Theme From Star Trek - History

History

The music was played over both the opening and closing credits of the original series. The opening credits begin with the now-famous "Space: the final frontier" monologue recited by series star William Shatner, accompanied by an opening fanfare. The main theme begins, punctuated at several points by the Enterprise flying toward and past the camera with a "whoosh" sound for dramatic effect, created vocally by Courage himself. A slightly longer version of the theme, minus the fanfare, was played over the closing credits, which were overlaid on a series of stills from various episodes.

Courage has said his inspiration for the main part of the theme was the Richard Whiting song Beyond the Blue Horizon giving him the idea for a song which was a "long thing that...keeps going out into space...over a fast moving accompaniment." The opening resembles two elements of symphonies by Gustav Mahler; the very beginning echoes the first notes of Mahler's First Symphony, while the first three notes of the leitmotif fanfare, as well as some of the harmonic structure and orchestration that Courage used, are similar to phrases in the first movement of his Seventh Symphony. The melodic and rhythmic outline of the opening horn solo is clearly derived from motto themes found in the openings of the symphonies of Anton Bruckner (most especially that of the horn section solo in the opening of the Ninth) while the duplet-triplet pattern of the melody is found in Bruckner's Third, Fourth, Sixth and Eighth Symphonies. The harmonic progression is from the song "Out Of Nowhere," a jazz song written by Edward Heyman and Johnny Green.

The unaired pilot "The Cage" used a wordless rendition of the melody line, sung by soprano Loulie Jean Norman with flute and organ, over an orchestral arrangement. When originally written (and as heard in "The Cage"), Courage had Norman's vocalizations and the various instruments mixed equally to produce what Courage described as a unique "'what is that that I'm hearing?' sound." According to Courage, however, Gene Roddenberry had the mix changed to bring up the female vocal, after which Courage felt the theme sounded like a soprano solo. Finally, for the third season it was remixed again, this time emphasizing the organ.

Producer Herbert Solow recalled that Norman had been hired under a Screen Actors Guild agreement and would receive rerun fees for her part in the theme. For the second season onwards, her vocalization was dropped from the theme. Solow regretted the choice and composer Courage was not informed until twenty-seven years later.

The second unaired pilot episode used an entirely different theme, (Star Trek was the first series in television history where a network, NBC in this case, requested and paid for a second pilot episode) although this too was also composed by Alexander Courage. Re-edited for time and then aired, the second pilot episode returned to the original theme and in only the first several episodes, sans all vocals, was a concerto-like solo of an electric violin playing the melodic line. Also the very well known overdubbing by William Shatner was not present in only this aired second pilot, it was music only for "Where No Man Has Gone Before."

In 2006, CBS began syndicating a "remastered" version of the series with numerous changes, including a re-recording of the theme music, which was used for all episodes of the series. Elin Carlson, a professional singer and lifetime Star Trek fan, re-recorded Norman's vocalization.

Over time, the show's theme music has become immediately recognizable, even by many people who have never seen the program. Portions of the original theme have been used in subsequent Star Trek series' and motion pictures. Jerry Goldsmith quoted the theme in 1979's Star Trek: The Motion Picture, where it softly accompanies the "captain's log" scenes. Dennis McCarthy reused the original theme's fanfare when he reworked Goldsmith's main theme for use as Star Trek: The Next Generation's theme music, where the fanfare precedes Goldsmith's theme. Most of the subsequent Star Trek motion pictures's main title music starts with the fanfare before seguéing into music composed specially for the given film. 2009's Star Trek breaks with this tradition; instead, composer Michael Giacchino uses the opening notes sparingly in the movie, but features an arrangement of the theme in the film's end credits. All the Star Trek feature films to date use the fanfare at some point within the film.