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 conception as any which has taken form on this modern stage". Later assessments of the opera have often mentioned both the opera's strong and weak points. Audrey Williamson wrote in a 1982 book that the virtues of "The Sorcerer", "in spite of its defects ... justify its place in the repertoire." In 1996, Ian Bradley commented in the introduction to his annotated edition of the Gilbert and Sullivan libretti, "It will certainly be a great pity if it gradually fades away. "The Sorcerer" contains two of W. S. Gilbert's best-drawn characters, the soulful Dr Daly ... and the flashy but