Sound Check -- Geoff Carter: Analyzing the musicality of Disney's 'Fantasia 2000'

Geoff Carter's music column appears Fridays. Reach him at carter@ vegas.com

Critics savaged Walt Disney's original 1940 "Fantasia." They damned the animated film for its very audacity, for the way it played fast and loose with the classical repertoire -- Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours" set to dancing hippos, Dukas holding hands with Mickey Mouse, "The Nutcracker Suite" sans Nutcracker.

There were dissenting voices behind the curtain, as well. Igor Stravinsky, the composer of "Rite of Spring," decried not only the way his composition was set to images, but also the popular context in which it was placed. "When Walt Disney used Le Sacre du printemps for 'Fantasia,' he said in Musical Digest in 1940, "he told me, 'Think of the numbers who will now be able to hear your music.' ... It is of no interest to me. The mass adds nothing to art ... It can be helped only through an increase in the quality of listening, the quality of the individual soul."

One can't help but think of Stravinsky's condemnation while listening to the compilation score of the IMAX sequel, "Fantasia 2000," conducted by James Levine and performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. It opens with an amped-up version of Beethoven's too-familiar "Fifth," played roughly at the speed of Metallica's "Master of Puppets"; it treks on through serviceable -- hardly memorable -- renditions of Shostakovich and Gershwin; it reduces Saint-Saen's "Carnival of the Animals" and Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance" to "hit single" versions that wouldn't be out of place on a 1970s-vintage K-Tel compilation.

Uncle Walt's fundamental idea is still sound -- to bring classical music to the masses, make middlebrows of lowbrows -- but Stravinsky and original "Fantasia" conductor Leopold Stokowski might just take a half-turn in their graves upon hearing the musical selections in "Fantasia 2000." Stokowski and Disney achieved a peculiar, inimitable synergy with the original "Fantasia"; they chose the selections together (with musicologist Deems Taylor), Stokowski conducted them with all due reverence, and Disney made his animators work around the results, pushing them to greater levels of creativity.

(Author John Culhane provides a perfect example of Walt's love-over-gold mentality of the time, in his 1983 book on the making of "Fantasia." Animator Dick Huemer asked Walt if he could "hire Stravinsky or this man Piern" to write some original music for the film, something that would be more conducive to the timing demands of animation. Walt refused, saying, "Those guys don't work that way ... They are of a different school. We are developing an entirely different school right here in this place.")

Levine doesn't enjoy that luxury. He was not chosen as a collaborator, but as talent for hire, and as such was made to bend to studio demands. Given a collaborator's role, he likely would have insisted that the program be slowed down to walking speed, would have thrown out "Pomp and Circumstance" (a half-baked suggestion by Disney chairman Michael Eisner), perhaps even made a case for Saint-Saens' beautiful composition to be used at its full, 20-plus minute length -- just as Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" was allowed to breathe in the original film.

Current Walt Disney Co. Vice President Roy Disney (Walt's nephew) has claimed in interviews -- not incorrectly -- that his "Fantasia" is faster-paced and more consistently engaging than the original, and while the film itself is magnificent, and forgives a lot of flaws in the program, it still seems an unnecessary slight to the musical accompaniment. The quality of the individual soul is indeed elevated, but not necessarily by what one is hearing, regardless of the volume and clarity level at which one is hearing it.

So it goes. See "Fantasia 2000" anyway, more than once -- for the magnificence of Respighi's "Pines of Rome," stunningly brought to life by a family of flying whales; for Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," illustrated by the artistic style of caricaturist Al Hirschfeld; last but certainly not least, for the intense nature ballet that accompanies Stravinsky's "Firebird," a composition he sold to the studio -- ironically enough -- while they made the version of "Rite of Spring" that so distressed him.

And if you enjoy the music, better still. There are literally thousands of different interpretations of "Fantasia 2000's" repertoire, spread over many, many CDs and LPs. Use the film as a springboard to those giddy heights -- don't let your enchantment with the music end at Disney's official soundtrack. You may think the old masters don't really mind being compressed, but those guys don't work that way.

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