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The Music for Victory at Sea Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2024
EP17 is set in the western Pacific's Mariana Islands—Guam in particular. There's plenty of “ugly music” combat action, and much of the soundtrack is given to Bennett's concert marches and a nearly full-length version of Rodgers's “Guadalcanal March.” What's most distinctive are the delicate passages written for the Chamorro, Guam's native people. Woodwinds, harp, and gentle percussion are prominent, and the alto flute makes its sole Victory appearance.
EP17 opens during Guam's tranquil prewar years. Unlike the rest of the Mariana Islands held by Japan as WWII began, Guam had been a US territory since the Spanish-American War, though remaining lightly defended even as Japan moved in the 1930s to expand its sphere of influence and then joined the Axis powers in 1940. Bennett's distinctive music for this South Seas locale [A] at 1:01 opens EP17 and later returns twice more. His next gentle “Guam” melody at 1:29 [B] is stylistically similar, though like so many of his Victory melodies is a one-time passage. (For more about the musical material of [A] and [B], see the Musical Postlude below.)
EP17 viewers learn at 2:00 that, months before the war's outbreak, “Naval authorities on Guam plead in vain with Congress to fortify the strategic island while time remains.” This a reminder of what NBC's archived Victory documents demonstrate: Salomon's desire to weigh unbiased and unflinching coverage of WWII against prospects of advancing controversial viewpoints or unduly embarrassing any country's government agencies. Indeed, Congress had turned down $5 million in appropriations for Guam's Apra Harbor in April 1939 as part of a $66.8 million Naval Air Base Bill for construction and aircraft, mostly in Pacific locales.
EP17's only moment of on-screen music-making comes at 2:16, as we see the drum and bugle corps of Guam's home-guard militia and then a subset of the small Marine population stationed there. Bennett's NBC trumpets play a unison fanfare in G major [C], fully performable on the US military's standard-issue G bugles.
With an appearance of J-3 at 2:29, the viewpoint is that of Japan, a country aware that Guam, “the American pillbox without guns in the Marianas,” is ripe for conquest anytime. The music continues with J-6 at 2:46 and then again at 3:04, with J-3 added underneath.
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