An Ear for Concert Music

We had the dogs' radio on in the kitchen this morning (yes, our dogs listen to the radio, and it turns out they like NPR and classical music), and a rather unpleasant, modern piece was playing, when suddenly Daniel proclaimed, in a charmed soprano:

"Oh, I think this song is from Mickey Mouse!"

At first I didn't know what to make of the association, but then Daniel went on to recount, basically frame-by-frame, how Mickey got the wizard's hat and put it on... It quickly became obvious that Daniel was delivering the synopsis of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," from Disney's Fantasia.

I was very impressed that Daniel could actually recognize this awful, but sophisticated piece, based on a session of passive entertainment. [Ian confirmed that this was the music from The Sorcerer's Apprentice when I asked him, as it was playing, which also seemed like pretty good recognition-power.] But I was also impressed because he managed to sit through the movie and remember it. I went to see it when I was four or five years old, when it came out in the theaters (I think it may have been the first movie I saw in a theater), and I remember sitting on my father's lap and seeing some pleasantly goofy older guys in tuxedos talking about the music they were about to play, and then waking up, and it was time to go home.

If it weren't for Mickey, we wouldn't know anything about the music of Paul Dukas, the French composer. And if it weren't for Daniel, I certainly wouldn't have known what the music from that scene actually sounded like.

(February 5, 2011)