"Star Trek" theme composer Alexander Courage dies
4 hours ago
LOS ANGELES — Alexander "Sandy" Courage, an Emmy-winning and Academy
Award-nominated arranger, orchestrator and composer who created the
otherworldly theme for the classic "Star Trek" TV show, has died. He
was 88.

Courage died May 15 at the Sunrise assisted-living facility in
Pacific Palisades, his stepdaughter Renata Pompelli of Los Angeles,
said Thursday. He had been in poor health for three years.

Over a decades-long career, Courage collaborated on dozens of movies
and orchestrated some of the greatest musicals of the 1950s and
1960s, including "My Fair Lady," "Hello, Dolly!" "Seven Brides for
Seven Brothers," "Gigi," "Porgy and Bess" and "Fiddler on the Roof."

But his most famous work is undoubtedly the "Star Trek" theme, which
he composed, arranged and conducted in a week in 1965.

"I have to confess to the world that I am not a science fiction fan,"
Courage said in an interview for the Academy of Television Arts &
Sciences Foundation's Archive of American Television in 2000. "Never
have been. I think it's just marvelous malarkey. ... So you write
some, you hope, marvelous malarkey music that goes with it."

Courage said the tune, with its ringing fanfare, eerie soprano part
and swooping orchestration, was inspired by an arrangement of the
song "Beyond the Blue Horizon" he heard as a youngster.

"Little did I know when I wrote that first A-flat for the flute that
it was going to go down in history, somehow," Courage said. "It's a
very strange feeling."

Courage said he also mouthed the "whooshing" sound heard as the
starship Enterprise zooms through the opening credits of the TV show.

"Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry later wrote lyrics to the tune,
which were never sung on the show but entitled him to half the
royalties, Courage said.

Among the many other projects Courage worked on was the 1987 TV
special "Julie Andrews: The Sound of Christmas," for which he won an
Emmy for musical direction.

He and Lionel Newman shared Academy Award nominations for their
adapted scores for 1964's "The Pleasure Seekers" and 1967's "Doctor
Dolittle."

A friend and colleague of movie composers John Williams and Jerry
Goldsmith, he also provided the orchestration for such movies as "The
Poseidon Adventure," "Jurassic Park," "Basic Instinct" and "The
Mummy" and supplied arrangements for the Boston Pops while Williams
was conductor in the 1980s and early 1990s.

For "Star Trek" he composed music for only a few episodes, in
addition to the theme and the music for the pilot. But that theme was
reprised in the TV sequel "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and in
the "Star Trek" movies.

Courage was born Dec. 10, 1919, in Philadelphia and raised in New
Jersey. After graduation from the Eastman School of Music in
Rochester, N.Y., in 1941, Courage enlisted in the Army Air Corps.

After the war, he became a composer for CBS radio shows and then
became an orchestrator and arranger at MGM.

Beginning in the 1960s he composed music for TV shows, including "The
Waltons," "Lost in Space" and "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea,"
although the only themes he created were for "Star Trek" and "Judd
For the Defense."

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