a soundtrack that represented fear, alienation, and madness. The soundtrack to The Shining was my introduction to a whole world of 20th Century classical that sent me down a path to discovering some of my most-loved pieces and composers. I have The Shining to thank for introducing me to the work of Krzysztof Penderecki, my favorite composer.

The soundtrack remains one of my favorite, most-played albums in my collection. Due to licensing problems, it hasn’t been released on CD, but the vinyl still turns up if you look hard enough (but its rarely cheap).

The pieces found on the soundtrack album are, to my mind, almost inextricably linked to the images in the film. This is precisely why I recently set about hunting down some live video performances of these works, in an effort to deconstruct what makes this music so effective. I have to say, watching full orchestras perform these works is mind-blowing to me.

Collected here are live performances of almost all of the tracks from the soundtrack LP of The Shining. Even if you aren’t a fan of the film, you may want to cut off all the lights and play these in a darkened room for the ultimate Halloween-season soundtrack. It doesn’t get much more terrifying and madding than this. Put on some modern classical, be alone with your thoughts, and completely delve into madness.

Pleasant dreams.
 
Wendy Carlos “The Shining Main Theme”:

 
More music from ‘The Shining’ after the jump…

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Posted by Christopher Bickel
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10.21.2015
09:48 am
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Looking at Ligeti
04.10.2010
02:29 pm
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An already lovely printed visual score by Rainer Wehinger for György Ligeti‘s early musique concret gem “Artikulation” made even lovelier via synchronization by kind Youtube user “d21d34c55”. Bonus clip below is Ligeti’s mighty choral piece Lux Aeterna used of course by Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
 

Posted by Brad Laner
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04.10.2010
02:29 pm
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