From Bach to Stravinsky, the greats of classical music animate ‘Fantasia’

For nearly all movies, composers typically write music that is tailored to the action, setting and mood of the story. Think Ennio Morricone, Bernard Herrmann or John Williams. But the creators of “Fantasia” (1940), Walt Disney’s feature-length animated film, conjured up fantastical sequences to accompany eight pre-existing works of classical music. 

The groundbreaking result is now viewed as a masterpiece of American cinema. In 1998, the American Film Institute ranked it as this country’s 58th greatest film based on a poll of more than 1,500 movie-industry artists and leaders. It received two honorary Oscars after its release.

Audiences will have a chance to view segments of this landmark cinematic accomplishment and its sequel, “Fantasia 2000,” on the big screen and hear the accompanying classical selections performed live by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, under guest conductor Emil de Cou, on Nov. 24-26.   

Disney conceived the idea for “Fantasia” when he realized that The Sorceror’s Apprentice, a now-famous animated short created as a comeback vehicle for the character Mickey Mouse, could not earn back its costs if released on its own. He took a risk and decided to make it part of a larger film that would include animated segments set to seven other classical works, all but one led by famed conductor Leopold Stokowski and performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra.

The challenge was to find evocative music that would inspire Disney’s visual artists and story writers. Meetings were held with artistic staff, along with Stokowski and Deems Taylor, a music critic and composer, who served as the film’s narrator. Works like Niccoló Paganini’s Moto Perpetuo and Claude Debussy’s Clair de lune were considered and ultimately rejected before the final lineup was agreed upon. Nearly all the chosen pieces were either inspired by poems or folk tales or were meant to tell stories as dance works or programmatic compositions.

It is impossible to know widely known the eight works chosen by the Disney team were at the time of the film’s release, but certainly the movie enhanced their visibility and brought them in an unprecedented way to mainstream audiences. It is clear, for example, that Paul Dukas’ 1897 symphonic poem, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, got a huge boost from the movie and has gone on to be the French’s composer’s most performed and recorded work.

Here is a brief look at each of the works featured in the original film:

Toccata and Fugue in D minor (date unknown), J.S. Bach. Originally written for pipe organ, this piece was arranged for orchestra by Stokowski, and it is visualized in “Fantasia” with abstract patterns and lines. In large part because of its use in the film, it has gone on to become the best-known organ work of the 18th century. Though not related to a story, this highly dramatic, even spooky composition can be heard behind the opening credits of the 1931 movie, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” and it was used in a 1962 cinematic adaptation of “The Phantom of the Opera.”

The Nutcracker Suite (1892), Piotr Illyich Tchaikovsky. Little needs to be said about this renowned work, which has become a beloved Christmastime staple. The piece was conceived as a ballet, and Disney and his colleagues kept that original idea, having fairies, fishes and varied flora perform some of its best-known scenes, including The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (1897), Paul Dukas. Much as it did with The Nutcracker, the Disney team hewed closely to the original inspiration for Dukas’ work — a 1797 Goethe poem. That literary work spins a story of a naive sorcerer’s apprentice, who, tired of doing his own chores when left alone, enchants a broom to do his work for him but soon loses control of the magic he has initiated.

The Rite of Spring (1913), Igor Stravinsky. Commissioned by famed ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev for his Ballets Russes, it became an immediate succès de scandale at its Parisian debut and was later seen as one of the most influential works of the 20th century. Though originally conceived as accompaniment for a ballet about pagan rituals, the complex, polyrhythmic music is used here as a backdrop to a visual history of Earth’s beginnings, complete with dinosaurs.

Pastoral Symphony (1808), Ludwig van Beethoven. Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony is a programmatic work vividly depicting a bucolic country scene interrupted by a violent storm. The Disney visualization goes in a very different direction from the composer’s original concept, depicting a festival to honor Bacchus, the god of wine, with an array of Greco-Roman mythological beings in attendance, including Zeus, who conjures the storm.

Dance of the Hours (1876), Amilcare Ponchielli. Probably the least known of these eight works, this comic ballet was originally intended to be the Act 3 finale of Ponchielli’s opera La Gioconda, and it depicts the hours of the day through dance. In “Fantasia,” the ballet is performed by ostriches, hippopotamuses, alligators and elephants.

Night on Bald Mountain (1867), Modest Mussorgsky, and Ave Maria (1825), Franz Schubert. Night on Bald Mountain is a tone poem depicting a witches’ sabbath on St. John’s Eve, an Eastern Slavic folk holiday related to the summer solstice. In the Disney version, the winged devil Chernabog summons evil spirits that disperse with ringing of an Angelus bell and the coming of dawn. As a counterpart to the earlier evil, this section ends with monks proceeding through a forest into the ruins of cathedral to the singing of Ave Maria.