Director: James Algar
Featured Music: Paul Dukas
Story Development:Perce Pearce, Carl Fallberg
Art Direction:Tom Codrick, Charles Philippi, Zack Schwartz
Animation Supervision: Fred Moore, Vladimir Tytla
Production Supervision: Ben Sharpsteen
Mickey Mouse Supervising Animator: Fred Moore
Sorcerer Supervising Animator: Vladimir Tytla
Animators: Les Clark, Riley Thomson, Marvin Woodward, Preston Blair, Edward Love, Ugo D’Orsi, George Rowley, Cornett Wood

Description:

Mickey Mouse cast a magic spell over moviegoers with his entrancing role in Fantasia and rode a new wave of popularity. In this returning classic segment in Fantasia 2000, directed by James Algar with music by Paul Dukas, the versatile mouse star finds himself in over his head when he puts on a different hat and tries to work a little magic of his own. Naturally he lands in deep water. The Sorcerer's Apprentice was the genesis for Fantasia back in 1937 and served as the springboard for Walt Disney's Concert Feature.

Production Notes:

Mickey Mouse cast a magic spell over moviegoers with his entrancing role in Fantasia and rode a new wave of popularity. In this returning classic segment, the versatile mouse star finds himself in over his head when he puts on a different hat and tries to work a little magic of his own. Naturally, he lands in deep water. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice was the genesis for Fantasia back in 1937 and served as the springboard for Walt Disney’s ambitious Concert Feature.
When you think of Fantasia, you think of Mickey Mouse, says Hendel Butoy. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is the icon of the film, so we always knew we wanted it to continue as part of Fantasia 2000.
Roy Disney adds, I personally think that The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is one of the most amazing examples of animation in its highest form that I’ve ever seen. We kept it in Fantasia 2000 to show how good they were sixty years ago and to challenge ourselves to prove what we could do today.
A lot of the artists that worked on this sequence imagined the sorcerer to be Walt himself, observes Disney. In fact they gave him the name Yensid, which is Disney spelled backwards. If you look at the very last frame of film where the sorcerer swipes Mickey with the broom, he cocks his one eyebrow way up, which was a very Walt kind of gesture. Walt was a magician, but he was also Mickey. Not only did he do Mickey’s voice but the character was very much an extension of Walt’s personality. A kind of a timid little guy who wants to do his best. That’s really who he was. There was an awful lot of Walt invested in that sorcerer’s apprentice and his dream to conduct the universe.
Walt assigned his top team of animators to work on The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Mickey expert Fred Moore got the plum assignment of animating the mouse in his greatest role. This screen appearance marked the first time that Mickey had pupils in his eyes. Legendary animator Vladimir “Bill” Tytla animated the Sorcerer. Among Tytla’s other impressive credits are the devilish Chernobog in the Night on Bald Mountain sequence of the 1940 Fantasia and the manipulative Stromboli in Pinocchio. James Algar, who had previously animated animals for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and would go on to pioneer True Life Adventures for the Studio, was picked to direct this sequence.
To bring The Sorcerer’s Apprentice up to modern standards for a January 2000 release, a meticulous restoration of picture and soundtrack was undertaken. Although it had been upgraded for previous reissues, new advances in digital technology made it possible to take this latest incarnation to a higher level of quality than was ever possible before. Kodak’s Cinesite operation oversaw the restoration of the visual content.
We had to clean up the picture and track digitally so that it would fit in with the look and sound of the new sequences, notes Ernst. We inputted the original picture into the computer and went through it a frame at a time to remove and dust, dirt and artifacts that were never meant to be there. For the soundtrack, we went to Sony in New York and used their proprietary system that breaks the track down to 256 slices. We could then go through each slice and take out extraneous noise by averaging the music before and after that particular damaged area. In this way, we didn’t have to take out the whole spectrum of sound, just the particular area with a problem. It worked quite well.

Musical Background:

Acclaimed French composer Paul Dukas wrote The Sorcerer’s Apprentice in 1897 and it was first performed on May 18th at a concert of the Societe National de Musique in Paris to resounding success. Since then, it has become one of the most popular pieces in the orchestral “tone poem” repertoire. America heard it for the first time in January 1899, when Theodore Thomas conducted it in Chicago.
As indicated by the work’s subtitle, Scherzo after a ballad by Goethe, the piece is based on a ballad by Goethe (Der Zauberlehrling) which in turn had been founded on a 2,000-year old tale by the Greek writer Lucian. Dukas seemed to find the perfect musical representation for the story and it actually seemed as if he had scored the poem with its ingenious orchestration. The listener is invariably surprised no matter how often the music is heard.
Dukas was a professional music critic for several publications and was apparently most critical of himself. He set such high standards for his own music that he destroyed any compositions that failed to meet his expectations. And that meant most of his works. This habit of burning most of his work accounts for his rather limited catalog. Dukas wrote orchestral pieces (Polyeucte Overature), ballet (La Peri) and one successful opera (Ariane et Barbe-bleue). During his lifetime, he taught at the Paris Conservatory, where he studied, served as inspector of musical education in the provincial conservatories, and was elected to the Academie des Beaux Arts. His music is noted for its combined mastery of form with elegance of style and refinement of expression. He died in Paris in 1935 at the age of 69.