Steve Schwartz:
>>Marius Constant. The theme was, I think, for Twilight Zone (or was that
>>Bernie Herrmann?).
Roger Hecht:
>Twilight Zone was Herrmann, I'm pretty sure.
Here's the actual story, from
http://www.classicthemes.com/50sTVThemes/themePages/twilightZone.html:
In 1960, CBS Music Director Lud Gluskin was asked to find a
new Main Title/End Credits THEME for the second season of the
series, to replace the original THEME written by veteran
radio/TV/film composer Bernard Herrmann. The problem was
thought to be that the Herrmann theme was considered "too
down" according to music supervisor Don B. Ray, quoted in the
book "TV's Biggest Hits" by Jon Burlingame. However new visuals
had been created, with some bizzare [sic] items floating
around in the style of a Salvador Dali abstract painting, so
that required a new scoring approach...if for no other reason;
So several new THEMEs were commissioned and recorded for CBS
including two new THEMEs submitted by Bernard Herrmann, one
by Jerry Goldsmith, another by Leith Stevens, and a few other
composers familiar to CBS; but none of these was deemed
suitable...(they were eventually incorporated into the CBS
Cue Library and used to score episodes of "Twilight Zone" and
other shows...)
Finally in desperation, Lud Gluskin tried splicing together
two short cues written by a French Avant-Garde classical
composer Marius Constant -- who had composed them for CBS to
use as backgrounds for episodes of "The Twilight Zone", and
then recycled in the network cue library. CBS had a policy
in those days to have music composed and recorded overseas
to skirt US Musician Union re-use fees which were 100% of the
original session fee for any subsequent re-use. This policy
was intended to keep producers from using recordings over and
over, but it had the opposite effect -- inspiring producers
and networks to find alternatives and music packagers who
recorded outside the U.S. so they could use "track" (re-cycle)
cues...
Such commissioned cues were available to be shared by any CBS
series which needed them. The internal title for this cue
library was the "CBS Foreign Library".
The cues which Gluskin spliced together were originally named
"Etrange 3 (Strange No. 3)" and "Milieu 2 (Middle No. 2)".
They were so fragmentary and unusual that they had not been
used much. These were two of the six short dramatic cues
Constant wrote and recorded with a small ensemble featuring
a two guitars, percussion including bongo drums, a saxophone
and French horns.
They had never been designed to be a Main Title or End Credits
THEME. Spliced together by Gluskin, their unique qualities
appealed to Serling, who was looking for something different.
So TV history was changed when they became the new "Twilight
Zone" THEME from the 2nd season on...and now the most recognized
by the atonal guitar motif which opens "Etrange 3."
In 1982 correspondence with composer Constant, he explained
that in 1959 he composed six cues at the request of Lud Gluskin
"for a few hundred dollars"; He knew they were intended for
their first use on a new show described by CBS as "strange,
incredible, bizarre, fantastic"; Composer Constant went on
to say it wasn't until much later that he learned that two
of his cues had been spliced together to become its Main Title
and End Credits THEME for this U.S. Television series;
Hopefully his ASCAP performance royalties as well as any
mechanical royalties from future recordings helped soothe his
astonishment.
- seb
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