George Dreyfus: Quintet, after the Notebook of J.-G. Noverre, for wind instruments (1968) - Andante

Abstract

"' ... la premiere et la plus essentielle beaute d'un air de ballet est la convenance, c' est-a-dire le juste rapport que l' air doit avoir avec la chose representee.' So wrote Jean-Georges Noverre, the Gluck of the ballet, the Shakespeare of the dance, a Prometheus among men. It was this eighteenth century ballet master extraordinaire, this choreographer and philosopher of the dance, who rescued ballet from its servile position as a vapid accessory to opera and established it as an independent dramatic entity, who liberated costume and added mime to the rigid five positions of classical ballet, who raised musician and painter to roles of equality in creation of the dance art of the future: the ballet d' action. The noiebooks provide an invaluable insight into the creative processes of this energetic and revolutionary thinker. The notebook No. 3, now in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, bears the date 'Novembre 1776'. It postdates Noverre's major treatise on the dance Lettres sur la danse et sur les ballets (1760) and was probably compiled during his brief and stormy appointment as 'compositeur et maftre des ballets' at the Academie royale de musique and as Directorof the F etes de Trianon. The notebook contains jottings of melodies - short characteristic pieces with descriptive titles, in which the pruning of excess ornamentation ensures the free flow of rhythm so essential to the dance - and choreographic steps (the pas echappe). Literary allusions in some titles indicate the seriousness of his dramatic intentions as well as his friendship with some of the notable hterary figu es of his time (Voltaire and Marivaux). One detail that has perplexed scholars is in the five figure combination that appears without explanation above melody No. Vi, La Fille D' Auvergne. Whether this is an acrostic for the corps de ballet or some more private symbol - the combination of his safe, perhaps, or the number of his Paris bank account - remains unverified. However, the fact that, in those days of intrigue, he noted such a private message in such a place shows how closely he guarded his creative thoughts in their formative stages. The first thing to be firmly established about the Dreyfus quintet is that it has nothing whatever to do with ballet. Neither is it a mere slavish imitation of the tyle and forms of eighteenth century music. A careful comparison • will show that Dreyfus has treated his source material with considerable freedom, taking here a distinctive rhythmic pattern, there a melodic feature, and making it the basis of an extended, non-balletic development. Even in those movements where Noverre's melodies are used in full they are modified at will to accommodate the composer's own style. In the second movement, for example, Noverre's rising sixth becomes the rising fifth that is so characteristic of Dreyfus' s 6/8 andante melodies. In essence, we have here a cross fertilisation of creative minds that bridges the gap between the eighteenth century and our own. The quintet was written at the invitation of the Sydney Wind Quintet in 1968." -- Kay Dreyfus Show more