Donald M. Swartz

Television composer Donald M. Swartz dies at 85

Maryland Public Television music director wrote “TWX in 12 Bars,” the enduring theme for “Wall $treet Week”

November 11, 2009

By YORK DAILY RECORD & YORK DISPATCH

Donald M. Swartz, the composer, musician, sound-effects specialist and public-television pioneer whose distinctive theme introduced “Wall $treet Week” for more than three decades, died Nov. 11. He was 85.

Swartz became one of the earliest employees of Maryland Public Television’s new station in Owings Mills, where he headed the music-and-effects department and composed scores for numerous regional and national television productions.

His best-known work was “TWX in 12 Bars,” the theme for “Wall $treet Week with Louis Rukeyser.”

The instrumental combined the language of a 12-bar blues with sounds associated with financial communication and Lower Manhattan. Its rhythmic design incorporated the clatter of a teletype machine, while the opening bells recalled the Westminster-style chimes heard near Wall Street.

For millions of viewers, the theme became the weekly sound of finance.

Its mixture of jazz, machinery and ceremonial bells immediately established the program’s unusual tone. “Wall $treet Week” dealt with markets, investments and economic policy, but it did not present those subjects with the cold formality associated with many business broadcasts.

Swartz’s music suggested movement, information and commerce while retaining a playful quality suited to Rukeyser’s conversational delivery and frequent puns.

The theme was heard during the original program’s long PBS run and became one of the most durable musical identities in American public television.

“Wall $treet Week” began at Maryland Public Television in 1970 and developed into the station’s signature national production. The original edition was hosted by Louis Rukeyser for more than 30 years and originated from MPT’s facilities in Owings Mills.

The program sought to make investments and economic developments understandable to viewers who were not professional traders.

Rukeyser opened with commentary on the week’s markets, questioned a panel of analysts and interviewed figures from business, government and economics. Guests over the years included central bankers, investors, corporate executives and academic economists.

Swartz’s theme helped make that format inviting.

Rather than using a grand orchestral fanfare, he wrote a compact piece with a strong rhythmic profile and an audible connection to communications technology. The teletype sound suggested market quotations arriving over financial networks, while the blues structure gave the music an unmistakably American character.

Its title referred to TWX, the Teletypewriter Exchange Service once used by businesses to transmit typed messages over telephone lines.

The phrase “in 12 Bars” described the familiar harmonic pattern underlying countless blues and jazz compositions.

By joining the two ideas, Swartz produced a title that was simultaneously technical and musical: electronic business communication translated into a jazz form.

The cue also worked unusually well with the program’s visual opening.

The title sequence moved through images associated with New York’s financial district while the bells and teletype rhythms connected the physical location of Wall Street with the constant flow of market information.

The music remained effective even when the economics being discussed were difficult or unsettling. It did not promise prosperity or dramatize every weekly fluctuation as a crisis. Instead, it established continuity—the markets had opened and closed again, and Rukeyser had returned to explain what had happened.

That continuity helped make “TWX in 12 Bars” inseparable from the program.

When “Wall $treet Week” was reformatted after Rukeyser’s departure in 2002, an updated, more orchestral arrangement of Swartz’s theme was produced by Swartz and Don Barto. The revision preserved the identity of the original composition while adapting it to the redesigned series.

The program continued until 2005, giving Swartz’s music an association with approximately 35 years of public-television financial reporting.

Later revivals of the “Wall Street Week” name also returned to updated versions of the familiar theme, demonstrating how completely the music had become identified with the franchise.

Swartz’s career encompassed considerably more than that single composition.

Born Donald Markley Swartz on Feb. 7, 1924, in Durham, N.C., he was the elder son of Joel Swartz and Virginia Markley Swartz.

He developed a lifelong interest in music but did not initially pursue the conventional education of a professional composer.

Swartz taught himself to play jazz guitar and performed regularly as a member of a jazz combo on live television in Baltimore.

That experience placed him in broadcasting before videotape and extensive post-production had become standard. Musicians working on live television had to follow visual cues, adjust to changing running times and move immediately among introductions, transitions and featured numbers.

Those practical skills later became central to his work at Maryland Public Television.

Swartz also possessed a strong scientific and technical background.

During World War II, he trained as a navigator in the Army Air Corps from 1943 through 1945. After the war, he attended Johns Hopkins University and earned a bachelor’s degree in physics.

The combination of physics, military navigation and music was unusual, but all three disciplines demanded precision, timing and an understanding of systems.

A navigator had to translate measurements into a course. A physicist had to analyze how forces and signals behaved. A television composer had to align sound with a visual sequence measured in seconds and frames.

Swartz subsequently worked for the Office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon.

In 1961, he served as deputy director of the Educational Programs Division at the newly established National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

NASA itself had been created only a few years earlier, and its public-education efforts were becoming increasingly important as the United States entered the human-spaceflight era.

Swartz worked with members of the early astronaut corps and accompanied John Glenn on a goodwill tour of Japan, where he also filmed the astronaut’s appearances.

Glenn had become one of the country’s most prominent public figures through the Mercury program, and international tours were intended to present American space achievements to audiences abroad.

Swartz’s involvement combined his technical training with communication and media work. It also anticipated his later position in public broadcasting, where complex subjects had to be translated into forms accessible to a general audience.

He eventually left federal service to join Maryland’s developing public-television operation.

Swartz was reportedly the fourth person hired by the new Channel 67 in Owings Mills, the station that became Maryland Public Television.

As head of its music-and-effects department, he was responsible for an area that extended beyond conventional composition.

Public-television productions needed opening and closing themes, dramatic underscore, transitions, sound effects, recorded music and audio material for documentaries, educational programs and public-affairs broadcasts.

A department head might compose an original score, select existing recordings, create sound effects, supervise musicians, edit tape and work directly with producers to determine how the soundtrack would shape a program.

Swartz composed music for what his family described as countless MPT productions.

Because regional and public television did not always preserve complete music credits in searchable databases, much of that work is difficult to reconstruct title by title.

Some pieces would have accompanied one-time documentaries or educational programs. Others may have served as station identifications, promotional spots, local public-affairs series or short transitions reused over many years.

The surviving prominence of “TWX in 12 Bars” therefore represents only the most visible part of a broader broadcasting career.

His scientific background would have been particularly useful at a public station producing educational and informational programs.

Swartz could understand technical subject matter while also recognizing that television required clarity, pace and emotional engagement.

Music could help separate topics, signal a change in location, make statistics less abstract or give a documentary a recognizable identity without overwhelming its informational purpose.

“Wall $treet Week” was an ideal meeting point for those abilities.

The program dealt in numbers, charts and financial systems, but it depended upon television craft to make those subjects engaging. Swartz found a musical equivalent for the flow of data: bells, machine rhythms and blues harmony arranged into a concise weekly signature.

His use of the teletype was especially appropriate for the period.

Before personal computers and real-time financial websites, mechanical printers and telecommunications systems carried market reports, news dispatches and business messages. The sound of the machine immediately suggested information arriving from elsewhere.

By turning that noise into percussion, Swartz treated technology not merely as a sound effect but as part of the musical ensemble.

The device anticipated later television scores that incorporated electronic beeps, typewriters, machinery and sampled environmental sounds into rhythmic structures.

Yet Swartz’s theme remained grounded in jazz rather than futurism. The technology clicked and chattered, but the harmonic foundation was familiar and human.

That balance suited Rukeyser’s role as an interpreter standing between the machinery of the financial markets and the individual viewer at home.

Swartz remained with Maryland Public Television through the years in which the station expanded from a regional educational outlet into a nationally recognized producer.

MPT’s output eventually included financial journalism, automotive reporting, nature and regional documentaries, arts programming and children’s television. “Wall $treet Week” became its longest-running and most widely recognized national program.

Swartz retired from broadcasting but continued to serve the public in Glen Rock, Pa.

He became a member of the borough council and later served as mayor.

His community activities included helping establish the annual Glen Rock Street Fair and advocating for the Arthur Hufnagel Public Library.

The shift from public broadcasting to municipal service reflected a continuing interest in civic institutions.

At MPT, he had helped create programming intended to inform and educate. In Glen Rock, he worked more directly with local government, public events and library support.

He was also made one of only three honorary members of the Glen Rock Carolers.

The organization’s recognition connected him once again with community music, far removed from the television studios and market reports of “Wall $treet Week.”

Swartz was survived by his wife, Janice Dean; nephews Bill Swartz, Robert Swartz and David Deems; and nieces Jennifer Brown and Emily Cross.

An open-house remembrance was held Dec. 6 at the Glen Rock Ambulance Club. His family requested that memorial contributions be made to the Arthur Hufnagel Public Library.

Donald Swartz’s television legacy rests on a composition that performed its job so effectively that viewers could scarcely imagine the program without it.

“TWX in 12 Bars” did not resemble the triumphant brass themes associated with network news or the bright prize music of a conventional game show.

It was witty, economical and specific to its subject.

The teletype supplied the market’s mechanical pulse. The bells placed the viewer near Wall Street. The blues pattern gave the machinery warmth and movement.

Together, those elements introduced a program that sought to make an intimidating financial world understandable.

For more than three decades, viewers heard Swartz’s theme and knew that another week in the markets had ended—and that Louis Rukeyser was about to explain it.

The composition’s continuing use in later versions of “Wall Street Week” confirmed its status as more than an old television theme.

It had become the musical identity of the program itself.

Behind that familiar cue was a career of unusual range: wartime navigator, physicist, Pentagon employee, NASA educator, jazz guitarist, public-television composer, sound-department head, councilman and mayor.

Donald M. Swartz brought technical intelligence and a musician’s ear to public broadcasting.

His best-known work transformed the noise of financial machinery into music—and made one of PBS’ longest-running programs recognizable before its host spoke a word.