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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 July 2014
Choreographers have always found difficulty in fitting stories to existing musical scores and there have been few occasions when such music has fitted the dramatic structure entirely satisfactorily at every instance. There are two solutions to the problem: either to commission new music or to manipulate an existing score so that it suits the choreographer's purpose, by editing, changing the order of events or the orchestration, even by finding a composer to write a few bars here and there ‘in the style of’ the main body of the music. Such manipulation is by no means the property of story dances; Balanchine altered the order of events in Serenade for instance.
Frederick Ashton has more often than not chosen the ‘welding’ approach, as he calls it, and this is the method he and John Lanchbery used in A Month in the Country. The two men spent a week in September, 1975, working out action to music before any of the dance was choreographed. Before A Month in the Country, Ashton had already collaborated with John Lanchbery in a similar fashion, on La Fille mal gardée (1960), The Two Pigeons (1961) and The Dream (1964), and, much earlier in his career, he had worked with Constant Lambert who introduced the approach to him and was on hand to arrange and orchestrate pieces, even to suggest which music Ashton should use.
1. Vaughan, David, Frederick Ashton and His Ballets (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1977), 394Google Scholar; for information on preparation of the ballet, this book was the chief source, 393-406.
2. Description from the program.
3. Ibid.
4. All three pieces are included in Fryderyk Chopin Complete Works, ed. Paderewski, Ignacy J. (Warsaw: The Fryderyk Chopin Institute, 1949)Google Scholar; Vol. XXI. All references are made to this edition.
5. Claudio Arrau with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Eliahu Inbal, Philips: SAL 6500 422, 1972. A recording of the ballet is available in Britain on HMV Greensleeve, featuring the orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden conducted by John Lanchbery with Philip Gammon playing the piano solo; ESD 7037, EMI (Australia) Ltd., 1977.
6. Abraham, Gerald, Chopin's Musical Style (London: Oxford University Press, 1939), 16Google Scholar.
7. From an interview with Ashton included with the televised performance, BBC, May, 1978.
8. Vaughan, 444.
9. Perhaps significance is attached to it because it is one of the few selections of music in the minor key in the entire ballet.
10. Croce, Arlene, “Dancing: The Royal Line,” New Yorker, (May 17, 1976), 167Google Scholar.