Scoring Star Trek Part 16 - Fred Steiner: Ep 50 - By Any Other Name
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- Опубліковано 23 лют 2024
- With great consistency the late Fred Steiner provided nothing less than outstanding scores for original Star Trek, catching "the inner spirit" of the series, to quote producer Bob Justman.
"Pesante", "Funebre", "Agitato" - Musical expression markings I hadn't seen before looking into this music that was composed, performed, and recorded the "old school" way - pen and manuscript, real musicians, analog tape.
We explore Steiner's final season two effort - a partial score for episode 50 "By Any Other Name" which gave us so much memorable music for the latter half of the season.
Incredible that these composers only had 7-10 days to score each episode, get them transcribed, recorded and edited...and yet this music MAKES these episodes...what talent...and thank you for deconstructing it for us! I play trombone but love all instruments...!
Thanks for that! Have you seen my video on Fielding and "The Trouble With Tribbles"? As a trombonist, you may find that very interesting!
@@davidpage9355 Just watched it...I would have NEVER thought that the tribble's theme was sped-up muted bones...! The ingenuity is phenomenal! And to think that most of these composers thought that their imagination, creativity and industry (under incredible time constraints) was likely to be "throw-away" music that would last an episode and then be instantly forgotten is an irony intensified by your dogged dedication to reconstructing and appreciating it is awesome...!
Fascinating.
This is one of the best UA-cam videos I have seen in a very long time. Thank you!
Wow, thanks!
Amazing.
Thank you so much David for your work and all the effort and love you put in these videos. Looking forward to season three. Greetings from Germany.
Your work and your channel is just amazing. The original series had such fantastic music and I greatly appreciate you bringing attention to it.
It is amazing the quality and level of professionalism expended on making the original TV series... especially with the financial constraints they had at the time.... there was tremendous amounts of creativity throughout... something rarely seen today ....Thank you for your efforts doing this series... your channel needs to be made more widely known to Star Trek TOS fans... so they have a deeper understanding of this treasure....and the work that went into making it.
The layering that Steiner employes is so wondrous in its execution. Subtle variations in his score and the emotions they invoke are amazing.
I have been a Fan since the original series was on TV. I was around 12 years old when I was able to see the show in syndication. Lately I am discovering the reasons why TOS is the best. This show as made me conscious of how important the music is for the success of the story telling in TOS. Also, I was recently watching a UA-cam reaction video by two 20 somethings. They noticed the effective dramatic lighting of the set. To them it was reminiscent of Film Noir. They also thought the music and lighting gave the show a horror feel. Well Yeah! Space even without aliens should be terrifying to the average person. Close encounters should be on a whole other level.
So much expertise. So much that we take for granted. So much respect for these artists AND FOR YOUR EXPLANATION! Thank you, and best regards from Canada. Cheers.
Hey, thanks for watching up north!
Thank you for your channel! The music in TOS lives and breathes and throws out tremulous tentacles with correlated limbs and a pulsing brain, even today!
Post production back then was a nightmare! I learned how to splice tape when I was a kid. I couldn't imagine having a project that big!
LoL - I've spliced a bit or two of tape in my lifetime.. pretty much guesswork.
Another great analysis. Thanks! 🙂
As a composition music geek and avid Star Trek fan, this was fantastic. New subscriber here. How fun! The TOS music is so memorable and stuck in my psyche for sure. Another interesting aspect of this, is thinking about television production scoring from the late 60's - 70's, where a lot of the same orchestrations/voicings can be heard in other shows. I think that's fascinating in terms of Hollywood as an industry. For instance, low ominous bass clarinet queues used often to convey similar feelings, etc. between different shows.
You are to explaining Star Trek music the way Leonard Bernstein is to explaining classical.
I was upbeat coming into this one, thinking of the SNL skit of Shatner at a Star Trek convention:
"First, we have the lovely actress Julie Cobb. Now you all remember her as Yeoman Leslie Thompson from the first ten minutes of Episode 51, "Errand of Mercy" [sic]... in which she was transformed into a cube... and crushed!"
But I got sad hearing the music leading to her character's death. It's one of my favorite episodes because of the throwbacks to previous episodes, and despite their experience, they get taken over very quickly and easily. The last time I posted comments about this episode, people were outraged that Kirk didn't punish Rojan and his crew for the murder of Yeoman Thompson. I responded that revenge isn't the way for people in Starfleet or the Federation in the 23rd century. I guess we'd use the term realpolitik: Kirk got the best deal he thought he could and honored the agreement.
Funny how a video about little snippets of music from this episode can turn into one of your longest ones!
Great comments. And this one IS my longest! Almost forty minutes on 12 and a half minutes' of music. Sheesh.
I lost it when you played “Oh Yeah” - my laugh woke the cats! :-D
Seriously, though, your scholarship adds so much to our appreciation of the artistry that went into every aspect of the series. Watching the show you experience all the elements together, but it’s great to “peel back the layers” and see how they were created and how (and why!) they work together. Thank you once again for a great lesson!
Apologies to your cats! 😄
@@davidpage9355 I think they’re used to it by now … LOL
It's such a trope of Kirk kissing women, aliens posing as women, and android women, but I think there's only 20 episodes involving him kissing, not even a third of 79.
One of my absolute favorite Trek scores. Thank you.
Fascinating as ever. Nice on having the original manuscript too! I've STILL not taken volume 3 of the soundtrack out of the cellophane! I keep setting aside days for it but the universe always seems to have other plans!
I know the feeling about themes being designed for other instruments and not being so readily playable on piano instruments - I think I said as much when I did my one-man-band version of "Back In The USSR"!
Yeoman Thompson as the only female redshirt casualty in the show is all the more shocking because there's an actual security guard standing right next to her, and when Rojan crushes one, we automatically expect it to be the security guard - after all it's always the security guard that cops it, isn't it? Female yeoman v security guard, should be no contest, but this episode surprises us! What's more, when they play about with the two blocks, they get them exactly right. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to get wrong but if you follow the blocks, you'll see it was indeed the yeoman's block that got crushed.
I remember you talking about dissonance on Gerald Fried's music for "Shore Leave" and "Amok Time", although my first thought when you mentioned it here was Bernard Herrmann's famous theme from "Psycho"!
The bit when Kirk seduces Kelinda, I probably didn't realise was new, I think I always just figured it was the Andrea music tracked. Also, when the Kelvans take over the ship, Steiner definitely used his earlier theme from "The Corbomite Maneuver" as a backdrop for the new theme! Then again, as you observed, all his scores from season 2 (apart from "The Omega Glory" obviously) adapted his themes from the first season to some small degree (and I'm sure there will be more equivalent echoes in season 3) - it's what made Steiner's music so identifiable with the show, and why he's the main composer of incidental music. And what makes this episode's score sound so "surprisingly normal" for music composed so late in the season's run. Then again I suppose it should sound normal for the show in general, it's Fred Steiner! Even his uncredited bits on "The Omega Glory" and "The City On The Edge Of Forever" sound relatively normal, even though they're adapting existing songs into the world of Star Trek music!
- Liam.
Rojan said he was going to kill them both. I wonder how many people thought they were both dead when they were turned into blocks?
Thank you!
A pleasure!
Steiner did some of my favorite cues
Thank you for doing this David! At some point - as a bonus episode - you should do Fred Steiner's one STNG episode - Code of Honor.
That's a great idea. I knew he had done one, but was kind-of frustrated with how it went, some misunderstanding with Roddenberry, that sort of thing. That could also make it interesting. Thanks for the suggestion. 🖖
Well, I've kinda hated this episode just because I always found the music to be so dang repetitive! Thanks for bringing a new appreciation to it! Very nice!
Your video work is consistently improving! While most of the added touches worked, sometimes it was a little over the top -- such as the communicator chirp when coming back to your talking-head, or sometimes the background bridge ambiance not being background enough. Or the couple of times the music overplayed your voice. But all in all, real improvement and qualtiy producing! Thanks for all your work!
Appreciate the comments as always. I kind of dragged this across the finish line. Started in early December, and it's my longest by far. Just wanted to get it done finally, so may have cut some corners.
I’m greatly looking forward to your analysis of George Duning’s indelible score to “The Empath”. This one and his score to “Metamorphosis” are enchanting and phenomenally enduring. I really enjoyed this segment on Steiner’s score to “By Any Other Name”. My all time favorite score of his is the one he composed for “Charlie X”-I hope you will one day soon go back to S1 and provide commentary for this seminal score to the series.
Amazing - in the car this very evening I said to my wife I ought to go back to S1 and have a look at "Charlie X". Do you believe that?? 🤔
@@davidpage9355 Great to know! My all time favorite cue for the series occurs in “Charlie X”. It’s in the scene where a curious Charlie Evans witnesses crewmen going about their work maintaining the ship’s operation as he becomes initiated to a starship’s environment.
This somewhat dreamy cue later becomes repurposed as shore party “transiting” music and is heard in “Shore Leave”, “This Side of Paradise”, and lastly in “Operation: Annihilate!”.
Thanks very much for this series on the music of Star Trek TOS. One topic that I hope you have enough information to explain at some point is how the composers were able to quote themes from other composers. Did a TV series typically have a music library with all of the music composed for the series that other composers could check out? Could composers ask for tapes from episodes or the library or were they all so good that they could remember a theme that they heard on TV and just go from there? Thanks and keep up the good work.
That's a good question from our time when we can get any theme at a touch of a button.
In the example in this video, of Steiner quoting Courage's 4-note "Beyond The Pale" motif, I wouldn't know precisely how he learned that theme but he and Courage certainly knew each other (Steiner basically took over for Courage) and there very well may have been some friendly collaboration behind the scenes.
I'm aware of only a couple of instances in which one composer would adapt another's work. Most frequently, it was the Courage Enterprise "fly-by" fanfare that each composer added his own spin to. Example - the first episode scored by Sol Kaplan "The Enemy Within" is the first to have the high piccolo arpeggio down and up at the downbeat, and it went on to be arguably one of the most used fanfares, although there were many other great ones.
And in "Return To Tomorrow" the Henock character (occupying Spock's body) got Duning's twist on Steiner's "Black Ship" Theme from Mirror, Mirror .. which ultimately goes back to S1 "Balance Of Terror" when we first encounter the Romulans. A fine example of the "team attitude" present in production of the show.
Hope that answered your question!
Love your channel! Could you please do a video on the music from Requiem for Methuselah
Particular interest is the scene with Kirk and Rayna in the lab - she states "I come here when I'm troubled"
For sure will check it out, but I know that there was no music written specifically for that episode, with the exception of the "Pseudo Brahms" waltz ("played" by Spock) which was composed by Ivan Ditmers, a regular pianist/keyboardist for these recordings. I presume the remaining music was tracked from other episodes or made up of stock library cues. If I can identify the cue in that particular scene I'll look into making a "Killer Cue" reel that compares the original and the tracked for "Requiem..."
It's only just hit me why I thought some of that music was more like sound effects. I defy anyone to listen to that xylophone piece and and not picture Elizabeth Montgomery's nose twitching!
😄
Great Video. Good ears. Where did you find Dr Steiner's manuscript? "Misterioso" is a valid music direction. It's Italian for the English "Mysterioso."
Oh, duh. Never occurred to me it was Italian. My bad, appreciate the clarification! I really can't reveal the source, other than someone who was willing to help me get going. It's great when people go the extra mile when they don't have to... but for the love of the music. Thanks for watching.
Fascinating and fun, as always. Thank you!
I wonder, do you know to what extent (if any) Fred Steiner would have been involved in choosing what library cues were tracked in this episode? Were the composers who created partial scores involved in those choices, or even aware of them?
The music editor was in charge of adding the cues from their extensive library. I don't know for sure, but do not believe the composers were involved aside from, as mentioned in the video, a specific request for ease of later usage... that kind of thing.
These partial scores give away something - the cue number listings are not sequential. For example, M12-M14 usually falls at or near the beginning, but the next "new" score cue may be M21 or M24, so the M cues in between must be library cues that were already set by the producer (typically Justman) and music editor.
I admit I'm more or less piecing some of this together just from what can be seen, so maybe someone who actually works in this business will come along later and help us all better understand!
@@davidpage9355 Thanks for explaining. Wow, I hope they at least let the composer hear what library cues had already been inserted so they could better "fill the gaps"...as they always so brilliantly did. Thank you, as always, for your exploration of these familiar old worlds.
What a great subject! For my Beyond Antares I boughtnall the (physical) TOS Sountrack CD's i couldmfind, and used what works to my ear (like when Spock is taken by the Alien into the Antares Maelstrom, when Kirk, Sulu and Chekov transport into the Rift and finally find Spock, I play Spocks Theme with the Bassy 🎶 dun dun dun DUN duuu and such! ... BUT I never knew very much, and who made it, who did what, who c9mposed, where? Who recorded,.. The PROCESS.... Such an undeveloped Niche,. I h9pemyou do an Episode 'About the score...', for each TOS episode, I willnwatch them and have Subscribed.
(That said, the constant Bridge Noise play8ng in the background bore into my head like a Drill,... During the show it is informative, appropriate, it is a Cue. It has relevance... Under you talking the process of scoring (and then DURING THE MUSIC AS WELL! :O felt so wrong... Like a Chinese Water Torture with the high pitch chirp. I found it so distracting, I had to stop watching before the 9 minute mark...)
But I will still subscribbe and even try to watch it again leter perhaps after a drinky poo... and not on 3 cups of coffee! Just my opinion (or my ADD or Brain or or or ? Who knows,..) I do appreciate the effort. I will even let the video play through (with the sound down) to help you with the algorithm (in addition to leaving a comment), but it just was too... distracting and for menat least did not add anything. And of course I also Subscribed, so hopefullt that shows you I am not just being a negative Nancy (Nathaniel?)
All good, friend. Thanks for watching.