By Alice Chalmers
monday, august 18, 2025 at 10:07:00 a.m. edt
A critic argues that the Victory at Sea music was primarily composed not by Rodgers, but by Bennett!
The wiki article is the tip of the iceberg about the Victory at Sea music.
The twelve Rodgers piano "themes" last an aggregate of twelve minutes, and Bennett arranges/transforms them to produce a couple hours of the score. But, more than nine hours of it is entirely his (Bennett's) composing.
In Hollywood, a fair bit of his "arranging" is sub-composing----here's a theme, expand it to fit this scene. You don't see his name on Rebecca, but he helped Waxman quite a bit (the climactic fire music is his); for the Jerome Kern Swing Time, the "Waltz in Swing Time" is solely Bennett's. And then there's all the concert music he somehow found time to write, including a first opera Maria Malibran, produced at Juilliard with a cast that included a young Risë Stevens. You'll want to read the new Victory at Sea book---and the Bennett biography.
N.S.: What year did the new Victory at Sea book come out?
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7 comments:
This must be it- unfortunately, the price is insane!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/357282868697?_skw=%22MUSIC+FOR+VICTORY+AT+SEA%22&epid=20058376833&itmmeta=01K308N6NDX4SC6TRG88ZCW2TR&hash=item532fb7edd9:g:8qIAAOSwxa1j8cW2&itmprp=enc%3AAQAKAAAA4FkggFvd1GGDu0w3yXCmi1fZbFea22e6Xf2yjt%2FbCw44%2FX%2BKPG4imYNF72yVqam1avIfu6wq%2BzSuxgLIDf1DZm0OtT6Cmd6B7kYQU8mLAOeZ13wlL6jfUkVUzTPErcTgSUYkxJqHgmziXjt36sc10AViEKeekMH3u9QT54JfIxCa8oqjFIvV2p%2FwyL2Wu5RW4KQIkOJ80n6mCxwlp90YdYW0TEmxeEOVrsBBfBJPzQFyuqi%2Bfk%2BVYWStm19xzMQ5KBWIGAaGPcvC7FbdDxIGciypsDo2c93NIGuCmb2mge9B%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR-bq1IiYZg
-RM
Here's the Bennett biog:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/277331866932?_skw=%22ROBERT+RUSSELL+BENNETT%22&itmmeta=01K308ZVDQRBGVC73G0YFK0S9E&hash=item4092447534:g:TbgAAeSwCmxn5yIK&itmprp=enc%3AAQAKAAAA0FkggFvd1GGDu0w3yXCmi1cY1sBjOTdNYudrnE5zEn0fYvpeorbqtMDBCXX%2FQ4xcBwq5I3mitRspZtLGBgg77aFfIYdwlD8qCtwOGL9qdE3RlaOGttOPvCXldAJASdpXTWIwCtYAX4GDljbvDXON3fen3aoCuAyDFOuLqDycT7o7Blknme%2B3PgkaoomKDCocwVN3vXZH3lPZKMwcM9Gi6WJvFzb4Pgd%2FXenII7I5N5tGSSEF4qSKy4QbvKOKw0g%2BBff%2BQI99WYc8pZPZkq%2BCdCE%3D%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR_i2_4iYZg
-RM
I feel a little silly jumping in here, but Alice Chalmers isn't arguing--they are simply stating established facts. Richard Rodgers's Victory-At-Sea manuscripts have been at the Library of Congress since the 1950s, and microfilms of R. R. Bennett's Victory-At-Sea full orchestra scores have been viewable there for nearly fifty years. A minute of Googling will lead you to my 2023 Victory-At-Sea book, where you get to see all twelve Rodgers themes, and then get a walk-through of each of the 26 episodes, showing you exactly when you're hearing a transformed Rodgers theme (which IS a couple hours' worth, all told) and when you're hearing entirely original Bennett orchestra composing (which DOES amount to more than nine hours). The hardback of the book isn't cheap--academic presses can't pay their bills that way--but the E-book is not too bad, and you'll get both the detailed look at V-A-S's musical collaboration and the whole history of how NBC-TV came to do the series. There's no way for me to post images here, or I'd happily show you--and all your followers--some of the Richard Rodgers themes. Fortunately, LOC has the "Guadalcanal March" manuscript online, and you can see what RRB turned into a rousing five minutes of orchestra music. (I hope this is all useful and informative to you---thanks for your interest in all this here in 2025!) https://www.loc.gov/resource/ihas.100010507.0/?sp=1
All those white people stole it all from Black writers! So was all the Shakespeare stuff which was written in the shadow of Stonehenge shortly when Black people were building it. Dwayne Eduh's family is hiding a Fast and Furious screenplay he completed just before he died 'cause they not sure about Vin Diesel.
My father was a Marine in WW2 and got me interested in the series and its music at a young age. We audio-taped much of it from the TV, and I was listening to this stuff when other kids were listening to rock music (maybe that's where I went wrong!). I still have the tapes, and can testify that the audio was definitely re-mixed in recent times- the volume levels of music and narration were originally equal.
Your post is much appreciated. For all its faults, VICTORY AT SEA is still an amazing series.
-RM
All will be revised in due time,HWL.
--GRA
That's no joke- beware of "remastered" recordings of rock and pop music, they're often remixed placing the percussion up front and louder than it originally was. Music was NEVER mixed with drums in the forefront, nor booming bass, even in the disco era. When the fad of people driving around blasting music began in the late 70s, you would hear the actual MUSIC of the song going by, not thundering bass (and that was bad enough- "Ring My Bell" wafting past at 3 AM was a recurring nightmare!). The insane mega-bass craze seems to have taken root in the 90s, probably because of rap- which, having NO music at all, replaces the void with that terrible noise. I remember passing one of those damn open-to-the-street bars in NYC, and Sinatra was playing on the jukebox- with the bass turned up to 11!
Hold on to your vinyl records (or cassettes, or 8-tracks, 78s, Edison cylinders, whatever!).
-RM
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