AA.VV.
A Clockwork Orange / Music from the Soundtrack

Being convinced that the so-called "film music" is by no means second-rate music, especially when it occupies such a prominent position in feature films of this level, I am about to review the soundtrack of Clockwork Orange (which, Italianized, would be Arancia Meccanica).

The record, like the film, opens with the famous Title Music from A Clockwork Orange, which will be revisited, rearranged in the Beethovenian style, in the third track Theme from A Clockwork Orange (Beethoviana). And it is the brilliant German composer who pervades much of the film and thus the soundtrack; the themes proposed, to be honest, are few but carefully chosen and masterfully adapted. Most notably, we find the famous Ninth Symphony present in its original version with the Second Movement, and in a curiously revisited version with the Fourth, also renamed March from A Clockwork Orange. Fragments of this composition are also present in the pieces named Suicide Scherzo and Ninth Symphony, Fourth Movement- Abridged. Significant contribution is also given by Gioacchino Rossini, who gifts the soundtrack with Thieving Magpie, a piece that once heard got stuck in my head and didn’t leave for less than two days. But particularly of the Italian composer, I would like to recall the William Tell Overture which, in an anomalously accelerated version, accompanies one of the most grotesque scenes of the film.

Last, but not least, we have the very famous Singin’ In The Rain, which Alex loved to sing at rather peculiar moments. There is no doubt that the sound element in this film is far more than just a simple accompaniment to the images: what would indeed be some memorable scenes (aside from, of course, the films forcibly administered to good Alex) without some equally memorable pieces taken from this soundtrack? But master Kubrick leaves nothing to chance, and, once again, does not forget this fundamental aspect.