'Star Trek' Theme Music Composer Dies at 88

Alexander Courage, 88, a Hollywood composer, arranger and orchestrator who dashed off what he called a piece of "marvelous malarkey" that became one of the best-known television theme songs, the opening music for "Star Trek," died May 15 at the Sunrise assisted-living facility in Pacific Palisades, Calif., after strokes.

Mr. Courage had worked on nearly 100 films since the late 1940s, including many of MGM Studios' celebrated musicals: "The Band Wagon," "Funny Face," "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers," "Gigi," "My Fair Lady" and "Oklahoma!"

Most of the films were based on Broadway shows by top composers, so the music itself was not always new. But Mr. Courage helped make important decisions as the arranger about how to score the main and incidental music to match the mood of the on-screen action -- whether a soft-shoe tap for Fred Astaire or the rousing barnyard-dance sequence in "Seven Brides."

As orchestrator, he performed the intricately detailed task of translating the ideas of harmony, rhythm and tone into musical scores for the studio orchestra.

Jon Burlingame, a leading authority on film and television music history, called Mr. Courage "an extraordinary craftsman with a thorough knowledge of the orchestra, and that's what made him so valuable as arranger and orchestrator for musicals."

But it was on television that Mr. Courage left his biggest imprint. His fanfare-style introduction to "Star Trek" -- eight notes played by the brass section -- followed by the wordless melody with a prominent soprano voice won him enduring recognition from generations of "Trekkies" and even casual viewers of the science fiction show.

"Star Trek" originally aired on NBC from 1966 to 1969 and has been in perennial syndication.

He told an interviewer he never was a science fiction fan. "I think it's just marvelous malarkey," he said. "So you write some marvelous malarkey music that goes with it."

To write the "Star Trek" theme, Mr. Courage thought back to a pop song from his childhood that conjured images of going into the far distance. He came up with "Beyond the Blue Horizon," popularized by Jeanette MacDonald and featuring a fast, trainlike rhythm pulsating beneath the soaring melody.

Mr. Courage adapted the idea to the "Star Trek" job, which he completed in a week. His vision of the music included a soprano singer (Loulie Jean Norman), a flute, an organ and maybe a vibraphone. But he said the show's producer, Gene Roddenberry, wanted to accentuate the female voice.

When Roddenberry was done, he said, the music "sounded like a soprano solo."

Burlingame, author of "TV's Biggest Hits," said Roddenberry went further to annoy Mr. Courage by adding words to the instrumental theme. The lyrics begin: "Beyond the rim of the star-light/My love is wand'ring in star flight."