Kind of interesting - they had hired a composer to do a score instead of using classics, and classical music was originally used only as a placeholder, but Kubrick decided to forego the original soundtrack.

If you have Amazon Prime you can listen to it for free (not counting the cost of Prime itself....):

https://smile.amazon.com/Music-2001...-----&vehicleName=2001+Honda+Odyssey

Elf

I for one simply cannot imagine "2001" without the classical music score. And it's not as if György Ligeti's choir music wasn't "contemporary" and still remains somewhat futuristic (or at least timeless). In conclusion, I'm with Kubrick here. It was the right choice to keep the "Ersatz score". The other music isn't entirely bad, but at the same time somewhat painful to listen to in its attempt to imitate the Zarathustra theme without plagiarizing it. It's probably highly unfair to say it, but my (highly subjective) impression was:

"Meh."

I’m speaking with the benefit of hindsight of course but Kubrick absolutely made the right decision concerning the score. Then again, Kubrick almost always made the right creative decision concerning his movies.

On a related note, Tony Banks (of Genesis fame) wrote a score for the sequel “2010” but for whatever creative reason it was dropped and replaced with a score by David Shire.

Here is some interesting info on the collaboration between Tony Banks and the director of "2010" Peter Hyams,

http://2010odysseyarchive.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-music-that-might-have-been.html