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Wendy Carlos, moog synthesizer, focus on electronic compositions of "A Clockwork Orange" and "The Shining"
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School of Electrical Engineering |
Master's thesis
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en
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60
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This study investigates the composition of the musician Wendy Carlos for the movies \textit{A Clockwork Orange}, 1972 and \textit{The Shining}, 1980 by Stanley Kubrick. The pieces are performed with the Moog synthesizer, an electronic instrument which she contributed to develop. By analyzing these arrangements, this thesis wants to give recognition to Wendy Carlos as a musician who changed and, in a way, revolutionized people approach to electronic music.
Electronic music started becoming mainstream to the public starting from the mid 1950s. This was mainly due to improvement of technology and popularity of radio stations, which gave access to sound manipulation. One of the most important technology improvements regarding music was the synthesizer, which became accessible thanks to Robert Moog.
From the analysis of Wendy Carlos' work, two different styles emerged: Replication style and Original style. The former is characterized by the replication of classical compositions while the latter gave space to her original style. The Replication pieces analyzed in this work are: \textit{Funeral of Queen Mary March} (1971), which is based on Henry Purcell's composition, is faithful to the original while transmitting more tension; \textit{Overture to William Tell} (1972), based on the Gioacchino Rossini's original, is a fastened version to create a more comical effect to the scene it is used for; \textit{Ode to Joy} (1972), from Ludwig Van Beethoven's original, has a clever usage of the vocoder to mimic the singing voice of the choir; \textit{Main Title} (1980), based on the Gregorian chant \textit{Dies Irae}, is more influenced by her own style, resulting rather far from the original. Regarding Wendy Carlos' Original style, the pieces analyzed are: \textit{Timestep} (1972), which gives a first glance of her original style with influences by classical compositions; \textit{Rocky Mountains} (1980), which is a strong expression of her original style, without clear melody and filled with low pitch sounds.