When You Wish Upon A Star
Leigh Harline
Browse 1 Sheet
Sort:
Song library
Browse piano sheets by Leigh Harline on Zen Virtual Piano. Leigh Harline was a composer born in Salt Lake City, Utah, on March 26, 1907, one of 13 children. He majored in music at the University of Utah, where he studied piano and organ with J. Spencer Cornwall, a former director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Harline moved to California in 1928. His radio jobs in San Francisco and Los Angeles covered composing, conducting, arranging, instrumental playing, singing and announcing. His piano and organ studies in Utah and his work as an instrumentalist on California radio may hint at a thread of musical performance running through his early career. In 1931 Harline provided music for the first transcontinental radio broadcast to originate from the West Coast, which caught the ear of Walt Disney. Harline joined Disney in 1932, writing tunes for more than 50 animated shorts. These included the Silly Symphonies The Old Mill, Music Land and The Pied Piper. His first Disney songs and score were heard in Father Noah's Ark in early 1933. His radio work from 1928 and the more than 50 shorts for Disney may point to a career that spanned radio and animation. Music Land (1935) is a spoof of symphonic jazz with a cast of musical instruments. Harline's score for The Old Mill (1937) is a tone poem that loosely follows the four-movement structure of a classical symphony. The Old Mill won an Academy Award for Best Short Subject, Cartoon. Music Land's spoof of symphonic jazz and the symphony-like structure of The Old Mill may point to symphonic forms appearing in more than one short. Harline also scored The Goddess of Spring (1934). Harline composed the score for Pinocchio in 1940 and wrote most of the film's songs with the lyricist Ned Washington. Harline and Washington delivered "When You Wish upon a Star" to the Pinocchio story crew in early autumn 1938. Walt Disney chose to run the song under the opening credits and to reuse it as a musical theme through the film. The film won the Academy Award for Best Original Music Score, and Harline and Washington won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for "When You Wish Upon a Star." Does the Best Original Song award for "When You Wish Upon a Star," set beside The Old Mill's Academy Award for Best Short Subject, Cartoon, show Academy honours reaching both a feature film and a short in his work? Cliff Edwards sang the original version in the character of Jiminy Cricket. The Library of Congress deemed Edwards's recording "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and inducted it into the National Recording Registry in 2009. It is tempting to link the song's delivery to the story crew in 1938 with the 2009 induction of Edwards's recording: both dates belong to one song, and they fall in different decades. Harline's death came on December 10, 1969, in Long Beach, California, from complications of throat cancer. He is buried in Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery.
Browse piano sheets by Leigh Harline on Zen Virtual Piano.
Leigh Harline was a composer born in Salt Lake City, Utah, on March 26, 1907, one of 13 children. He majored in music at the University of Utah, where he studied piano and organ with J. Spencer Cornwall, a former director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Harline moved to California in 1928. His radio jobs in San Francisco and Los Angeles covered composing, conducting, arranging, instrumental playing, singing and announcing. His piano and organ studies in Utah and his work as an instrumentalist on California radio may hint at a thread of musical performance running through his early career.
In 1931 Harline provided music for the first transcontinental radio broadcast to originate from the West Coast, which caught the ear of Walt Disney. Harline joined Disney in 1932, writing tunes for more than 50 animated shorts. These included the Silly Symphonies The Old Mill, Music Land and The Pied Piper. His first Disney songs and score were heard in Father Noah's Ark in early 1933. His radio work from 1928 and the more than 50 shorts for Disney may point to a career that spanned radio and animation.
Music Land (1935) is a spoof of symphonic jazz with a cast of musical instruments. Harline's score for The Old Mill (1937) is a tone poem that loosely follows the four-movement structure of a classical symphony. The Old Mill won an Academy Award for Best Short Subject, Cartoon. Music Land's spoof of symphonic jazz and the symphony-like structure of The Old Mill may point to symphonic forms appearing in more than one short. Harline also scored The Goddess of Spring (1934).
Harline composed the score for Pinocchio in 1940 and wrote most of the film's songs with the lyricist Ned Washington. Harline and Washington delivered "When You Wish upon a Star" to the Pinocchio story crew in early autumn 1938. Walt Disney chose to run the song under the opening credits and to reuse it as a musical theme through the film. The film won the Academy Award for Best Original Music Score, and Harline and Washington won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for "When You Wish Upon a Star." Does the Best Original Song award for "When You Wish Upon a Star," set beside The Old Mill's Academy Award for Best Short Subject, Cartoon, show Academy honours reaching both a feature film and a short in his work?
Cliff Edwards sang the original version in the character of Jiminy Cricket. The Library of Congress deemed Edwards's recording "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and inducted it into the National Recording Registry in 2009. It is tempting to link the song's delivery to the story crew in 1938 with the 2009 induction of Edwards's recording: both dates belong to one song, and they fall in different decades. Harline's death came on December 10, 1969, in Long Beach, California, from complications of throat cancer. He is buried in Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery.
Search the library
Common questions
Leigh Harline majored in music at the University of Utah. He studied piano and organ there with J. Spencer Cornwall, a former director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
Leigh Harline joined Disney in 1932. Among the Silly Symphonies he worked on were The Old Mill, Music Land and The Pied Piper, and his tunes covered more than 50 animated shorts in all.
Leigh Harline composed the score for Pinocchio in 1940 and wrote most of the film's songs with the lyricist Ned Washington. They delivered "When You Wish upon a Star" to the story crew in early autumn 1938.
Pinocchio won the Academy Award for Best Original Music Score. Leigh Harline and Ned Washington won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for "When You Wish Upon a Star."