Music & Ballet How ballet music took centre stage | Page 7

A somewhat gentler revolution came in the form of
Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloe (Ballets Russes, Diaghilev
commission, 1912). In a typically Impressionistic
blurring of boundaries, the composer himself
described the work as a “choreographic symphony”,
and the primacy of the music is reflected in how the
work has come to be performed: largely in the form of
two concert suites rather than a two-act ballet. The
music was hailed as a masterpiece even during the
composer’s lifetime, and its lush harmonies and
infectious motifs have made it one of the most
performed pieces in the classical canon.
An even more shocking forward leap in ballet music came with
Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, which inspired riotous scenes on its first
performance in 1913 (again, when performed by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes
in Paris). With its irregular rhythms, harsh dissonances and extended
instrumental techniques, it was a complete break with the past. In direct
response to Stravinsky’s rule-breaking ballet music, the Hungarian
composer Béla Bartók wrote his own, similarly shocking ballet The
Miraculous Mandarin. Its heavy score aims to evoke the urban environment
of the scenario, with blaring brass fanfares, chord clusters and dense
chromatic tonalities all contributing the work’s tempestuous feeling. Some
critics say that the tumultuous atmosphere of Bartok’s Miraculous
Mandarin reflected the political instability in the composer’s homeland at
the time. What’s more, the scenario’s bawdy subject matter saw it banned
by local authorities when it premiered in Cologne in 1926. At any rate, the
music for the ballet remains among Bartok’s most challenging works.