The Sorcerer's Apprentice (Dukas) The Sorcerer's Apprentice (Dukas) " The Sorcerer's Apprentice (French: "L'apprenti sorcier") is a symphonic poem in the key of F minor by the French composer Paul Dukas, written in 1897. Subtitled "Scherzo after a ballad by Goethe", the piece was based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's 1797 poem of the same name. By far the most performed and recorded of Dukas's works, its notable appearance in the Walt Disney 1940 animated film "Fantasia" has led to the piece becoming widely known to audiences outside the classical concert hall. Inspired by the Goethe poem, Dukas's work is part of the larger
The Sorcerer "The Musical Times" mused that "it seems as if every composition had grown up in the mind of the author as he wrote the words"; and "The Pall Mall Gazette" called the union between composer and librettist "well-assorted", arguing that "the opera contains several very happily designed pieces, in which one cannot tell (and need not know) whether the merit of the original underlying idea belongs to the composer of the poem or to the author of the score". A dissenting voice was "Figaro", which claimed that there was nothing in "The Sorcerer" that could not have been written by