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 Grave (poem) of their anatomy is unimpeachable, and the moral expression dignified and masculine". However, Johnstone was not wholly positive in his criticism, observing that in the close of the poem there is "short-coming, if not absolute failure", and that the final triumph of Resurrection over the powers of Death and Hell were "felt to be wanting". Rather than "the rapturous exultation of the true poet", the close is "in that tone of sober confidence which might have found place in any eloquent sermon". The most famous publication of the poem was by Robert Hartley Cromek, in part because it occasioned an