RhinoHaggis

I am beginning work on La Bayadère, which I expect to be difficult. I’m beginning with the two-violin répétiteur in the Sergeyev Collection at Harvard. I’ll be following leads from notes in different books, and sending out emails to researchers and libraries, but realistically I’m only going to be in a university library once a month and won’t otherwise be able to search/read most academic journals and research papers . I appeal to the BalletAlert hive mind. If you have any information relating to Bayadère scores, i would be much obliged!

2. Licensing to the U.S. or another country. U.S. copyright law does not recognize broadcast as a means of publication. The U.S. is also notorious for having an extremely long copyright period, and generous extension options for copyright holders. I live in the U.S. The Mariinsky Bayadère poses a dilemma. Say I went to the a Mariinsky and photographed it. Would I be allowed to inject the photographes score into the public domain? If this form is truly the original, and in this original form was never published I would probably have to talk to a copyright expert to find out if the U.S. would recognize this staged Mariinsky unveiling as first publication. Just the fact of doubt could be all they want: prevent scores from appearing, keep it inaccessible, and either offer access to it and other Bayadère ressources for a fee: “buy the Mariinsky production of La Bayadère for your company”… or try to monetize the exclusivity with a recording deal or a world tour (say)

This makes it pretty easy to assess the broad outlines of the Kirov claim on la Bayadère, in spite of our lack of expertise. The Mariinsky surely owns the document as property. They have no copyright claim on the music. They have no claim on the arrangement, which they have reconstructed, not written themselves. Their claim as editor is tenuous since -again- the purpose of the edits is to reconstruct the music as it existed. Inasmuch as the reconstructed document itself is original, it is impossible for them to be editors. If they published a Mariinsky Theater Edition with notes, that might constitute an edition, but they would probably only have actual copyright on thei written text of the volume, any notes, etc. The most likely status seems to be a compilation of manuscript, facsimile and Urtext… on which (according to IMSLP) there is no enforceable copyright, but it is courteous to respect for some short, fixed period. IMSLP’s courtesy period of 25 years will pass in the next year or two.

Wanted to add a couple of things to this. 1. Music, Arrangement, Edition IMSLP is an online library of public domain sheet music where the copyright status of every submission is checked by an expert. They divide copyright claims neatly into three categories: the Music, the Arrangement, and the Edition. The order of precedence is straightforward MUSIC > ARRANGEMENT > EDITION The copyright holder of the music has claim over all three: the music, and any arrangements or editions of/based on it. The arranger has claim on the particular arrangement and editions of/based on it. The arranger has no claim on the music or other arrangements of it. A editor has claim over that edition and anything based on it, but no claim on the music, any arrangements, or other editions. There are a few other odds and ends. Collected Works covers things like anthologies. You have copyright on your own contributions to the volume (introduction, notes, etc), and any editing or arranging you’ve done to the included works, as well as the unique selection of individual pieces. Collected works grants no copyright on the music, arrangements or editions included in the collection. Lastly, they grant a courtesy period of 25 years to publishers/editors of facsimile or “urtext” editions without expressly acknowledging any copyright ownership of such editions.

I would also like to add that righteous indignation is often a cheap power play. This view- that Great Works are irreparably marred by those who interrupt them … and that anyone who does not value them in their entirety is an intellectual or artistic inferior- is obviously piffle. The cuts might be bad, but the only real question is where the audience has its attention. We forgive abominable cuts every day watching TV, movies and advertisements. Music truncated abruptly, brought suddenly to an incongruent cadence…. Perhaps your experience is different but for me the vast majority of the time this is at worst a minor nuisance. I am briefly disappointed, and might make a face. But it rarely makes me question the artistic sensibilities or integrity of the editors. I strongly suspect that part of what went wrong for Petipa was that audience *knew* and *liked* Tchaikovskly’s music. Critics had the luxury of familiarity with the music, and the luxury of being able to be outraged by changes to it. if the result is unconvincing, fine, but we shouldn’t forget that the turn of the century theater critic was an adept at hyperbole and character assassination. [for fun examples of this, I can of recommend this book more highly : https://www.amazon.com/Lexicon-Musical-Invective-Composers-Beethovens/dp/039332009X]

Sorry “that portrait” 👆

I don’t want to detract from that portait because that’s just the sort of thing I had in mind when suggesting that it might be a personal reason to use the violin. It paints a pretty picture in the mind, and if it is how he liked to do it, then that’s most of what matters. However I think it is easy in the mind to imagine a story brings with it certain practical realities… but I’d be suspicious of myself if I got to thinking most ballet teachers focused on intimate directions in a variation would really find it less clumsy to be carrying a violin which they had to choose between playing and making any physical corrections. And most demonstrations for that matter. Sufficient knowledge of the choreography and music to follow a teacher in rehearsal of a variation, picking up and cutting off the music based on the indications to the dancer is -while not at all easy- nevertheless a fundamental requirement for a company musician. It does not require shouting and divided attention. That is precisely the purpose and job of the accompanist: to make her presence always an assistance and never a burden to the teacher. I say this only because it seems silly to compare the two where on the one hand we have an idealized portrait, and on the other a caricature: the most famous ballet company in the world can’t find a musician who satisfies the most basic demands of employment as a professional accompanist. These skills are harder to come by today but only because times are a-changing. And again, to the topic which has become sort of the dominant discussion in this thread: the understanding of the music… however fun it might be to play violin teacher and dancer… if the music in question is Tchaikovsky and the entire choreography and/or rehearsal are done with a single melody, or two part counterpoint, in any musically complex number this is virtually the same thing as saying nobody in that room had any idea what the actual music in question is like, including seas of countermelodies that -one would hope- might hold some interest for the choreographer. This is mostly just a thought experiment here, but at least in the abstract this to me lends a little more weight to the idea that Petipa who was a capable musician, would certainly have been aware of all the musical material in the score. I haven’t read The books discussed here (but they’re on my reading list now!), but it seems to me that if Petipa had really been so uninterested in the music as one might be lead to believe by words like “abomination”, then it would be visible in the choreography: nothing would ever happen in the choreography that responded to the inner voices, changes in harmony and texture, etc. that as a practical matter would have been impossible to reproduce with (for example) only two violins. I haven’t ever heard anyone try to make a claim like that: if you analyze the choreography and step with the music, you can see plainly he is unaware of what is going on in the orchestra beyond a recurring Melody and its bass line.

I’m not trying to make a character attack here. I think these are legitimate concerns about conduct. And in fact, this way of operating is so common in ballet music, there is no reason even to assume he acted in bad faith, which I do not. the fact that you CAN NOT, as a research scholar do either of the following a) holding unpublished material you know or believe to be copyrighted, publish it as your own, or b) holding such material which you know to be free of copyright and rare, keep it for yourself for monetary gain rather than relinquish it to a library or some other appropriate method are not minor recommendations. These are the kind of rules that underpin the very notion of ethical conduct in scholarship. i an mot a mind reader; could be wrong about these volumes and I would happy to be.

I am trying to get oriented in this area (impossible to obtain scores) and to me the Letellier books raise some concerns. This Bayadère volume is much better documented than his Paquita score, but it is hard not to be troubled by the artful way the scores “from the Soviet era” remain totally unspecified. This is a familiar frustration for the ballet musician; people with access to manuscripts use it as an opportunity to monetize that access while failing to disclose the location of the materials consulted. One who browses the Letellier books will find volumes where photographed or scanned copies of someone else’s work are arranged page-for page. Nevertheless the copyright page claims himself as the sole and exclusive copyright holder. Now, look. I’m not an expert in copyright law but there seem to be two clear options here: 1) Either there is indeed a valid copyright claim on these scanned works, in which case it will be someone involved in their creation, but obviously not Letellier, or 2) there is no valid copyright claim on them, and the only plausible copyrights he could assert would be as editor, or Collected Works, and in either case he should have thought about doing some actual editing or collecting rather than simply pasting photographs of another editor’s work, start-to-finish into his book. In other words -although I am no expert- the copyright claims appear at first sight to be completely specious. It is difficult to construct a scenario in which one could apply such claims to a work in this form. Moreover Dr. Letellier is a teacher at Cambridge, where a brief look at their research and publication standards make pretty clear that each of the three: 1) reproducing works without proper attribution 2) presenting historic documents without proper references eg location of those materials 3) claiming personal copyright on such materials fails to meet their research standard. And lastly, there is the obvious ethical breach: knowing full well the exceptional difficulty of finding and consulting such source materials -and operating as a scholar- rather than immediately make those materials available to a library where they could be freely consulted by the public, and almost certainly injected into the Public Domain…. he kept them for himself and published them on a vanity press as his own.

As mentioned above, piano versions of everything are indeed how orchestral music of every kind was -and still is- performed for all accompaniment purposes. Here in the U.S., every year thousands of students in every state visit the designated local school with a piece prepared for ajudication. Every single one of them who requires an accompanist will use a pianist, as every single piece of solo-instrument-with-orchestra in the entire repertory has an orchestral accompaniment arranged for piano. Likewise every auditioner for a competition, etc. Etc. For every purpose it it assumed sufficient for the needed musical purpose. And when that assumption fails it is because the music is dense enough that a single piano is simply not enough to portray the musical texture. But interestingly two-piano versions pose a challenge for a rehearsal setting as they require tight coordination of the two pianists and this kind of overhead is just not a part of accompaniment tradition. Proper rehearsal scores are always for a single pianist, even when there are extra staves showing additional countermelodies. But even with two pianos, the color and character of the original instruments is lost. I actually asked a dancer from the Dutch National Company about this whole business recently, because reductions like the Firebird are unplayably difficult. He said that the first rehearsals with the orchestra music after piano preparation are always a disaster as dancers adjust to all the extra musical activity going on: counter melodies jumping out of nowhere; moving inner voices, etc. But in all these settings, the principal performer knows the orchestral version. if Petipa was reluctant to consider all the extra notes in the full score as having much importance, it changes the meaning of a reduction.

[Here’s a little love for the violin to counteract the brutality of the 19th-Century machine instrument ❤️]

@Helene while those things are certainly true (and increasingly relevant as the piano wanes and strapped dance studios surely question the investment in live music on battered uprights)… it is probably impossible to overstate the ubiquity of the piano in the 19th and early 20th century. After 1800, the piano developed rapidly, becoming sturdier, with a broader range of dynamics and tone, and requiring less and less frequent maintenance. By mid-century the piano was for all practical purposes the instrument we know today. The layout of the keys is transparent reading exactly like a musical staff. Harmonies are distinguishable at sight. This, and the ability to play more notes at once in more complex interrelations than any other instrument made it the default reference instrument. For everything. Every musician that attended conservatory anywhere in Europe was required to learn to sing… and play the piano, a tradition which is only now beginning to fade. Every working musician could play the piano. And the piano was necessary for modern music. The violin répétiteur has a kind of mystique in ballet history, but “répétiteur” is just the French word for the job that -say- a pianist does helping an opera singer prepare for a concert. It isn’t a question of the loveliness of the tone, but of pure practicality: you can’t help a singer prepare Puccini with a violin. There is certain music that she needs to prepare and you need to be able to play it. And depending on the singer you will be expected to provide on the piano every specific note and musical quirk (like the speed of rolled chord) that singer uses as cues. The world of the violin répétiteur had vanished. And pianos were everywhere. Bars, restaurants, whorehouses… homes. It was the 19th century turntable. It is how anyone could hear the melodies to the latest works of any kind. At the time Petipa was choreographing, there was no such thing as a performance space large or small that did not have a grand piano which was regularly tuned and maintained. A prominent theater would have in every performance and rehearsal space a piano which could be serviced or tuned before -or even during- every performance. I say that not to be a cheerleader ‘rah-rah piano’, but because at the time Petipa was choreographing, the use of a violin répétiteur as a matter of practical convenience no longer existed. And the music being written was totally unsuited to its use. The year Petipa died, The Firebird premiered. Somewhere between Rameau and Stravinsky two-part accompaniment becomes an absurd notion, regardless of the beauty of a solo violin playing well-suited music. So it raises some interesting questions. Clearly the violin accompanist survived longest in the ballet. If Petipa was using two violins, it might be because an older he was revisiting was only available in a 2 violin score. Perhaps it was a tradition that survived in certain ballet theaters. Or perhaps by that time it was a peculiar preference unique to him? Without trying to rag on them, the music of composers like Drigo and Minkus could easily lend credence to the idea that you could still get by with melody and countermelody… while the rest of the world in the meantime, moved on.

It's crazy to think of someone using two violins with a modern piano available. With répétiteurs it would be impossible to take any stock at all of a longer Tchaikovsky piece. Tchaikovsky did his own reductions and they are quite good. Still, we already know the orchestral versions, and I agree that - -if we didn't already know them- even with piano reductions it would be difficult to grasp the bigger picture for his broader numbers, like the long waltzes. He introduces a fabric of interlocking countermelodies that appears like characters, spark new interest and textures, and allow the principal theme to fall underneath as accompaniment. He was also a masterful orchestrator. He showcases the colors of the different instrumental registers, and melodies are tailored to specific instruments with phrasing and articulation that is hard to imitate at another instrument, or imagine in its absence. The piece I have in mind is not Tchaikovsky, but Rimsky-Korsakov's Russian Easter Overture. If it's unfamiliar, give it a listen, and try to imagine capturing it in a piano piece. I hesitate to say it's impossible; Yuja Wang does the impossible every day. But it'd have to be close. I would also hesitate to jump to the conclusion "unmusical". I think any musician who has worked with a choreographer has the experience of working-out phases of choreography where the music is simply not an equal partner, if for no other reason than the music is already written but the choreography is not. In some sense choreography depends on music to exist, but just as the composer should freely elaborate her ideas , so also the choreographer should be allowed to elaborate the dance freely into the future on the principles of choreography and not as mere accompaniment. There is no need to write off a failure to grasp the measure of Tchaikovsky and the possible implications for choreography, as a lack of musicality.

Hahaha I thought i was going to get clobbered for saying that! @doug that is a reassuring tempo mark. I saw a version on YouTube (that I can't find now) with répétiteur violins that was quite brisk. In partial defense of whatever choreographers/directors are making these decisions, some of the problem lies in the music. This music has no countermelodies; no soft rhythm part elaborating the counts. Musically, it only "works" at tempos where the role of the steady 8th is unambiguous. It's either a 2/4 coda, a crisp moderato with equal-weight eighths, or a false adagio where with some imagination you can pretend the eighth is subdivided. In the same way that it would be terribly awkward to stop the accelerando early and finish the piece without breaking into the coda tempo it's hard to take a slower tempo without falling down the drain into the false adagio. Also, thanks for the info on notation! I'll have a look!

Reading through @Quiggin's quotes -and at the risk of exaggerating the case- it's interesting to consider that perhaps Petipa wasn't the best composer of solos. Perhaps I'm alone in this, but one of the things that immediately cries "Petipa" to me is steps which would normally be a petit allegro drawn out into a slower tempo, like the slow part of the third shade variation from la Bayadère: there's an uncluttered elegance, but it also looks like a miniature nightmare for the dancer, to fill all the time convincingly, with such small and quick movements . HOP ..... . .... HOP ...... .... HOP. The last time I played this for a class studying the variation, it was all I could do to keep the tempo down. Anyway, there are of course a million possibilities, like for example that we have slowed down the tempo (the music is very tempo-neutral).... but it's funny to think that one possibility is that Petipas wasn't always so hot at writing variations, and the dancers were huffing and complaining.