Music, Memory, Pixar

The ever-increasing popularity of Hollywood animation has come about not just through technological advances or the breaking down of decades-old biases about cartoons being just for kids but also through the emotionally nuanced storytelling deployed more recently by studios, in particular Pixar. Issues of nostalgia permeate practically all of Pixar’s features; their more recent films have gone further than simply reveling in the remembrance of times past (real or imagined) and have begun to explore the creation of memory and the reasons why memories fade or endure.1 Sound and music have played decisive roles in the recollections and impressions of all these films. Here I’ll consider some trends in scoring and sound design to show how the melodies of childhood—and adulthood—drive Pixar’s stories, which appeal to all ages. It’s telling that, more than eighty years after the premiere of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), the first American animated feature, composers still feel stuck in a rut with cartoon music. In an article about Cars 3 (2017), the film’s composer, Randy Newman, stated: “It’s a privilege to be able to write for an orchestra like this. . . . Sometimes I wish I could get a big romantic drama with Jessica Chastain looking into the distance for 20 or 30 seconds. But I get cars going around the track.”2 Newman is echoing the very same sentiments his colleagues in cartoons have expressed for ages, including MGM composer Scott Bradley, who was quoted seventy years ago saying, “It’s fights, fights, fights for me . . .