Music
The opening and closing credits theme during the first two seasons was called "Rise and Shine", a lively instrumental underscore accompanying Fred on his drive home from work. The tune resembled "The Bugs Bunny Overture (This Is It!)," the theme song of The Bugs Bunny Show, also airing on ABC at the time, and may have been the reason the theme was changed in the third season.
Starting in Season 3, Episode 3 ("Barney the Invisible"), the opening and closing credits theme was the familiar vocal, "Meet the Flintstones". The melody is derived from part of the 'B' section of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 17 Movement 2, composed in 1801/02. The "Meet the Flintstones" opening was later added to the first two seasons for syndication.
The musical underscores were credited to Hoyt Curtin for the show's first five seasons; Ted Nichols took over in 1965 for the final season.
During the show's final season, "Open Up Your Heart (And Let the Sunshine In)", performed by Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm, in a clip from that season's first episode, was used as alternate close music.
In 2010 a PRS for Music survey of 2,000 adults in the UK found that the "Meet the Flintstones" theme tune was the most recognised children's' TV theme, ahead of those for "Top Cat" and "Postman Pat".
Read more about this topic: The Flintstones
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“I used to be angry all the time and I’d sit there weaving my anger. Now I’m not angry. I sit there hearing the sounds outside, the sounds in the room, the sounds of the treadles and heddles—a music of my own making.”
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