Victory at Sea - Music

Music

Salomon also signed Richard Rodgers, fresh off several successful Broadway musicals, to compose the musical score. Rodgers contributed 12 "themes"- short piano compositions a minute or two in length; these may be examined in the Rodgers Collection at the Library of Congress. Robert Russell Bennett did the scoring, transforming Rodgers's themes for a variety of moods, and composing much more original material than Rodgers, as may be observed in Bennett's holograph scores, archived with Bennett's papers at Northwestern University and microfilmed at the Library of Congress. Episode No. 18, for example, is entirely of Bennett's creation, and uses none of Rodgers's twelve themes. Bennett nonetheless received credit only for arranging the score and conducting NBC Symphony Orchestra members on the soundtrack recording sessions, and many writers still refer erroneously to "Rodgers's thirteen-hour score". In 1954 Rodgers recorded the VAS "Symphonic Scenario" medley (scored by Bennett) with the New York Philharmonic for Columbia Records, but it was Bennett who made the more familiar RCA Victor recordings—the first (1953) with NBC Symphony Orchestra musicians who played for the soundtrack sessions, and later with members of the Symphony of the Air, an orchestra created in the autumn of 1954 from former NBC Symphony members, identified on the albums as the RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra.

RCA issued the Rodgers-Bennett musical score in four different album versions, released on LP and CD. The listing below is based on the 1992 remastered recordings from RCA called Victory at Sea (13 tracks) and More Victory at Sea (11 tracks). Selections from More Victory at Sea are marked by an asterisk (*). Note that the More Victory at Sea album also includes "Special Effect Battle Sounds" as part of many of the tracks.

The movements and approximate timings in the RCA Victor Symphony performance are as follows:

1. The Song of the High Seas - 5:02
2. The Pacific Boils Over - 5:43
3. Fire on the Waters - 5:58
4. Guadalcanal March - 3:07
5. Pelelieu* - 3:37
6. Theme of the Fast Carriers - 6:44
7. Hard Work and Horseplay - 3:46
8. Mare Nostrum - 4:29
9. Beneath the Southern Cross - 4:04
10. Mediterranean Mosaic - 5:52
11. Allies on the March* - 5:15
12. D-Day - 5:55
13. The Sound of Victory* - 6:12
14. Victory at Sea - 6:14
15. Voyage Into Fate* - 6:20
16. Rings Around Rabaul* - 6:06
17. Full Fathom Five* - 7:08
18. The Turkey Shoot* - 5:18
19. Ships That Pass* - 4:53
20. Two If By Sea* - 6:27
21. The Turning Point* - 5:24
22. Symphonic Scenario* - 10:34
23. Danger Down Deep - 4:53
24. The Magnetic North - 5:45

The score was a favorite of US President Richard Nixon, and part was played at his funeral.

Rodgers's "Beneath the Southern Cross" theme was given words by Oscar Hammerstein, titled "No Other Love," and put into their 1953 musical, Me and Juliet. The May 1953 recording by RCA Victor recording artist Perry Como became a "Number One" hit on the pop charts later that year.

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