Are there any tv shows where - for whatever reason - the incidental music caught your attention? Not talking about the shows’ theme songs (and their decline, look at Law & Order whose “theme” is nothing more than a couple of stylized gavel pounds), but rather the little stings or short themes that accompany scene transitions or poignant screen moments.
Examples that come to mind might include the slap bass riffs you heard frequently on Seinfeld, the “fight music” you’d hear on the original Star Trek series whenever Kirk tussled with Klingons, or maybe that little the-caper-is-in-motion theme you’d hear on Mission Impossible when someone was, say cracking a safe, doctoring identity papers, or putting on a disguise.
How about the background music for “How Its Made” segments - they are the length of the segment (less the short opening explanatory scene when the history and usage of the product(s) are discussed while showing models or samples of said product, in front of seemingly randomly selected green-screen backgrounds), synth-based tunes, some of which are actually rather catchy (my favorite was the near-rock style one first used for the Motor Cycle Engine segment). Tunes are occasionally recycled for other segments as the series progresses.
For some reason, I recall a comedian several decades ago who had among his routines the playing of music from Gilligan’s Island - not, as he stated, the theme song which everyone played, but the incidental themes such as the “sneaking around” theme or the “jaunty happy wrap-up” theme.
I’m not sure who here watches “Secrets and Lies”, but Damien Rice’s “It Takes A Lot to Know A Man” was used to great effect in the final scenes of the show on May 3.
I am about convinced that I rate “The Fever” episode of The Twilight Zone so highly because of it not only being the second TZ I ever saw, but also because of the honestly brilliant jazz music used in the scenes where does her best coin garbled voice Franklin(!) had his ‘greed dreams’ and later was pursued by the slot machine.
A perfect, PERFECT example of incidental music beautifully setting up an episode right out of the gate is the calliope music heard in the background at the very beginning of an Alfred Hitchcock Hour episode titled “The Jar”. I unfortunately couldn’t find the episode on YouTube (rats!!), so instead here’s what quite a few people swear the music sounds just like, “Dies Irae” alias the 5th movement of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique.
I always as a kid liked the background music for Gilligan’s Island. I found out years later it was an early gig for John Williams (yes that one) which made it clear why.
The Best of Both Words (the first Borg TNG cliff hanger) also had especially good background music for TV.
On the Andy Griffith Show, there’s the background music when Barney is playing the big lawman. All I could find offhand is a slow version of that music in a different setting, when Barney is knowingly putting himself at risk. - YouTube
Almost identical music is used in the Dick Van Dyke Show when Rob has to deal with law enforcement. That’s because Earle Hagen did the music for both shows. - YouTube
Here’s a link to the full Hitchcock episode, but the site seems a bit dodgy, so I’m spoilering the link and also breaking it. Use at your own risk.h ttp://www.tubeplus.is/player/1380475/The_Alfred_Hitchcock_Hour/season_2/episode_17/The_Jar/%22
All of ST: TOS’s music was brilliant. My favorite themes were the darker ones used in episodes like “The Doomsday Machine” and “The Ultimate Computer.” I also love the mechanical-sounding “Shuttlecraft Launch” theme.
Many noted composers worked on the show; sadly, I don’t hear anything comparable when I watch TNG or Voyager. A lot of it sounds synthesized to me, rather than orchestral.
Lalo Shifrin worked on Mission: Impossible almost right next door to Star Trek. His music was both very innovative and highly important to the show, since it told so much of its stories with pictures instead of dialogue.
Wild, Wild West is another of my favorites. If I could have a soundtrack playing in the background in real life, I’d like to hear Jim West’s theme when I walk down the street.
The music Bernard Herrman did, not for Hitchcock but for the Ray Harryhausen movies: **Jason and the Argonauts ** and The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, full of bassoons.
By your definition, the “doink-doink” sound that accompanies scene transitions in Law & Order is, in fact, memorable incidental music. So memorable that you’ve mistaken it for the theme.
I’ve never heard (or don’t remember hearing) the music from the Alfred Hitchcock Hour you’re talking about, but the “Dies Irae” melody is a lot older than Berlioz – it goes back at least to the time of Gregorian chant. Berlioz used the melody for his Symphonie Fantastique because of its macabre sound and associations.
Anybody remember Purgatory, the 1999 made-for-TV theological western? A bit cheesey, but intriguing and entertaining.
(The ending super sucks, but they had no choice.)
The background music was delightfully eerie, not really “music” but just wisps and chords, just enough to establish the otherworldly tone. I thought it was very effective.
Also, the TV series “The Prisoner” had some really wonderful incidental music, enough that they released three CDs of it. And yet about half of it was just taken from a big reel of general-purpose music that the studio had in their production archives! It wasn’t written for the show, but for whatever purpose might come along. “Blue Stripe” generic music. Need a “Sea” theme? Need a “Sneaking up” theme? All on the big studio reel!
This may not be what the OP is looking for, but “Jonny Quest” had some sensational music. Some might be considered “traveling music,” but if you think back to the mummy episode, there was a super brass/tympani 3/4 time piece while Anubis is stomping across the desert: Brass-tymp-tymp, brass-tymp-tymp, etc., then that last insane, rumbling chord (probably a 9th chord with lots of sharp/flat intervals. And if you know which piece I’m describing, it’s now stuck in your head; enjoy your night-time earworm, JQ fans.
A lot of that music was used on other Hanna-Barbera 'toons, particularly “The Flintstones.”
The best part of Battlestar Galactica (not the 70s TV series but the modern reincarnation) was the music. All those eerie choral laments, heart-pounding instrumentals, etc.