William Lava

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William Lava (March 18, 1911 - February 20, 1971) was a musical composer and arranger who worked on the Warner Bros.' Looney Tunes cartoons from 1962 onwards, replacing the deceased Milt Franklyn. Lava's music was very different to that of Milt Franklyn and Carl Stalling - it does not draw from Raymond Scott's tunes, and has a tendency towards atonality - a sense of tension is often created in Lava's scores using sequences based on the notes of the diminished chord, sounding almost similar to Hoyt Curtin's Hanna-Barbera music.

Animation fans often groan at Lava's work when compared to his predecessors. However, it should be noted that he arrived at Warner Brothers shortly before the studio dismantled its full-time orchestra, later subcontracting animation to DePatie-Freleng Enterprises. Without an ample music budget, Lava was forced to work with a tiny band to record his scores. Also, budget cuts forced him to produce a set of generic cues that were edited into ten Road Runner shorts produced in 1965 and '66. [1] Since Lava didn't actually "score" these cartoons, per se, the music doesn't follow the action closely as in other Warner Brothers productions.