Chapter 3 - The Scores of Fred Steiner

Summary

Fred Steiner was best known for his television scores, among them included Gunsmoke, Perry Mason, Star Trek: The Original Series (1966-1969), and a contemporary of The Twilight Zone, the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show (1959-1964). Steiner wrote scores for a total of seven episodes for The Twilight Zone: three half-hour episodes and four hour-long episodes.

Steiner began piano lessons at the age of six, switching to cello at thirteen. His formal musical training began when he attended the Oberlin Conservatory and studied composition with Normand Lockwood. Steiner began his career at CBS in 1947 writing music for television, but he left Hollywood for several years, returning in 1960 to both resume his Hollywood film music career and to earn a Ph.D. in musicology and teach composition. He learned orchestration from his father who was both a violinist and composer who taught him by reading scores, but he learned scoring on the job at Hollywood. His first job in radio was at the behest of Nathan Van Cleave who first hired him as his orchestrator. Steiner credits Van Cleave as his mentor who helped to introduce him to other composers such as Lyn Murray who also hired him for various orchestration jobs.

This chapter will examine Steiner's Twilight Zone scores and his method of composing them. I believe that the most formative part of his compositions were his sketches and, as such, his method of sketching can be credited to the tutelage of Nathan Van Cleave. Steiner often composed his episodes in multiple styles, often dictated by the episode's temporal shifting. Sometimes this was often to musically represent a character's image or personality. Indeed, Steiner's musical imprint is both dictated by the film and his own experiences.

Aside from working as a composer at CBS, we know that Steiner was familiar with the scores for The Twilight Zone in another way. Among his personal papers housed at Brigham Young University is a photocopy of both the autograph of Bernard Herrmann's score for “Walking Distance;” the purpose of having these items and the date upon which they came into his possession are unknown.