The Ballet... Music in Pursuit of Beauty

The Music

The Words

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the ‘Classical For Everyone’ Podcast… five hundred years of incredible music. My name is Peter Cudlipp and… If you enjoy any music at all then I’m convinced you can enjoy classical music. All you need are ears. No expertise is necessary. If you’ve ever been curious about classical music… or explored it for a while once upon a time… or just quietly wondered what all the fuss was about… then this is the podcast is for you. And because there’s a lot of music out there each episode has something of a theme… and for this one it is ‘the ballet’ or maybe more accurately… ‘Amazingly good classical music written for dance performance over the last two hundred and fifty years.

Alright… the reference I am going to start this introduction with might surprise you. It certainly surprises me as I really am not prone to quoting from musical theatre but in Michael Bennett’s ‘A Chorus Line’ from 1975 with Music by Marvin Hamlisch and Lyrics by Edward Kleban there is a song with a refrain that begins with the line… ‘Everything Was Beautiful At The Ballet’.

And looking at the music I’m going to play you in this episode a lot of it meets that description… it’s beautiful. Certainly in the 20^th century the focus of ballet maybe shifted a little away from beauty… as choreography broke away from romantic idealism. But I think even today in most cases ballet, and by extension ballet dancers, remain the embodiment of a certain perfection… an aspirational image of what the human body in very rare cases… can do and can be. A sort of beauty. And perhaps this ‘grasping towards beauty’ has been one of the things that has drawn incredible music for ballets from composers for hundreds of years. In the next hour and a quarter you’re going to hear from a few of those composers and in something of a chronological order… Ballet music by Friedrich Willibald Gluck, Alphonse Adam, Leo Delibes, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, , Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Aaron Copland and Aram Khachaturian.      

First a little background. It really wasn’t until the early nineteenth century that classical ballet as we know it became a sort of set type of performance… where choreographed dance to music is the end in itself. Prior to that, ballets, as they spread from Renaissance Italy and were formalised in France, especially during the reign of Louis XIV, were likely to be parts of a more varied work. So there were opera-ballets, comédie-ballets… and dance interludes in things called ‘lyrical tragedies’… precursors of grand opera. There is a lot of incredibly good music in these earlier works but for the first piece today I’m going to leap ahead to the middle of the 1700’s to an opera… but one famous for its ballets. This is Orpheus and Eurydice by Christoph Willibald Gluck. It was first performed in Vienna in the presence of the Empress Maria Theresa in 1762 and then reworked by Gluck twelve years later for audiences in Paris and one of the changes was to give the ballets more prominence… including the one that I am going to play you called ‘The Dance of the Furies’. 

Orpheus has just arrived in the underworld to rescue his wife Eurydice but he is blocked by the Furies… vengeful creatures in the service of the God of the Dead. Here is the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra with Gluck’s ballet ‘The Dance of the Furies’ from his opera ‘Orpheus and Eurydice’. It is about 4 minutes long.

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That was the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra with Gluck’s ballet ‘The Dance of the Furies’ from his opera ‘Orpheus and Eurydice’. So as I mentioned in the introduction it was in the nineteenth century that ballet for its own sake became a popular form of entertainment and two countries, in terms of works that have lasted, dominated this development… France and Russia.

First up some music from a couple of French ballets. The title character of the composer Alphonse Adam’s ballet ‘Giselle’ from 1841 is a young peasant girl who dies of grief after being deceived by the nobleman, Albrecht. One might quite reasonably think she’d have something of a grudge… But in the second half of the ballet, even though she is now a ghost, she defends Albrecht from the collection of angry spirits of unmarried women who also died after being betrayed by their lovers. Perhaps the most famous moment from the ballet is where Albrecht dances with Giselle’s ghost. It is called the Grand pas-de-deux. And ‘pas-de-deux’ is French for ‘step of two’ meaning a section of a ballet where two leads dance together… usually the moment where the best two dancers of the company are able to show off their abilities… and there is a lot of sighing and cheering from the audience. Here is the Grand pas-de-deux from Giselle with music by Alphonse Adam. It is about five minutes long and is performed by the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden conducted by Richard Bonynge.         

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That was the Grand pas-de-deux from the ballet Giselle with music by Alphonse Adam performed by the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden conducted by Richard Bonynge.

Alright, the second French ballet I am going to play you a section of is ‘Coppelia’ and it premiered in 1870 and the music was by Leo Delibes. Now perhaps unusually this ballet is described as a comedy. One way to define a ‘comedy’ is ‘a story where things keep getting in the way of two people who are meant to be together but who find a way in the end’. The plot devices in ‘Coppelia’ keeping the two lovers apart revolve around an old doctor building eerily convincing life-size dancing dolls. So… maybe a comedy with a tiny touch of creepiness. At the beginning of the ballet there is a village festival taking place and central to that is the young people dancing a ‘Mazurka’ which is a fast waltz based on Polish folk music. Here again is Richard Bonynge conducting the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden with the Mazurka from the opening of Coppelia with music by Leo Delibes. It is about 4  minutes long.

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That was Richard Bonynge conducting the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden with the Mazurka from the opening of Coppelia with music by Leo Delibes.

Alright the next three pieces in this ‘Music for Ballets’ episode of the Classical For Everyone’ podcast are all by one composer… the Russian Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. He only wrote three ballets and each of them remains incredibly popular. By comparison of his ten operas only one, Eugene Onegin, is performed regularly outside Russia. The ballets are Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker. I’m working up a whole episode about the extraordinary life and music of Tchaikovsky for a few weeks’ time so I’ll keep these introductions a little brief. First I have the Waltz of the Swans from ‘Swan Lake’ which premiered in Moscow in 1877. In the story… which it seems Tchaikovsky kind of pulled together from Russian folktales himself… the swans are young women who are under a sorcerer’s spell that turns them into swans in the daytime and only at night… by the side of an enchanted lake created from tears… do they return to human form. This is the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Mstislav Rostropovich. Tchaikovsky’s ‘Waltz of the Swans’.

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That was the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Mstislav Rostropovich. Tchaikovsky’s ‘Waltz of the Swans’. In this episode so far I’ve been giving you a bit of the plot to set the scene for each ballet. This though, will be the briefest description… There’s a princess. She goes to sleep. She wakes up. Here is the very beautiful Adagio from Tchaikovsky’s ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ from 1890. And again Rostropovich is conducting the Berlin Philharmonic.

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That was the Adagio from Tchaikovsky’s ‘The Sleeping Beauty’. Mstislav Rostropovich conducted the Berlin Philharmonic.

To finish this trio of excerpts from the trio of Tchaikovsky ballets… here is a two and a half minute March from ‘The Nutcracker’ completed in 1892… It’s from the beginning of the ballet when the children of the house are anticipating their gifts on Christmas Eve. They, and the audience, do not yet know that there are magical toys amongst the presents. Here again is Mstislav Rostropovich conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. The March from Tchaikovsky’s ballet ‘The Nutcracker’. 

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That was the March from ‘The Nutcracker’ ballet by Tchaikovsky performed by Mstislav Rostropovich conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

Ok, so in the early 20^th century the best regarded composers for ballet music remained Russians… but the centre for the production of new ballets had returned to Paris. And the reason for this was the ballet company founded in 1909 in Paris by the Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev. He called it the Ballets Russes… or in English… The Russian Ballets. And that, in the majority of cases, was what the Ballets Russes put on. In the company’s twenty year history Diaghilev was certainly also a keen promoter and commissioner of works by French composers, but his company will be forever connected to Russian ballets and in particular launching the international career of the young Igor Stravinsky with his 1910 ballet, The Firebird followed by ‘Petrushka’ in 1911 and then from 1913, ‘The Rite Of Spring’. If what I have played you so far fell into what could be broadly called ‘classical ballet’… it was these works by Stravinsky… that took ballet into the modern world. I’m going to play you what is I think an almost perfect illustration of this evolution from the old to the new. It is a scene from ‘Petrushka’. The ballet follows three characters from a puppet theatre at a fair in St Petersburg. Magically they are brought to life and the plot is a dark love triangle between the Moor, the Ballerina and Petrushka… who is essentially a clown. In this ballet, there is no prince but there is a ballerina. The hero, Petrushka, does not end up with the Ballerina. He is murdered by the Moor and the ballet concludes with Petrushka’s ghost cackling in the sky. In the same way that the tone of the story is a long way from Tchaikovsky… the music is using a more complex and perhaps less reassuring set of sounds.

Here is four minutes from Igor Stravinsky’s ‘Petrushka’ where the Moor first dances with the Ballerina as the lovesick clown, Petrushka, looks on. In this recording the composer conducts the Columbia Symphony Orchestra.

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That was the Dance of the Ballerina and the Moor from Igor Stravinsky’s ‘Petrushka’. The composer conducted the Columbia Symphony Orchestra.

Alright, there is so much very good music written for ballets in the first half of the 20^th century that I’ve chosen the next couple of pieces using that very sophisticated system of… just playing my favourites. But for the first piece I am at least continuing the Russian theme. But now we are in Soviet Era Russia. In the mid 1930’s Sergei Prokofiev commenced work on a ballet setting of Shakespeare’s play ‘Romeo and Juliet’. After a series of obstacles and frustrations, including some people strongly suggesting to Prokofiev that adding a happy ending was a very bad idea… an idea he did fortunately abandon… the ballet was finally premiered in 1940. I’m going to play you what is most generally known as ‘The Dance Of The Knights’. It is part of the sequence where the two rival Veronese families… the Montagues and the Capulets confront each other at a Ball… the same Ball where Romeo and Juliet will meet. It is six minutes long and here is an incredible performance. Andre Previn conducts the London Symphony Orchestra. Sergei Prokofiev’s ‘Romeo & Juliet’.

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That was ‘The Dance Of The Knights’ from Sergei Prokofiev’s ‘Romeo & Juliet’. Andre Previn conducted the London Symphony Orchestra.

This whole episode has very much focused on Europe and particularly France and Russia but by the middle of the 20^th century America was starting to create some ballets of its own and one of the most prominent composers working in the medium was Aaron Copland. In 1941 the choreographer Martha Graham approached him with a request for a ballet… but it would be another three years before they could agree on a scenario and Copland would commence writing the music. It really got going in 1943 with Graham sending Copland an outline titled "House of Victory", about a newlywed couple in a small 19th-century Pennsylvania settlement. This was the start of what would become ‘Appalachian Spring’ an exploration of American archetypes of small rural communities just before the Civil War... all set to beautiful and evocative music. I’m going to play you the opening nine minutes. It starts quite quietly. Here is Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic. Aaron Copland’s ‘Appalachian Spring’.

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That was Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic with the opening Aaron Copland’s ‘Appalachian Spring’. My name is Peter Cudlipp and you have been listening to the ‘Classical for Everyone’ Podcast. I have another couple of pieces coming up but before I get to them I want to give you some information that I hope you might find useful… If you would like to listen to past episodes or get details of the music I’ve played… please head to the website classicalforeveryone.net. That address again is classicalforeveryone.net And on the individual episode pages of the website there are links to Spotify playlists with the full versions of most of the music played in each of the episodes. And if you want to get in touch with any questions or suggestions then you can email… info@classicalforeveryone.net.

And a quick thank you to my friend Kristen Hannah for suggesting the idea of an episode devoted to Ballet. Proof that good things come from drinking wine in New Zealand.

Alright, to finish this episode I have to talk about the gladiator Spartacus for a moment. In 73 BC he led an uprising of slaves against the Roman Republic and even though he was killed two years later and the revolt was quashed his story was passed down through the ages and eventually he came to be seen as a rare champion of the downtrodden. So much so that he was adopted as a figure of tremendous symbolic power for the socialist and communist movements of nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Indeed in a quote widely attributed to Karl Marx he refers to Spartacus as "the most splendid fellow in the whole of ancient history, a real representative of the ancient proletariat". The figure of Spartacus came to play a strong cultural role in the Soviet Union and… getting back to music… in 1954 the Soviet-Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian wrote his ballet ‘Spartacus’. Incidentally this was three years after the American writer, and formerly jailed member of the Communist Party of America, Howard Fast had self-published his version of the Spartacus story. And a few years after Khachaturian wrote his ballet… on the other side of the Iron Curtain Hollywood took Fast’s novel and turned it into the Kirk Douglas film, ‘Spartacus’, incidentally directed by the friend of this podcast… Stanley Kubrick. But back to the ballet. Khachaturian gave Spartacus a wife whose name is Phrygia and at the end of the second act… after the slaves have escaped from captivity they dance together… to rather amazing music. I began this episode talking about the link between ballet and beauty. For me this is something very beautiful. 'The Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia’ by Aram Khaachaturian. Stanley Black conducts the London Symphony Orchestra.

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That was Stanley Black conducting the London Symphony Orchestra with 'The Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia’ from Aram Khachaturian’s 1954 ballet ‘Spartacus’

Thanks for your time and I look forward to playing you some more incredible music on the next ‘Classical For Everyone’. This podcast is made with Audacity Software for editing, Wikipedia for Research, Claude for Artificial Intelligence and Apple, Sennheiser, Sony, Rode and Logitech for hardware… The music played is licensed through AMCOS / APRA. Classical For Everyone is a production of Mending Wall Studios and began life on Radio 2BBB in Bellingen NSW, Australia thanks to the late, great Mr Jeffrey Sanders. The producers do not receive any gifts or support of any kind from any organisation or individual mentioned in the show. But, never say never.

And if you have listened to the credits… here is a little bonus for you… This is another couple of minutes from Tchaikovsky’s ‘The Nutcracker’ performed by Mstislav Rostropovich and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Tchaikovsky called this the ‘Danse De La Fée Dragée’… which is better known as ‘The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’

Thanks for listening.