Customer Reviews

Tunes for 'Toons: Music and the Hollywood Cartoon

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Though the book focuses almost exclusively on the works of Carl Stalling and Scott Bradley, Goldmark paints a thorough picture of the workings of animation in the 1930s and 1940s. Particularly interesting to me was the different approach that each composer took in scoring animated shorts. Stalling's collage of classical, public domain, and Warner-owned themes and Bradley's own original scoring and lofty hopes for the future of music in animation. That Goldmark is a musician interested in animation and not the other way around seems to me more for the better. Texts on animation tend to focus on the same shorts or studios and get a little dry with post-modern speculation. While Goldmark does his share of that in the book, he sticks more to the facts surrounding the high-mindedness that films of the 1930's and Classical music both share.

The book's ending is rather blunt, particularly the final chapter which could have been expanded on with more contemporary examples in animation. On the whole, this was a great read, especially the jazz chapter and the chapter on "What's Opera Doc".

I am trying to find better ways to help students learn classical music. This is a fun, yet educational way to help kids learn about classical music and remember it always! Lots of resources and ideas can be drawn from this book. Good luck!

I had the good fortune to interview Professor Goldmark about this book and his work in general. You can listen to the podcast interview at the following link:

http://blog.case.edu/orgs/ksl/offtheshelf/2008/10/20/off_the_shelf_episode_2

I don't have this book, and usually I hate it when people feel the need to contribute reviews for something they don't have (and I gave it 5 stars, because you can't submit a review without a rating - I'm giving Daniel the benefit of the doubt). But I wanted to respond to some of Robert Carlton's comments in his review. First of all, I think he's right that this was Daniel Goldmark's PhD thesis, so perhaps it is a bit dry as a result. However, I have to take issue with his comment that he wished that Goldmark had spent less time on the cartoons of the '30s and '40s and more time on the "golden age" of the '50s and '60s. Well, that's just wrong. The golden age IS pretty much the '30s and '40s. I could maybe give him that there are great cartoons from the '50s, but the '60s is part of the golden age? Let's keep in mind that this book is about theatrical cartoons and more specifically the music written for them. Theatrical cartoons had all but just about dried up by the '60s and those that hadn't truly have some of the most awful music ever produced (sorry Bill Lava). Carl Stalling had even left WB before the '50s were close to ending, so I think that's just a wrong argument. That being said, I will be buying this book as Goldmark is the leading authority on the subject. Even if it is a thesis...

Having grown up on a steady diet of Warner Bros., Disney and MGM cartoons I probably have a genetic predisposition to marimbas, slide trombones and contra-bassoons, and music that roars through more changes in 3 minutes than an entire Lutoslawski symphony. I've enjoyed the Rhino and Hanna-Barbera cartoon music boxes, and of course the two Carl Stalling Project CDs.

It was with some anticipation therefore that I picked up this book about cartoon music, with the fun-looking cartoon cover.

To my dismay, it's a rather dry book written like a master's thesis, full of footnotes and citations (Goldmark is a professor of music history). The author spends a lot of time identifying the sources of various cartoon themes, and presents several second-by-second breakdowns of particular cartoon soundtracks. His text, which spends more time on the 1930s and 1940s cartoons than the 'golden era' of 1950s and 1960s, is full of such scholarly and entirely-beside-the-point observations as:

"The pensive, heaving breaths taken by both characters throughout the cartoon call attention to the unnatural demands that opera singers must place on their bodies."

Well, yeah??? The best of these cartoons transcended good storytelling precisely because they didn't take themselves too seriously, and put a sense of fun above all else. Daniel Goldmark could take a lesson here.