L'apprenti sorcier

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is the French composer Paul Dukas’ best known work, its popularity boosted by inclusion in Disney’s 1940 animated film Fantasia. Dukas based the piece on Goethe’s Der Zauberlehrling, a poem about a hapless apprentice who casts a magic spell on a broom to help him fetch water. When he cannot remember how to uncast it, the workshop begins to fill dangerously with water. Dukas’ 12-minute orchestral score, written in 1897, traces the action vividly. Muted strings and flickering flute motifs summon the mysterious atmosphere of the sorcerer’s studio, and a clarinet announces a lugubrious theme associated with the broom. Later, when the apprentice’s spell has been cast, this same theme is transmogrified into a glowering source of threat and menace. Only the return of the sorcerer prevents a disastrous flood ensuing. He undoes the spell, delivering a pummelling rebuke to his cowering apprentice at the work’s conclusion.