Wendy Carlos (formerly known as Walter) was largely responsible for bringing the singular sound of the Moog synthesizer into the music mainstream of the 1970s. Beginning with Switched on Bach, released in 1968, Carlos enjoyed a level of critical success that must have come as something of a surprise, given the general stodginess exhibited by the Classical music community in response to non-traditional approaches to musical interpretation. Among the many admirers of Carlos' work was film director Stanley Kubrick, who had decided to film an adaptation of the Anthony Burgess novel A Clockwork Orange. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was to be featured prominently in the storyline as well as the soundtrack, and quite fortuitously, Kubrick commissioned Carlos to create Moog renditions of a number of classical pieces as well as to create some original Moog compositions for the film. The results are nothing less than ground-breaking. In particular, "Title Music from A Clockwork Orange," an adaptation of Henry Purcell's Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary, seems to sonically encapsulate the entire film in just over two minutes, a simply stunning display of the Moog synthesizer's expressive capabilities. Also of note is Carlos' innovative use of the vocoder in her interpretation of "The Fourth Movement" of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which gives the piece an eerie mechanistic feel that matches the aesthetic mood of the film perfectly. Easily one of the most essential film scores ever recorded.
