He was gracious enough to answer all my questions for my Soundtrack magazine interview a few years back and he even sent me a copy of the hardcover The Story of Star Trek by Bob Justman.
Thank you for the music, both yours and the glittering arrangements of others'!
Apart from the first Star Trek scores and the great Superman IV, I'm sorry to say I don't know much of his own music, and there does not seem to be much available-- probably more Trek episodes and possibly some Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea & Lost in Space. The Waltons would make for some nice releases, I suppose; it's great he got to see this splendid edition that was made of Superman IV.
Sorry to hear it. He went to the Eastman School of Music, part of my alma mater the University of Rochester, so I always felt a special affection for him. (He was there much earlier than I was, though!)
Strange but true: Driving to work today, I had nothing new to listen to, so I scanned my iPod (it's hooked up in the car) and happened to pick Courage's score for the original "Star Trek" pilot, which I had not listened to in many years! I'm not one to believe in the dead controlling one's actions… but this was weird!
I don't know what to say. As composer and orchestrator for the likes of Messrs Goldsmith, Williams and co, often working "behind the scenes", he added so much more to the music we enjoyed, and he was absolutely wizard at what he did.
This is very, very, very sad news indeed. I wouldn't dream of trivialising Courage's career by mentioning just one small part of his enormous legacy but truly, if he'd ONLY written the Star Trek theme (and various subsequent episodes) and nothing else he would still be hailed as one of the finest contributors to the artform there ever was. In fact he gave us so much more than that.
And as one of Goldsmith's collaborators, he must now join both Arthur Morton and Goldsmith himself in the film music history books.
There was a society that named an award after him and he was the first recipient, presented to him by John Williams. It's nice it happened before he died.
A nice legacy beyond his lovely work in many things.
