S.O.S.TITANIC op.284 (August 1979)

Composer's note: 'SOS Titanic is a good account of the disaster and well researched. We had a man who was an actual survivor on the team who I spoke to quite a bit. Producer Norman Gimbel was a practical joker and had an issue of Variety printed with the headline 'Howard Blake dies at age 95'. He didn't seem too concerned as to whether the film succeeded or not. I later found he was known as a lyric writer but he never mentioned it. He hired me on the strength of 'The Duellists' which I'd just written and because he was obliged to have so many English on the team because it was an Anglo-USA production. It was made by Bernard Delfont, brother of Lew Grade who was making 'The Raising of the Titanic' on the next lot. I liked the authentic B&W montage of the launching and that inspired my theme for the opening. Originally I wanted to write the score for large organ, suggesting the one in the Mormon Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, but Gimbel said no. I used horns and trombones with percussion, flute, oboe and a few strings and recorded in Denham Studios in London, flying back from LA for 5 days. The set of Titanic was a huge affair that could be moved up and down electrically. All other ship interiors were shot on the Queen Mary in Long Beach. The 1st class lounge was the dining room of the Waldorf in Aldwych. I used a Scott Joplin waltz (his only one, called 'Bethena') for the Irish lovers dancing on deck and wrote several more waltzes myself. The dance music played below decks when the lovers first meet was 'The Connemara Waltz.'