Introduction

Summary

Each of the following sections is a companion to an individual Victory at Sea episode, and the reader should access video of the complete Victory series. Online sources vary in image and sound quality, and options at archive.org, YouTube, Vimeo, and elsewhere may be compared. On DVD, I recommend the 2003 History Channel restoration, easily available on eBay, for the quality of its transfer. Periscope Film did a fine Blu-ray release in 2010, tougher to find at this writing. Nowadays, any segment of any program can be quickly accessed—a luxury unavailable to the Victory enthusiast pre-home video.

Sections on EP1 to EP26 highlight appearances and transformations of the Rodgers themes—using the chapter 4 abbreviations SONG-SEAS, SUB, DEATH-DEBRIS, HAWAII, MARCH, D-DAY, MUSTERING, TANGO, FIDDLE-GTR, CARRIER, NAPLES-ROME, and VIC-HYMN—as well as Bennett's compositional contributions to Victory. Musical examples are at the end of each section, referenced in the preceding pages with bold, bracketed capital letters: [A], [B], etc. The narration excerpts are set in italics to distinguish them from the discussion.

All pitch designations here are in concert pitch, even when referencing a transposing instrument. Though only sixteen bars of Bennett's entire Victory score use key signatures, they are added to several music examples here for clarity. These reductions are mine, a necessary practical substitute for Bennett's full scores. Non-music readers may note that all excerpts from the orchestral score are referenced by episode and timing (“EP23, 7:45”), so that anyone can locate and listen to every musical example spotlighted here. A word about timings: “1:00” here indicates each individual install-ment's beginning, following NBC's one-minute opening credits sequence. The readers viewing the History Channel DVDs will need to adjust for this because the newly filmed episode introductions by Peter Graves (no relation to Leonard G.) shift the running time—fortunately, by exactly one minute.

Each section concludes with “Relevant Films,” predating Victory. The listed films contain scenes identical to one or more in the episode under discussion, and might be Salomon's source, given that Victory's film clips were taken from both raw camera footage (war-theater scenes, most likely) and edited productions. In any case, it's interesting to compare these clips with their later Victory appearances, especially as regards narrative treatment and musical accompaniment.