Ballet Music
19th Century Ballet
In the 19th century ballet emerged as an art form in its own right with music being composed for the sole purpose of dance. This art form had emerged in France from the early operas of Rameau and particularly of Lully, who was the court composer to Louis XIV. His operas contained not only the usual arias and choruses but also elaborate dance sequences in which King Louis often participated.
(The Grand Pas de Deux from Scottish Ballet's The Nutcracker, choreographed by Ashley Page. Photograph by Bill Cooper).
During the 19th century Tchaikovsky wrote three sets of ballet music which were also performed as a suite of dances at orchestral performances. The three most famous of these are ‘Swan Lake’, ‘Sleeping Beauty’ and ‘The Nutcracker’. Listen to one of the most famous dances from ‘The Nutcracker’, ‘The dance of the sugar plum fairy’, and notice the use of the celeste, a keyboard instrument in which small hammers play bars similar to chime bars.
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(The Waltz of the Flowers from Scottish Ballet's The Nutcracker, choreographed by Ashley Page. Photograph by Bill Cooper).
20th Century Ballet music
In the early 20th century the Ballets Russes fled from the revolutionary Russia to Paris, where the company continued to perform traditional ballet before large audiences. Its principal choreographer, Diaghilev, was quite forward-looking and engaged the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky to write new music for the ballet company. The music and ballets set new standards with dynamic rhythms and at times dissonant harmonies new to the listeners of the times. Three stand out: ‘Firebird’, ‘Petrushka’ and ‘The Rite of Spring’. The music in the ‘Rite’ was so rhythmically different and so difficult for the dancers that at the first performance the dancers could not complete the performance, which disintegrated into a shambles. The audience was so overcome with the strident sound and the unusual rhythms that there was a riot both inside the theatre and in the streets after the end of the performance. Needless to say these works, so different when they were first performed, are now regarded as masterpieces and are regularly performed as ballets while the music itself is regularly performed at orchestral concerts. Listen to the start of the first scene, ‘Shrovetide fair’. The orchestra creates an image of people rushing about and the busy fair; meanwhile Petrushka is beside a street barrel organ.
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(Painting of 'Russian ballet' painted by August Mackie. The painting seems to be of a performance of 'Carnival').
In America, Aaron Copland produced ballet music based on American folk tunes and rhythms, with his music ‘Billy the Kid’ perhaps one of the best known. Other modern composers wrote ballet music as well and here is a short example by the Russian composer Shostakovich. This is a waltz from his ballet suite ‘The Human Comedy’.
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Ballet and dance companies continue to flourish into the 21st century and it is now common to find all kinds of music being used for traditional ballet, modern ballet and dance spectaculars with, for instance, groups like Riverdance performing modern versions of traditional dance to modern versions of traditional music.
(Paul Liburd & Sophie Martin in Scottish Ballet's 'The Pump Room', choreographed by Ashley Page. Photograph by Bill Cooper)