
“ | 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 was combined talents went into the creation of this new form of entertainment, Fantasia. | ” |
— Deems Taylor. |
Joseph Deems Taylor (b. December 22nd, 1885, d. July 3rd, 1966) was an American composer, music critic, and promoter of classical music, as well as the host for the first Concert film, Fantasia.
He appeared in Walt Disney's 1940 film, Fantasia as the film's Master of Ceremonies, as well as musical advisor where he was instrumental in selecting the musical pieces that were used in the film, including the then-controversial Sacre du Printemps. In the long-unseen roadshow version of Fantasia, issued on DVD in 2000, and re-released on the 2010 Fantasia/Fantasia 2000 Blu-ray release, all of Taylor's voice-over work was re-recorded by veteran voice artist Corey Burton. The complete film was originally 124 minutes long, due almost entirely to the fact that Taylor's commentaries were more detailed in the roadshow version, but the original audio elements for these longer commentaries had deteriorated to the point that they could no longer be used, so Corey Burton was selected to re-record all of the dialogue for consistency. The general release version of Fantasia, running 120 minutes, is the version most audiences are familiar with. In that version, Taylor's commentaries were severely abridged and only showed shots of the orchestra tuning their instruments. Only in the VHS release of Fantasia did Deems Taylor's original long on-screen introduction to Toccata and Fugue in D Minor appear with his original audio, while the rest of the intros were the abridged versions.
Quotes[]
“ | What you're 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. Now, there 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 a third kind, music that exists simply for its own sake. | ” |
— Deems Taylor. |
“ | Now the number that opens our Fantasia program, the Toccata and Fugue is music of its third kind, what we call: "absolute music". Even the title has no meaning beyond a description of the form 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 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 the Toccata and Fugue In D Minor by Johann Sebastian Bach, interpreted in pictures by Walt Disney and his associates, and in music by the Philadelphia Orchestra and its conductor, Leopold Stokowski. | ” |
— Deems Taylor about the opening Fantasia segment. |
“ | The last number on 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. The first is "Night on Bald Mountain" by one of Russia's greatest composers, Modest Mussorgsky. The second is Franz Schubert's world-famous "Ave Maria". Musically and dramatically, we have here a picture of the struggle between the profane and the sacred. Bald Mountain, according to tradition, is the gathering place of Satan and his followers. Here, on Walpurgis night, which is the equivalent of our own Halloween, the creatures of evil gather to worship their master. Under his spell, they dance furiously, until the coming of dawn and the sounds of Church bells send the infernal army slinking back into their abodes of darkness. And then, we hear the "Ave Maria", with its message of the triumph of hope and life, over the powers of despair and death. | ” |
— Deems Taylor about the concluding Fantasia segment. |