William Lava

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William Lava (March 18, 1911 St. Paul, Minnesota - February 20, 1971 Los Angeles, California) 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 from 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 seventh chord, sounding almost similar to Hoyt Curtin's Hanna-Barbera music.

The Tweety cartoon The Jet Cage (where the first half of the cartoon is scored by Milt Franklyn while the second is scored by William Lava) demonstrates well the difference between the two styles of composition.

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. (Lava's 1940's work on projects such as the "Joe McDoakes" short subjects and Republic serials shows him to have been an able and capable composer, his scores greatly enhanced by the studio orchestra.) Without an ample music budget, Lava was forced to work with a tiny band to record his scores.

In addition, Lava's reputation was damaged by eleven Road Runner cartoons subcontracted by DePatie-Freleng Enterprises to Format Films in 1965 and '66[1]. The budgets for these cartoons were even tighter still, meaning that only the first one (Run, Run, Sweet Road Runner) had real scored music. The other 10 used a set of generic musical cues, which did not follow the action closely as in other Warner Brothers productions.

William Lava also composed the Pink Panther Show music for 124 episodes (USA, 1969, animation), always based on the Henry Mancini's original theme, adapting it to closely follow character action.

Lava composed the theme and most of the incidental music for the TV series F Troop.