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“At this very moment, people of all ages throughout the United States – in fact, all over the world – are learning the rudiments of ‘classical music,’ that all encompassing genre

distinction that includes music not just from the so-called Classical era of the mid- to late eighteenth century, but music from about the 1700s clear through to the turn of the

twentieth century as well. But they aren’t learning about Beethoven, Chopin, and Liszt in the classroom or the concert hall; no, scads of people are getting their first exposure to

such composers from animated cartoons.”-Daniel Goldmark1

Cartoons have long been a source of entertainment, but have also served as a

socio-cultural barometer for the eras in which they were released. As an emerging art

form, cartoons did much to stimulate the minds of viewers, however it was not until the

two technologies melded into art that their extreme popularity and successes could come

to be known. These technologies (animation and recorded sound) began to fascinate Carl

Stalling and sparked his early experiments with a tick system or ‘click track’.2 This was

not, by any stretch, the first incorporation of music into a short animated film (this was

originally done live by accompanists like Stalling), but it was the first successful attempt

to synchronize music and animation successfully. By allowing collaboration between the

departments, but still allowing independent operation, the efficiency of the studio could

be improved, and consequently profitability increased. It is my contention that the

complex interactions between emerging technologies, along with their monetary

successes, have single-handedly catalyzed changes not only in day-to-day animation

studio operations, but in the animators and composers styles as well.

Carl Stalling was and is one of the most recognized names in Cartoon music for a

number of reasons, many which pertain primarily to technology. Stalling’s career began

in the early 1900s as an accompanist for silent cartoons, where he learned much of when

he knew about using music to create various emotions throughout the picture.3 The book

“Musical Accompainment of Moving Picture” published in 1920 by Lang & West served

as a guide for Stalling in capturing the mood presented to the audience.4 In the early

1920’s, Walt Disney met with Carl Stalling, and helped to launch the career. Stalling 1 Goldmark. Cartoon Music Book. 103.2 Barrier. Cartoon Music Book. 42-48.3 Goldmark. Tunes for Tunes. 12.4 Lang & West. Cartoon Music Book. 19.

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scored the first two Micky Mouse shorts which were released before Steamboat Wille,

which is often considered to be the first ‘complete’ cartoon; Stalling was not involved

with this picture, contrary to popular belief.5 He worked at UB Iwerks for a short time

before moving to the Warner Brothers studio in 1936 where his career really began to

take off.

The Warner Bros. studio succeeded partly because of the management at their

management control of licensing and reproduction royalties.6 As a matter of fact, this

business savvy attitude is actually what propelled Stallings career into the spotlight,

nearly twenty years after his death. It was only after Greg Ford and Hal Willner released

the Carl Stalling Project, a two CD set featuring Stalling’s work at W.B. that his abilities

and achievements began to be recognized.7 However this affinity for success was

brewing at W.B. many years before a wide distribution like this was even possible.

Leon Schlesinger, a producer at Warner Bros. before and during Stallings tenure,

required in his that at least on piece owned by W.B. would be used in every cartoon

created.8 Much of Stallings success was based on this contract and he was probably hired

specifically to fulfill this contract. Since Stalling’s history of scoring silent cartoons had

taught him that audiences react more to music they already know, parody became a major

aspect of his style. As John Zorn said, “Stalling had an Ivesian sense of quotation… all

generes of music are equal—no one is inherently better than the other – and with Stalling,

all are embraced, chewed up, and spit out…”9 The W.B. library was extensive and

allowed Stalling to utilize a great number of tunes in his shorts, and consequently, he

generated profitable revenues for the studio.

The early Disney records show that a system of ‘cross-scoring’ for animators and

musicians was developed into a standard that allowed the music and picture to line up

because, as Stalling says, “Perfect synchronization of music for cartoons was a problem,

since there were so many quick changes and actions that the music had to match”10 When

he began his stay at W.B., Stalling decided that the bar system was insufficient for the

5 Goldmark. Tunes for Tunes. 6 & 12.6 Goldmark. Tunes for Tunes. 18.7 Goldmark. Tunes for Tunes. 10.8 Goldmark. Tunes for Tunes. 17.9 Brophy. Cartoon Music Book. 263.10 Goldmark. Tunes for Tunes. 20-34.

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quickness and excitement involved in cartoon scoring. This led him to pioneer of the

‘tick’ or ‘click-track’ system that has changed the face of recording technology for all

time.

The 1929 Stalling-scored short The Skeleton Dance was the first cartoon to utilize

this new click-track system. Devised as a way to keep the orchestra in time with the

music, this pioneering cartoon helped to define what looks and sounds good (or bad) in a

cartoon today. Stalling, as a pioneer of new techniques, had noticed that since the frame

rate of the animation was constant, he could use the predictability of the framerate and

make it coincide with the music. He achieved this by taking a length of film containing

the same number of frames as the animation and poking holes every 12, 8, or 4 frames,

depending on what the score called for. Playback of this film would create clicks and

pops that were then broadcast to earpieces that the musicians used to stay in time with the

action. This simple solution to a complicated problem has revolutionized and shaped the

way cartoons are scored and recorded today.11

While watching The Skeleton Dance one can practically see the tick

system in the animation, and it is entirely possible to conduct the orchestra in a very strict

4/4 to the point that it is almost distracting. This steady beat continues throughout the

short until the ending sequence when the action speeds up and it becomes obvious that

the cartoon was not animated any faster, just sped up. Speeding up the click track

provides a concurrent effect. The exact synchronizing of an animated movement (such as

steps, or hammering nails) with the underlying music is called “mickey-mousing”.12 This

particular short is filled with such synchronizations, and they are actually distracting to

both the animated and scored storylines. Cartoons after this point would strive to get

away from the monotony of seeing and hearing these ticks as this tremendous

advancement in recording became a standard. However, the most active component of

any cartoon is often the sound effect. Ever since Richard Strauss wrote the bleating

sheep excerpts in Don Quixote, sound effects have been used to highlight humorous

musical situations. These are often used to highlight animated sequences, and usually the

music will drop a beat or so before the sound effect is heard, highlighting is importance.

11 Barrier. Cartoon Music Book. 42-48.12 Goldmark Tunes for Tunes.

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Stalling was, by no stretch, the only composer working in animation at this time,

but he was by far one of the most prolific (as far a industrial advancement). While

Stalling’s composition style relied heavily on existing tunes, Scott Bradley, an animation

composer for MGM, was defining the standards that would become known as the way to

write original music for cartoons. Bradley was very much against mickey-mousing, as

well as the use of recorded dialogue and pre-written music. However as time passes, the

advancements in technology not only allow Bradley to change his position (on using

existing music), but also to allow his composition style to begin to reflect these

technological leaps.

Bradley’s composing style is generally very different from Stalling’s, despite the

fact that they composed during the exact same time. While much of these differences

rely on their opposing viewpoints towards pre-written music, their main distinguishing

features stems from financial success. The Warner Brothers cartoons studio was very

successful, primarily because of their ability to utilize licensing and generate profits. As

a matter of fact, the studio was created as a venue to showcase the W.B. library.13 On the

other hand, Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) suffered from a lackluster library and much

tighter budget constraints.14 The effects of these fiduciary discrepancies are immediately

apparent when comparing Bradley and Stalling compositions.

Because of their smaller size, MGM carried a smaller orchestra with relatively

few strings, and mostly wind instruments. Influences from wind symphonies by

Hindemith and Stravinski were often drawn upon to work around the small number of

strings MGM could afford to hire.15 Additionally, Bradley’s composition style called for

more story development through song rather than the “gag after gag” pace established at

Warner Brothers. Their smaller library and Bradley’s distaste for existing melodies also

forced MGM to work at a slower pace than W.B.. Consequently, Bradley ended up

composing about a third of the number of works that Stalling was writing every year.

Many argue that this compositional style not only contributed to the pace of Bradley’s

13 Goldmark. Tunes for Tunes. 17.14 Goldmark. Tunes for Tunes. 53.15 Goldmark. Tunes for Tunes. 54.

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work, but helped to maintain its high quality as well.16 Bradley had an uncanny ability to

capture not only the mood of a particular scene, but also to transition throughout the

entire picture building a climax towards the end -- something that critics will point out,

Stalling he rarely did.

The Dance of the Weed is an Ising production with a score by Scott Bradley

written in 1941. What made this cartoon unique was it’s backwards production process.

Bradley had long disliked the use of click tracks claiming that they detracted from the

soul of the underlying music. As a result, The Dance of the Weed was composed first,

and the animators drew around the recording, a process that is taxing on everyone except

the musicians.17 Bradley always hoped that the cartoon would reemerge as an acceptable

art form, and this approach was an attempt to make this to happen.18 And, while Bradley

did not necessarily contribute technologically as Stalling had, his influence on the use of

original music in cartoons (The Simpsons – Alf Clausen and The Animaniacs – Richard

Stone) can still be heard today.19

Animation composers, especially those in Stalling’s vein, were constantly looking

for new influences in old music. By the late 20’s and early 30’s jazz music had begun to

bleed into the popular repertoire. Around the same time, cartoons began to utilize jazz as

a marketing technique.20 Unfortunately, many of these cartoons still carry the racist

undertones of the previous century, and actually depended on them both in their

animation and sound. However, this was also the venue that many jazz greats like Louis

Armstrong and Cab Calloway used to enter the mainstream. Live shots of the band

would often block out the title animations right before the cartoons that featured their

music began. The premiers of such cartoons were often highly regarded among the

“viewing class” and could be related to the media spectacles that Haydn had orchestrated

120 years before.

Modern music has also found its place in cartoon music legacy, and Scott Bradley

was often looking for new systems of note organization to utilize. During one 16 Goldmark. Tunes for Tunes. 44.17 Goldmark. Tunes for Tunes. 56.18 Goldmark. Tunes for Tunes. 47.19 Goldmark. Tunes for Tunes. 76.20 Goldmark. Tunes for Tunes. 77.

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particularly odd chase scene from Putting up the Dog, an MGM short scored by Bradley,

the score calls for the use of the Schoenberg 12 tone system.21 This quick and subtle use

of modern music techniques has long been the topic of many a cartoon musicologist

discussion. However, it is often the more recognizable classical and operatic works that

underscore our memories of cartoons. Themes from Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2,

parodies of Rossini operas, Wagner’s entire library appear throughout the cartoon music

repertoire to the point of exhaustion. This extends throughout history and continues, to a

lesser extent, today. Cartoon-viewer’s love of this “new and improved” classical music

helped to propel the Disney movie Fantasia to the top of what could be considered to be

modern program music.

While Stalling and Bradley were both pioneers in their own regard, there are

dozens of other prominent composers who have made a living and a name writing music

for cartoons. However, it is really the owners and producers of the studios that made

cartoons to not only be successful, but on the cutting edge as well. Stalling’s “click-

track” may have been revolutionary for its time, but it was undoubtedly influenced by the

“bar sheet” (incorporating music, dialogue, and animation cues) system that Walt Disney

had pioneered some years before.22 Furthermore, it was not merely Stalling’s ability to

meld popular songs together that drove up Warner Bros. revenues, it was Schlessinger’s

business sense that drove this money machine. It is no surprise, then, that one of the most

significant advances in music technology today was born in a Disney studio, by none

other than Walt himself.

Fantasound was the collective vision of Walt Disney, prominent conductor

Leopold Stokowski (who has a rich history with music technology), and the engineer

William E. Garity. It was initially designed during the production of Fantasisa during

the late 30’s. Despite a flop with distributors that all but killed the project (folding the

spatialized sounds into a monophonic channel), Fantasound would eventually evolve into

what we know as surround sound today.23

While developing the Fantasound system, a number of crucial advancements were

discovered. Both Leopold Stokowski and Walt Disney were part of a new technological

21 Goldmark. Tunes for Tunes. 71.22 Goldmark. Tunes for Tunes. 20.23 Schmul

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wave that began in the early 20th century shortly after the invention of the carbon

microphone, originally developed by Thomas Edison.24 Stokowski was always at the

forefront of his field, constantly experimenting with acoustics and instrument placement,

and was the conductor for a number of multi-track recordings even before the advent of

electrical recording techniques in the early 20’s.25 He continued to record at the

Academy of Music in Philadelphia and would eventually go to work for the National

Broadcasting Corporation, gaining wide radio coverage. Disney, as we have discovered,

was a pioneer as a producer of animation and the accompanying sound, and while

planning for Fantasia, he demanded that the frequency response of the recording be

improved. The high standards demanded by Stokowski and Disney forced William

Garity, the project’s engineer, to come up with the revolutionary system known as

Fantasound.

What made the Fantasound system so groundbreaking stemmed from two crucial

aspects that dealt with the tracking features of the Fanta-board -- the device invented to

implement Fantasound. The first tracking advancement can be seen in the sheer number

of tracks used. Most film-based recordings at this time were monophonic, or were

recorded on one track. The Fanta-board utilized eight tracks – six stereophonic close-in

microphones, one mix of these six tracks, and one microphone picking up reverberant or

‘room’ noise. These were extracted into four tracks – three with stereophonic audio

tracks, and one track used to change track volume. This control track was used to change

the compression ratio during playback according to the volume. Doing this allowed soft

passages to be heard over tape noise that troubled previous recordings. Loud passages

could now stand out from the softer passages, primarily because of this advancement in

compression and dynamic range manipulations.26

Unfortunately, this hefty technology was not received well by theatres and

distributors. So much so that the only screenings with Fantasound were in the initial run

of the film. After this major city revue, the tracks were folded into a monophonic

recording using the dated technology. In 1942 Disney and members of his ‘Fanta-Team’

were awarded an Academy Award for “an outstanding contribution to the advancement

24 IEEE25 Chasins26 Schmul

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of the use of sound in motion pictures…” Despite these great achievements, another

significant music technology milestone is tied to the Fantasound project. Because

stereophonic distributions were not brought back until the 15-year anniversary-release,

the original masters had to be transferred from the Fanta-board – a device which occupied

an entire room to magnetic recorders in another building. A transfer over specially

designed telephone lines was scheduled, and a revolutionary data transfer over the

‘internet’ took place.27

“Now we can bring a symphony orchestra to every small town in America.”-Walt Disney28

Technology has shaped every facet of our lives, down to the cartoons we watch

every Saturday morning (or in the evenings, as is now the case). Looking back to he

1950’s, it is apparent that the same held true for this generation. The culture of the

concert hall was a major facet of this era, and, sure enough, it appeared in their cartoons.

We will now examine pieces by Stalling and Bradley respectively -- both from the time

of the Hollywood Bowl. Carl Stalling’s The Rabbit of Seville (1950 - Lantz) showcases

the overture from Rossini’s The Marriage of Figaro. This is a very popular cartoon

featuring a Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd chase.

The cartoon opens and Bugs and Fudd appear in front of an eager opera crowd.

Bugs, the ‘cultured’ of the two, knows how to act, and is immediately in character… for

the opera of course. Fudd however, is overcome with stage fright and succumbs to Bugs’

antics. After some singing, the remainder of the cartoon (with the exception of the

ending tagline) has no vocals, and features only the overture (also with the exception of

the ending climax song – Mendelssohn’s Wedding March; an interesting juxtaposition to

the Marriage of Figaro). This is very different than the previous mindset that Stalling

operated within, where sometimes there were over 30 cues and changes.29 This short

animated film was a perfect venue for the now prominent Stalling to comment on the

culture of the time.

Bradley also had a number of cartoons that commented on the concert hall

environment of the early 50’s. There are a number of Bradley cartoons with this theme; 27 Schmul28 Lang & West. Cartoon Music Book. 22.29 Goldmark. Tunes for Tunes. 12.

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The Cat Concerto (1947 – MGM) features Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2,

which should raise flags for Bradley purists. However, this is one of the most quoted

cartoon music selections. The film begins with Tom, the cat, at the piano, maintaining an

aura of cultured poise and seriousness. As he begins the piece, Jerry interrupts him

constantly distracting Tom to the point that he begins to improvise. This interplay

continues throughout the cartoon and at point, the hammers of the piano, in a ‘mickey-

moused’ fashion, literally chase Jerry. However, the ‘micky-mousing’ seems okay in this

particular case, because of the sheer feat of animation required for this scene. The

technological improvements in animation spilled over into the compositions as well.

While cartoons have always been a form of entertainment capable of capturing the

mindset of a generation, they have also been a venue for the evolution of audio

technology. The inherent connection of music to technology through animation,

exploited by Stalling and his invention of the click-track for film has come full circle

with the advent of the multi-tracking stereophonic feat known as Fantasound. As these

technologies shaped and evolved over the years, so did the culture surrounding the

cartoons the technology supported. Even today, there is a culture dividing cartoons for

adults and cartoons for children. The Cartoon Network has captured both of these

markets, playing children’s cartoons during the day, and cartoons with a more mature

subject matter run at night. Music still plays an integral role in plot advancement,

however the compositional quality has decreased significantly. Technology now permits

the quick slicing and dicing of media farm music that allows studios to run with a smaller

composition budget. Fortunately, there are still composers (Alf Claussen – The

Simpsons, Mark Mothersbough – Rugrats) that have carved a niche for themselves,

exploiting these technologies, as have others in the past.

The cartoon culture has not left the stage -- Hundreds of cartoons are produced

each year, and while there may not be as many original numbers as there were during the

era of the Hollywood cartoon, a few musical gems certainly emerge from time to time.

Whether used as transition, parody, or plot, music will always have its place in film and

cartoons. It will always be intertwined with the technology that drives it, and the culture

that surrounds it. The thoughts and actions of a century ago resonate every day in the

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technologies we take for granted. We are fortunate to have their experiences, but we

should look forward to new and exciting advancements in music technology -- certainly

animation will be at the crest of this wave.

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Works Cited:

1. Beck, Jerry ed. The 50 Greatest Cartoons: As Selected by 1,000 Animation Professionals. Atlanta: Turner Publishing. 1994.

2. Chasins, Abrams. Leopold Stokowski, a profile. New York: Da Capo Press. 1979.3. Goldmark, Daniel ed & Taylor, Yuval ed. The Cartoon Music Book. Chicago: A

Capella Books, 2002.4. Goldmark, Daniel. Tunes for Tunes. Berkeley: University of California Press,

Ltd. 2005.5. IEEE Global History Network: Carbon Transmitter. New Brunswick, NJ6. Maltin, Leonard. Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animate Cartoons.

Plume Books. New York, New York. 1980, rev. 1987.7. Schmul, John. < http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/>. The American

Widescreen Museum, 1941. HTML ed 1998.