Leopold Anthony Stokowski was a British conductor of mixed Polish and Irish descent, who was one of the leading conductors of the early to mid-20th century, he is best known for his long association with the Philadelphia Orchestra and his appearance in the 1940 Disney animated feature film Fantasia with that orchestra. He was especially noted for his free-hand conducting style that spurned the traditional baton and for obtaining a characteristically sumptuous sound from the orchestras he directed. He was also known for modifying the orchestrations of some of the works that he conducted, as was a standard practice for conductors prior to the second half of the 20th Century.
Fantasia[]
Walt Disney approached Stokowski in 1937, while having dinner with at Chasen's in Hollywood, to conduct what was to be a short feature, and, upon liking the choice of music, an agreement signed by Disney and Stokowski on December 16, allowed the conductor to "select and employ a complete symphony orchestra" for the recording. He was paid $5,000 for his work and had the Philadelphia Orchestra record the pieces.
With the exception of the "jam session" in the middle of the film, he conducted all the music which included his own orchestrations for the "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" and "Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria" segments. For Bald Mountain, Stokowski used the score to conform to the Disney artists' storyline, depicting the battle between good and evil, the ending of piece segued into the beginning of Schubert's "Ave Maria" with new lyrics by Rachel Field.
Stokowski even got to talk to (and shake hands with) Mickey Mouse on screen, although he would later say with a smile that Mickey Mouse got to shake hands with him. This footage of Stokowski was incorporated into Fantasia 2000.
A lifelong and ardent fan of the newest and most experimental techniques in recording, Stokowski saw to it that most of the music for Fantasia was recorded over Class A telephone lines laid down between the Academy of Music in Philadelphia and Bell Laboratories in Camden NJ, using an early, highly complex version of multi-track stereophonic sound, dubbed Fantasound, which shared many attributes with the later Perspecta stereophonic sound system. Recorded on photographic film, the only suitable medium then available, the results were considered astounding for the latter half of the 1930s.
For his efforts, Stokowski and his associates were given an Honorary Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences "for their unique achievement in the creation of a new form of visualized music in Walt Disney's production Fantasia, thereby widening the scope of the motion picture as entertainment and as an art form."