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* "LOS ANGELES—Seth MacFarlane is a great fan of the orchestra. He loves to sing with a big band, he hires a full orchestra every week on his animated series Family Guy, and his new movie A Million Ways to Die in the West has a symphonic score reminiscent of the halcyon days of The Big Country and The Magnificent Seven. 

So when MacFarlane started thinking about music for Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, the Fox science documentary series that concludes it's 13-episode run this Sunday, he instinctively knew this would need the full power of the orchestra to support the stunning imagery and thought-provoking scripts. 

Unfortunately, the show was debuting in March 2014 and it was already mid-December 2013. Compounding the scheduling dilemma: because of an international distribution deal already in place, the first four episodes needed to be completely finished by the third week of January. 

That's not a lot of time to compose, orchestrate and record two hours and 40 minutes of music, which was what the first four Cosmos episodes would require. 

Luckily, Alan Silvestri was up to the challenge. Over the next three months, he would write nearly four hours of original music, "by far," he says, the most he has ever composed for a single project............."

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