Trivia

Both the "William Tell" overture and the "Ode to Joy" song heard on the soundtrack are from musical compositions based on the work of German poet/playwright Friedrich Schiller. Schiller's "Sturm und Drang" dramas attest to his fascination with young, violence-prone troublemakers like Alex, from Don Carlos to Joan of Arc, and the plot of his "William Tell" in particular, which centers on a band of rebels whose leader comes into conflict with their authoritarian government, has obvious parallels to Alex's story. During the opening reels meanwhile Alex reenacts, on his own thuggish terms, things the "Ode to Joy" describes. After getting "feuertrunken" off the drug-laced beverages at the Korova bar, he and his gang enter a kind of "Heiligtum" ("shrine") --- the theater which, though wrecked and decaying, still has vestiges of the classically-styled decorations intended to mark it as a temple of culture. "Ein holdes Weib" ("precious lady") is also "errungen" (literally, "conquered") by Alex, and when he calls the bound and gagged husband of his victim "brother" he is echoing the refrain (with its cry of "Brüder") from Schiller's poem. See more