When Petipa Re-Choreographed . . .

[RhinoHaggis]

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. 

Edited Tuesday at 06:33 AM by RhinoHaggis

[RhinoHaggis]

On 9/13/2024 at 3:07 PM, cubanmiamiboy said:

In the Legat book he speaks of his early and his brother 's training with their father, and there's one of their famous drawings showing them at the barre with papa Legat close by playing the violin. In this case he was both the teacher and the musical accompaniment. He was able to be close by, give corrections and stop and resume as he wanted. It is intimate and probably less time consuming 

The piano implies orders to the pianist and to the dancers, with shouting in different directions. It could be frustrating for the teacher. Plus...an extra salary.

Sorry “that portrait” 👆

[RhinoHaggis]

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]

[doug]

A few things to consider when assessing Petipa's choreography and musicality:

- Use of a violin repetiteur was de rigueur in theaters across Europe in the nineteenth century. Please see David Day's 2007 dissertation on this topic and Bruno Ligore's "Violin Conductor's Scores and Pantomimic Encoding in the first Half of the Ninenteenth Century: Some methodological approaches" (2023).

- It is well-known that Petipa met with his composers and heard their music performed on piano. His instructions to composers demonstrate his musical competence and familiarity with orchestral instruments.

- Petipa studied music theory and violin as part of his training.

- Petipa seems to have preferred music written in consistent periods (such as 8-bar phrases) for purposes of choreographing complementary dance phrases. He was aware of Tchaikovsky's celebrity and hesitated to ask as much of him as he did with house composers.

- Most choreography seen today that is attributed to Petipa has been altered from what he appears to have choreographed--some in part, some significantly, some completely. His musicality appears to have been what I call "literal"--the choreography closely follows the pulse of the music and the melodic line, with body weight shifted on the beat. This is true of all nineteenth-century ballet choreography I've studied as yet. This did not preclude occasional syncopation, however. The accent was usually down, not up. As Alexei Ratmansky, has observed, Petipa's choreographic phrases occasionally ignore a change in musical phrase, perhaps to provide choreographic counterpoint.