Posted on 11/30/2014 9:54:51 PM PST by CharlesOConnell
youtube.com/watch?v=KiETwztU3cA
Alexander Courage, Dolorous Theme, "The Waltons", Season 5, # 8 "The Wedding", Part 2 (November 4, 1976)
The Waltons marked a departure from Hollywood's deprecation of Southern culture, customary since the advent of movie sound.
Contrary to the Lil' Abner/Jubilation T. Cornpone approach, Alexander Courage's vastly underappreciated treatment of musical themes are of unknown, literal authenticity.
The approach in this piece seems a combination of Cecil Sharp and Frederick Delius.
Alexander Courage, an Emmy-winning Hollywood composer whose most famous work was the strange, soaring and instantly recognizable theme from “Star Trek,” died on May 15, 2008 in Pacific Palisades, Calif. He was 88 and until recently lived in Malibu.
Alexander M. Courage in the early 1980s.
His stepdaughter Renata Pompelli confirmed the death.
Familiarly known as Sandy, Mr. Courage wrote music for hundreds of television shows and films. But he was forever identified with the sweeping, ecstatically overwrought strains that opened “Star Trek,” first broadcast on NBC from 1966 to 1969.
The theme took on a life of its own. It was heard in all the “Star Trek” movies and several of the later television series. It cropped up on an episode of “The Simpsons” and in the films “Wayne’s World” and “Muppets From Space.” It was recorded by jazz musicians like Maynard Ferguson and by symphony orchestras.
The son of a Scottish father and a French-American mother, Alexander Mair Courage was born in Philadelphia on Dec. 10, 1919. In 1941 he earned a bachelor’s degree from the Eastman School of Music, where he studied composition, music theory and French horn. He also studied conducting with Serge Koussevitzky at Tanglewood. In World War II Mr. Courage served as a bandleader with the Army Air Corps.
After the war Mr. Courage joined CBS Radio, composing and conducting for shows like Hedda Hopper’s “This Is Hollywood” and “The Adventures of Sam Spade, Detective.” From 1948 to 1960, he was an orchestrator and arranger at MGM, where he worked on a string of well-known musicals, among them “The Band Wagon,” and “Gigi.” He also orchestrated and arranged music on the films “Guys and Dolls” and “Funny Face.”
In 1965 the writer and producer Gene Roddenberry asked Mr. Courage to create the theme music for a television pilot about a starship and its crew. According to published accounts, Mr. Roddenberry, wanting to avoid what he called “space music” — anything too avant-garde — told Mr. Courage not to use electronics.
Mr. Courage’s score opens with a bold fanfare for brass, followed by a lyrical theme for French horn. Over the music are the wordless strains of a high soprano and a whooshing sound (vocalized by Mr. Courage), which accompanies the starship Enterprise as it passes across the screen. The net effect is an exquisite combination of pomp and cheesiness, Valhalla and Vegas in equal measure.
Mr. Courage composed the background music for just four additional episodes of “Star Trek.” But he wrote music for hundreds of episodes of other shows, including “The Waltons,” “Eight Is Enough” and “Lost in Space.” He composed one other television theme, for “Judd for the Defense,” broadcast on ABC in the late 1960s.
With three colleagues, Mr. Courage won an Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in Music Direction for the 1987 ABC special “Julie Andrews: The Sound of Christmas.”
Mr. Courage’s first two marriages ended in divorce. His third wife, Shirley Pumpelly Courage, whom he married in 1980, died in 2005. Besides his stepdaughter Renata Pompelli, he is survived by three other stepchildren, Raphael Pumpelly, Andrea Steyn and Lisa Pompelli, all of Los Angeles; and six grandchildren.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: June 4, 2008
An obituary on Saturday about the film and television composer Alexander Courage, who wrote the “Star Trek” theme, misidentified the studios that produced two of the movies for which he orchestrated and arranged music. “Guys and Dolls” was a Samuel Goldwyn production distributed by MGM; it was not an MGM production. “Funny Face” was made by Paramount, not MGM.
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