# Do you like Dukas' Sorcerer's Apprentice?



## Radames

I don't know why it's so popular. I just don't like it much at all. I find it just repeats over and over. On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being best how would you rate it as a tone poem?


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## arpeggio

You are asking a bassoon player???????


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## Guest

I voted "9 - excellent". It truly is a superb piece of orchestration that I regret not having studied a lot closer a lot earlier.


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## Taggart

Careful, we'll post the Fantasia clip and then start taking the mickey! 

Lovely piece of music!


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## Berlioznestpasmort

I don't think I've ever met anyone who didn't enjoy it, so your response is interesting and something of a challenge. Most everyone nowadays associates it with Mickey in one of the best of the _Fantasia_ tableaux. Might it help if you read the Goethe poem that inspired it? http://www.reelyredd.com/1006sorcerersapprentice.htm The repetition serves a purpose in depicting how overwhelmed the apprentice becomes - rather like Lucy in the chocolate factory scene:


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## Guest

Taggart said:


> Careful, we'll post the Fantasia clip and then start taking the mickey!
> Lovely piece of music!


I'm *not* taking the mickey, Inspector T.


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## LancsMan

It's good - an effective piece of entertainment and well done. Of course it's not a 'great' work of art and it's unfair to compare it to more serious fare.


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## DavidA

Really great piece of music. First classical piece I ever bought on an EP (remember them?) with Solti and Israel PO. Was a pop music fan then but have always liked this immensely. It succeeds completely in what it sets out to achieve. 
Don't forget Mickey shook hands with Stokowski afterwards. A first for the Mouse!


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## nightscape

It's a seriously killer jam.


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## Richannes Wrahms

It took me some effort to erase Fantasia from my mind, I think it probably hindered rather than promoted classical music for the generations that watched it when they were kids*. As for the piece in question, one of the best works written by a Frenchified Rimsky-Korsakov.


*at least those who had not been exposed to classical music previously (as music itself and not just "background" to something else) and come from places where "classical music" is still Mozart and Beethoven. I would go on on the Fantasia subject but the discussion would be pointless due to cultural and personal relativity.


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## joen_cph

One of the best tone poems of the period, no dust and still fresh, together with "La Peri" his best work. Gave it 9.


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## hpowders

I'd better not say anything.... 

A picture is worth a thousand words anyway.


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## moody

Richannes Wrahms said:


> It took me some effort to erase Fantasia from my mind, I think it probably hindered rather than promoted classical music for the generations that watched it when they were kids. As for the piece in question, one of the best works written by a Frenchified Rimsky-Korsakov.


Don't agree at all ,it got me into Stravinsky at an early age.


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## Ukko

One of my earliest exposures to 'descriptive' classical music. I like it fine, haven't heard it in a decade or so. It's one of those works that sticks in my memory too well - Like Rimsky's Scheherazade.


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## Berlioznestpasmort

hpowders said:


> I'd better not say anything....


But you did! :lol:


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## hpowders

Berlioznestpasmort said:


> But you did! :lol:


Go back and look. I made it worse!!


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## hpowders

Berlioznestpasmort said:


> But you did! :lol:


I think this thread consists of mostly Paul Dukas' descendants.


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## KenOC

hpowders said:


> I think this thread consists of mostly Paul Dukas' descendants.


Checked on this -- Dukas had one daughter, who died in a plane crash in 1958.

If Dukas had lived five more years, he could have seen his piece in _Fantasia_.


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## Guest

Our Ken - TC's resident researcher!


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## bigshot

I had a friend who never liked anything other people liked. That limited his enjoyment of things a LOT.


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## Tristan

I get what you mean about it being repetitive, but I personally think it's brilliant. Although I'm sure that _Fantasia_ has influenced my like of the piece


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## PetrB

bigshot said:


> i had a friend who never liked anything other people liked. That limited his enjoyment of things a lot.


_roflmao_.......................


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## Ravndal

LancsMan said:


> It's good - an effective piece of entertainment and well done. Of course it's not a 'great' work of art and it's unfair to compare it to more serious fare.


But it is!

...............


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## PetrB

LancsMan said:


> It's good - an effective piece of entertainment and well done. Of course it's not a 'great' work of art and it's unfair to compare it to more serious fare.


It is serious fare and a fine piece. The only thing not serious about it is a silly animation 'choreographed' to the piece after the fact of its being written.

For those for whom that animation is very much a context of their first hearing (usually 'that childhood experience') or something similar thereafter, that must be like having first heard the Ode to Joy as disassociated from Beethoven and as played by terrible electronics through hideous megaphones from an ice cream truck. _Later, hear the ninth symphony, and try not to think of ice cream trucks, bad and distorted sound, and your childhood._

Pity, all that :-/


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## david johnson

It's a fun selection I enjoy. I recall the Paray/Detroit recording on Mercury having a bit of fire.


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## Itullian

A listen every 5 years or so is fine for me.


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## Radames

bigshot said:


> I had a friend who never liked anything other people liked. That limited his enjoyment of things a LOT.


I'm not normally like that. I like the 1812 Overture and Kentucky Fried Chicken.


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## joen_cph

david johnson said:


> It's a fun selection I enjoy. I recall the Paray/Detroit recording on Mercury having a bit of fire.


Agree, having an array of Paray ain´t that bad


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## Weston

When I was in college I once defiantly got inebriated and went to our campus theater by myself to see a Fantasia showing. Tired of people always wanting me to sit too far back, I sat in the very front row. When the giant waves started rolling back and forth -- well, I feel sorry for the poor folks who had to clean up the theater after I crawled out and dragged myself back to the dorm for a miserable rest of the evening. 

So, no I don't like it much.

As to that I'm pretty desultory about Dukas. La Peri is pretty good, especially the opening fanfare and the Grande sonate is okay for maybe one or two more listens in my lifetime. But the Symphony in C does nothing for me at all.

Also for some reason I often get Dukas and Bizet totally mixed up in my head. Bizet is another purveyor of profound apathy to me.


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## elgar's ghost

It's not like we have all that much Dukas music to enjoy as it is - I think his meagre legacy would be poorer for The Sorcerer's Apprentice's absence, so I'm glad that this most self-doubting of composers thought it worthy of publication.


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## senza sordino

I've played it, great piece, lots of fun. Very difficult for me to play. Who asks a violinist to play arpeggios in Ab? 

But it's tough not to think of Mickey and his army of broomsticks.


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## Ingélou

I like it. It's not my sort of thing - it's a bit 'arch' (unless I'm seeing it through Mickey-Mouse spectacles). In general, I dislike arch, facetious music. All the same, it's clever and compelling and I admire it. So I voted for it as 'good'.


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## senza sordino

Ingélou said:


> I like it. It's not my sort of thing - it's a bit 'arch' (unless I'm seeing it through Mickey-Mouse spectacles). In general, I dislike arch, facetious music. All the same, it's clever and compelling and I admire it. So I voted for it as 'good'.


I don't understand. Is "arch" short for something.


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## Ingélou

senza sordino said:


> I don't understand. Is "arch" short for something.


No - arch is a quality, 'knowing', 'facetious', 'sly'. Like someone who laughs at their own joke. The Sorcerer's Apprentice has that knowing sort of cleverness, and normally that puts me off. But I admit, it's an engaging piece of music all the same. It's just a personal view - all I'm capable of delivering.


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## ShropshireMoose

It's a superb piece of music, and requires an extremely good orchestra and conductor to properly do it justice.
Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra are about the best for my money:


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## csacks

I just have to say that I enjoy listening it. It is not a challenge, and Disney made it easier to enjoy, but, IMO that is the final objective of music. I voted 8.


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## Whistler Fred

I have the good fortune to get familiar with this piece long before I saw "Fantasia." I've loved it from the first time I heard it in my impressionable youth, and still love it today. So a (perhaps not too objective but heart-felt) "10" from this listener.


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## Fortinbras Armstrong

Richannes Wrahms said:


> It took me some effort to erase Fantasia from my mind, I think it probably hindered rather than promoted classical music for the generations that watched it when they were kids*. As for the piece in question, one of the best works written by a Frenchified Rimsky-Korsakov.
> 
> *at least those who had not been exposed to classical music previously (as music itself and not just "background" to something else) and come from places where "classical music" is still Mozart and Beethoven. I would go on on the Fantasia subject but the discussion would be pointless due to cultural and personal relativity.


If I remember correctly, Leonard Bernstein once said that the mark of a truly cultured American was that he could listen to the finale of the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger.

BTW, here is my favorite rendition of that, from the movie Brassed Off






(Being a Yorkshire Lad, I love a good brass band.)


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