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Musical Offerings ⦁ 2012 ⦁ Volume 3 ⦁ Number 2 61
Musical Offerings, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 61-74. ISSN 2167-3799
© 2012, Emma Gage, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/)
A Walk through an American Classic
Emma Gage
Cedarville University
America’s animated film industry was quite new and revolutionary in
the 1920s not yet twenty years old.
1
What became even more
revolutionary, however, was the addition of music and sound to
animated film in 1928. Walt Disney was the main developer in this
process. Looking on from the 1920s until Disney’s death in 1966,
music assumed a distinct, almost central, role in creating Disney’s
cartoons. Because of this centrality, special techniques, developed very
effectively by composers, were used to synchronize this music and
animation. The music of Walt Disney’s classic films was written by a
number of hand-picked composers who, working with Disney,
ingeniously crafted the music to fit animation and bring musical
inspiration to the homes of viewers, leaving America and the world
with a beloved legacy.
Walter Elias Disney began his cartoon animation career around 1920.
He had done much drawing before that, however. He started off with an
apprenticeship at a commercial art shop at the age of seventeen.
2
His
daughter recalls the story she was told of the first time her father drew a
picture and received payment for it. When Disney was seven or eight a
local doctor asked him to draw a picture of his horse. The doctor liked
the picture well enough to pay him for it and thus started the informal
career of Walt Disney.
3
In 1921, after much work with drawing and
technology, Disney began selling his one-minute cartoon reels called
1
Neal Gabler, Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination (New
York: Alfred A Knopf, 2006), 52.
2
Ibid., 44-45, 52, 57-61.
3
Diane Disney Miller, The Story of Walt Disney (New York: Dell Publishing
Co., Inc., 1957), 17.
62 Gage ⦁ A Walk through an American Classic
Laugh-O-Grams. In the next few years Walt, as he liked to be called,
struggled with business in the animation world, but in 1923 with
financial support from his brother Roy the Disney Bros. Studio was
born.
In Walt’s beginnings at the company he was only a cartoon animator
among others who were testing the new field, but by 1928 he had
released the very first talking picture to “marry music, sound, and
image” called Steamboat Willie, featuring the beloved character that
would become known as Mickey Mouse.
4
Music for silent film was not
a new concept, but unlike any preceding films Steamboat Willie
“established a concrete connection between the animation and the
musical score.”
5
A young animator for Disney, Wilfred Jackson, is
given credit for this earliest attempt at the synchronization of animation
and music. His method included developing the music until the
preferred tempo for Disney’s animation was reached. By figuring out
that twenty-four frames of the film went by in one second Jackson
could set a metronome at the desired tempo putting a beat with every
specified number of frames. A metronome, in the form of white flashes
on a screen, was then used to set the tempo the musicians needed to
follow, and a “dope” sheet was created to indicate the relationship
between the beats of music and the action on the screen.
6
Surprisingly, for all of Walt Disney’s interest in music and animation
he was not a musician and was not known to have had any formal
music training. However, he gave as much attention to the music of a
film as to any other aspect. As recorded by David Tietyen, Walt told his
animators and directors, “There’s a terrific power to music…you can
run these pictures and they’d be dragging and boring, but the minute
you put music behind them, they have life and vitality they don’t get in
any other way.”
7
With this in mind, in 1928 Walt hired Carl Stalling as
his first main composer after he had met him already a few years
earlier. This man was responsible for creating the process that truly
4
Graeme Harper, Ruth Doughty, and Jochen Eisentraut, eds., Sound and
Music in Film and Visual Media: An Overview (New York: Continuum, 2009),
603.
5
Daniel Goldmark, Lawrence Kramer, and Richard Leppert, eds., Beyond the
Soundtrack: Representing Music in Cinema (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2007), 226.
6
David Tietyen, The Musical World of Walt Disney (Milwaukee, WI: Hal
Leonard Publishing Corporation, 1990), 13-14.
7
Ibid.
Musical Offerings ⦁ 2012 ⦁ Volume 3 ⦁ Number 2 63
synchronized music and animation. He developed what was called the
“tick system” later to be called “mickey-mousing.” By processing
frames from the film a steady beat could be determined and it was
projected into the ear of each orchestra member from a telephone
receiver.
Though Stalling only worked with Disney for about two years he made
a great impact on the refining of processes used to bring animation and
music together. When Disney and Stalling came upon a conflict about
adding or taking away music to better fit the animation Disney
proposed a compromise: Stalling would write music to the Mickey
Mouse pictures to fit as best as possible, but Stalling would also write
his own musical ideas and Disney would fit animation to them. This
brought about the production of a series called The Silly Symphonies.
This series “represents the most important era of Disney film and music
development.”
8
The music became the more important part; in a way
the animation served the music. Stalling’s idea behind the Silly
Symphonies was to take inanimate figures and bring them to life
through dancing and moving with music and rhythms. The Skeleton
Dance, produced in 1929, was the first of these productions. Other
features included flowers, trees, and eventually animals. Stalling’s
score for this first film was original, but it was based on “The March of
the Dwarfs” from Edvard Grieg’s Lyric Suite. Much of the music used
in the early Disney years was music in the public domain, because it
could be acquired freely. Stalling recalled in an interview that
oftentimes Disney wanted to use a certain song, but, not wanting to pay
royalties, Disney would have Stalling write a piece similar to it but
original. Stalling said he would “sometimes use a musical number as a
pattern, suggesting a certain style or mood.”
9
In 1930, Stalling left the
studio but later returned as a free-lancer for Disney. With his departure
a new band of composers was brought in, creating for Disney’s films
the beloved musical melodies people still cherish today such as “Heigh-
Ho,” “When You Wish upon a Star,” and many others.
As the newly-named Walt Disney Studio continued to progress in the
animated film industry a number of composers came and went, each
making their mark in the Disney world. In 1931 and 1932 Frank
Churchill and Leigh Harline joined the Disney team as key composers
8
Ibid., 23.
9
Judith Tick and Paul Beaudoin, eds., Music in the USA: a Documentary
Companion (New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2008), 423.
64 Gage ⦁ A Walk through an American Classic
of the 1930s, helping Disney reach the level of “pop/classical fusion”
he desired. Ross Care says it best: “Together they created what would
become the signature Disney sound: music that is primarily melodic,
inventively orchestrated, and essentially simple (sometimes deceptively
so) and accessible, yet always with that indefinable X-factor that was
another characteristic of Disney’s work as a whole: popular appeal.”
10
Disney found Churchill in Hollywood studios as a talented yet not
formally trained pianist. He found Harline working with radio as a
trained musician, a graduate from the University of Utah. Both of these
men had very unique creative abilities that allowed them to create
valuable compositions for Disney that were so for very different
reasons. Jon Newsom said, “If Churchill’s greatest strength was as a
composer of melodies, Leigh Harline’s was as Disney’s ‘Symphonist,’
silly or otherwise.”
11
As Disney took on these new composers he also assumed a new
challenge in animated film. After all of the progress he had made with
the Silly Symphonies and other short cartoons, which were called
“shorts,” he hoped to create the first feature-length cartoon. His plans
were met with discouraging comments and his ideas were given the
name “Disney’s Folly.” Producing a successful feature-length animated
film with music requires precise synchronization of sound and image
whereas the production of a live-action film with music does not. With
this in mind Disney had to approach the music of a full-length animated
film differently than that of the shorts he had previously created. No
longer could only one composer write the melodies and the background
score. An arranger and orchestrator were now needed to work with the
other musicians and animators. The first film that would be born
through this process was the operetta-like Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfs. Frank Churchill was responsible for most of the melodic
material in Snow White with some orchestral help from Harline and
Paul Smith. He had a plethora of melodies within his mind waiting to
be written that helped make the film successful, giving us songs like
“Some Day My Prince Will Come” and “Whistle While You Work.”
Evidence of Churchill’s uncanny ability to produce melodies is also
seen in his songbook The Children’s Music Box.
10
Daniel Goldmark and Yuval Taylor, eds., The Cartoon Music Book
(Chicago, Ill.: Chicago Review Press, 2002), 24.
11
Tietyen, Musical World, 37.
Musical Offerings ⦁ 2012 ⦁ Volume 3 ⦁ Number 2 65
As Churchill and other supporting composers worked, Disney sought
his objective. He wanted the music in Snow White to “offer exposition,
develop characters and situations, or advance the plot rather than be
musical interludes randomly inserted in the film.”
12
Disney wanted his
animated musical to stand out among the patterns of the day and to start
a “new pattern” of weaving the music “into the story so somebody
doesn’t just burst into song.”
13
Disney succeeds in this as Snow White
is seen and heard singing while working just as anyone might do. With
every action centering on a musical beat Disney continued to make sure
that every bit of music or lyric matched the action on the screen. Each
dwarf had his own musical theme and when all the dwarves were
together a new theme entered in containing seven notes. Though the
idea of Snow White was considered a folly it met with great success at
its premier in 1937 and paved the way for future feature-length
animated films.
Within the next five years Walt Disney created and produced four more
feature-length animated films that abundantly developed and advanced
the technology used to incorporate music with animated film. These
included Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi. Pinocchio was
musically unique in its scoring, most of it attributed to Leigh Harline.
Other composers, however, also contributed to the scoring and
orchestration, working together on parts that best suited their particular
talents, to create a comprehensive score. It was also different from the
Snow White score in its richer and more luxurious musical sound. The
now characteristic Disney theme song “When You Wish upon a Star”
was written by Harline with lyrics by Ned Washington. The music in
Pinocchio helped to create the mood of the film. Leitmotifs were used
for specific characters like Jiminy Cricket and heard in varying forms
every time that character appeared on screen.
Dumbo, though not particularly well-known, had the clear essence of a
bright and boisterous musical. Its songs were team-composed by Frank
Churchill, Ned Washington, and Oliver Wallace; at times specific
voices were brought in to represent certain characters such as the song
sung by crows in the film calling for the distinct sound of Jim Crow
and the Hall Johnson Choir.
12
Ibid.
13
Ibid., 37.
66 Gage ⦁ A Walk through an American Classic
Disney’s Bambi introduced an entirely different role for music in
animated film. Disney wanted music to replace much of the dialogue
from the original story and to enhance the action and storyline in the
way the dialogue normally would. He wanted the music to be great, not
in the sense of a large orchestra, but in the sense of intense
showmanship. Frank Churchill was the initial composer for Bambi, but
with his death in 1942 his work was finished by Ed Plumb and other
supporting composers. With Plumb’s talent in mind Disney had them
develop the music into an intensely rich orchestration and score. Ross
Care says, “In the Disney modus operandi a distinctively collective
effort toward excellence superseded the work of any single
contributor.”
14
Because Disney demanded excellence of the music in
his films artists worked together in collaboration to reach the best result
with no one person receiving all the credit. Disney wanted the classical
music of Bambi, more than with any other film, to appeal to a broad
audience. He wanted the general audience, not just the music critics, to
understand and appreciate the music.
Attention to minute detail of the synchronization of animation and
music is exemplified in the song “Little April Shower” as drops of rain
and other elements of nature are given specific musical sound effects.
Staccato notes on the clarinet, the tap of a triangle, and the clang of a
Chinese cymbal portray drops of rain on leaves while rapid sixteenth
notes on the violin portray scurrying animals trying to avoid the storm.
Every aspect of the music adds to the action of the story. “Galop of the
Stags,” though a very simple quarter-note sequence, intensifies the
bounding of the male deer through the clearing. A theme based on
“twitterpation,” the Disney term for the awakening of love, is
introduced, developed, and varied each time the characters of Flower,
Thumper, and Bambi fall into “twitterpation,” presenting a sort of
theme and variations, variations ranging from waltz to march to jazz
style. Musical themes and expressions are threaded throughout the film
successfully intensifying meaning, feelings, and actions of the animals.
During the same time that Disney was working on the previous four
films he was also generating another film unlike any of his others.
Fantasia 1940 worked with and visualized music more than any other
14
Ross B. Care, “Threads of Melody: The Evolution of a Major Film Score -
Walt Disney's Bambi,” The Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress 40,
no. 2 (Spring 1983): 89.
Musical Offerings ⦁ 2012 ⦁ Volume 3 ⦁ Number 2 67
aspect in the film, and, in fact, music was in charge. Disney said, “We
are picturing music. This music is not serving as background to the
picture.”
15
The music for Fantasia was chosen from pre-existing music,
unlike the originally composed music for his other films. Originally
Fantasia started as a short called The Sorcerer’s Apprentice with the
same role of visualizing music on a screen, but because of the growing
cost and Disney’s growing fascination with the idea of using concert
music in film he decided to expand to a feature-length film. This idea
for a film representing music first came from the fellow abstract
animator Oskar Fischinger. He made the suggestion to conductor
Leopold Stokowski, who later passed on the idea to Disney. Fischinger
was hired by Disney to work on the ideas for animation, but his work
was not what Disney desired. Though Fischinger’s position was soon
terminated he clearly inspired the idea for a film like Fantasia.
Disney first met Leopold Stokowski rather coincidentally at a
restaurant in Hollywood. The two men struck up a conversation and
from there grew many ideas for Fantasia. They decided to work
together to choose what music would be used in this “visualized
concert” of a film. Both men met a number of times to listen to many
different pieces. Ultimately, they chose pieces that contained the
highest quality of expressivity. Stokowski himself went on to conduct
the Philadelphia Orchestra for the music in Fantasia. His example of
conducting, seen in the film as a silhouette when animation is not being
shown, helped the general audience better understand the role of the
conductor. This does not appear to have been a central goal of
Disney’s, however. Among the pieces used for Fantasia were Bach’s
“Toccata and Fugue in D Minor,” Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite,
Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, and a
number of others. Disney wanted Fantasia to present music in the best
way possible, “yet, he knew that current film sound systems were
inadequate to properly convey the majesty of the music.”
16
Disney,
therefore, had engineers develop a new sound system called
“Fantasound.” “Fantasound” used multiple recordings to create the
most balanced final recording from the orchestra and used multiple
speakers placed throughout the auditorium to give the audience the
most engaging experience. This was the earliest development of the
more advanced systems we have today. At Fantasia’s release in 1942 it
15
Tietyen, Musical World, 45.
16
Ibid., 49.
68 Gage ⦁ A Walk through an American Classic
was not a great success, but in later years it was found to be more
valuable.
Disney’s approach to visualizing the music through animation with
colors and live action served to give the audience a greater experience
of the music. Disney was not an expert on the idea of color music, a
concept somewhere between synesthesia and physical resemblance. He
did not use this as the basis in animating the music for Fantasia as
Clark Farmer says, “the keying of colors with instruments is not
consistent,” but Disney succeeded in making a new way for the music
to be understood.
17
To prove the effectiveness of this, an exploratory
study was done on the effect visual components have on a non-music
major’s comprehension of music. Students were given a test and
divided into groups by those who would see the visual of Fantasia and
those who would hear the music only. The study found that students
who listened and watched scored higher on the test, though not
substantially higher. The visual narrative section, the Sorcerer’s
Apprentice, as opposed to the abstract visual representation, was the
most significantly helpful section, because it helped students better
understand the programmatic quality of the music. It was found,
though, that in the comment section of the test students who heard the
music only referred more to the specific elements of the music while
those who had the visual referred to the images on the screen. This
study concludes that teachers of music should consider including
visuals while teaching music but also consider how it may detract from
the music itself.
18
The fact that Disney’s Fantasia would spur such a
stimulating study is proof of the vision he was trying to fulfill.
Deems Taylor was another crucial figure in Fantasia’s development.
As a musicologist and composer, he also helped choose the pieces used
in Fantasia. He came alongside Stokowski, the conductor, and became
the narrator of the film. For each new section and, therefore, new piece
of music, Taylor introduces and explains what the audience will be
seeing and hearing in relation to program, pictorial, and abstract music.
Disney uses very distinct and reflective imagery to interpret the music
17
Jay Beck and Tony Grajeda, eds., Lowering the Boom: Critical Studies in
Film Sound (Chicago, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 196.
18
John M. Geringer, Jane W. Cassidy, and James L. Byo, "Effects of Music
with Video on Responses of Non-Music Majors: An Exploratory Study,"
Journal of Research in Music Education 44, no. 3 (September 1, 1996): 249,
RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, EBSCOhost.
Musical Offerings ⦁ 2012 ⦁ Volume 3 ⦁ Number 2 69
being played. At one point Taylor introduces the “soundtrack.” It is
invited to make instrument sounds and we see the flowing sound of a
harp, the more rigid sound of a violin, the larger sound of a trumpet,
and the shaking sound of a cymbal. These are all represented by
different colors, shapes, and spaces. Disney seeks to ensure that the
audience understands the imagery and is able to have a more enriching
experience through it.
Fantasia was re-released a number of times but most significantly in
1969 and 1980. A scene in the original film from Beethoven’s Pastoral
Symphony portrayed a dark-skinned centaur shining the hooves of a
light-skinned centaur. With the civil rights movement so prominent this
particularly racist scene was cut in 1969, unfortunately leaving the
scene and the music with a large skip. Later in 1980 work was done on
this scene to allow it back into the film without having any racist
connotations. This was done by cutting the image only to reveal that the
centaur’s hooves were being shined, not by whom.
Fantasia had many advanced technological and psychological ideas,
but Disney’s largest goal, holding a similar view to Stokowski’s, was to
bring the inspiration of classical music as entertainment into the general
audience’s reach. Stokowski said, “That is why great music associated
with motion pictures is so important, because motion pictures reach
millions all over our country and all over the world.”
19
During the years of World War II Disney continued experimenting with
film techniques, but he had no major successes until the release of
Cinderella in 1950. Finding himself once again at the forefront of
animated film, Disney introduced some “musical firsts” with this
film.
20
He hired pop songwriters rather than musicians from his studio
to compose the music. The songs in the film were also published by
Disney’s own music publishing company whereas, before, other music
publishers were used. Disney was drawn to the “Tin Pan Alley”
songwriting team of Mack David, Jerry Livingston, and Al Hoffman
because of their hit song “Chi-Baba Chi-Baba.” Perry Como’s
recording of this song was becoming famous and Disney was very
19
Mark Clague, "Playing in 'Toon: Walt Disney's Fantasia (1940) and the
Imagineering of Classical Music," American Music: A Quarterly Journal
Devoted To All Aspects Of American Music And Music In America 22, no. 1
(March 1, 2004): 92, RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, EBSCOhost.
20
Tietyen, Musical World, 89.
70 Gage ⦁ A Walk through an American Classic
interested in the character style of the song. It is likely that Disney was
searching for a song to fit his fairy-godmother scene and he saw great
potential in these men based on “Chi-Baba Chi-Baba.” After writing
“Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo” and finding great success, this three-some went
on to create the other characteristic and precious Disney song, “A
Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes.” In other songs, like “So This Is
Love,” a duet arrangement complements the animation of the dancing
Prince and Cinderella, and the musical features of “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-
Boo” help establish the bubbly character of the fairy-godmother. An
effective technique is used in “Oh Sing Sweet Nightingale.” The end of
the song carries the phrase through and then successively drops a word
until the last word is the first word of the phrase: “Oh sing sweet
nightingale, Oh sing sweet, Oh sing, Oh!” The music in the remainder
of the film beautifully establishes the characters and the mood just as
Disney desired.
In the next nine years Disney produced Alice in Wonderland, Peter
Pan, Lady and the Tramp, and Sleeping Beauty. Sleeping Beauty was
unique because it took pre-existing music and adapted it to the film.
George Bruns, a more recent addition to the Disney staff, adapted
Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty ballet for Disney’s film. Unlike
Fantasia, the music was changed a bit in order to better fit the
animation and Bruns also added to the score with his best Tchaikovsky
imitation. Sleeping Beauty was nearly the last full-length animated
feature Disney would see released, but his work in entertainment was
yet to be finished.
In 1960, Disney took a huge musical step in hiring the brothers Richard
and Robert Sherman as studio musicians. This was the first time Disney
had a team of songwriters on his staff as part of the personal studio.
The Sherman brothers would go on to write a plethora of songs for
Disney’s films, the animated features including The Sword in the Stone,
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, and, his last to work on, The
Jungle Book. The Sherman Brothers had a personal favorite of one of
their songs: “The Most Wonderful Thing about Tiggers.”
While Disney was living he developed one other film that was
particularly outstanding, but it was not purely animation. Disney and
his workers perfected the process of integrating live-action with
animation in Mary Poppins. It was a very difficult technological
advancement that required real humans and animation to be combined
in one frame, unlike the simpler pure animation, but Disney was always
Musical Offerings ⦁ 2012 ⦁ Volume 3 ⦁ Number 2 71
looking to try a new, fascinating idea. Mary Poppins was a “total
synthesis of all that was Disney–animation, music, special effects,
outstanding art, and superb casting and acting.”
21
This was a full-
fledged musical for which the Broadway and television arranger Irwin
Kostal was brought in to conduct. From this film we have the beloved
songs “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” “Chim Chim Cher-ee,” and
“Let’s Go Fly a Kite.” One of Disney’s personal favorites, that he often
had the Sherman brothers play for him, was “Feed the Birds,” which
conveyed such kindness and compassion. Another very special song
was “A Spoonful of Sugar.” The melody line of this song was used as a
leitmotif whenever the character of Mary Poppins was about to take
center stage. Mary Poppins was an immense success at its release in
1964. It was among the last films on which Disney would work
personally before he died in December of 1966.
Since Disney’s death Walt Disney Studios has continued trying to
create films with the same musical vision as its founder. Walt Disney
was the first to show how music could be used as an essential element
in a film. It was through his studio that much of our modern-day
technology on music and film began to be developed. Through his
fusion of classical and popular music he was able to reach a broad
audience with beautiful music. His composers and lyricists always
wrote songs that purposefully advanced the plot. Though Disney was
not a musician, he had a keen sense of what the music included in his
films should be and how a song could make or break a film. Even in his
development of Disneyland he emphasized the importance of music,
whether playing in the streets or on the rides to bring the experience to
life. In all of his entertainment work Disney demanded excellence. No
one person ever received all the credit because the team of animators
and musicians worked together to ensure a spectacular outcome. Walt
Disney merged classical music with popular film to broaden the
horizons of entertainment. The melodies and orchestrations produced
were of utmost quality. David Tietyen wrote in 1990, “His songs
reached our innermost selves with messages of love, hope, and human
compassion–messages that will live for years to come.”
22
Walt Disney
believed in his vision to inspire his audience to dream and think deeply
through music. Though he is not currently listed in the canon of music
history, musicologists need to take a closer look at the importance of
Disney’s work with animation and music in comparison to today’s
21
Ibid., 133.
22
Ibid., 149.
72 Gage ⦁ A Walk through an American Classic
music in film and the inspiration that music from his studio has left on
the hearts of the world.
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