Franz’s solo in Coppélia: yet another interpolation (Bol’shoi version)

Who knows what this is? Answers below!

Click here to download Franz’s interpolated solo from Coppélia for piano (free pdf)

After I’d finished that last post on teachers and their summer school rep, I wondered whether I’d gone a bit too far on the world-weary musicians’ humour.  But then the very next day, I was asked if I could locate music for the solo in the video below (sorry if it gets removed, that’s the pain of posting YouTube links. If it does, search for Franz variation, Coppélia, Bolshoi and probably another one will turn up). It’s Coppélia, I was assured. It’s not needed for the summer school I’m playing for currently, but for another that’s happening in a couple of weeks (and all credit to the teacher who knows enough to be looking in advance to get the scores together.) 

 The video I was shown was from the Prix de Lausanne some years ago, where the solo was announced as Act I of Coppélia, and was in E major. Now I’ve seen a few other videos (including the one above), I’m pretty sure it had been speeded up and pitch-shifted from D. So what? Well, I’d looked through hundreds of pages of scores of Sylvia, La Source, Le roi l’a dit and other ballets, looking for things in E major. It’s not that I wouldn’t have spotted the tune in another key, but a key helps to speed up the search. 

How many dancers does it take to identify an interpolated solo? 

At dinner last night, about eight illustrious stars of the ballet world sang along with the tune and said “what IS that?!” First answer? Raymonda. The director on my right rang Moscow. “It’s Coppélia.” Yes, so everyone keeps telling me, but WHAT IS THE MUSIC. Because the music isn’t from Coppélia. I had already asked the oracle (Lars Payne) who informed me that the solo wasn’t in the Schott edition of Coppélia which has includes music that was dropped from the first (Heugel) edition of the score. 

Someone on YouTube commenting on this solo says “That’s Fille mal gardée not Coppélia.” You never know with YouTube commenters. They’re either mad bots, or they know something. Could it be? 

I’ve done a transcription of the music, but I am pretty sure I am going to see it in print one day, because it sounds very familiar. My first thought was that it sounded a bit like Glazunov — it has resonances with that awful Jean de Brienne solo. But Glazunov would surely have had a few middle lines going? The opening really does sound like Delibes, but that middle section with the lazy falling chromatic bass? That sounds more like Lanchbery. Until that point, it sounded like it could have been Minkus or Pugni.  I take that back. There’s something really rather fine about this solo, in its melodic construction, and in the voicing of the chords. In that sense, it has quite a different feel to the usual suspects. 

Enter Ernest Giraud, wearing a kilt 

Could it be Ernest Guiraud, who added a solo for Act 3 (see this article from the Petipa Society)?  I’d looked through the scores available on IMSLP, but couldn’t see the solo. Then I hovered over Gretna Green again. Come to think of it, this music does sound like it could be Scottish, rather than Hungarian/Polish. IMSLP only have a scene and waltz from Gretna Green. Is there anything else on the net? Well, yes there is. There’s a  manuscript full score at archive.org (on pages 196-201). As I’d done the transcription already, it was easy to recognise what I was looking for, despite the old score and handwritten notes. Et voilà, the mystery is solved. That solo — now the third interpolation for Franz that I know of in Coppélia is from Gretna Green, by Ernest Guiraud. 

Gretna Green piano reduction at the British Library

There is a piano reduction of the whole ballet in a few libraries, and this solo starts on page 66. It’s available online at the British Library (direct link to the first page of the solo here). Now that I can see the piano score, it’s clearer that the solo (or whatever it was originally) was quite a bit longer, and the repetitions up the octave in the Bolshoi version are probably as a result of having cut out the middle section. 

Doing this kind of transcription work is labour-intensive: I listened over and over to the video, taking down the solo by dictation. Having found the orchestral score, I amended the harmonies I hadn’t been able to hear properly. Now I’ve seen Guiraud’s own piano reduction, I see how I could have made mine simpler. However, audio transcription has it’s advantages. You make the arrangement much closer to how it sounds: for example, the simplicity of Guiraud’s arrangement is at the expense of the doubling of the cello and bass, which is what gives the solo the oomph it needs when you play it for a ballet rehearsal. 

More on Guiraud

Guiraud is an interesting person to follow up, judging by my skim through this dissertation on Guiraud’s life and works by Daniel Weilbaecher (1990). Born in New Orleans to French parents, he moved back to Paris to continue his music education. winning—like his father before him—the prestigious Prix de Rome.  Gretna Green (originally Le forgeron de Gretna-Green), according to Weilbaecher (see p.71 of his thesis), was the first work of Guiraud’s to be produced at the Opéra in Paris, on 5th May 1873, choreographed by Louis Mérante. The famous Milanese ballerina Rita Sangalli was supposed to have taken the leading role as her Parisian debut,  but preparations were delayed and so she made her debut in Delibes La Source instead. Now the interesting thing about that is that it was Sangalli’s specially composed solo from La Source (No. 23 in the piano score from IMSLP) which is one Balanchine’s  interpolations into Coppélia for Franz’s solo alongside the waltz variation, Act III No. 16 (d)  from La Source. Petipa apparently originally introduced the latter for Swanilda in 1904, which means that both previously “female” variations are now coded as male to many people. 

Guiraud was best friends with Bizet, and good friends with Delibes (he was a pallbearer at his funeral), and the teacher of Debussy.  Weilbaecher is full of fascinating stories that sound extraordinary given the stature now of the people concerned. Shortly after the premiere of Gretna Green, Guiraud was at Lalo’s house with Saint-Saëns, Massenet, Reyer and Bizet. Massenet, it seems, was all over Guiraud, praising his new ballet. Bizet intervened and told Massenet to shut up, and that he “disgusted” him—much as they all loved Guiraud, he said, Gretna Green was not as good as all that, you sycophantic creep. Or words to that effect (full story on p. 74 of Weilbaecher’s thesis). One contemporary opinion was that Gretna Green might have had a much longer life had it not been for the fire which destroyed the Opéra at the end of 1873. Whether or not that is the case, Guiraud was well-known and liked in Paris at the end of the 19th century, and I’m so pleased to be able to identify him as the composer of this solo. 

Tchaikovsky named Guiraud as one of a group of French composers who gave him hope in a world where German music, in his view, had gone into decline. 

In France, on the contrary, one can hear something which is new and at times very interesting, fresh, and striking. Bizet, of course, is head and shoulders above them all, but still Massenet, Delibes, Guiraud, Lalo, Godard, Saint-Saëns, etc are people with talent and, most importantly, people who are at any rate a long way from the dry routine manner of contemporary Germans.

[Letter 2215 from Tchaikovsky to Nadezhda von Meck, 31 January/12 February–9/21 February 1883, source: the  Delibes page at the Tchaikovsky Research website.]

Afterthoughts

Let’s run through the details briefly again: the teacher wants to do a solo, and says it’s from Coppélia (by Delibes) and is in Act I, and judging by the video, it’s in E major.  As it turns out, it’s not by Delibes, it’s not in Act I, and it’s not in E major, it’s from a ballet with a Scottish theme, not a Polish one. The moral of the story? If you’re going to teach a repertoire class, get in touch with your pianist well in advance to make sure they can source the music. That’s how this fascinating journey started, and it has been a pleasure to sort out.