page_title: Fantasia (1940 film)
section_title: Story meetings and program selection
hierarchical_section_title: Fantasia (1940 film) / Production / Development / Story meetings and program selection
caption_attribution_description: English: Studio portrait of Joseph Deems Taylor.
context_page_description: Fantasia is a 1940 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and released by Walt Disney Productions. With story direction by Joe Grant and Dick Huemer, and production supervision by Ben Sharpsteen, it is the third Disney animated feature film. The film consists of eight animated segments set to pieces of classical music conducted by Leopold Stokowski, seven of which are performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra. Music critic and composer Deems Taylor acts as the film's Master of Ceremonies, providing a live-action introduction to each animated segment.
  Disney settled on the film's concept in 1938 as work neared completion on The Sorcerer's Apprentice, an elaborate Silly Symphonies short designed as a comeback role for Mickey Mouse, who had declined in popularity. As production costs grew higher than what it could earn, Disney decided to include the short in a feature-length film with other segments set to classical pieces. The soundtrack was recorded using multiple audio channels and reproduced with Fantasound, a pioneering sound reproduction system that made Fantasia the first commercial film shown in stereophonic sound.
context_section_description: Taylor arrived at the studio one day after a series of meetings began to select the musical pieces for The Concert Feature. Disney made story writers Joe Grant and Dick Huemer gather a preliminary selection of music and along with Stokowski, Taylor, and the heads of various departments, discussed their ideas. Each meeting was recorded verbatim by stenographers with participants being given a copy of the entire conversation for review. As selections were considered, a recording of the piece was located and played back at the next gathering. Disney did not contribute much to early discussions; he admitted that his knowledge of music was instinctive and untrained. In one meeting, he inquired about a piece "on which we might build something of a prehistoric theme ... with animals". The group was considering The Firebird by Igor Stravinsky, but Taylor noted that his "Le Sacre du printemps would be something on that order", to which Disney replied upon hearing a recording, "This is marvelous! It would be perfect for prehistoric animals. There would be something terrific in dinosaurs, flying lizards, and prehistoric monsters. There could be beauty in the settings."
  Numerous choices were discarded as talks continued, including Moto Perpetuo by Niccolò Paganini with "shots of dynamos, cogs, pistons" and "whirling wheels" to show the production of a collar button. Other deleted material included Prelude in G minor and Troika by Sergei Rachmaninoff, and a rendition of "The Song of the Flea" by Mussorgsky, which was to be sung by Lawrence Tibbett. On September 29, 1938, around sixty of Disney's artists gathered for a two-and-a-half hour piano concert while he provided a running commentary about the new musical feature. A rough version of The Sorcerer's Apprentice was also shown that, according to one attendee, had the crowd applauding and cheering "until their hands were red". The final pieces were chosen the following morning, which included Toccata and Fugue in D minor, Cydalise et le Chèvre-pied by Gabriel Pierné, The Nutcracker Suite, Night on Bald Mountain, Ave Maria, Dance of the Hours, Clair de Lune by Claude Debussy, The Rite of Spring and The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Disney had already begun working out the details for the segments, and showed greater enthusiasm and eagerness as opposed to his anxiety while starting on Pinocchio.
  Clair de Lune was soon removed from the Fantasia program, but Disney and his writers encountered problems of setting a concrete story to Cydalise. Its opening march, "The Entry of the Little Fauns", attracted Disney to the piece which at first provided suitable depictions of fauns he wanted. On January 5, 1939, following a search for a stronger piece to fit the mythological theme, the piece was replaced with sections of Beethoven's sixth symphony. Stokowski disagreed with the switch, believing that Disney's "idea of mythology ... is not quite what this symphony is about". He was also concerned about the reception from classical music enthusiasts who would criticize Disney for venturing too far from the composer's intent. Taylor on the other hand welcomed the change, describing it as "a stunning one", and saw "no possible objection to it".
  The new feature continued to be known as The Concert Feature or Musical Feature as late as November 1938. Hal Horne, a publicist for Disney's film distributor RKO Radio Pictures, wished for a different title, and gave the suggestion Filmharmonic Concert. Stuart Buchanan then held a contest at the studio for a title that produced almost 1,800 suggestions including Bach to Stravinsky and Bach and Highbrowski by Stokowski. Still, the favorite among the film's supervisors was Fantasia, an early working title that had even grown on Horne, "It isn't the word alone but the meaning we read into it." From the beginning of its development, Disney expressed the greater importance of music in Fantasia compared to his past work: "In our ordinary stuff, our music is always under action, but on this ... we're supposed to be picturing this music—not the music fitting our story." Di
caption: Deems Taylor was the film's Master of Ceremonies, who introduced each segment in live-action interstitial scenes.
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