Legendary composer Alexander Courage has passed away at the age of 88. Courage will always be remembered as the composer of the now iconic theme for the original "Star Trek".
Courage's eight-note brass signature for the Enterprise may be the single best-known fanfare in the world. When told that more people know it than know Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, Courage – in his typically self-deprecating fashion – said that must surely be an exaggeration.
Courage's fanfare for the Starship Enterprise, written in 1965 for the first of two Star Trek pilots, was heard throughout the three original seasons of the show and has been reprised in all of the Trek feature films and several of the TV series, especially Star Trek: The Next Generation in the 1980s and '90s.
Courage’s credits range from musicals like "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers", "Singin’ in the Rain", "Oklahoma!" and "Guys and Dolls" (all of which he wrote arrangements for) to episodes of "Lost in Space" and "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea", and the score to "Superman IV: The Quest For Peace".He also scored a handful of films in the late 1950s, including "Arthur Penn's The Left-Handed Gun" and such drive-in fare as "Shake, Rattle and Rock" and "Hot Rod Rumble". But television became Courage's primary outlet for composition, including various episodes of M Squad, Wagon Train and "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour" at Universal, "National Velvet" at MGM and "The Untouchables" at Desilu.
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