Eyes Wide Shut

Music

• The film's 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 strange ritual, the incantations heard in the background are actually Christian prayers sung in Romanian, played in reverse.
• One of the recurring pieces of music in the film is the eerie second movement of György Ligeti's piano cycle "Musica Ricercata". The piece is unusual in that it uses only three notes (plus octave displacements), in addition to the unyielding performance indication of Mesto, rigido e cerimoniale. The choice of Ligeti is interesting because Kubrick used Ligeti's Atmospheres in his film without obtaining Ligeti's consent, much to the composer's dismay.