2001: the start of a musical odyssey

The first time I ever left a movie theater wanting the soundtrack for the film I just saw was when I was in seventh grade.

It was the Fourth of July weekend, and my brother-in-law Dan -- my sister is 14 years older than I -- said we had to go see 2001: a Space Odyssey at the Naro Expanded Cinema. This pops into my mind with crystal clarity because the Kentucky Theatre, Lexington's answer to Norfolk's Naro, is showing 2001 this weekend on its Winter Classics series. Anyway, I can't remember if I was excited. This was before the Naro became an almost weekly journey for me, but it was when I was in the throes of initial Star Wars fandom, so any space movie had some appeal for me.

The movie, of course, was a little strange for a seventh grader to wrap his head around -- the apes; the quiet, slow spaceships. I don't know that the question, "What was going on there?" was ever answered that night or has ever  been answered completely. But even on that viewing, I had to agree with the tagline. It was, "The ultimate trip." I can remember feeling pinned to my seat with my hands gripping the armrests as Dave sped through the light show toward the end and his regeneration as the "star child."

A key element of those sensations was the music, which I immediately loved, particularly the Ligeti. The majesty of Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra and beauty of Johann Strauss' The Blue Danube were already culturally iconic. But the droning, haunting chorus and sharp, sporadic instruments of Gyorgy Ligeti's Requiem for Soprano, Mezzo-Soprano, 2 Mixed Choirs and Orchestra was some of the coolest stuff I had ever heard. It always showed up along with the mysterious and impenetrable black monolith. Later, when I looked at the soundtrack album, it made perfect sense that Ligeti also composed Lux Aeterna, the music as Dr. Floyd travels to the moon, and Atmospheres, the music of Dave's white-knuckle trip through space.

What I certainly didn't realize I was hearing was a movie that, "neatly brackets the entire arc of twentieth-century musical history," as Alex Ross writes in his new book, The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century. In one movie, we go from the beautiful majesty of R. Strauss to Ligeti's envelope tearing work, and the 2001 music is far from his strangest stuff.

Appreciating what Ligeti's music did -- and this was long before I knew anything about 12-tone music and minimalism and any of the other contemporary genres that seem to drive a lot of people up the wall --  set the stage for appreciating a lot of other stuff like John Cage, Steve Reich, Philip Glass and even artists like Meredith Monk and bands like Sonic Youth.

The notion that people need to be taught to like classical music has always struck me as absurd. Yes, learning more about the music, learning to play it, deepens your appreciation, definitely, and your liking for it, maybe. The same, I think, is true of pop music. You start with an initial infatuation, then, as you listen and learn more, your appreciation deepens. And things can certainly grow on you. But there has to be a moment for music aficionados when they hear sounds that speak to them and they fall in love. For me, seeing 2001 was definitely one of those occasions.

The image above is a scan of the gatefold of my copy of the 2001: a Space Odyssey soundtrack record album.