If you could ask Carl Stalling, he would probably say it was his idea; and if you could ask Walt Disney, he would probably say it was his idea. Whosever idea it was, the seed of the idea originated with Stalling. He had been frustrated with the work he had been doing on the Mickey cartoons , which, by 1929, were really starting to take off. Stalling was dissatisfied that he had to tailor his music to fit the flow of the cartoon, and not vice-versa. Between him and Disney, they envisioned a series of shorts where that would be reversed; where the action would be subservient to the music. And thus the Silly Symphonies were born .

The Silly Symphony series became a showcase for the Disney artists. In them, they were allowed to let their imaginations run a little freer, not being locked into the demands of a single character. The Symphonies were intended to have no recurring characters (although a few of the regular characters did appear in a few) and usually ended up having little or no real plotline. Most tended to be dance numbers (as in the first Symphony, "The Skeleton Dance") or lyrical, pastoral works (as in what is probably the best known Symphony, "The Old Mill.")

They also became the method where the Disney artists experimented with new techniques. The multi-plane camera (which proved to be a milestone in animation; giving flat, two-dimensional animation a three dimensional look) got it's first tryout here. Disney's first color short was a Silly Symphony. Disney's first real attempt at animating realistic human figures was also tried first in a Symphony; a necessary step before they started on their first feature length film, "Snow White."

Ironically also, the one medium where the artists were not really concentrating on character gave us the first short where Disney felt true character had finally been achieved: "The Three Little Pigs."

75 different Silly Symphonies were created over a ten year span (1929-1939). The series was discontinued once the feature films proved to be so successful.