Laurence Rosenthal composed the Young Indiana Jones theme used in series titles and featured in many episodes, as well as scoring and conducting just under half the episodes. Rosenthal's scores tend towards the "mellow" end of the spectrum. Rosenthal's home page lists his contributions to Young Indiana Jones and the awards he won for the series, plus several sample tracks for listening. Joel McNeely also scored and composed for just under half of the episodes. His contributions tend towards "action" themes. Young Indy Around the World (a "making of" documentary) contains a segment (3 minutes in) where Joel McNeely talks about the music. BSOSpirit has an extensive interview with McNeely which contains a wealth of detail about his work on Young Indiana Jones. Highlights include:
Frédéric Talgorn composed music for the Trenches of Hell episodes (Somme 1916 and Germany 1916). See his biography for some quotes about the experience. Talgorn's official Web site includes extensive samples from his body of work, including 3 tracks from Trenches (7 minutes of music). Curt Sobel composed the chilling score to Transylvania 1918. His IMDb page lists his many accomplishments, and he shares his thoughts on working in the film industry in an interview with The Editors Guild Magazine. Steve Bramson composed music for the Treasure of the Peacock's Eye episode. An online interview with Bramson details his inspirations, including Williams and Rosenthal. He has some samples of his work - including Peacock's Eye - at his home page. John Williams' "Desert Chase" theme from "Raiders" (with the familiar cues) was used in the Mystery of the Blues bookends featuring Harrison Ford. The music was arranged by Joel McNeely with the rest of his score. It was all newly recorded for the episode. Other composers' work is incorporated into the episode scores:
In addition, several episodes contain performances of music. The aviators sing "Garryowen" in Attack of the Hawkmen, both The Scandal of 1920 and The Mystery of the Blues feature performances by real and fictional characters, and even "China Dreams" in Treasure of the Peacock's Eye is a period song. |
Interestingly, in the DVD documentary credits, Arthur Kempel is co-credited (with Joel McNeely) for "Attack of the Hawkmen". Steve Bramson is also co-credited with Joel McNeely for "Oganga"!
This is not the case in the episode credits themselves, however.
I'll have to watch that documentary to see (and hear) if the music credit indicates that non-McNeely music was used. Good find. It may be they pulled music from other sources for the documentaries.
The creation of the chase sequence for Chicago was done by us pulling and then photocopying sections of the Truck Chase for Raiders. We literally got to hold the original orchestra score parts used to record that sequence. Joel McNeely then attached his pieces to the copies to make the full musical score that was then recorded in its entirety. (It's not a mix of the original Raiders recording - everything for the episode was recorded fresh.)
Chuck McNight @ TheRaven identified the music played in the Young Indy trailer that was placed at the beginning of some of the Indiana Jones VHS tapes.
The piece is titled "Reach for the Stars", by Richard Harvey. It can be found on his production music CD "Fantasia", details at: http://www2.playkpmmusic.com/pages/viewcd/viewcd.cfm?cdnum=1926