Waltz of the Flowers
from The Nutcracker Suite
by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Fantasia fun fact: Fantasia to this day holds the record for the longest animated Disney film at 126 minutes run time.

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Trepak
from The Nutcracker Suite
by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Fantasia fun fact: Disney had the idea to re-release Fantasia every year with a few new songs. In 1941, Walt and his team created eight new additional sequences for the film. Some of the sequences were put to Wagner’s “The Ride of the Valkyries” and Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebees”. Sadly, this never came to fruition. But, these scenes along with a few others were used to create a sequel, Fantasia 2000.

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Coffee
from The Nutcracker Suite
by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Fantasia fun fact: Disney wanted Fantasia to be an extraordinary film with extraordinary effects. He suggested 3-D effects, filming the entire movie in widescreen, and even using olfactory effects, such as wafting perfume through the theatre as the wildflowers danced during the “Nutcracker Suite” segment. While none of these concepts came to be, the ever innovative Disney was years ahead of his time and all of those effects were later used in many films.

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Dance of the Reed-Flutes
from The Nutcracker Suite
by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Fantasia fun fact: Disney brought in professional dancers Joyce Cole and Marjorie Belcher and had them wear ballet skirts that resembled blossoms to help the animators understand the movement of the petals while dancing on the water.

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Tea
from The Nutcracker Suite
by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Fantasia fun fact: Many of the characters featured in Fantasia are named. This includes Mademoiselle Upanova (the main ostrich ballerina from Dance of the Hours), Hyacinth Hippo and Ben Ali Gator (also from Dance of the Hours), Peter Pegasus (the little black Pegasus from The Pastoral Symphony), Jacchus (the donkey from The Pastoral Symphony), and Hop Low (the tiny mushroom from the movement Tea from The Nutcracker Suite).

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Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy
from The Nutcracker Suite
by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Fantasia fun fact: In 1942 Fantasia won two Academy Awards. One was presented to Disney and the developers for “outstanding contribution to the advancement for the use of sound in motion pictures through the production of Fantasia.” The second was presented to Stokowski “and his associates for their unique achievement in the creation of a new form of visualized music in Walt Disney’s production of Fantasia, thereby widening the scope of the motion picture as an art form.”

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Toccata and Fugue in D Minor
by Johann Sebastian Bach

Fantasia fun fact: The conductor featured in Fantasia was Leopold Stokowski. He was a
superstar in his day and was featured on the cover of Time magazine twice, once in 1930
and once in 1940. He was so excited about Disney’s idea that he offered to conduct for free.

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Hello and welcome to the Fantasia SAL! This SAL will feature one square to represent each piece/movement in the classic 1940s Fantasia. Get your sorcerer’s hat at the ready and your tutu tied and join me on a musical journey through classical pieces by greats like Tchaikovsky, Bach, and Beethoven as seen through the eyes of Disney himself.

Every release will feature a Fantasia fun fact: a little tidbit I picked up about Fantasia as I was researching the SAL.

Fantasia fun fact: The original concept by Disney was a short cartoon titled The Sorcerer’s Apprentice that featured only the section with Mickey as the apprentice sorcerer. Disney wanted to boost Mickey’s popularity and take pairing animation and classical music beyond the slapstick of his past Silly Symphonies. As Disney put it, he wanted to produce shorts where “sheer fantasy unfolds … action controlled by a musical pattern has great charm in the realm of unreality.”

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