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The Sorcerer's Apprentice is the English name of both an 1897 symphonic poem by Paul Dukas (L'apprenti sorcier in French), and of a 1797 ballad by Goethe (Der Zauberlehrling in German), which inspired the musical work. Goethe, in turn, based his poem on a story by Lucian of Samosata.
L'apprenti sorcier
Although Dukas' musical piece was already quite well known and popular, it was made particularly famous by its inclusion in the 1940 Walt Disney animated film Fantasia, in which Mickey Mouse plays the rôle of the apprentice. Being probably the most popular section of Fantasia, it was used again in Fantasia 2000. Today, few can hear the piece without picturing Mickey dressed in a red robe and his master's magical hat.
Some authorities have suggested that L'apprenti sorcier was intended as a scherzo of Dukas' untitled symphony, with which it has some thematic similarity; indeed it is subtitled "Scherzo after a ballad by Goethe". However others point out that L'apprenti sorcier is clearly program music while the symphony is abstract.
Der Zauberlehrling
Goethe's poem is a ballad in fourteen stanzas. In it, an old sorcerer departs his workshop, leaving his apprentice with chores to perform. The apprentice tires of fetching water for a bath or tank, and enchants a broomstick to do the work for him. But soon the floor is awash with water, and he realises that he cannot stop the broom because he does not know the magic word to make it stop. Despairing, he splits the broom in two with an axe, but each of the pieces takes up a pail and continues fetching water, now faster than ever. When all seems lost, the old sorcerer returns, quickly breaks the spell and saves the day. The poem finishes with the old sorcerer's statement that powerful spirits should only be called by the master himself. Interestingly, the question of the sorcerer's anger with his apprentice, which appears in both Philopseudes and Fantasia, does not appear in Der Zauberlehrling.
The "Zauberlehrling" is extremely well-known in the German-speaking world. The lines in which the apprentice implores the returning sorcerer to help him with the mess he has created has attained the status of a proverb, especially the line "Die ich rief, die Geister" ("The spirits that I called"). "Die ich rief, die Geister" is often used to describe a situation where somebody summons help or uses allies that he cannot control, especially in politics.
Philopseudes
Philopseudes (Greek for "Lovers of lies") is a short frame story by Lucian, written c. AD 150. The narrator, Tychiades, is visiting the house of a sick and elderly friend, Eucrates, where he has an argument about the reality of the supernatural. Several internal narrators then tell him various tales, intended to convince him that supernatural phenomena are real. Each story in turn is either rebutted or ridiculed by Tychiades. Eventually Eucrates recounts a tale extremely similar to Goethe's Zauberlehrling, which had supposedly happened to him in his youth. While the similarities are so great as to make it obvious that Lucian was Goethe's inspiration, there are several small differences:
- The sorcerer is instead an Egyptian mystic, a priest of Isis called Pancrates;
- Eucrates is not an apprentice, but a companion who eavesdrops on Pancrates casting his spell; and
- Although a broom is listed as one of the items that can be animated by the spell, Eucrates actually uses a pestle.
However perhaps the most important difference is the moral of the story. In Der Zauberlehrling and in Fantasia, it is generally presumed that the story embodies some maxim or moral, and that it is something along the lines of "don't start what you can't finish" or "don't meddle with things you don't understand". In Philopseudes, however, the intention is to ridicule tall tales.
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