Which was the first ballet to be rehearsed to piano?
It's hard to find out when people first rehearsed ballet with piano rather than violin. An article from 1963 might have the answer.
More on “truly triple meter” – are Chopin’s waltzes really mazurkas?
I’m not saying that Chopin couldn’t write a waltz, or that his embodied sense of waltzing was too fragile to be able to incorporate it in music. But I wonder…
Dancing masters, music and memory
I’m thoroughly enjoying Eric McKee’s book Decorum of the minuet, delirium of the waltz: a study of dance-music relations in 3/4 time. There are books that you grow up with…
Playing for ballet class tip #21: Make friends with a notator
If there’s one kind of person in the ballet universe who can really understand where you’re coming from as a musician, and where you need to go, it’s a notator,…
More on borrowings in the Nutcracker
I think most people know that there are quite a few musical borrowings in the Nutcracker, and that Tchaikovsky got the theme for the Arabian from somewhere – a Georgian…
The perils of video
Two recent conversations have caused me to remember an interview between Christopher Hampson & his long-term notator Caroline Palmer about his ballet Canciones that I transcribed and posted on the…