Music & Ballet How ballet music took centre stage | Page 3

When dance started featuringring in the European courts of the
Renaissance period, little thought was given as to what sounds the
performers would be moving to. Most of the time, in fact, their
movements would be accompanied by nothing at all - no music would be
played, and the focus remained purely on the dancers’ visual aspect.
Though this changed with the advent of the Baroque period, the music
that came to be used in ballet performances was initially little more than
an afterthought.
A sea-change came when one Italian composer set foot in the court of the
French king in 1653. Giovanni Battista Lulli, now commonly known by his
French name Jean-Baptiste Lully, was invited by Louis XIV to dance with
him in a production of Ballet royal de la Nuit, a ballet for which Lully had
composed some of the music. Lully went on to spearhead the use of faster
tempi in music composed for ballet productions, and also advocate the
then-unheard-of idea that one composer should write all of the music for
a single ballet. Lully’s music diverged from what had been traditionally
used to accompany ballet performances; it had a distinct style and
suggested something of a narrative. However, ballet as a form had yet to
solidify into anything near like what we think of it today. At the time, ballet
dances could be incorporated into sections of an opera to allow for set
changes, or be part of a longer performances featuring elements of
singing and poetry reading.
Ballet music: on the fringes