Thus Spoke Kubrick:“Guide Pieces,” Modes of Citation and the Rise of the Temp Track (Chapter in "After Kubrick: A Filmmaker’s Legacy")

When it came to how movies sounded, Stanley Kubrick was of a particular moment, but he seized that moment in a unique way. The moment — one might designate it as 1968, though it extends beyond the calendar year — was one that Kubrick shared with other innovative young filmmakers who sought to renegotiate how films were scored. The end of the Golden Age studio system brought with it an end to one kind of smoothed-over Hollywood sound. And the rise of the Hollywood auteur presented new opportunities to incorporate unusual types of music in mainstream cinema. From rock songs, jazz, avant-garde music, or plain absence of non-diegetic music, the films that shared cinemas with 2001: A Space Odyssey, or that came shortly after it, went in new directions when it came to how a hit film sounded.