The Scores of Nathan van Cleave

Abstract

Nathan Van Cleave was the most prolific composer for The Twilight Zone , composing a total of twelve original scores for both half-hour and hour episodes. Although he composed so many scores for this and other series, it is remarkable that his music has not received more attention in and out of scholarly circuits. Van Cleave worked predominantly as Aaron Copland's orchestrator for his film music as well as his composer for scores such as The Colossus of New York (1958) and Robinson Crusoe on Mars ( 1964). This chapter will bring to light an understanding of his original scores for The Twilight Zone and seeks to understand him not simply as an arranger and orchestrator, but as a composer as well. Van Cleave worked at CBS from 1935 until 1942 as an arranger and composer for the radio scores of Lyn Murray, Ray Block, and Robert Emmitt Dolan. As Chapter 3 alluded to briefly, much of what Fred Steiner learned about scoring came from Van Cleave: He had a certain method for arranging, as I recall, actually kind of a logical one. Sketch out the melody, make a separate chart deciding which colors you would use in what part of a song, start off with full strings and then the next eight bars maybe go to woodwind. All this would be laid out on a separate piece of paper. He would go through and put the melody in, next go back with the bass and the other parts and then fill in the harmonies and the percussion parts. The piano part was usually laid out and entered last, but we used certain shorthand. Van Cleave's sketches seem to indicate this method and by examining at Steiner's sketches for The Twilight Zone , we can see that he also took the same approach. But unlike other composers, Van Cleave did not always do his own orchestrations. Larson states that “Van Cleave and Steiner would go on to have an especially fruitful collaboration orchestrating each other's work on CBS television shows like The Twilight Zone and Gunsmoke , neither man taking credit in such cases.” Fred Steiner often orchestrated Van Cleave's music for the series from thematic material that he had already composed, with Steiner remaining uncredited for his work and Van Cleave often reciprocating for Steiner.