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Music for Ballet - favourites, possibilities, etc


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Most ballet would be of little value without its accompanying musical score, which provides  the technical basis for timing the steps and movements, and carries a great deal of the sense, and the emotion, of  each work. Certainly, where the music is performed live, audiences always seem to applaud  the orchestra, or soloist(s), and conductor, as much as the dancers (and sometimes more so)!

 

With this in mind,  I have been wondering for some time whether the BCF could/should include a separate new main forum that centres on the relationship between ballet and its music,  titled “Music For Ballet” or something similar.

 

Under that main heading, some examples of  the sort of threads people might choose to discuss could be:

 

- Favourite (or least favourite)  ballet scores.

- Shared knowledge of what particular works are already used in particular ballets.

- Wish lists of hitherto unused music that could/should be used for new ballets (partly informed, no doubt, by what  might  be posted  in the last thread suggestion).  

- Historic background to the creation/choice  of  a particular score for a ballet, or a ballet for a particular score.

- Comments on music in particular performances attended.

 

I wonder  if moderators and forum members think this would be worthwhile, and possible?   

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Creating a new sub-forum isn't difficult. Whether it is worth the effort, is another thing. Or how much it would get used if it were, I couldn't guess, but I don't think it would get bombarded with postings (on which I may be utterly wrong of course!)

Surely most of the suggestions above could easily be put into existing forum threads, either under the ballet being discussed, or as a new thread to run alongside such discussions

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1 hour ago, zxDaveM said:

Surely most of the suggestions above could easily be put into existing forum threads, either under the ballet being discussed, or as a new thread to run alongside such discussions

Well they could, but then they would  be dispersed and random, whereas my feeling is that music in ballet is of such importance, and (hopefully) of such interest to forum members, that it deserves and needs a central reference point.

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It is a good idea and think there should be sufficient interest but it is very difficult when talking about a particular ballet performance not to include comments on the music there. 
But perhaps it’s worth trying and see how it goes. 

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6 hours ago, Richard LH said:

Well they could, but then they would  be dispersed and random, whereas my feeling is that music in ballet is of such importance, and (hopefully) of such interest to forum members, that it deserves and needs a central reference point.

 

Start a thread on it in the 'general' forum, and see how it runs 🙂

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7 hours ago, zxDaveM said:

 

Start a thread on it in the 'general' forum, and see how it runs 🙂


 

 

13 hours ago, Richard LH said:

Well they could, but then they would  be dispersed and random, whereas my feeling is that music in ballet is of such importance, and (hopefully) of such interest to forum members, that it deserves and needs a central reference point.


Or you could use the extant “Opera and Music” forum in Not Dance.

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It might also be nice to occasionally stray into music we’ve had in ballet classes and been inspired by! 
I’m in love with a piece at the moment we’ve had for adage in London class for the last couple of weeks! 
Of course it’s only piano but found out yesterday it’s actually a song by a group called Snow Patrol called “Chasing cars” 

Id never heard it before and thought it might have been a big number from a musical. 
I googled the song and the words are rather lovely too. 

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On 25/05/2022 at 07:25, Jan McNulty said:


 

 


Or you could use the extant “Opera and Music” forum in Not Dance.

I did see that forum, but I feel "Not Dance" would not be appropriate for discussions on the relationship of dance (ballet) and music. 

 

On 25/05/2022 at 00:05, zxDaveM said:

 

Start a thread on it in the 'general' forum, and see how it runs 🙂

 

OK I think I will do so .... although this here thread is itself in the 'general' forum,  a separate one could avoid  the great "New Main Forum Possibility" controversy!

 

Thanks for the feedback everyone. 

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Would be curious to know what Richard LH and fellow members think of ballets danced without music  (or just without music for part of it ) eg Jerome Robbins’s Moves. I haven’t seen it live, but have seen clips of it, eg on New York City Ballet’s company website. I like what I’ve seen. I would find it hard to dance without a music score but it certainly looks fascinating on its own terms.

 

Another interesting aspect of music scores for ballets- when choreographers select the same piece of existing music to set their stories or steps to. Eg MacMillan and Balanchine both choosing the same Tchaikovsky symphony for Anastasia Act 2 and Diamonds in Jewels respectively, depicting scenes that couldn’t be more different: revolution and death in Anastasia, graceful and regal serenity in Jewels (Jewels is the older ballet). 

 

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On 26/05/2022 at 17:12, LinMM said:

It might also be nice to occasionally stray into music we’ve had in ballet classes and been inspired by! 
I’m in love with a piece at the moment we’ve had for adage in London class for the last couple of weeks! 
Of course it’s only piano but found out yesterday it’s actually a song by a group called Snow Patrol called “Chasing cars” 

Id never heard it before and thought it might have been a big number from a musical. 
I googled the song and the words are rather lovely too. 

Love Snow Patrol and Chasing Cars! - that song has been borrowed for quite a few tv shows (Grey’s Anatomy, Eastenders, One Tree Hill etc) and for use  as figure skating soundtracks. It was also noted to be the most widely aired song of the decade (2000-2009) in the U.K. The band’s Run (from their third album)was also extremely popular and is very good. The most quirky piece of class music I’ve ever heard - out of all the Chopin, ballet scores, other classical composers, film scores,  ragtime, show tunes etc etc - has to be Rob Clark improvising on the Muppets theme tune when playing for the Royal Ballet on World Ballet Day! I now watch their whole class on demand every year to see if he repeats it. 😆🤣

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I don’t know how I missed the song back when it was more famous!!  

But it might have been because  my dad was very ill around that time between 2000 and 2007 (when he died) and I was very busy trying to help him. I used to drive along on the way back to Brighton after spending weekends with him with the Mass  for the Armed man ( mass for peace) by Karl Jenkins at full volume in the car to sing out the tension and horror of seeing one’s father disintegrate slowly to dementia 😥

 

We’ve been building this adage up for the last three weeks in class to this rather dramatic piano piece and on Wednesday I asked the teacher finally what it was called. Now I can’t stop playing the original video of the song!! 
It’s strange how individual bits of music can just suddenly envelope you like that and from any genre. 
Next Wednesday I will ask the teacher which collection it comes from or whether it’s just individual pieces she has put together herself for the class. 
 

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On 27/05/2022 at 20:03, Emeralds said:

when choreographers select the same piece of existing music to set their stories or steps to.

 

Try "Fearful Symmetries" by John Adams - I guess there must be up to 15 or more choreographies to that piece of music. Try every piece by Philip Glass, his Violin Concerto for example. Try "Spiegel im Spiegel" by Arvo Pärt, some years ago it was in every other modern ballet (over here on the continent). 

And how often have the Chopin pieces been used for ballet...

 

Another interesting point is: what was NOT used for ballet? Who started to use symphonies, who started to use religious music, opera music, jazz music... there's a first for many kinds of music we now accept as normal in ballet, but much of it was not used 100 years ago. Until two or three years ago it was not allowed to use opera music by Richard Strauss for dance, or anything else he had not written especially for dance. MacMillan had to go to Stuttgart to do his "Song of the Earth" because he could not use that music in Covent Garden.

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2 hours ago, Angela said:

 

Try "Fearful Symmetries" by John Adams - I guess there must be up to 15 or more choreographies to that piece of music. Try every piece by Philip Glass, his Violin Concerto for example. Try "Spiegel im Spiegel" by Arvo Pärt, some years ago it was in every other modern ballet (over here on the continent). 

And how often have the Chopin pieces been used for ballet...

 

Another interesting point is: what was NOT used for ballet? Who started to use symphonies, who started to use religious music, opera music, jazz music... there's a first for many kinds of music we now accept as normal in ballet, but much of it was not used 100 years ago. Until two or three years ago it was not allowed to use opera music by Richard Strauss for dance, or anything else he had not written especially for dance. MacMillan had to go to Stuttgart to do his "Song of the Earth" because he could not use that music in Covent Garden.

 

Very interesting about Strauss and McMillan, thanks Angela.

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On 27/05/2022 at 19:03, Emeralds said:

Another interesting aspect of music scores for ballets- when choreographers select the same piece of existing music to set their stories or steps to.

Yes indeed...another example would be  Petipa using part of the lovely  Minkus score from the PDD in Act 2 of Don Q Act 2  in the PDD in Act 1 of La Bayadere.

Both seem fine in their respective  contexts, albeit sitting in very different imagined cultural settings. 

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On 27/05/2022 at 19:03, Emeralds said:

Would be curious to know what Richard LH and fellow members think of ballets danced without music  (or just without music for part of it ) eg Jerome Robbins’s Moves. I haven’t seen it live, but have seen clips of it, eg on New York City Ballet’s company website. I like what I’ve seen. I would find it hard to dance without a music score but it certainly looks fascinating on its own terms.

 

 

Thanks Emeralds, I was not aware of this piece. I have only seen clips, too, but  it seems to me that the piece gains special significance  particularly because of the  absence of music - rather emphasising the strangeness of that approach. Thus I am not sure it would work well if employed too often.  Though there are no played notes, the dancers do at times introduce, and rely on,  rhythms,   though the noise of their feet hitting the stage floor.  

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On 25/05/2022 at 00:05, zxDaveM said:

 

Start a thread on it in the 'general' forum, and see how it runs 🙂

 

On 27/05/2022 at 14:34, Richard LH said:

OK I think I will do so .... although this here thread is itself in the 'general' forum

 

Moderators, now this thread has started off and is generating several  points of interest, would it be possible, please,  to amend its title simply to  "Music for Ballet",  rather than having to start  a separate  thread with that title? 

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  • zxDaveM changed the title to Music for Ballet - favourites, possibilities, etc
1 hour ago, Richard LH said:

 

 

Moderators, now this thread has started off and is generating several  points of interest, would it be possible, please,  to amend its title simply to  "Music for Ballet",  rather than having to start  a separate  thread with that title? 

 

I have tweaked it - is there a better wording you'd prefer?

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I think the recent Forsythe evening performed by ENB showed how well pop music could be used for classical ballet.  

 

Going back to my student days, I do remember one very ambitious would-be choreographer contemplating doing something to The Flight of the Bumble Bee...

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On 27/05/2022 at 23:04, LinMM said:

I don’t know how I missed the song back when it was more famous!!  

But it might have been because  my dad was very ill around that time between 2000 and 2007 (when he died) and I was very busy trying to help him. I used to drive along on the way back to Brighton after spending weekends with him with the Mass  for the Armed man ( mass for peace) by Karl Jenkins at full volume in the car to sing out the tension and horror of seeing one’s father disintegrate slowly to dementia 😥

 

We’ve been building this adage up for the last three weeks in class to this rather dramatic piano piece and on Wednesday I asked the teacher finally what it was called. Now I can’t stop playing the original video of the song!! 
It’s strange how individual bits of music can just suddenly envelope you like that and from any genre. 
Next Wednesday I will ask the teacher which collection it comes from or whether it’s just individual pieces she has put together herself for the class. 
 

I’m so sorry to hear about your father, LinMM, and his long illness. My deepest condolences. x 

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On 29/05/2022 at 16:48, Richard LH said:

Yes indeed...another example would be  Petipa using part of the lovely  Minkus score from the PDD in Act 2 of Don Q Act 2  in the PDD in Act 1 of La Bayadere.

Both seem fine in their respective  contexts, albeit sitting in very different imagined cultural settings. 

Just a tiny tiny nitpick here, RichardLH, but am curious to find out which piece of music do you mean?- I think the repetition might be done by subsequent choreographers or dancers mounting their own versions of the  ballet/s rather than Petipa. Petipa didn’t reuse music because he had financial resources of the Tsar’s Imperial Theatre funding at his disposal and Minkus, Drigo and other composers to write original music at short order.

 

I’m intrigued as to which music  you’re thinking of, because I can’t recall any identical piece- even the Water Jug Dance, the children’s dance (with the awful makeup), and Nikiya & unknown partner (as I call him!) PDD (which are all not in the Royal Ballet production) have different music, as far as I can recall. I could be wrong though, as I often try to forget bits of ballets I don’t like! 

 

There’s also lots of borrowing and musical chairs of various ballet solos in the classics as Russian ballet masters or coaches reviving the classics in St Petersburg or Moscow discarded choreography they didn’t like or changed a production to suit their dancers, and the version stuck. And when dancers dance in galas or tour with their own shows, some also change classical solos or codes if they don’t like the conventional version available!  (This doesn’t generally happen in opera or classical music, where performers have encores to play about with if they wish.) 

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On 28/05/2022 at 20:24, Angela said:

 

Try "Fearful Symmetries" by John Adams - I guess there must be up to 15 or more choreographies to that piece of music. Try every piece by Philip Glass, his Violin Concerto for example. Try "Spiegel im Spiegel" by Arvo Pärt, some years ago it was in every other modern ballet (over here on the continent). 

And how often have the Chopin pieces been used for ballet...

 

Another interesting point is: what was NOT used for ballet? Who started to use symphonies, who started to use religious music, opera music, jazz music... there's a first for many kinds of music we now accept as normal in ballet, but much of it was not used 100 years ago. Until two or three years ago it was not allowed to use opera music by Richard Strauss for dance, or anything else he had not written especially for dance. MacMillan had to go to Stuttgart to do his "Song of the Earth" because he could not use that music in Covent Garden.

Balanchine ignored that Richard Strauss “rule” (who made the rule anyway? It’s a silly rule as so much of his operas are danceable and beautiful) by using the beautiful waltz from Der Rosenkavalier for his ballet Vienna Waltzes in 1977, and it’s been one of the best loved pieces (it’s absolutely stunning to look at) in their repertoire for over 40 years. It was also chosen for part of their first live (streamed) performance post lockdown last year.

 

Probably first choreographer who used symphonic music successfully would be Leonide Massine (eg Choreartium), followed by Balanchine (eg Symphony in C -originally called Le Palais de Cristal), then Neumeier, who must all be applauded for using quality serious music in the orchestra pit and showing that ballet could be subtle, reflective, powerful, nuanced and have depth. Other choreographers have done so from time to time, and many since,  but these three, especially Neumeier, were really the pioneers who were not afraid to use entire symphonies without splicing them to fit a story, and simply allowing the music and the movement themselves to be the story. 

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2 minutes ago, Emeralds said:

Balanchine ignored that Richard Strauss “rule” (who made the rule anyway? It’s a silly rule as so much of his operas are danceable and beautiful) by using the beautiful waltz from Der Rosenkavalier for his ballet Vienna Waltzes in 1977, and it’s been one of the best loved pieces (it’s absolutely stunning to look at) in their repertoire for over 40 years. It was also chosen for part of their first live (streamed) performance post lockdown last year.

 

Wasn't he only able to do so because US copyright rules are different? Hence, I believe, its absence from European stages.

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10 minutes ago, Lizbie1 said:

 

Wasn't he only able to do so because US copyright rules are different? Hence, I believe, its absence from European stages.

Or was it because European companies wouldn’t pay the copyright fee? The terms are different and sometimes also depend on how long the owner/estate has paid to extend the rights for. 

 

On the other hand, I wish some choreographers/companies would have a go at tackling the ballets that Mozart and Beethoven wrote again (they only wrote one each). The music is very danceable. Another ballet that I would like to see in Britain - please come back, NYCB! - is Balanchine’s Orpheus, which has a wonderful score by Stravinsky. 

 

 

 

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1 minute ago, Emeralds said:

Another ballet that I would like to see in Britain - please come back, NYCB! - is Balanchine’s Orpheus, which has a wonderful score by Stravinsky. 

 

 

 

 

Is Orpheus the one where the leading character wears a giant rubber black band?

 

If so, it is one of my least favourite works I have ever seen.

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16 minutes ago, Jan McNulty said:

 

Is Orpheus the one where the leading character wears a giant rubber black band?

 

If so, it is one of my least favourite works I have ever seen.

It’s a gold coloured mask, not a black band, so you should be safe, Janet. 😉

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1 hour ago, Emeralds said:

am curious to find out which piece of music do you mean?

I am thinking particularly of the RB versions of the two ballets, and the Act 1  PDD of Nikiya and Solor, and the Act 2 PDD of Kitri and Basilio. From what you say, have I wrongly attributed this duplication to Petipa rather than to perhaps Makarova or Acosta?

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