swan lake music

[omshanti]

i recently saw mathew borne s swan lake. somehow watching it ,i was moved by the beauty of the music more than when i see the classical productions of swan lake. is the tempo and the order of the music in mathew bourne s swan lake closer to what tchaikovsky actually wrote?

[Michael]

Ballet scores are shifting sands. What Tchaikovsky himself wrote for Swan Lake was performed only twice during his lifetime, very early on. It was only after his death that the ballet as we know it took shape and at that time Tchai's brother Modest overhauled the libretto (generally acknowledged to be positive changes) while the Romanov court composer Drigo unfortunately mangled the score in places. I don't know that what Tchai himself wrote has ever fully recovered its integrity.

[Solor]

mangled micheal? I dont think so... I myself actually like Drigo's version, as well as the original, equally. I find them to be different, rather than better or worse than than the other.

Bourne's production plays out the full score of 1877. Most ''classical'' productions retain more or less Petipa and Ivanov's 1895 version of the music, which was mostly edited, with numbers tranferred to other scenes, etc. By default, it was Riccardo Eugenio Drigo who did the work, as he was then chief conductor and composer (though he never held the ''oficial post'' held by Minkus and Pugni) at the Mariinsky. Mostly Drigo toned down some of the scores "loud brassy parts", edited repeats. The biggest changes were his orchestrations of numbers from Tchai's op.72 for piano wich became Odile's solo, the waltz of the swans and the pas d'action of the last scene. He also modified the end of the adagio in act II, and the black swan adagio, taken from the 1st act. Mind you, he did all of this at the Balletmaster's request, not because he felt like it! If you ask me, Drigo was the best composer of all of the so-called 'specialist ballet composers'. Tchaikovsky really dug his score for Petipa's 1889 "The Talisman", and so did Alexander Benois, ALOT!

Had Tchaikovsky lived, he would have modified Swan Lake himself, as there were plans to do so........how great that wouldve been!

I wouldnt go so far as to say that Modest "overhauld" the libretto, he merely changed soem things.

[rg]

by asking about 'what tchaikovsky actually wrote' i presume the question refers to the 1877 score and its order vs. the order of the numbers as used in bourne's staging. (as will likely be restated here, 'what tchaikovsky actually wrote' might never have been performed as such, because the score was reworked and reworked some more with each new staging from 1877 onward.)

one place to start would be to compare a CD (or two) of the 1877 score as recorded on many labels, with the CD of bourne's version (TELDEC 0630-16451-2), conducted by David Lloyd-Jones. bourne did rework the score for his staging, admittedly however his re-ordering is hardly the most drastic or dramatic of such in recent years.

surprisingly i've just located my bourne CD.

in brief, and once over, i note that in act 1 of bourne's 2 act production, the pas de trois music from the score's act 1 has been reordered, edited and amplifed by numbers from the act 3 'pas de six'.

the concluding sc. written to end act 1's sc. in a park is transposed by bourne to end his first lakeside scene.

bourne's act 2 - a conflation of tchaikosky's acts 3 & 4 - omits some numbers and reorders others written for the ballroom scene. for example, the polish/mazurka number is not given; at least two numbers are identified as 'shortened' in the CDs notes. if by tempo you ask concerning the tempos familiar from contemporary russian, post-soviet stagings, these are frequently played on the slow side, to say the least.

[omshanti]

thank you for your responses . so nobody knows how tchaikovsky wanted his music to be heard? i thought at least the tempo and speed of the music must have been written on his notes. can anybody in the world just change bits of another composer s music to suit their productions? is there any thing like copyrights? i did notice that in borne s swan lake the music was played faster.

[Helene]

can anybody in the world just change bits of another composer s music to suit their productions?

The short answer is "yes," especially when works are no longer protected legally. And many times when they are, but there is no oversight. Balanchine, whose respect for Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky in particular was legendary, cut (ex: Mendelsson's "Scottish Symphony," Tchaikovsky's 3rd Symphony, Tchaikovsky's "Serenade for Strings" in the original verison) and rearranged (Tchaikovsky's "Serenade for Strings" in the revised version and "Mozartiana") composers' music. (Although I'm not sure he ever changed a note of Stravinsky's music.)

Mark Morris described how when Delibes wrote the music to Sylvia, it was ordered by the yard. Being a ballet composer was a bit of a dog's life, even when decently renumerated.

[Michael]

mangled micheal? I dont think so...

I wouldnt go so far as to say that Modest "overhauld" the libretto, he merely changed soem things.

He certainly did that in changing the tragic conclusion of the 1877 original (where Odette and Siegfried both disappeared beneath waters of the lake, agitated by a storm, until then "The storm dies down ... The moon's pale light breaks through the scattering clouds. The Swans appear on the Lake" as the concluding music elevates into a calm tragic mode) into an Apotheosis with Siegfried and Odette in a "temple of eternal happiness and bliss." The debate, lively to this day, on how Swan Lake should conclude dates back to this amendment. As to which, one wouldn't change the Petipa/Ivanov ending all the same.

[Solor]

He certainly did that in changing the tragic conclusion of the 1877 original (where Odette and Siegfried both disappeared beneath waters of the lake, agitated by a storm, until then "The storm dies down ... The moon's pale light breaks through the scattering clouds. The Swans appear on the Lake" as the concluding music elevates into a calm tragic mode) into an Apotheosis with Siegfried and Odette in a "temple of eternal happiness and bliss." The debate, lively to this day, on how Swan Lake should conclude dates back to this amendment. As to which, one wouldn't change the Petipa/Ivanov ending all the same.

WOW REALY? Geez I thought that they both died in the 1895 Petersburg version. Was it not however the Balletmaster's idea to have the ending changed?

With regarding bourne's new version, when I said he presented Tchaikovskys original I merely meant that no music was revised, as extensively as it was in 1895, though it seems everyone reorders stuff. I was alwayys under the impression that he didnt like his score for Swan Lake, and that he thought it was to loud, etc.....Wiley says he was going to "take up the matter" of the ballet's instrumentation. for a new revival in Petersburg, which never came to be........

With regard to Tchaikovsky's so-called 'original intentions' how much instruction was he given when he composed Swan Lake? I dont think he just thought up a bunch of numbers, thier legnths, tempo, etc........was he not told what to write regarding number of scenes/dances, etc? Perhaps it's time to re-read "Tchaikovsky's Ballets", but even in that book I dint think that questionis answered, as this might be unknown.