Fantasia is a motion picture produced by Walt Disney that blends classical music and live action with cartoons. The motion picture premiered in 1940. Fantasia consists of animated segments, each featuring a well-known classical composition with cartoon interpretations of the music. The noted symphony conductor Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra performed the music.
Loading the player...Night on Bald Mountain by Modest Mussorgsky
Fantasia originally aroused some controversy from classical music fans who claimed that the movie trivialized great works of music. But the film soon was recognized as a masterpiece for its imaginative animated treatment of the compositions.
The musical selections include Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by Johann Sebastian Bach; the Nutcracker Suite by Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky; The Sorcerer’s Apprentice by Paul Dukas; The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky; Symphony No. 6 in F, the Pastoral, by Ludwig van Beethoven; The Dance of the Hours by Amilcare Ponchielli; and Night on Bald Mountain by Modest Mussorgsky. Perhaps the best known of the sequences is The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which stars the famous Disney cartoon character Mickey Mouse as an apprentice magician who starts a spell that goes out of control.
Loading the player...Toccata and Fugue in D minor
Most of the sequences in Fantasia are playful or comic. However, the final piece, Night on Bald Mountain, portrays the struggle between evil, as represented by the Black God, and the sacred, as symbolized by the dawn and the playing of Franz Schubert’s “Ave Maria.”
Loading the player...Ave Maria
See also Disney, Walt .
