Walt Disney's 'Fantasia' (1940) Quiz

Answer: Deems Taylor

After the members of the orchestra enter in a room filled with blue light, Deems Taylor introduces himself at the beginning of 'Fantasia'. He tells the viewer that there are three kinds of music on Fantasia: the kind that tells a definite story, the kind that has no plot but paints definite pictures, and "music that exists simply for its own sake".

Taylor (1885-1966) was an American composer but also a critic and a promoter of classical music, known to some as the "dean of American music". He served many years as intermission commentator for the New York Philharmonic. He was a natural choice to serve as the narrator and commentator for 'Fantasia', and he also played a large role in the selection of musical pieces for the project. All of Deems Taylor's voicework in the original two-hour release (and in later DVD and Blu-Ray releases) was overdubbed by Corey Burton because of degradation of the original recording. In the 115-minute theatrical rereleases that most audiences had become familiar with before the 21st century, much of Taylor's commentaries were deleted.

Answer: mostly abstract animation

During this first sequence, featuring Bach's 'Toccata and Fugue in D Minor', the viewer is treated first to impressions of the musicians, then the instruments, then colors and lines (with some clouds, landscapes, and other forms) that move with the music. The Master of Ceremonies, Deems Taylor, invites the viewer to enjoy what he calls music for its own sake, or absolute music, and a series of images that might pass through a listener's mind as he sits in a concert hall listening to the music, at first conscious of the orchestra but then letting his mind float freely.

The music itself is an arrangement of Bach's 'Toccata', originally an organ piece, for a full orchestra, written and conducted by Leopold Stowkowski (1882-1977), a figure who would have been well-known to audiences in 1940 for his association with the Philadelphia Orchestra and his free-hand conducting style (no baton), as seen in 'Fantasia'. He conducts all of the music, which is played by the Philadelphia Orchestra, in the film.

Answer: plums doing the Sugar Plum Fairy dance

During the Sugar Plum Fairy dance, we are treated, appropriately, to fairies, who return during the Dance of the Flutes, accompanied by blossoms which were modeled after live dancers twirling in skirts. The animators modeled the mushrooms of the Chinese dance after the comical movements of the Three Stooges.

They also studied a live Arabian dancer to add fluidity to the colorful fishes. Thistles are used for the Russian dance as their flowers suggest the high fur hat (papakha) worn by Cossacks. As for the Nutcracker itself, in the words of the movie's Master of Ceremonies Deems Taylor, "There's nothing left of him but the title."

Answer: Mickey Mouse

It may be hard to imagine, but the 'Sorcerer's Apprentice' sequence (the animation and the concept, not the music) was created as a comeback vehicle for the center of the classic Disney universe, Mickey Mouse, who had already begun to decline in popularity by the end of the 1930s. It was planned to be a short in the 'Silly Symphonies' series, but instead Walt Disney decided to make it part of a larger film (lucky for us).

As MC Deems Taylor points out, this piece tells a clearly defined story, one that Disney altered little in the animated telling. An apprentice is tired of the drudgework he is assigned, and uses the sorcerer's hat and spellbook to make his broom fetch the water. But the broom won't stop, and so Mickey chops it to pieces. But the pieces come to life and continue to fetch water until Mickey finds himself underwater. The spell is broken when the sorcerer returns and restores order. The music is Paul Dukas' symphonic poem "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" (1897), based on a 1797 poem by Goethe.

To emphasize Mickey Mouse's comeback, the animators have the little fellow shake the hand of the conductor Leopold Stokowski in silhouette after the sequence is over.

Answer: the natural history of the Earth (including dinosaurs)

In 'Fantasia', Deems Taylor describes the sequence as a "coldly accurate reproduction of what Science thinks first went on during the few billion years of this planet's existence. Science, not art, wrote the scenario of this picture." And indeed, Walt Disney consulted with astronomer Edwin Hubble (for whom the telescope is named), biologist Julian Huxley, along with paleontologists at both the American Museum of Natural History and Caltech. The 'Rite of Spring' sequence was used in American science classes for many years, and it inspired Stephen Jay Gould to become a paleontologist.

Taylor invites the listener to imagine himself as observers in outer space "looking down on this lonely, tormented little planet", with its volcanoes and steam clouds. We watch the lifeless Earth develop cellular life forms and eventually plants and animals. A significant portion of the segment deals with the dinosaurs, depicted as they were in the mid-20th century as slow, lumbering creatures with dragging tails. The manner of their extinction is considered inaccurate by 21st century standards, and it is rather lingering besides, and somewhat moving.

The original plan was to include the rise of mammals and eventually humans and the discovery of fire. According to the art director of the segment, John Hubley, "fundamentalists... threatened to make trouble for 'Fantasia' if Walt connected evolution with human beings." He went on to say, however, that his boss "had a fundamentalist background... so he was a little bit torn between that and wanting to go with science. I think he really understood the rightness of the science, but he was a showman, you know, kind of mystical on that."

The orchestral work itself was a tad controversial at the time, having caused riots at its Parisian debut some decades before, and Deems Taylor was influential in getting Igor Stravinsky's 'The Rite of Spring', or 'Le Sacre du printemps', included in 'Fantasia'.

Answer: the soundtrack

Deems Taylor announces an intermission of 15 minutes, and he and the orchestra move offscreen, and the curtain closes. A title card of the movie appears, the only place where it appears in the original release and in subsequent DVD and Blu-Ray releases. (Presumably this is where the projector would be shut off).

The curtain reopens, and the orchestra returns and plays a little jazzy jam session until Deems Taylor reappears. Taylor then introduces the audience to "somebody who is very important to 'Fantasia'", someone who is "not only an indispensable member of the [Disney] organization, but a screen personality whose possibilities nobody around the place ever noticed". This "someone" is the optical soundtrack, animated in an interesting sequence that is a somewhat accurate but mostly fanciful depiction of how a soundtrack may look on a piece of film. This sequence is often omitted in some versions of the film, but it is a good example of Disney work of that era that sought to both entertain and educate the audience with creative animation.

Answer: centaurs and winged horses

Instead of a rustic setting as the composer envisioned, Disney gives Beethoven's 'Pastoral' a mythological setting. (Deems Taylor mixed Greek and Roman names of the deities in his remarks.) Unicorns, fauns, and winged horses, the family of Pegasus, have a prominent role, along with some cherubs, but the most memorable figures of the 'Pastoral Symphony' sequence are the centaurs and the "centaurettes" (female centaurs). Eventually a clownish Bacchus presides over a bacchanal, which is interrupted by a thunderstorm created by Zeus, but then other deities, such as the goddess of the rainbow, the god of sleep, and the goddess of the moon restore tranquility.


The 'Pastoral' sequence also has some infamous depictions of black or African characters. There is a centaurette named Sunflower who has a black girl's upper body and a donkey's lower body and is clearly servile to the other centaurettes; there are a pair of half-woman, half-zebra creatures accompanying Bacchus; and then there is another donkey centaurette named Otika who also appears with Bacchus. The two donkey figures, which are rather unflattering to say the least, were removed from 'Fantasia' at the end of the 1960s, but the zebra figures, which are quite majestic, were left in.

Answer: hippos dancing with alligators

During 'The Dance of the Hours', ostriches dance a ballet in a rather comical fashion. But the creatures that steal the show and dance during the best-known portion of the piece are the tutu-clad ballerina hippos, whom you have never seen move so delicately, led by Hyacinth Hippo. Elephants also join in the performance. Eventually the hippos perform a remarkable and vivacious dance with somewhat sinister alligators, including a pas de deux between Hyacinth Hippo and Ben Ali Gator, and it all ends with a thunderous crash as the dance hall collapses from the strain.


Hyacinth Hippo makes some cameos decades later in the feature film 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' (1988) and on the TV series 'House of Mouse' (2001-03). Hyacinth also performed trapeze acts for the Toon Circus Parade at Disneyland Circus in the 2000s and was doubtless their biggest star!

Answer: the demon Chernabog

The Master of Ceremonies Deems Taylor informs the audience that Bald Mountain is "traditionally regarded as the gathering place for Satan and his followers". Taylor relates that on Walpurgis Night [Walpurgisnacht in German, traditionally the night of April 30th], the "creatures of evil gather to worship their master".

They are led by the gargantuan demon Chernabog, the masterpiece of illustrator Kay Nielsen and Ukrainian animator Vladimir Tytla. During the best-known motif of Modest Mussgorsky's tone poem, the menacing yellow-eyed winged colossus arises at the summit of Bald Mountain to summon ghouls and spirits. "Under his spell, they dance furiously" until daybreak, when they "slink back into their abodes of darkness", recounts Taylor during this last introduction, as the movie's final number in combines 'A Night on Bald Mountain' with a second, opposing piece.

Answer: Ave Maria

Deems Taylor describes the combination 'A Night on Bald Mountain' and 'Ave Maria' to the viewing audience as "two pieces of music so utterly different in construction and mood that they set each other off perfectly" in "a struggle between the profane and the sacred". An bell announcing the morning prayer, the Angelus, drives back the colossal demon Chernabog and his minions as night becomes daybreak. Robed monks carrying torches emerge from the woods toward a church in a rather contemplative animated sequence described by Taylor as "the triumph of hope and light over the despair of death".

And then the movie ends abruptly, without so much as a "The End", as perhaps it might at a real concert, though one would have thought the orchestra would remain to take a bow!