Bach with joined-up writing

RODNEY GREENBERG says:

The root of this goes back 77 years, to the opening sequence in Walt Disney’s full-length cartoon, Fantasia. Bach’s D minor Toccata and Fugue (in an orchestral transcription conducted by Stokowski) was overlaid with imaginative visuals. They are more free-wheeling than this note-by note version, which is nevertheless effective in its literal transformation of notes on a stave into scrolling, coloured symbols.

No computer graphics for Disney’s animators: it was all drawn frame by frame on celluloid. Completed in 1939, the film was ground-breaking. It must have been the first classical music experience for countless young cinema-goers. In the year 2000 an updated Fantasia was screened for family audiences in arenas, synchronised to a real, live orchestra.

There exists 18 precious seconds of never-issued footage Fantasia inspired. In 1946 Salvador Dali spent time at Disney’s fantasy factory in Hollywood. The two showmen got along well, and Walt decided to give the hyperactive surrealist his head “to see what would happen”. Dali would make a 6-minute contribution to a cartoon omnibus film then in production. Disney had bought the rights to Destino, a romantic ballad in beguine rhythm by Mexican composer Armando Dominguez. This was to be the soundtrack for “something unique, possibly a new art form.” Dali, now fired-up, made sketches including surreal swans and elephants, ants and turtles, gory monsters, a baseball ballet, and (naturally) his trademark floppy watches.

Being wartime, the studio was strapped for cash. The commercially risky venture fell apart. But the two men remained friends. Disney never returned to Bach. He later described the inspired efforts of his animators on Fantasia as “just noodling around.” Their noodling lives on, not least through Etienne Abelin’s link: http://www.musiceyes.org.