In April 1952, "Billboard" reported that Jack Lawrence and Sammy Fain had signed to compose the score. In the following year, Disney decided the score should be based on Peter Tchaikovsky's "Sleeping Beauty Ballet", which rendered the songs Lawrence and Fain had written unusable except for "Once Upon a Dream". Walter Schumann was originally slated to be the film composer, but he left the project because of creative differences with Disney. George Bruns was recommended to replace Schumann by animator Ward Kimball. Because of a musicians' strike, the musical score was recorded in Berlin, Germany with the Graunke Symphony Orchestra from September 8 through November 25, 1958.