In view of the controversy it has aroused, "Fantasia" is worthy of reappraisal. While some critics have out shouted the Hollywood press agents in praising it, others have termed it a "bastard hybrid of art and music, the unfortunate result of mating Leopold Stokowski and Minnie Mouse."

The truth lies far from either extreme. The "Nutcracker Suite" is strikingly beautiful, Stravinski's "Rite of Spring" is horribly realistic with the raw violence of the music matched by a dino saur death battle on the screen, and Dukas' "Sorcerer's Apprentice" is hilariously comic--but Beethoven's "Pastoral" has become a bacchanalian nightmare and the Disney ballet which accompanies the "Dance of the Hours" is scarcely better than a Terry Toon.

Whether or not you like the general idea of pictured music, though, is another issue. Psych A students may still remember the experiment in which a composition was played for subjects who gave it a title according to the mental images it evoked in their minds. Anything from "Charge of the Light Brigade" to "Face on the Barroom Floor" might be applied to a work entitled by its composer "Sunset in Peaceful Valley." For some people music does not call out mental pictures: when it does they are different for each listener. The key to the complaints about "Fantasia" is that some critics do not like having the sketches from Disney's mind superimposed upon their own differing or non-existent mental photos. It's like going to see a movie after having read the book from which the show was adapted--all the changes, even changes for the better, are annoying.

Entering the theatre already equipped with personal imagery for the music is a handicap, but the most expert of musicologists can thoroughly enjoy "Fantasia" if he will make a little effort at mental flexibility to meet the draftsmen balfway.