The Sorcerer's Apprentice (Dukas) Romantic genre of programmatic music, which composers like Franz Liszt, Claude Debussy, Jean Sibelius and Richard Strauss increasingly explored as an alternative to earlier symphonic forms. Unlike other tone poems, such as "La mer" by Debussy or "Finlandia" by Sibelius, Dukas's work is, like works such as "Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks" by Strauss, descriptively programmatic, closely following the events described in the Goethe poem. It was customary, in fact, to publish the poem as part of the orchestral score. The instrumentation of the piece consists of two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two soprano clarinets and bass clarinet, three bassoons
The Sorcerer modern audience why a baronet cannot marry a pew-opener, while in the Victorian era it was self-evident. Also, the humour in the piece relies in many instances on parodies of operatic conventions that may be unfamiliar to some audiences. In 1913, E. J. Dent wrote in reference to "The Sorcerer": "It seems as if a course of Mozart in English might be the best preliminary step towards educating our on-coming public to a really intelligent appreciation of Sullivan". Gilbert scholar Andrew Crowther argues that while both "The Sorcerer" and "H.M.S. Pinafore" satirise the idea of love levelling all ranks, the