Fantasia, The Waltz of the Flowers

If Chaplin talked, Disney gave a concert. In Fantasia, released in the late fall of 1940, he disclosed something new in the line of musical entertainment. Fantasia offered a program of descriptive music, recorded by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski, with animated program notes to take the the usual printed ones. The animation, needless to say, was Disney's part of the proceedings, and Disney at his best. Deems Taylor, appearing on the screen at intervals, acted as general apologist and between-numbers commentator. The film opened with a Bach toccata and fugue, illustrated by abstract moving forms. In Dukas' The Sorcerer's Apprentice, our old pal, Mickey Mouse, was the hero. He was the only traditional Disney character in Fantasia.

Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, a Disney masterpiece, was one of the most exquisite episodes in the series, as this shot from "The Waltz of the Flowers" indicates. A unique feature of Fantasia was the reproduction of the music. Recorded on three sound tracks, it was produced through a battery of sixty loudspeakers placed throughout the theater, giving the music a quality of astonishing fidelity.

The first half of the program closed with Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. The music to the ballet for which this was originally written caused an uproar at its first hearing and is still considered too advanced for the average taste. Nevertheless, as realized by the Disney forces, it was one of the most successful numbers on the program--a tribute not only to the public's growth in musical appreciation, but also to Disney's genius for translating sounds into action.

The second half comprised Beethoven's "Pastoral" Symphony (which aroused violent controversy over its lapses of taste), Ponchielli's The Dance of the Hours, Mussorgsky's A Night on Bald Mountain, and ended with Schubert's Ave Maria.