Question by myportraitdrawing: What’s the music in Eyes Wide shut when he goes into the Secret Orgy?
Recently I’ve been reading about Alleister Crowley and His Thelemic Religion involving ritual sex magic, and this music seems to be somehow related to that.
Best answer:
Answer by bixlives70
* The film’s opening title music is “Waltz 2 from Shostakovich’s Suite for Variety Stage Orchestra”, for years misidentified as the composer’s Jazz Suite 2, recorded and released under the latter, incorrect, name by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.
* In the scene with the ritual, the incantations heard in the background are in Romanian, played backwards. The piece, named “Masked Ball”, is an adaptation by Jocelyn Pook of her earlier work “Backwards Priests.” When first contacting Pook in regard to providing music for the film, Kubrick asked her if she had anything else like Backwards Priests – “you know, weird.”[7]
* One of the recurring pieces of music in the film is the second movement of György Ligeti’s piano cycle “Musica Ricercata.” The fact that the piece uses only three tones and the unyielding performance indication of Mesto, rigido e cerimoniale adds to the unsettling nature of the piece.
* In the morgue scene, Franz Liszt’s late solo piano piece, “Nuages Gris” (“Grey Clouds”) (1881) is heard.
* “Rex tremendae” from Mozart’s Requiem plays as Bill walks into the Viennese cafe and reads of Mandy’s death.
* The background score during the orgy scene (where Tom Cruise walks from room to room) is a Tamil song sung by Manickam Yogeshwaran who is a well-known Carnatic singer. (Tamil is a classical Indian language spoken by over 74 million people worldwide today. Carnatic music is one of the two styles of Indian classical music that is popular in South India.)
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!