For reasons unknown to this writer, the animated output of The Walt Disney Company is not always seen as "high art." That one can see even the Disney films of the late 1980s and early 1990s and see merely crass commercialism is shocking. The hand-drawn features Disney's studio has been releasing since 1937 are absolute proof of "cartoons" as controlled works of art, an image Disney did everything he could to perpetuate.

No more evident was Disney's commitment to art than with Fantasia, first released in 1940. While prior Disney shorts and features were either based on lovable, original characters (Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and the like) or oft-told fables and fantasies (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio), Fantasia sought to bring young and old audiences together through a series of sensory delights, marrying visuals with some of the greatest musical works ever created. Though the public didn't immediately know what to make of the anthology - it didn't turn a profit until 1969, when Disney gave in and acknowledged that youth movements found the film particularly enjoyable after recreational substance use (and re-marketed the film as such!) - its mature vision of what the animated feature could do has made it a critical delight to this very day. (Tuesday sees the film make its debut on Blu-Ray Disc.)

After the jump, we provide a discussion of some of Fantasia's greatest moments, both behind and in front of the camera, and the release history of the stunning musical recordings made just for the film.

The genesis of Fantasia began with a simpler desire of Walt Disney's: to revive Mickey Mouse's popularity. The character that made him a household name was losing his popular footing to Disney's Donald Duck, so Walt sought to give Mickey his flashiest outing yet: a silent toon scored to Dukas' The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Mickey was totally redesigned for the short, and a chance meeting led to Leopold Stokowski, the renowned conductor, offering his musical services for free. The short was longer and costlier than any of Disney's Silly Symphonies, and in a bold move, Disney decided to expand the project into a series of short, musically-oriented features. Music critic Deems Taylor would introduce each piece, giving background on the original music and its context in the shorts. Many memorable animated moments would be created for this project, from the dancing alligators, ostriches and hippos in the "Dance of the Hours" sequence and the season-changing fairies in The Nutcracker to the fearsome Chernabog (reportedly modeled on Bela Lugosi) in Night on Bald Mountain and the uplifting finale set to Schubert's "Ave Maria." Stokowski was on board through the whole project, and his Philadelphia Orchestra recorded the rest of the score.

One of the most notable innovations in Fantasia was the premiere usage of a new multichannel sound process known as "Fantasound." Well ahead of your conventional 5.1 multichannel home theaters, Fantasound featured eight optical tracks of sound, propelled through 30 or more speakers around the room. This was easily one of Disney's most daring technical innovations in a career already full of them (Fantasia made great use of Disney's innovative "multi-plane" camera, which would zoom through foreground and background plates at various distances to add heretofore unseen depth to the animated image).

Fantasia was advertised as being ten years ahead of its time in some promotional materials; that may have been a modest estimate, however. The film, ultimately distributed not through Disney but RKO, failed to turn much of a profit. The film was heavily edited for general release; to this day the original "roadshow" version of the film from 1940 has never been fully reconstructed. Though critics were kind enough, and have since hailed the film as a deserving masterpiece, Disney himself never saw much of the acclaim before his death in 1966.

The premiere release of the music for Fantasia didn't happen until the third time the film was released, in 1956. By that point, the film had been mostly heard in its mono mixdown, and exactly one copy of the original Fantasound print still existed. (None of them had terribly long shelf lives, being recorded to nitrate film, which was easily deteriorated.) The sound was painstakingly transferred over telephone lines from Disney to RCA, where a three-track stereo print was mastered on magnetic tape. This was the sound track used through the 1980s, and it was first issued as a triple album on Disney's Buena Vista label.

Leopold Stokowski with The Philadelphia Orchestra, Walt Disney's Fantasia (Buena Vista STER-101, 1957)

LP 1

1. Toccata and Fugue in D minor - Johann Sebastian Bach
2. Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy (from The Nutcracker Suite) - Pyotr Illych Tchaikovsky
3. Chinese Dance (from The Nutcracker Suite) - Pyotr Illych Tchaikovsky
4. Dance of the Reed Flutes (from The Nutcracker Suite) - Pyotr Illych Tchaikovsky
5. Arabian Dance (from The Nutcracker Suite) - Pyotr Illych Tchaikovsky
6. Russian Dance (from The Nutcracker Suite) - Pyotr Illych Tchaikovsky
7. Waltz of the Flowers (from The Nutcracker Suite) - Pyotr Illych Tchaikovsky
8. The Sorcerer's Apprentice - Paul Dukas

LP 2

1. The Rite of Spring - Igor Stravinsky
2. Movement I: Allegro Non Ma Troppo (from Symphony No. 6 in F, Op. 68 "Pastorale") - Ludwig van Beethoven
3. Movement II: Andante Molto Mosso (from Symphony No. 6 in F, Op. 68 "Pastorale") - Ludwig van Beethoven
4. Movements III-IV: Allegro/Allegro/Allegretto (from Symphony No. 6 in F, Op. 68 "Pastorale") - Ludwig van Beethoven

LP 3

1. Dance of the Hours (from La Gioconda) - Amilcare Poncielli
2. Night on Bald Mountain - Modest Mussorgsky
3. Ave Maria - Franz Schubert

In 1982, with digital recording technology catching on fast, The Walt Disney Company made an odd choice for their newest reissue of Fantasia: rather than attempt to remaster the original soundtrack (whose magnetic transfer was starting to show its age), they redid the soundtrack entirely. Digitally recorded and mastered under the baton of Irwin Kostal (a two-time Oscar winner for West Side Story and The Sound of Music who'd done musical work for Disney's Mary Poppins, Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Pete's Dragon), this was the de facto replacement for Stokowski's work for most of the 1980s. It was released on compact disc in the U.S. but only got a vinyl release in the U.K. (as BBC Records REQ-537). Though it's not nearly as significant or impactful as Stokowski's original recordings, it would be nice to see it get re-pressed on CD someday.

Irwin Kostal, Fantasia: Motion Picture Soundtrack Digitally Recorded and Mastered (Buena Vista Records CD-001, 1982)

Disc 1

1. Toccata and Fugue in D minor - Johann Sebastian Bach
2. Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy (from The Nutcracker Suite) - Pyotr Illych Tchaikovsky
3. Chinese Dance (from The Nutcracker Suite) - Pyotr Illych Tchaikovsky
4. Dance of the Reed Flutes (from The Nutcracker Suite) - Pyotr Illych Tchaikovsky
5. Arabian Dance (from The Nutcracker Suite) - Pyotr Illych Tchaikovsky
6. Russian Dance (from The Nutcracker Suite) - Pyotr Illych Tchaikovsky
7. Waltz of the Flowers (from The Nutcracker Suite) - Pyotr Illych Tchaikovsky
8. The Sorcerer's Apprentice - Paul Dukas
9. The Rite of Spring - Igor Stravinsky

Disc 2

1. Movement I: Allegro Non Ma Troppo (from Symphony No. 6 in F, Op. 68 "Pastorale") - Ludwig van Beethoven
2. Movement II: Andante Molto Mosso (from Symphony No. 6 in F, Op. 68 "Pastorale") - Ludwig van Beethoven
3. Movements III-IV: Allegro/Allegro/Allegretto (from Symphony No. 6 in F, Op. 68 "Pastorale") - Ludwig van Beethoven
4. Dance of the Hours (from La Gioconda) - Amilcare Poncielli
5. Night on Bald Mountain - Modest Mussorgsky
6. Ave Maria - Franz Schubert

Finally, for the film's 50th anniversary in 1990, Disney sought to meticulously restore the soundtrack as it was originally heard. Using the 1956 stereo track and the original mono mix as source material, the original recordings were digitally restored and remastered to approximate the original multi-channel Fantasound mix as closely as possible. The resultant product was released on video that year, and was put on CD (Buena Vista Records 60007-2, same track indexing as the Kostal version above), making Stokowski's original works available on the format for the first time anywhere. (The most recent pressing of that two-disc set was in 2001, as Walt Disney Records 60007-7.)

No discussion of Fantasia would be complete without the discussion of its spiritual sequel, 1999's Fantasia 2000. A pet project of Walt's nephew Roy E. Disney, Fantasia 2000 was a production 10 years in the making, featuring new animated sequences based around classical pieces, using various unique styles of animation, including hand-drawn cels and computer graphics (which were actually completed before Pixar did Toy Story for the Mouse in 1995). As a tribute to Walt's original conception of Fantasia as a continually-changing traveling show, Mickey's classic turn as the sorcerer's apprentice was retained in the film. Star-studded, live-action introductions rounded out the moments between each sequence.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of James Levine, did all of the music for Fantasia 2000 except for "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," which retained the restored stereo version of Stokowski's original recording.

James Levine and The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Fantasia 2000: An Original Walt Disney Records Soundtrack (Walt Disney Records 60986-7, 1999)

1. Movement I: Allegro con brio (from Symphony No. 5 in C minor) - Ludwig van Beethoven
2. Pines of Rome - Ottorino Resphigi
3. Rhapsody in Blue - George Gershwin
4. Movement I: Allegro (from Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Major) - Dimitri Shostakovich
5. Finale (from The Carnival of the Animals) - Camille Saint-Saëns
6. The Sorcerer's Apprentice - Paul Dukas *
7. Marches #1-4 (from Pomp and Circumstance) - Edward Elgar
8. Firebird Suite (1919 Version) - Igor Stravinsky

* This track used the original Stokowski recording from the film