With each new television show came new challenges, especially from a financial standpoint. Composing and recording new scores for each episode was costly and not conducive to network budgets. To remedy this problem, CBS established a Stock Music Library (from here on referred to as The Library). Regardless of whether they originated as original scores for a specific episode or derived from cues from suites composed solely for The Library, often cues were used in multiple episodes, sometimes taking on entirely new meanings, but sometimes adhering to the meaning ascribed to the context of its original use.

This chapter examines the genesis of the CBS Stock Music Library and the reuse of various cues in the musical scores for The Twilight Zone. The goal is to use these scores as a case study to understand how music becomes associated with a specific situation enough to render reuse in other situations and, further, the manner in which The Library was employed. As a result, we can see how specific cues became associated with specific situations and chosen for various episodes. It also seeks to hypothesize a potential reason why certain episodes may have been considered unique enough to merit the composition of a completely new score, a topic that will be covered in Chapter 2.

Jeff Bond's statement in the context of Star Trek particularly holds true for The Twilight Zone as well: “one of the reasons the music […] is so deeply imbedded in out memories is the matter of simple repetition. Not only have these episodes been viewed countless times in syndicated reruns and on video […], but the musical cues themselves were repeated endlessly, not just in ensuing episodes, but also often several times within the same episode.”2 The music for The Twilight Zone falls into three basic categories: wholly composed of new music (possibly with a stock track or two thrown in), partial scores composed of both new and stock music, and scores completely comprised of stock music.