Star Trek music

Discussion in 'Star Trek - The Original & Animated Series' started by Valenti, Feb 25, 2018.

  1. Valenti

    Valenti Captain Captain

    Joined:
    Dec 26, 2017
    Location:
    NY
    As anyone knows Star Trek had some of the most iconic music in all of television ever. Does the UCLA archives have the original manuscripts from all the composers? And if not, Why not? It should be available to the general public to transcribe or whatever as it is a remarkable testament to Trek's true genius and should be studied by future Trek composers.
     
    Admiral Archer likes this.
  2. feek61

    feek61 Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

    Joined:
    Nov 25, 2011
    Location:
    In the Sunshine!
    No, sadly that information is not in the UCLA archive.
     
  3. GNDN18

    GNDN18 270 Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Mar 21, 2013
    Location:
    GNDN18
    Spocko, ZapBrannigan and Ronald Held like this.
  4. Valenti

    Valenti Captain Captain

    Joined:
    Dec 26, 2017
    Location:
    NY
    I read that Alexander Courage sent a box of his Star Trek music to some composer from new voyages/next phase. That should be for everyone to study, not just him.
     
  5. Harvey

    Harvey Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Oct 8, 2005
    The vast majority of the Star Trek collections at UCLA were donated by Gene Roddenberry and Bob Justman - the music sketches are not part of those collections because those two men didn't have them in their personal papers.
     
    ZapBrannigan likes this.
  6. gottacook

    gottacook Captain Captain

    Joined:
    Apr 27, 2005
    Location:
    Maryland
    In 1980 when I was a music composition undergrad, I wrote a fan letter to George Duning, and he replied saying all his Star Trek materials were at the USC library. When I next visited LA in July 1985, I spent a day there studying the collection and taking notes. It's been a while, but I assume these materials (cue sheets, script development memos, etc.) are still at USC.
     
    TREK_GOD_1, ZapBrannigan and GNDN18 like this.
  7. Valenti

    Valenti Captain Captain

    Joined:
    Dec 26, 2017
    Location:
    NY
    Bizzarely great music on par with Prokofiev and Bartok in my opinion never before seen since or previously.
     
  8. Maurice

    Maurice Snagglepussed Admiral

    Joined:
    Oct 17, 2005
    Location:
    Real Gone
    I think Star Trek had a lot of memorable music but these same composers wrote for a lot of other shows and didn't phone it in there. The Trek music is iconic because Trek is iconic, not necessarily because it's greater than its contemporaries. I mean, John Williams' stuff for Irwin Allen is pretty great.
     
  9. ZapBrannigan

    ZapBrannigan Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Jan 7, 2013
    Location:
    New York State
    Well, it's true that Williams' LIS music is timeless and masterful. But he was scoring some of the first and best episodes of the series. Compare Gerald Fried's music for LIS versus ST: there's no comparison. Same for Alexander Courage and Fred Steiner. Their ST music was magnificent, and their music for those later, crummy LIS stories was nondescript at best.

    The music for TOS was intrinsically great, and that happened because the composers wanted to serve the series as best they possibly could.
     
  10. Maurice

    Maurice Snagglepussed Admiral

    Joined:
    Oct 17, 2005
    Location:
    Real Gone
    Williams' Lost In Space was but one example. And, honestly, Gerald Fried already did his signature thing for The Man From U.N.C.L.E. episode "The My Friend, the Gorilla Affair", which aired a full nine months before "Amok Time" and which features some verrrrry familiar Amok-Timey music.
     
  11. feek61

    feek61 Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

    Joined:
    Nov 25, 2011
    Location:
    In the Sunshine!
    I do think the subject and themes of Star Trek did help to inspire the composers on Star Trek in comparison to maybe a Ben Casey episode.
     
    ZapBrannigan likes this.
  12. Valenti

    Valenti Captain Captain

    Joined:
    Dec 26, 2017
    Location:
    NY
    The music to LIS made me physically ill. It was like torture. I don't know why or what season but it was ugly to me.
     
  13. TREK_GOD_1

    TREK_GOD_1 Vice Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    May 24, 2006
    Location:
    Escaped from Delta Vega
    That's a new one.
     
  14. ZapBrannigan

    ZapBrannigan Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Jan 7, 2013
    Location:
    New York State
    Thanks to The Music of Star Trek by Jeff Bond, the La La Land box set liner notes, and some interviews in Starlog, we know the composers largely felt the same way. Gerald Fried and I think Fred Steiner said as much. Fried said that Star Trek was taken a lot more seriously by all the artists working on it, and they had long philosophical discussions and so forth.
     
    feek61 likes this.
  15. johnnybear

    johnnybear Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Sep 7, 2014
    The third season music for LIS was great along with the new credits! LOTG also had a great second season theme and credits compared to the first!
    JB