A Dramatic Fermata

I'm watching "Victory at Sea" on DVD. Robert Russell Bennett's orchestrations of Richard Rodgers's themes, so familiar to Navy musicians, are even more masterful in the context for which they were written.

I just finished watching Episode 23, "Target Suribachi." It begins with preparations for the invasion of Iwo Jima, the convergence of American ships offshore that crucial island, the range-finding, all scored with Bennett's typical expertise.

Finally, the bombardment starts. And when it does, the music, for the first time, stops.

For 22 1/2 episodes, music has underscored every action, every victorious parade, every humiliating defeat. But now, the only sounds are the roar of the big guns, the scream of airplane engines, the thunder of the explosions that tear apart the island in preparation for the landing.

No doubt, Rodgers and Bennett could have come up with musical accompiment for this. But they had the sense not to. Letting the sound of battle tell the story makes this scene the starkest of the series.