Music with strings: a musicological analysis of Barry Gray’s music for Thunderbirds 1964-1966

While there is a huge volume of extant work on TV and film music, the music of Barry Gray (1908-84) and his work with Gerry Anderson over several decades remains under documented.

This thesis is, to my knowledge, the first in depth academic study of the work of Barry Gray. My research explores his orchestral music for the Thunderbirds TV series during the years 1964-1966. I have chosen his music for Thunderbirds as the apogee of his work, for the following reasons. It is the most popular and enduring of the Supermarionation series, was double the length of other series (one hour as opposed to 30 minutes in length) and has been revived on television several times over the decades to continued acclaim. His theme for Thunderbirds is in the top 10 TV themes listed by ITV.

In my thesis I discuss Gray’s musical idiolect and analyse what makes his music distinctive and readily identifiable. Factors in this comprise his characterful themes, the use of extended harmonies and modal content, distinctive instrumentation, a facility for working in differing musical genres, the extensive narrative use of leitmotifs with multiple variations, that resulted in a large sound using relatively small instrumental forces.

My studies of the original scores have revealed his use of modular composition techniques to provide musical ‘building blocks’ that were subject to extensive tape editing techniques that were unrivaled at the time in music for television. By illuminating these factors, I argue for significant difference being displayed in his music.

I have chosen three scores from Thunderbirds as case studies: The Opening and Closing Titles, the score for the first episode ‘Trapped in the Sky’, and the library music session
‘The Links in the Chain’, which all reveal different working methods. Studying the original MS scores from the Barry Gray Archive, together with access to the original session recordings has enabled me to use both the ‘sounds and scores’ in my analysis. I use thematic and harmonic methods of analysis to reveal Gray’s ‘musical signatures’ that mark his music as unmistakably his creative voice.

I also contextualise the background to Thunderbirds with social themes and contexts in the 1960s, TV and SF music in the 1960s, the field of electronic music and Gray’s place within that field, aspects of musical creativity, and the development of contemporary arranging and orchestration practice.