Fantasia

How do you do?

My name is Deems Taylor,

and 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,

these are not going to be...

the interpretations of trained musicians,

Which I think is all to the good.

Tehre are three kinds of music

on this "Fantasia" program.

First there's the kind that tells a definite story.

Then there's the kind, that

while it has no specific plot,

does paint a series of

more or less definite pictures.

Then there's third kind,

music that exists simply for its own sake.

The number that opens

our "Fantasia" program,

the "Toccata and Fugue,"

is music of this third kind--

what we call

"absolute music."

Even the title

has no meaning...

beyond a description

of the from of the music.

What you will

see on the screen..

is a picture of the

various abstract images...

that might pass

through your mind...

if you sat in a concert hall

listening to this music.

At first, you're more or less

conscious of the orchestra,

so our picture opens...

with a series of impressions

of the conductor and players.

Then the music begins to suggest other things...

to your imagination.

The might be...

oh, just masses of color.

Or they may be

cloud forms...

or great landscapes

or vague shadows...

or geometrical objects

floating in space.

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.

It's a series af dances taken out of a

full-length ballet called "The Nutcracker"...

that he once composed

for the St. Petersburg Opera House.

It wasn't much of a success

and nobody performs it nowadays,

but I'm pretty sure you'll recognize

the music of the suite when you hear it.

Incidentally, you won't see

any nutcracker on the screen.

There is nothing like to him

but the title.

Now we're going to hear

a piece of music...

that tells a very definite story.

As a matter of fact, in this case

the story came first...

and the composer wrote the music

to go with it.

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.

One day, for instance, when he'd

been told by his master...

to carry water to fill a cauldron,

he had the brilliant idea...

of bringing a broomstick

to life to carry the water for him.

Well, this worked

very well at first.

Unfortunately, however, having forgotten

the magic formula...

that would make the broomstick

stop carrying the water,

he found he' started

something he couldn't finish.

Mr. Stokowski.

Mr. 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"...

I repeat, when Igor Stravinsky

wrote his ballet "The Rite of Spring"...

his purpose was in his own words.

"to express primitive life."

So Walt Disney and his fellow artists...

have taken him at his 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.

And that story,

as you're going to see it,

isn't the product

of anybody's imagination.

It's a coldly accurate reproduction...

of what science thinks went on

during the first few

billion years of this

planet's existence.

Science, no art, wrote the scenario

of this picture.

According to science,

the first living things here...

were single-celled

organisms

tiny little white or green blobs

of nothing in particular...

that lived

undur the water.

And then as ages passed,

the oceans began to swarm...

with all kinds

of marine creatures.

Finally, after about a billion years,

certain fish, more ambitious

than the rest,

crawled up on land and became

the first amphibians.

And then several hundred

million years ago,

nature went off on another tack

and produced the dinosaurs.

Now, the name "dinosaur"

comes from two Greek words...

meaning "terrible lizard,"

and they were certainly that.

They came in all

shapes and sizes.

From little crawling horrors

about the size of a chicken...

to hundred-ton nightmares.

They were not very bright.

Even thr biggest of them

had only the brain of a pigeon.

They lived in the air

and the water as well as on land.

As a rule, they were

vegetarians,

rather amiable and easy to get along with.

Hoeever, there were bullies

and gangsters among them.

The worst of the lot,

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