Music
The theme music for the opening and closing credits was written by John Williams, the composer behind the Star Wars theme music who was listed in the credits as "Johnny Williams."
The original pilot and much of season one reused Bernard Herrmann's eerie score from the 1951 classic "The Day the Earth Stood Still."
For season three, the opening theme was revised (again by Williams) to a more exciting and faster tempo score, accompanied by live action shots of the cast, featuring a pumped-up countdown from seven to one to launch each week's episode. Seasons 1 and 2 had animated figures "life-roped" together drifting "hopelessly lost in space" and set to a dizzy and comical score.
Much of the incidental music in the series was written by Williams (who scored four episodes) and other notable film and television composers including Alexander Courage (composer of the Star Trek theme) who contributed six scores to the series. His most recognizable ("Wild Adventure") included his key theme for "Lorelei" composed for organ, woodwinds, and harp – thus cementing this highly recognizable theme with Williams' own "Chariot" and main theme for the series.
A series of soundtrack CDs were released containing only background and incidental music from the original TV series.
Read more about this topic: Zachary Smith
Famous quotes containing the word music:
“If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves.... The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Brünnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall....”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“Nothing separates the generations more than music. By the time a child is eight or nine, he has developed a passion for his own music that is even stronger than his passions for procrastination and weird clothes.”
—Bill Cosby (b. 1937)