Right from the start, ballet and music have been uniquely intertwined. Without music ballet is nothing less than the empty motions of a ritual. Without the movement and rhythm of dance, music looses all vitality. And so, ballet as an entrance to human expression hinges on both music and dance. Jean Baptiste Lully (1632-1687), the Italian-born French composer who set up the nation’s French opera was not only a court composer to Louis XIV, but also a choreographer who produced court ballets for Molire’s plays.
This possibly explains why his productions never lacked an accompaniment. Theatre productions of the 1700’s turned composers away from ballet and toward the music of dancehall dancing. This phase sustained its self straight through the nineteenth century with the exception of pieces by Russian classical composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) which include the Nutcracker, Swan Lake, and Sleeping Beauty.
In the twentieth century ballet came back to the focus. Once more considered a respectable art form, choreographers looked to the works of classical composers like Mozart, Bach, Vivaldi, Chopin, Brahms, and Handel to perform the art of ballet dancing too. Many agree that ballet owes it’s really existence to the likes of people who are both composers and choreographers. Because being musicians in nature, they naturally pay very close attention to ballet following the rhythmical structure of its accompaniment exactly. One who doesn’t understand music can simply create ballet that looks good that in of itself, yet at the beck and call of a great classical piece the beginner falls short of expressing the true nature of the piece. Instead, they turn the production into a sort of movement that’s lacking in both art and beauty. The gurus instead know when it is suitable to go against the grain of the accompaniment to heighten those dramatic periods which capture their audience’s attention and leaves them breathless. As we dawn a new era of music and dance, it’s certain that ballet will continue to modify. However, just as music and dance have always been the best of buddies, ballet will continue to find its new identity in the continually changing music of today.