Like the tornado that blows through at the conclusion, The Band Concert is a whirlwind of animation and an incredibly entertaining artistic marvel in the extensive catalog of Disney short subjects.
This year marks the 90th anniversary of this milestone cartoon. Not only is it the first Mickey Mouse short produced in color, but it’s also brimming with character animation that would help solidify the famous Disney characters’ personalities, as well as sight gags and effects that allow the talents of the Disney artists to be on full display.
The Band Concert, directed by Wilfred Jackson, opens with conductor Mickey and his orchestra, which includes Goofy, Clarabelle Cow, and Horace Horsecollar, who have just finished playing a segment from Zampa by Louis Joseph Ferdinand Hérold and are receiving thunderous applause.
They then break into “The William Tell Overture,” by Gioachino Rossini, which is soon interrupted by vendor Donald Duck, who sells popcorn and peanuts. Mischievous Donald breaks out his flute and decides to join in, but as Mickey and the gang continue with the “Overture,” Donald plays “Turkey in the Straw” on the flute.
The orchestra joins in with Donald instead of continuing with “William Tell,” which angers Mickey, who breaks Donald’s flute. But the crafty Duck has other flutes up his sleeve and continues to break them out, distracting the orchestra, and Mickey continues to break them.
Donald still tries to change the orchestra’s tune, but Goofy hooks him with the trombone. A bee buzzes around Mickey, and as he attempts to swat it, the orchestra takes this as a musical cue.
Mickey then comes to “The Storm” section of the overture just as a tornado rips through the park. The audience, along with the anthropomorphic benches, run for cover. Mickey and his orchestra keep playing, getting swept in the whirlwind of the storm, soaring high in the air, and then, one by one, coming back down to earth, each landing on the branch of a tree.
All the while, they never stop playing. After Horace sounds the final symbol crash, the only one left to applaud is Donald, who pulls out his flute and begins in on “Turkey in the Straw” again until the band members throw their battered instruments at him.
It’s perfect that Jackson directed The Band Concert, as the short is almost a preview of how the Disney artists would combine music and animation five years later in Fantasia. Jackson played a major role in that groundbreaking feature, directing the indelible “Night on Bald Mountain” segment.
With legendary Disney Studio talents, such as Wolfgang Reitherman, Les Clark, Clyde Geronimi, and Jack Hannah, among others, working on The Band Concert, the music (adapted here by Leigh Harline) is paired perfectly with the animation.
This is seen early on, as Mickey cues up the “Overture,” the characters sway and bounce in perfect time with the musical notes. Later, when Mickey has an ice cream cone thrown down the back of his shirt, he shimmies to the background music of a snake charmer dance.
The artists also incorporate great sight gags in between the music cues. When Mickey turns the page of the music to “The Storm” section of “The William Tell Overture,” an overwhelming amount of music notes appear on the page, spilling off onto added pieces of paper that hang off the side.
That moment of comedy hints at the tremendous finale that’s to come in The Band Concert. Mickey and the gang are swept up into the tornado, with the maestro in the middle of the funnel and the musicians swirling around him as the tornado rears up.
They all continue to play, and the music continues on the soundtrack in a moment of animation that truly is, well, a force of nature. In the center, Mickey stays focused on the music, waving his baton as he soars through windows and doors of houses that have been sent into the sky. The orchestra members swirl by him and past the camera, layer upon layer of action that is overwhelming and exhilarating to watch.
Since its release in February of 1935, The Band Concert has secured its place as an iconic moment in Mickey Mouse’s filmography and has a tremendous legacy in animation history.
In 1994, the short rightly earned a spot in Jerry Beck’s book, The 50 Greatest Cartoons, at number three.
In the book, noted author and film historian Leonard Maltin sums up why this Disney short is still remembered: “The Band Concert is a perfectly realized cartoon that manages to blend music, comedy, personality animation, dramatic action, and storytelling into a seamless whole. I’ve always felt that it was the natural drama of “The William Tell Overture” that inspired Walt Disney and his staff to such incredible heights. It’s certainly one of their finest achievements – a great, great cartoon.”
• You can watch THE BAND CONCERT online if you CLICK HERE.
Michael Lyons is a freelance writer, specializing in film, television, and pop culture. He is the author of the book, Drawn to Greatness: Disney’s Animation Renaissance, which chronicles the amazing growth at the Disney animation studio in the 1990s. In addition to Animation Scoop and Cartoon Research, he has contributed to Remind Magazine, Cinefantastique, Animation World Network and Disney Magazine. He also writes a blog, Screen Saver: A Retro Review of TV Shows and Movies of Yesteryear and his interviews with a number of animation legends have been featured in several volumes of the books, Walt’s People. You can visit Michael’s web site Words From Lyons at: 
Since Disney had been using Technicolor exclusively for the Silly Symphonies up until this time, it was probably inevitable that the first Mickey Mouse cartoon made in Technicolor would have a musical focus. Mickey would have already been familiar with Rossini’s Overture to “William Tell” from having played it on the violin in the recital depicted in “Fiddlin’ Around” (aka “Just Mickey”), Disney’s first Mickey Mouse cartoon made without Ub Iwerks. The first cartoon Iwerks made without Walt Disney, as it happens, was “Fiddlesticks”, in which an unnamed mouse in red shorts and white gloves likewise plays a violin recital, though “William Tell” isn’t on that program.
It’s fitting that Goofy is shown playing the clarinet in “The Band Concert”, as his voice actor, Pinto Colvig, was a clarinetist himself.
Donald Duck proves that the March theme from the “William Tell” Overture can be played in counterpoint with “Turkey in the Straw”. The late musical humorist Peter Schickele once composed a “Quodlibet” that combined various quotes from classical works and public domain songs, and in one passage “William Tell” is played in counterpoint with Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” and Foster’s “Camptown Races”.
“The Band Concert” always reminds me of an orchestra concert I once played during a bad storm. In the middle of Tchaikovsky’s “Waltz of the Flowers”, a huge thunder crash knocked out the electrical power and plunged the concert hall into total darkness. The orchestra kept right on playing, and when the lights came on after a minute or so the audience erupted into applause. Nice of them of course; but then, “Waltz of the Flowers” is one of those pieces, like the Overture to “William Tell”, that, if you can’t play it in the dark, or with your eyes closed, you really don’t have any business calling yourself a musician.
I found a recording of Peter Schickele’s “Quodlibet” and see that I commented in error, which is bound to happen when going by memory of a piece of music I hadn’t heard in decades. In the “Quodlibet”, “William Tell” is played in counterpoint with “Ta-ra-ra BOOM-de-ay”; the passage combining the “Ode to Joy” with “Camptown Races” follows immediately afterward.
“The Band Concert” was a cartoon I longed to see for many years. I had read about it in books and seen still photos from it. But before home video, the Disney shorts were scarce and hard to find. There was no Disney content on Saturday mornings. The Disney program on Sunday nights focused almost exclusively on live action animal stories or live action dramas or comedies. Maybe twice a year they might run some vintage cartoons, but that was it.
The only access I had to “The Band Concert” was a fairly generous excerpt from the sound track on a record album titled “Mickey Mouse: This is My Life”. This selection left out the most familiar section of the William Tell Overture, probably because the Lone Ranger series was still playing occasionally in reruns. However, the narration from the record set up enough of the premise so that I could picture the animation in my mind’s eye.
It wasn’t until I caught “The Band Concert” on The Disney Channel that I was finally able to see the visual portion of the cartoon. Amazingly, when I viewed it for the first time–there were NO surprises! I had pictured the cartoon almost frame by frame exactly as it worked out on the screen! It’s a real tribute to the Disney artists to have made such corresponding use of the music to tell the story. Of course, my being a diehard Disney fan from a young age was also probably a large factor. I would agree whole-heartedly with your assessment that it is “an incredibly entertaining artistic marvel.”
“The Band Concert” was one the cartoons that played at the now long gone Fantasyland Theater (originally the Mickey Mouse Theater) in Fantasyland in Disneyland. That’s where I would have first seen it along with a collection of other shorts, always a welcomed air-conditioned respite from the Anaheim summers. As stated, one of the great animated films of all time.
Disney’s California Adventure includes a ride named Silly Symphony Swings, a standard “wave spinner” with seats on chains that swing out as it spins. It’s actually themed to The Band Concert, with art of the cyclone decorating the center and a figure of conductor Mickey on the very top. As it spins you hear the storm from William Tell Overture — a nice touch.
Walt Disney World once offered an animatronic Mickey Mouse Revue, with a tuxedoed Mickey conducting characters from shorts, features, and even comic books (Uncle Scrooge). Donald Duck was present as one of the Three Caballeros, but there was no cyclone climax. The whole attraction was relocated to Tokyo Disneyland, and the Magic Kingdom space housed 3D films and puppet shows until Mickey’s Philharmagic, a 3D film that had wannabe conductor Donald messing with a magic baton.
One could put together a nice if repetitious program of cartoon conductors: Mickey (here, Symphony Hour, and elsewhere), Bugs Bunny, Popeye, Andy Panda, Wally Walrus, Elmer Fudd (Corny Concerto), Tom and Jerry, Pink Panther, Droopy, and assorted one-off characters.
I remember reading somewhere that somebody thought The Band Concert was the perfect comedy, and that is pretty close to the truth. The way the comedy builds up to a crescendo–from Donald’s flute to the tornado–is flawless. It’s not my favorite cartoon, or my choice for funniest, but comic-structurally it’s perfect.
There’s this oft-repeated theory that Tree Saps inspired this cartoon, but it seems unlikely Disney or his storymen were using four-year-old Fleischers as grist for plots.
I like to see it as a story about an artist suffering in order to create his art. Mickey conducting the band while being within confines of a cyclone represents the joy one feels after suffering for one’s craft.
Me too. The closest we’ll get to a Walt Disney autobiography, am I right?
I think it’s one of the most substantial works Disney produced during his lifetime.
My all time favorite cartoon! When I started collecting 16mm film, this was the first cartoon I spent good money on to get a good print. Animated and scored perfectly, it’s in many respects the apex of the Disney animated shorts.
Decades ago, Disney offered this in Super 8mm sound and I had a copy of this cartoon for several years. One of the younger guys I knew from college asked me to help organize a “Christmas Party” for the poorer kids in town and I ran several cartoons for the kids at the party, but the real “higlight” was THE BAND CONCERT. I still think it’s one of the best Disney MICKEY MOUSE shorts ever!
Great cartoon. I had overlooked this one on account of it being a musical one. I had been really impressed by the amount of detail in Mickey’s Garden, but this one seems to go a step further.