The Music and the Mirror

Perhaps ballet’s most famous composer, Pytor Ilych Tchaikovsky is the mind behind Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, The Sleeping Beauty… The list goes on.

It was twelve years between writing Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty, and you can hear the maturity of Tchaikovsky as a composer between the two works. Every note is carefully placed to convey emotion, story or character. The orchestration went further to compliment ballet and subliminally reach audiences through musical devices.

“Tchaikovsky made ballet music respectable; he demonstrated what musical genius could do in this genre, and inspired generations.” – Nicolette Fraillon

Adam composed the hauntingly beautiful Giselle in only three weeks and was an early adopter of leitmotifs (recurring musical themes) that would go on to inspire Tchaikovsky’s work.

“The overall effect of Adam’s score is that of a collection of musical episodes that is greater than the sum of its parts.” – Dr Mark Carroll, University of Adelaide

Controversially Sergei Prokofiev changed Shakespeare’s original tragic ending to happy one, declaring- it was for practical reasons – “the living can dance, the dead cannot.”

Fortunately, Shakespeare’s tragic love story remains intact due to the insistence of Russian and English scholars.

“Prokofiev is a master of all the devices composers use for storytelling- melody, rhythm, harmony, instrumentalisation.” – Nicolette Fraillon

Igor Stravinsky’s experimental innovative work The Rite of Spring was a ground-breaking composition that allegedly caused a riot at its premiere in 1913. The complex rhythms are enhanced by instruments stretched into extreme registers that underscore the wild choreography. In contrast, Stravinsky’s earlier score, The Firebird, was written when the composer was 28 years old and is an atmospheric fantastical tribute to Russian folk melodies.