Through the Looking Glass

Through the looking glass : five pictures from Lewis Carroll, opus 12 orchestral suite by Deems Taylor (1919)

Believe it or not, you have likely seen and heard Deems Taylor (1885-1941) in your childhoods as the programmatic narrator for Walt Disney’s Fantasia (1940), but before his film debut, he harbored an illustrious music career as a composer and critic. One of his earliest works is the humable lullaby, “Skidamarink” from the comic opera, Echo, which premiered at the Globe Show in 1910. Less than a decade later, Taylor would compose Through the Looking Glass (1919), a five movement symphonic suite based on the Lewis Carroll Alice in Wonderland books. Taylor is neither the first nor the last to musically adapt the books, but he is one of the earliest to compose the works into a modern impressionistic style with chamber orchestra. The elegance and vigor of the music perfectly capture Wonderland’s slightly-off putting, whimsical nature as a fitting tone poem.

Dedication

The Garden of Flowers

Jabberwocky

Looking Glass Insects

The White Knight

Fun fact: in the score it says “To Katherine Moore Taylor from a difficult son”)