Espacios naturales protegidos (incluida Red Natura)

Repertoire How to develop it

There are two choices for playing suitable music for dance: improvising and using written music.

Improvisation

Some of the finest dance accompanists don’t use or even read music. Because their eyes are not glued to the printed page in front of them, they are free to observe the teacher as well as the class. They more easily gauge the teacher’s and dancers’ reactions to their music. Accompanists who consistently impro-vise for dance, however, run the risk of repeating themselves stylistically.

Much of their music may tend to sound the same after a while, not only in style but also in key signature. And improvisers tend to “noodle” inventively with their right hands, leaving the left hands to fall where they may, thereby short-changing rich rhythmic propulsion. It is therefore important for the accompanist to remain open and free with regard to melodic inventiveness, harmony, texture, tonality, and stylistic approach.

Dance teachers very often choreograph their classroom combinations to specific musical lines or accents, which must be reflected consistently—in the same place each time in a given combination—in your improvised music.

When you must improvise

If you are an accompanist who relies completely on printed music, you may still be required to improvise occasionally. While the music selections in this book have been carefully chosen to give as complete a range of rhythms, tem-pos, and styles as possible, there is the possibility that a teacher will ask for something not included here.

This happened to me many times with allegro 9/8s before I finally got up the courage to improvise something that fit. After several embarrassing in-stances of having to sit silently during a combination while the teacher clapped, my pride got the better of me and I managed to play something that only I knew was pretty rotten. The first time was the hardest. After that, I knew I could cope with nearly anything thrown at me as long as my sense of inadequacy didn’t immobilize me.

Some inventive teachers have asked for 10-count phrases, and one even asked for a 9-count phrase with silence during “5” and “6.” As diabolical as this may sound, it is possible to do. Such phrasing forces students to count the music and the silence, and it keeps us accompanists on our toes, so to speak.

Using written music

Your repertoire will eventually become an extension of your personality. In the beginning, it may seem small, not particularly challenging, and possibly obscure with regard to why one piece works and another doesn’t. You may feel that your particular personality is best reflected in a specific style of mu-sic, such as baroque or contemporary or impressionistic. The joy of move-ment is communicated onstage through—and enhanced by—every conceiv-able style of music, from that of the seventeenth-century Jean-Baptiste Lully to the contemporary Philip Glass. You can only benefit (musically as well as spiritually) by branching out into other styles of music, keeping in mind, of course, the needs and requests of the dance teacher.

You will be influenced in your choice of repertoire by the dance teachers for whom you play: One may detest baroque music and be ecstatic over any-thing from Swan Lake, while another may insist on noany-thing but Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. One of a dance accompanist’s prime assets is his adaptability to each teacher’s classroom demands, and this certainly includes the realm of repertoire.

Two other factors influencing your choice of repertoire are:

·

Dancing demands incredible physical endurance, so a classical solo varia-tion rarely exceeds sixty-four counts. Therefore, a complete dance state-ment must often be accomplished in a relatively short time, compared with the length of, for instance, a symphonic movement. This factor is evidenced in a dance class as well as onstage; rarely will a dancer at any level be asked to execute a classroom combination in the center that is longer than sixty-four counts. However, because groups of dancers often repeat combinations consecutively in the center, you may often be asked to play a combination as many as eight times without stopping, so you will need some pieces that have at least 128 counts.

·

Contrasts and changes of mood are factors to keep in mind while search-ing for new repertoire. For instance, many waltzes are quite long and have many contrasting sections. Those sections sharing the same dynamics or

quality or tempo can be used consecutively as one waltz. Often, another waltz of a different mood can be made up of the remaining sections.

If you don’t improvise, the search for new repertoire never stops. What actually comes from your fingertips can be derived from a host of sources.

Syllabus music

If you are playing for syllabus classes (for example, Royal Academy of Danc-ing [RAD] or Cecchetti or Bournonville), your repertoire problems are al-ready solved, since the music is included with the teaching syllabi. However, beginning accompanists must remember that playing only syllabus music prevents the development of one of the most important—and most cre-ative—facets of dance accompaniment: choosing suitable music for each combination.

Most teachers are very thankful for free music for their syllabus classes (except, of course, when examination time approaches). But the teacher needs to let the accompanist know that. My first ballet-accompanying job was for a Cecchetti teacher who put the syllabus music in front of me wordlessly, and I played the same music for months. It was my first experience in a clas-sical dance studio, and I had no idea that I could or should play something different. To this day it amazes me that I didn’t quit. And it also amazes me that the teacher stood it for as long as she did.

As soon as possible, begin to add pieces to your repertoire on your own, especially as alternates to syllabus music (if the teacher is agreeable, of course). Bring in pieces you have studied with your music teacher, making sure either to warn the dance teacher in advance if the pieces are not in con-ventional 8-, 16-, or 32-count phrases; or to “square them off” (see page 136) yourself in a musically satisfying manner. You or the dance teacher can invest in some of the material mentioned in the next section (it may be tax deduct-ible as a work-related expense). You should purposefully expand your reper-toire to reflect the wide range of music that is danced to onstage.

Collections of music

If I had to choose the single most important staple of my repertoire, it would be the Scribner (Radio) Music Library (“the Red Books”). This series con-tains nine volumes, the most useful of which are Light Opera and Ballet Ex-cerpts, Standard and Modern Dance Music (which is 95 percent waltzes), Grand Opera Excerpts, Modern Compositions, and Light Compositions. (Use the last one judiciously; it contains many examples of piddly music for dance.

These pieces are technically easy and adaptable for class, but are hackneyed and insubstantial. On the other hand, it is probably better to play a variety of hackneyed but suitable pieces while you are expanding your repertoire, than to limit yourself to one or two great ones.)

The Red Books are out of print, and every effort I have made to contact Scribner’s about either remainders or reissuing has met with silence. I have found partial sets at junk shops and Salvation Army stores (see the next sec-tion), so you could be lucky, too.

Another possibility is the Agda Skjerne books, published in Denmark by Wilhelm Hansen. Be sure to familiarize yourself with each piece in these books; some of them have odd numbers of phrases. Most of these pieces are labeled with the name of a common step or movement. When you become more experienced, you will realize that a piece labeled with one step (dégagés, for instance) might also work for another step (in this instance, frappés).

You may want to invest in one—or a few—volumes like those I fondly refer to as Ninety Thousand Pieces the Whole World Knows. Many of them are similar in quality to those in the Light Compositions Red Book, but you may be lucky, as I have been, and find an obscure volume that has lots of relatively unknown goodies in it.

Scott Joplin is probably America’s most famous ragtime composer, and you will find him well represented in the Golden Encyclopedia of Ragtime (New York: Charles Hansen, 1974). Included therein are also a number of absolutely sensational rags by more obscure composers. This volume is also, unfortunately, out of print. You might have luck contacting the nearest li-brary; I originally found it accidentally at the Seattle Public Library. I have heard that the best way to track down out-of-print books is to contact a used book or music store and ask them to initiate a search. The web site Sheet-Music.com is also a great resource for finding music.

There are a number of John Philip Sousa volumes on the market; my fa-vorite is Sousa’s Great Marches in Piano Transcription (Dover, 1975), probably because it contains facsimiles of the originals. These contain a large selection of 4/4 marches, 6/8 marches, codas, and pieces I call “one of those.” They are well worth the investment, even though you will have to add octaves in the left hand of almost every piece.

Czerny études

Czerny études provide a wealth of workable music for class. Whenever I men-tion my fondness for Czerny during seminars for accompanists, a groan in-variably arises from the participants. I have learned to be prepared to go straight to the piano and play a few of my special favorites to prove that a goodly amount of his voluminous output is not boring.

An interesting comparison can be made between Czerny études and barre combinations. Many pianists consider all such exercises a bore, executing them as a warming-up process for “real music.” But so many of Czerny’s études are quite enjoyable musically and very beneficial technically—exactly what barre combinations should be. It just depends on one’s approach. Some

dancers just slough through the barre, waiting to “really dance” in the center, while others truly enjoy the barre, realizing it is more than just a warm-up. I once asked Violette Verdy (surely one of the world’s most musical and beauti-ful dancers) toward the end of her active dancing career whether she ever got bored with daily class. “Oh, no!” she exclaimed; “I love class! Even the barre is fun!” I’m willing to bet that, if she didn’t love music so much, she wouldn’t love the barre so much.

While almost every volume Mr. Czerny ever published contains suitable classroom music, three in particular have an unusually large percentage: One Hundred and Ten Easy and Progressive Exercises (op. 453), Six Octave Studies in Progressive Difficulty (op. 553), and Perfection in Style (op. 755). Many of the pieces in the first of these three volumes must be adapted for suitability to dance. (The subject of adaptation begins in the next section.) They are me-lodically engaging but sparse in texture, which is true for almost all of Czerny’s easier études.

Operas and operettas

The operatic literature has also been a major source of my repertoire, and it became especially so after Mme. Volkova said, “The body sings when it dances. Play me an opera.” The special quality of a singing phrase can be a great inspiration to a dancer. (Interesting that inspire means both to literally breathe and figuratively move.) And trying to emulate the human voice on the piano can do nothing but increase the quality of your tone production.

The Grand Opera Excerpts and Light Opera and Ballet Excerpts Red Books contain a stylistically broad range of selections, but complete opera and oper-etta transcriptions offer even more music. It takes a fair amount of time to go through an entire opera or operetta in piano reduction, but it will be worth your while: You will have many new usable classroom pieces, and you will have improved your sightreading. Many public libraries have opera tran-scription sections.

Salon music

What is sometimes disparagingly called salon music is often a very good source of class music. Some of it is technically challenging, and most of it is very adaptable for class. Some well-known salon composers are Theodor Leschetizky, Auguste Durand, Adolph von Henselt, Théodore Lack, and Ben-jamin Godard. Moritz Moszkowski seems to be a borderline salon composer, and has written some wonderfully adaptable music. And I am told by one esteemed musical pedagogue that Frédéric Chopin was actually a salon com-poser. (He and his music are discussed in more detail in the section on rubato.)

The traditional ballet repertoire

The area of traditional ballet repertoire in the classroom is a very personal one. Most dance teachers have had some stage experience, and they have de-veloped strong feelings about certain music. Some dance teachers hold par-ticular ballets in almost reverential esteem, and feel that music from these ballets belongs only onstage and not in the classroom. Three such ballets are Les Sylphides by Chopin (orchestrated by Stravinsky, Liadov, Tcherepnine, and Glazunov), Giselle by Adolphe Charles Adam, and The Green Table by Fritz Cohen. Other teachers may have danced Nutcracker so often that they turn green at the sound of any music from it. If you are going to be playing for any teacher for a considerable length of time, it would be wise to ask how she feels about the traditional repertoire. Develop your own repertoire accord-ingly.

Generally speaking, most dance teachers respond very positively to the traditional repertoire; it was, after all, written specifically for dance. However, some of it has become hackneyed over the years; it has been massacred by unaware accompanists, and so overplayed that it is sometimes laughable.

The following ballets are available in piano transcriptions, have a large number of usable excerpts, and would be a very fine foundation from which to start building the ballet-excerpt section of your repertoire.

Nutcracker

Sleeping Beauty by P. I. Tchaikovsky Swan Lake

Raymonda by A. Glazunov

Coppélia by L. Delibes

Giselle by A. Adam

La Source La Bayadère

Don Quixote by L. Minkus, L. Delibes, A. Adam, R. Drigo, Le Corsaire or E. Deldevez⁹

Paquita

Some selections from certain transcriptions of Tchaikovsky (in the version of Peter March/Tchaikovsky Foundation, New York) and Glazunov are techni-cally quite difficult, but are definitely worth the trouble to learn. Their diffi-culty stems from an accurate rendering of the orchestral scope; the fullness of a large symphony orchestra is not always re-created in piano transcriptions.

(It took me two years of intermittent work to get Peter March’s version of the waltz Finale of Nutcracker into my fingers.)

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Ballet Musik, volumes 1 and 2, decades-old compendia published by Wil-helm Hansen in Denmark, contain many usable excerpts from not only the well-known traditional ballets but also some obscure ones. Some of the ex-cerpts are watered-down versions of the originals, though, and have no or-chestral substance whatsoever.

Some beautiful ballet scores (such as Glazunov’s The Seasons), as well as more recent music composed specifically for dance (such as Stravinsky’s Pe-trouchka), have not been included in the above list because there is a smaller percentage of usable excerpts from each composition. (Contemporary works like Petrouchka are rarely composed according to the nineteenth-century practice of stringing many short variations [perfect for classroom use] to-gether with a loosely binding theme.)

Show tunes

Broadway show tunes and popular old standards are played in class according to personal taste. Some dance accompanists play nothing but these tunes, possibly because they don’t know where else to look for suitable repertoire.

And many dance teachers accept these tunes, possibly because live music in any style is usually preferable to tape. But, just as all-baroque or all-Czerny classes are stylistically limited and ear-deadening, a steady diet of show tunes can be stultifying, uneducational, uninspiring, and insubstantial. A judicious sprinkling of them, however, can be a welcome change and pick-me-up.

Dance accompaniment, like everything else, is subject to fads. The pre-ponderance of show tunes for ballet class in New York City is hopefully just that: a fad. Most teachers feel that classical ballet should be taught with classi-cal music. And, again, remember that what the students hear in class forms their musical experience and taste to a great degree.

Where to find it

You will become more and more aware of the needs of the teacher(s) you play for, and will want to find music to fit those needs. Music stores, of course, are the logical places to look, especially ones with secondhand music sections.

(During the years I lived in New York City, part of every day was devoted to rummaging through the used music racks at Patelson’s on 56th Street, and much of what I found over forty years ago is still in my active repertoire.) Salvation Army and Goodwill stores, garage and estate sales, and junk shops are great places to find old, used, inexpensive, suitable pieces. Etude, the magazine published for music teachers beginning around the turn of the cen-tury, is full of obscure but very usable selections.

The radio is a good source of music, too. Keep a note pad handy in your car for jotting down the name—or the melody—of something you hear while driving. (I heard a Weber bassoon concerto—a piece a pianist would certainly

not be likely to happen upon at Patelson’s—one day on the radio, and it had such a catchy 24-bar theme that it has become a permanent favorite of teach-ers, students, and myself.)

How you go about deciding what will work for class when you are in a music store without a piano is another technique that improves with experi-ence. At first, you may buy a lot of music that looks adaptable but turns out to be unworkable, for one reason or another, when you try it out on the piano. It would be wise not to throw any music away. Although I have often been chided for being a pack rat, this questionable trait has been beneficial regard-ing music. I used to look at pieces written in 9/8 and categorically dismiss them as useless; since my understanding of music for dance has increased, I treasure them, and have gone back through all my rejects (about three cartonsful) and found several that are wonderfully appropriate.

What I look for first in music are a singable melody and phrasing that either is in, or can be adapted to, eights, sixteens, and thirty-twos. (Rhythmic structures eventually become very easy to alter, so don’t look at that first.) If you can’t already produce music in your head from a printed page, work to-ward developing this sense. It is handy in a music store, and it is essential in

What I look for first in music are a singable melody and phrasing that either is in, or can be adapted to, eights, sixteens, and thirty-twos. (Rhythmic structures eventually become very easy to alter, so don’t look at that first.) If you can’t already produce music in your head from a printed page, work to-ward developing this sense. It is handy in a music store, and it is essential in

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