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Balletromantic
Tchaikovsky for Ballet
Three scores that created the template for every classical ballet that followed
3 selections · Stage Door Society Editorial
The Accidental Genius
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky did not consider his ballet commissions his most serious work. He composed Swan Lake (1875–76), The Sleeping Beauty (1888–89), and The Nutcracker (1891–92) as professional obligations — well-paid work for the Imperial Theatres.
In retrospect, they are the most consequential ballet scores ever written.
What Tchaikovsky Changed
Before Tchaikovsky, ballet music was largely functional: pleasant, danceable, forgettable. Tchaikovsky treated his ballet commissions as compositional opportunities equal to his symphonies, and the result was music that could not be separated from its theatrical context — music that was the drama rather than accompanying it.
Swan Lake
The most analyzed of the three: the white acts (Acts II and IV) present a choreographic problem that has fascinated every major ballet company since Petipa. The music's sustained lyricism — the famous oboe theme — is simultaneously a description of Odette and a portrait of romantic longing itself.
The Sleeping Beauty
Tchaikovsky's own favorite of the three. Musically the most sophisticated: the 'Rose Adagio' is a structural marvel, and the score's use of leitmotif anticipates what Wagner was doing in opera at the same time.
