In 1928, Walt Disney was traveling across the country and stopped in Kansas City. While there, he contacted Carl Stalling. The two had met some years before when Stalling was leading an orchestra and playing the organ at the Isis Movie Theatre. Disney wanted to hire the musician to provide music for the animated short films Plane Crazy and The Gallopin’ Gaucho.
Disney hired Stalling to be his studio’s first music director, and shortly thereafter Stalling approached him with an idea. He wanted Disney to create a series of short films where the animation was built to follow the soundtrack, as opposed to the other way around. The concept would evolve into the Silly Symphony series. The first of these would be The Skeleton Dance, which debuted in 1929.
Speaking about the inspiration for the film, Stalling stated, “ “Ever since I was a kid, I had wanted to see real skeletons dancing and had always enjoyed seeing skeleton dancing acts in vaudeville.”
As Walt Disney wrote in late 1928, “Carl’s idea of a skeleton dance for a musical novelty has been growing on me.”
Little did they know at the time that the series would go on to revolutionize the field of animation, introducing innovations such as Technicolor and the multiplane camera. Over the course of the series, Disney would win seven Academy Awards for the Silly Symphony series. And to think it all started with a Danse Macabre.
The Dance of Death
The Danse Macabre, or Dance of Death, is a tradition that dates back to the Late Middle Ages. It was an “allegorical concept of the all-conquering and equalizing power of death.” In its original form, it showed a personification of death dancing with living figures, ranging from the pope and emperor to children and clerks. The idea was to suggest how death came from one and all, regardless of rank.
The prevalence of the Black Death and the Hundred Years War likely spurred the cultural fixation on death at the time. As historian Frances Rapp noted, “Christians were moved by the sight of the Infant Jesus playing on his mother’s knee; their hearts were touched by the Pietà; and patron saints reassured them by their presence. But, all the while, the danse macabre urged them not to forget the end of all earthly things.”
This genre of art proliferated in literature, paintings, and music such as Mattasin oder Toden Tanz by August Nörmiger. Though it faded from popularity during the Renaissance, it would continue to surface in later works, such as Liszt’s Totentanz: Paraphrase on “Dies irae,” S.126, and Camille Saint-Saëns’s 1874 composition Danse macabre, Op. 40.
As a side note, many writers have attempted to tie the music of Disney’s The Skeleton Dance to Saint-Saëns’s piece, but it’s a connection that Stalling denies. He stated, “It wasn’t Saint-Saens’ Danse Macabre, although some writers have said it was. Walt couldn’t get copyright clearance so he asked me to compose something similar, but my music wasn’t similar at all to the Danse Macabre. It was mostly a fox trot, in a minor key.”
However, that is not to suggest that Stalling’s piece did not incorporate a well-known piece of classical music.
The March of the Dwarfs
Born in 1843, composer and pianist Edvard Grieg was Norway’s pride and joy. As noted by Classic FM, he was to the country as Shakespeare was to England, the nation’s defining genius. His homeland became a defining influence on his music, stating, “The traditional way of life of the Norwegian people, together with Norway’s legends, Norway’s history, Norway’s natural scenery, stamped itself on my creative imagination from my earliest years.”
He began playing piano at a young age, studying under his mother. Recalling his childhood, he wrote, “Why not begin by remembering the wonderful, mystical satisfaction of stretching one’s arms up to the piano and bringing forth – not a melody. Far from it! No, it had to be a chord. First a third, then a fifth, then a seventh. And finally, both hands helping – Oh joy! – A ninth, the dominant ninth chord. When I had discovered this my rapture knew no bounds. That was a success! Nothing since has been able to elate me so profoundly as this.”
As a teenager, he attended the Leipzig Conservatory (which had been founded by Felix Mendelsohn) and graduated in 1862. From 1867 through 1901, he began publishing his Lyric Pieces, a collection of 66 short compositions for solo piano. Book V, Op. 54 was published in 1891 and contained a number titled Trolltog. A literal translation of the title would be something akin to “Troll Train,” though it is typically translated as “March of the Trolls.”
As the story goes, the piece was performed for a German audience, who did not have a proper translation for the word “troll.” As such, it was given the title “March of the Dwarfs.” Though it does not quite capture the essence of the original title, it seems to have stuck over the years.
It was this piece that Stalling decided to incorporate into his composition for The Skeleton Dance. As an article from the Walt Disney Family Museum notes, “The integration of classical music was a common practice in early Hollywood scoring and would continue to be used in the Disney shorts even as the Studios hired more exclusive composers through the 1930s.”
It’s a tradition that Stalling would continue to use after leaving Disney and joining the Warner Bros. studio, where he provided music for the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series. It became such a staple of these series that they may very well be credited with introducing a generation of viewers to the world of classical music.
Make Mine Music 