(Rhode Island, November 14, 1939)
Shortly after the success of her Switched-On Bach album, Wendy Carlos and her long-time producer Rachel Elkind began working with a spectrum follower--a device that converts sounds, such as speech, into electronic signals that mirror the overtones and rhythms of the original. The idea: To create the first electronic "vocal" piece. The piece selected for translation: the Choral Movement from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. After much preliminary work, Rachel felt that the Beethoven selection needed some kind of an introduction, something to ease the listener into this new sound of a well-known piece. Wendy began work on what was later to develop into an original, self-sustaining composition entitled Timesteps.
Wendy was, by her own admission, "about three and a half minutes" into Timesteps when a friend gave her a paperback copy of A Clockwork Orange. Like so many other readers, Wendy fell under the spell of Anthony Burgess' vision of a world of tomorrow filled with ultra-violence. She was also struck by the fact that her Timesteps music seemed to capture the exact feeling of the opening scenes of Burgess' book. Further work, and Timesteps evolved, subconsciously, into a kind of musical poem based on Clockwork -- a work that, as Wendy says, was an "autonomous composition with an uncanny affinity for Clockwork."
Then, the same friend who had given her Clockwork sent a clipping from a London newspaper announcing that Stanley Kubrick had just begun production of a film based on Burgess' book. Wendy and Rachel, both admirers of Kubrick's previous work, began to share the same day-dream: "Wouldn't it be great if..." Then came an announcement in the New York Times that Kubrick had actually finished filming. Timesteps was also finished, so Rachel sprang into action. Through a friend, literary agent Lucy Kroll, she contacted Kubrick's United States representative.
Timesteps and Beethoven's Choral Movement were airmailed to Kubrick. Wendy and Rachel waited. Finally, came a request from Kubrick: Could they come to London and discuss the use of Wendy's music in the film?
They came. They saw. And not only did they agree to Kubrick's use of the Beethoven Movement and Timesteps for the movie, but also Wendy began to arrange / perform some of the music already contracted for by Kubrick, and they even set down original ideas for other background music.
Although Warner Brothers released their filmscore album shortly after the release of Kubrick's Clockwork Orange, Rachel Elkind and I were never completely satisfied with it. The tapes used for the transfers were those made for the film track, and were a couple of generations removed from the original master mixes. So these versions contained compromises, like a necessary added compression and EQ, to sound good on a mono Academy optical print (at least we pioneered the use of Dolby, used for the first time ever in a film!)
