Radio age research, manufacturing, communications, broadcasting, television (1941)

With stop-watch and script, NBC's Margaret Snider se- lects music in the proper mood for the background of a television drama. Selectino; N4ood Music for TV Proo;rams -ZV TELF,VIS10N drama without background musii., someone has said, is like a stage setting without scener)', it's bare, empty and lacks the third dimension required to round out the mood of the play. How pertinent this observation is to the operations of NBC television pro- gramming is evident in the scope of activities behind the scenes in the network's music department. Music for NBC's television dramas is carctLilly se- lected by a stall of live music programmers, all of whom have had a formal musical education and all of whom have remarkable memories. The latter attribute is essen- tial, because the catalogues of recorded incidental music —no matter how descriptive—are nor adequate guides to the approximately 10,000 selections in the special library and to the 100,000 records in NBC's regul.ir record library. Margaret Snider, who heads this particular operation, started the special section in I9-l5 with only a desk and a turn-table. When Miss Snider first began working on background music for television, she had access only to the standard classical record library. Today, with physi- cal facilities commensurate to her staff of assistants (an office and four "roomettes" in which music programmers and directors can listen to the music). Miss Snider has amassed, in addition to two libraries of specially recorded music on 16-inch vinylite discs, seven English libraries of special background music, composed originally for film use and now used extensively in television and radio, here and in England. Catalogues for each special library provide the pro- grammer with clues to the general mood of e.ich record. Under the heading of "Dramatic Atmosphere," for in- stance, there are records titled "Aftermath," "Deserted City," "Haunted House," "Snow Scene," "Motif for Murder," and "Stop Press." Under "Fanfares," you'd find such titles as "Big Moment" and "Majestic." Under the heading of Light Atmosphere" the gamut runs from "All Strings and Fancy Free" to ""Exhilaration" and "Shopping Center."" Other general headings include "Marches," "Melodic," "National," ""Oriental," ""Sea," and "Storm, Machines, "War" (containing "Engine Room," "S.O.S." and "Shipwreck," in that pessimistic order). Other catalogues may be a bit more helpful. "En- counter at Dawn," for instance, is described as ""very heavy and dramatic, but quick moving, then becoming more subdued, but still with a dramatic and sinister atmosphere."' "Tlie individual compositions," Miss Snider said, "can be broken down into several moods and can be- used in whole or in part. But the fact that the library is so much larger and so much more varied than a written catalogue would indicate that the music programmer must rely very heavily on his memory. Besides, he should keep an open mind, since one piece may be applied to many different situations—one week tragedy, another mystery, another comedy, and so forth. Since catalogues dont really indicate the full use to which records can be put, one must interpret the mood of the script and paint in the background from knowledge tucked away in one"s own mental file."" Miss Snider and her st.iff—Marilynn Kilgore, Phebe Haas, Lea Karina and Harold "Venho—select music for about 20 television shows a week. Within the last two years a number of radio shows have also found it ex- pedient to use recorded background music. A half-dozen such radio shows are on the air now, with the number rising to twelve or fifteen in the Summer season. An hour-long TV drama, such as "Television Play- house"" or '"Robert Montgomery Presents," demands a var)'ing amount of time for music selection, depending on the individual director and the amount of music to be used. Ten to sixteen hours for a single script is average. A period piece takes longer, because the selector tries first I Continued on puse ^Oi RADIO AGE 25