Frank Churchill in production meetings

After joining the Disney studios in 1930, Frank Churchill composed music for animated shorts and feature films. His output includes Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Bambi, and The Three Little Pigs (featuing “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf).

Animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston recalled in Disney Animation:

Walt [Disney] used to claim that Frank Churchill always slept through the story meetings and never listened to his first instructions, but Frank hardly can be blamed. He knew that no matter what ideas were tossed out, and no matter how enthusiastically they might be received, that would have little bearing on the music he would eventually write. … He figured, correctly, that he would do better to wait until the decisions had been made and the footage set, and then he could write a score with integrity and flow, regardless of what had happened to the so-called structure. He would sit at his piano penciling his melodies and muttering, “This note is for the director, and this is for the producer, while this little note down here is for the animator, and this is for the director’s Aunt Tilda, and this is just for me!” (1)

(1) Tietyen, David (1990) The Musical World of Walt Disney. Wisconsin: Hal Leonard, p.37.

Posted

in

by

Greg

Tags:

, , , ,

Featured Content

First we make music
“…the nature of music is inherently social. Blackburn argues, ” … we need to remind ourselves that music in itself does not exist. Despite evidence to the contrary (scores, analytical charts, music stores, CD shelves, etc.) music exists only in performance. … It is therefore a social and political act.” The performance of music corresponds […]
Hough and Schnabel on piano rolls
I want to believe in piano rolls. The idea that we can insert an object into a present-day piano and hear long-dead pianists and composers perform again as if they were in the same room is a tantalisingly attractive prospect. It has a magical aura about it. But, I’m afraid, it’s a conjuring trick, or […]
The fire of knowledge
“When teaching, light a fire, don’t fill a bucket.” – Dan Snow, television presenter. Cited at QuotationsBook  
Intermezzo, op. 118, no. 2 (Brahms)
Title: Intermezzo, op. 118, no. 2Composer: Johannes BrahmsArranger: Greg SmithInstrumentation: Cello and pianoProduct medium: PDF score and part  
Playing by the mood of the audience
Rachmaninoff sent fellow composer/pianist Medtner his Corelli Variations.  He wrote: I played them here about fifteen times, but of these fifteen performances, only one was good.  The others were sloppy.  I can't play my own compositions!  And it's so boring! Not once have I played these all in continuity.  I was guided by the coughing […]
The development of concert life in London
The public concert, as an institution, dates from England from the Restoration period [from the 1660s]; previously music, unless ecclesiastical or dramatic in character, had been essentially the art of a small circle.  The largess of aristocratic patronage and the profits of publication were the composers’ rewards.  But with the middle of the seventeenth century […]
Cello and piano
Encouraging progress
“I have yet to find the man, however exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than under a spirit of criticism.” – Charles M. Schwab, American businessman Cited at Quotd.
O Danny Boy
Long before the tune Danny Boy even had words the tune existed as an Irish folk melody.  A study in 1979 revealed that Londonderry Air was related to Aislean an Oigfear (The Young Man’s Dream), which had been collected in 1792 from harpist Denis O’Hampsey  He was over ninety at the time and had played […]
Word of mouth encore
Leopold Stokowski gave the Philadelphia premiere of Ravel’s Bolero as an “encore” at a Friday afternoon concert. The newspaper critics had all left the hall, and so once again word of mouth had to prove its effacy, for at the Saturday night concert, after the last number, the audience applauded with unusual fervour and would […]