Narrator: [introducing the Pastoral Symphony] The symphony that Beethoven called the Pastoral, his Sixth, 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.
(15 votes)
2
Narrator: [introducing the Nutcracker Suite] 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, uh, you won't see any nutcracker on the screen. There's nothing left of him but the title
(14 votes)
3
Narrator: [on the Nutcracker Suite] Incidentally, you won't see any nutcracker on the screen. There's nothing left of him but the title.
(13 votes)
4
[last lines] Narrator: [introducing A Night on Bald Mountain] The last number in our Fantasia program is a combination of two pieces of music so utterly different in construction and mood that they set each other off perfectly... Musically and dramatically, we have here a picture of the struggle between the profane and the sacred.
(13 votes)
5
Narrator: What you're going to see on the screen 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.
(12 votes)
6
Narrator: [introducing the soundtrack] Now we're going to introduce somebody who's very important to Fantasia. He's very shy and very retiring. I just happened to run across him one day at the Disney Studios. But when I did, I realized that here was not only an indispensable member of the organization, but a screen personality. And so I'm very happy to have this opportunity to introduce to you the sound track.
7
Mickey Mouse: [Pulling on Stokowski's coat] Mr. Stokowski! Mr. Stokowski! [Mickey whistles to get Stokowski's attention] Mickey Mouse: My congratulations, sir! Leopold Stokowski: [shaking hands with Mickey] Congratulations to you, Mickey! Mickey Mouse: Gee, thanks! He, he! Well, so long! I'll be seeing ya! Leopold Stokowski: Goodbye!
8
Narrator: And now we're going to hear a piece of music that tells a very definite story. It's a very old story, one that goes back almost 2,000 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 practicing some of the boss's best magic tricks before learning how to control them.
9
Narrator: 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 have visualized 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.
10
Narrator: [introducing "The Dance of the Hours"] Now we're going to do one of the most famous and popular ballets ever written... 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 Alvisa, a Venetian nobleman.
11
Narrator: [introducing Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor] Things that might pass through your mind if you sat in a concert hall listening to this music. At first, you are more or less conscious of the orchestra. So our picture opens with a series of impressions of the conductor and the players. Then the music begins to suggest other things to your imagination. They 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 Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, as interpreted by Walt Disney's artists, and in music by the Philadelphia Orchestra and its conductor, Leopold Stokowski.
12
Soloist: [the end of Ave Maria] The Prince of peace your arms embrace, while hosts of darkness fade and cower. Oh, save us mother full of grace, in life and in our dying hour, Ave Maria!
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