"Oskar Fischinger had begun working on the ballet music from Verdi's opera A?da about the same time as his work on 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice' for STUDY NO. 8. Family affairs and commercial business interrupted the work late in 1930, and the charcoal drawings for the first minute of the film lay idle for several months until later in 1931 when Oskar's younger brother Hans was assigned to fill out and execute the rest of the piece.

"Although following the plans Oskar had already charted, Hans tended to render the shapes with the sharper, more streamlined style he had worked out on STUDY NO. 9. Furthermore, he went back over some of Oskar's charcoals and added details with grey tempera. The result is an exciting synthesis of the styles of the two artists - Oskar's loose, flexible and soft images with Hans' tight, hard-edged images." - Dr. William Moritz, Film Culture