Word: musics
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Rite of Spring, conducted by Maestro Leopold Stokowski and recorded in stereophonic sound (then a rarity in film exhibition), but also see it brought to life as a titanic dinosaur duel. A man of artistic ambitions--pretensions, if you will--Disney had a missionary fervor to bring fine music, mediated by his own exquisite middle-brow instincts, to the masses. "Gee," he gushed when he saw one segment of Fantasia, "this'll make Beethoven...
...here is Fantasia 2000--seven new sequences and an old favorite, The Sorcerer's Apprentice--arriving in the age of the middle-brownout. The portion of the moviegoing public that readily consumes, or is even exposed to, classical music has shrunk. The animation in this Fantasia--we'll call it F2K--has enough verve and humor to appeal to folks for whom even Kenny G is too rarefied; but will the masses swallow what's good for them? Something that might be called art? "I use the word art, and then I bite my tongue," says Roy Disney. "I hope...
Bringing Fantasia back to life has been a long slog for the Roy Disney team. They considered including jazz, world music, the Beatles, Andrew Lloyd Webber; finally they stuck with the Old Masters. Among the candidates (some of which had been proposed for Walt's "organic" Fantasia): Flight of the Bumblebee; the Mozart piece that incorporates Twinkle Twinkle Little Star; Brahms' First Symphony; Dvorak's Ninth; even Beethoven's Ninth. Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini had a nifty concept (a nightmare and a dream struggling for a sleeping child's soul), but it fell through...
Back in that once upon a time, Walt Disney made miracles. In 1928 he presented a primitive Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Willie. By 1940 he'd brought sophisticated color and sound to cartoons, extended them to feature length and, with Fantasia, boldly merged classical music and abstract images. Those were revolutionary days for animation; more was conceived in those 12 years than in the 60 that followed. Fantasia 2000 may look a bit timid by comparison, but it provides some fine artists the chance to stretch and frolic, even as it reminds today's audiences of animation's limitless borders...
...what if we study music at a very young age? If we are born with perfect pitch, could that help us keep it? Should we be offering lessons in infant cello or pint-size French horn? Dr. Kyle Pruett, who is a professor at the Child Study Center at Yale, a musician and the father of a nine-month-old, told me that even if we are born with perfect pitch, there is still no research showing that we can do anything to retain it. Formal musical training that comes too early can frustrate parents and "won't make much...