How do you do?
It's my very pleasant duty to welcome you here...
...on behalf of Walt Disney, Leopold Stokowski and all the other artists...
...and musicians whose combined talents went into the creation of this new form of entertainment...
..."Fantasia"
What you are going to see, are the designs and pictures and stories...
...that music inspired in the minds and imaginations of a group of artists.
In other words they're not going to be the interpretations of trained musicians.
Which I think is all to the good.
So now we present the "Toccata and Fugue in D minor" by Johann Sebastian Bach...
...interpreted in pictures by Walt Disney and his associates...
...and the music by the Philadelphia Orchestra and its conductor Leopold Stokowski.
You know it's funny how wrong an artist can be about his own work.
Now, the one composition of Tchaikovsky's that he really detested was his Nutcracker suite.
Which is probably the most popular thing he ever wrote.
Incidentally, you won't see any nutcracker on the screen.
There is nothing like to him but the title.
And now we are going to hear a piece of music that tells a very definite story.
It's a very old story, one that goes back almost 2000 years.
A legend about a sorcerer who had an apprentice.
He was a bright young lad, very anxious to learn the business.
As a matter of fact, he was a little bit too bright...
...because he started practising some of the boss's best magic tricks...
...before learning how to control them.
Mister Stokowski, Mister Stokowski...
My congratulations, sir.
- Congratulations to you, Mickey. - Gee, thanks.
Well, so long!
I'll be seeing you.
Good-bye.
When Igor Stravinsky wrote his ballet "The Rite of Spring"...
...his purpose was in his own words to express primitive life.
And so Walt Disney and his fellow artists have taken the man's word.
Instead of presenting the ballet in its original form...
...as a simple series of tribal dances, they've visualised it as a Pageant.
As the story of the growth of life on earth.
It's a coldly accurate reproduction, of what science thinks...
...went on during the first few billion years of this planet's existence.
So now, imagine yourselves out in space, billions and billions of years ago...
...looking down on this lonely, tormented little planet...
...spinning through an empty sea of nothingness.
Before we get into the second half of the program...
...I'd like to introduce somebody to you.
Somebody who is very important to Fantasia.
He is very shy and very retiring.
I just happened to run accross him one day at the Disney Studios.
But when I did I suddenly realized that he was not only an indispensable member of the organization...
...but a screen personality.
And so I am very happy to have this opportunity to introduce to you...
...the Soundtrack.
All right, come on. That's all right. Don't be timid.
And a Soundtrack.
Now watching him, I discovered that every beautiful sound also created...
...equally beautiful picture.
Now look, the Soundtrack kindly produces a sound.
Go on! Don't be nervous. Go ahead! Any sound.
Well, that isn't quite what I had in mind.
I suppose we hear and see the harp.
Now one of the strings, say the uhmm, the violin.
And now... Now one of the woodwinds. A flute.
Very pretty. Now let's have a brass instrument- the trumpet.
All right. Now, how about a low instrument? The bassoon.
Go on. Go on, drop the other shoe, will you?
Now to finish, suppose we see some of the percussion instruments.
Beginning with the base drum.
Thanks a lot old man.
The symphony that Beethoven called "The Pastoral" is said, is one of the few pieces of music...
...he ever wrote that tells something like a definite story.
He was a great nature lover, and in this symphony...
he paints a musical picture of a day in the country.
Now of course, the country that Beethoven described was the countryside with which he was familiar.
But his music covers a much wider field than that.
And so Walt Disney has given the Pastoral Symphony a mythological setting.
Now we are going to do one of the most famous and popular ballets ever written.
"The Dance of the Hours" from Ponchielli's opera "La Gioconda".
It's a pageant of the hours of the day.
All this takes place in the great hall with its garden beyond...
...of the palace of Duke Alvise, a Venetian nobleman.
The last number on our "Fantasia" program is a combination of two pieces of music...
...so utterly different in construction and mood that they set each other out perfectly.
The first is "A Night on Bald Mountain" by one of Russia's greatest composers...
...Modeste Moussorgsky.
The second is Franz Schubert's world famous "Ave Maria."
Musically and dramatically, we have here a picture of the struggle...
...between the profane and the sacred.