The first soundtrack: Snow White

The first soundtrack to be commercially released was Disney’s 1938 film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The songs were written by Frank Churchill (music) and Lary Morey (lyrics). The score was written by Churchill and Leigh Harline, with some additional music by Paul Smith.

Although Churchill and Morey originally wrote 25 songs for the film, it was typical of Walt Disney’s critical process of film making process to include only a selection in the final product: I’m Wishing, One Song, With a Smile and a Song, Whistle While You Work, Heigh-Ho, Bluddle-Uddle-Um-Dum (The Washing Song), The Silly Song (The Dwarf’s Yodel Song), Some Day My Prince Will Come, Music in Your Soup,and You’re Never to Old to be Young.

Walt Disney was adamant that music should serve as an integral part of the plot rather than an accessory to the film. He said: “It still can be good music and not follow the same pattern everybody in the country has followed. We still haven’t hit in any of these songs. … It’s still the influence from the musicals they have been doing for years. Really, we should set a new pattern, a new way to use music – weave it into the story so somebody doesn’t just burst into song.” (1)

Some other interesting facts about this soundtrack:

  • In one scene, Grumpy plays a weasy old organ. To produce this effect, Jim Macdonald (the sound effects creator) had studio personnel blow into large jugs. Animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston recalled: “With considerable ingenuity and a great deal of blowing and accompanying dizziness, a track had been recorded for the organ that Grumpy played in the dwarf’s house. It was only a first test, but it involved everyone in the studio who could read music, plus a handful of competent musicians and all the sound effects men, some thirty of us in all, blowing on bottles and jugs and strange homemade instruments. The most demanding part was for the man who blew over the giant jug for the lowest bass notes. That part had gone to Jim.” (2)
  • The score was nominated for an Academy Award.
  • Although the film cost around $1.5 million to make, it grossed more than $8 million at the box office.

(1) Tietyen, David (1990) The Musical World of Walt Disney. Wisconsin: Hal Leonard, p.37.
(2) Ibid., p.41.

Posted

in

by

Greg

Tags:

, , , , ,

Featured Content

Dance of the Knights (Prokofiev)
Title: “Dance of the Knights” from Romeo and Juliet (op. 64)Composer: Sergei ProkofievArranger: Greg SmithInstrumentation: Cello and pianoProduct medium: PDF score and part This item is available at Sheet Music Direct and Sheet Music Plus. Sample:  
The fire of knowledge
“When teaching, light a fire, don’t fill a bucket.” – Dan Snow, television presenter. Cited at QuotationsBook  
Hogarth on Chopin
“He accomplishes enormous difficulties, but so quietly, so smoothly and with such constant delicacy and refinement that the listener is not sensible of their real magnitude.  It is the exquisite delicacy, with the liquid mellowness of his tone, and the pearly roundness of his passages of rapid articulation which are the peculiar features of his […]
A task no longer
“Set me a task in which I can put something of my very self, and it is a task no longer. It is joy and art.” -Carman Bliss, Canadian Poet Cited at QuotationsBook  
Nikolaj Zainder performs Elgar’s Violin Concerto on the original violin
In 2010, Violinist Nikolaj Znaider performed Elgar’s Violin Concerto on the same 1741 violin in which Kriesler premiered the work on a hundred years before. Znaider was not worried about comparisons to Kriesler’s original performance: “he way I think of music is that it really is something that is played in the moment – it’s […]
A duet under the bed
It was in the eventful year, then, of 1813—the year of “Il Figlio per Azzardo”, with its obbligato accompaniment for lamp-shades of “Tancredi” and of “L’Italiana in Algeri”—that Rossini was writing one morning in bed, when the duet on which he was engaged fell from his hands. “Nothing easier”, an ordinary composer would say, “than […]
Art is meant to be uplifting
“Art,” announces Pat Buchanan to Charlie Rose, “is meant to be uplifting.” What a relief!  After all these years I’d never realized that Art had a moral purpose.  No more need now to be upset by Shakespeare and Dostoevsky, Picasso and Goya, Stravinsky and Berg, Sophocles and Williams.  Pat has clarified the rules, set the […]
Sight singing with Handel
When Handel travelled through Chester, on his way to Ireland, this year, 1741 (to give the first performance of Messiah), I was at the Public School in that city and very well remember seeing him [Handel] smoke a pipe, over a dish of coffee, at the Exchange Coffee House; for being extremely curious to see […]
What Cage couldn’t stand
“John Cage once said he couldn’t abide the Dominant Seventh, and the saxophone.” Ned Rorem (2000) Lies: A Diary 1986-1999.  Cambridge: MA: Da Capo Press, p.65.
The Ruffled Knights
Title: The Ruffled Knights Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: PDF score