“Duet for Pennywhistle and Piano” by Jay Chattaway

This one is for #TeamDarren.

I’ve always been a fan of the flute writing that Jay Chattaway did for “The Inner Light” and how that music and the Ressikan has an effect on Picard’s story beyond just that episode. In the Season Six episode “Lessons,” Picard has allowed himself to become romantically involved with the head of stellar cartography, Nella Darren1.

He initially discovers that they have a shared interest in music when she performs at a concert in Ten-Forward, and they soon begin playing duets together—Darren on the piano and Picard on the flute. It’s not until later that Picard plays for her the melody he learned during the events of “The Inner Light,” and he opens up to her about his experience.

Darren has taken them to a spot in one of the Jeffries Tubes where the acoustics are apparently perfect, and she has also brought along a roll-up piano2. After Picard plays the flute melody for her, Darren begins to play a piano accompaniment along with him. In a particularly cute moment, the music is shown to be traveling around the ship, and Geordi and Data both go off in search of the source.

Although Dennis McCarthy composed the bulk of the score for “Lessons,” Jay Chattaway was brought in to do a brief arrangement of his “Inner Light Theme” for this sequence. The cue ends abruptly with the piano cutting out a little before the flute just as what happens in the episode when the pair find something more interesting to do.

00:00