This volume reproduces the piano score of the ballet La Source, a joint composition by Ludwig Minkus and Léo Delibes. After the success of Néméa (1864), the Paris Opéra ordered a new grand ballet from the famous choreographer Arthur Saint-Léon to a libretto based on a Persian legend by Charles Nuitter. Saint-Léon involved his musical collaborator in St Petersburg, Ludwig Minkus, in the project, securing for him a hand in the composition of the first and fourth scenes of the of this new work, La Source, a fantastic ballet in three acts. The composition of the other two scenes (the second and third) were entrusted to the young, unknown Léo Delibes, thirty at the time, who had drawn favourable attention to himself in the preparation of the ballet music for the première of Meyerbeer’s posthumous L’Africaine in 1865. The first performance of La Source was on 12 November 1866 at the Théatre Impérial de l’Opéra, with the principal dancers Guglielmina Salvioni (Naila), Eugénie Fiocre (Nouredda) and Louis Mérante (Djemil). The ballet as a whole was very successful, with 73 performances until 1876. Saint-Léon immediately began planning another work with Nuitter and Delibes—Coppélia—one which would crown the young French’s composer’s success with triumph. This was premiered on 25 May 1870, the last of Saint-Léon’s work, and the last great success of the French Romantic ballet at the Salle Le Peletier before the crisis of the Franco-Prussian War, and the end of the Second Empire. As regards the music of La Source, Delibes’s contribution to the score, his first essay at ballet music, was noted for its vigour and many delightful melodies. In Jouvin’s opinion, his music was “vivacious and especially lively,” and contrasted effectively with the plaintive melodies of Minkus. “The style of the two composers,” observed the critic of La France Musicale (18 November 1866), “is essentially different and easily recognizable at a first hearing. M. Minkus's music has a vague, indolent, and melancholic character, full of grace and languor. That of M. Delibes, fresher and more rhythmic, is much more complicated in orchestration, and sometimes a little more ordinary. I should add that this difference in style is perfectly justified by the: contrasting character of the two parts of the ballet.”

The composer Ludwig Minkus represents one of music’s biggest mysteries. Who was he? Hardly anything is known about him, and yet he occupied an influential position in the theatres of the Imperial ballet in late nineteenth-century Russia. He has been recognised as a predecessor of Tchaikovsky, but as a musician is commonly held to have been so feeble as to be beneath contempt. Yet despite the scorn heaped on him, and his consequent obscurity, Minkus is far from being forgotten. Since the early 1960s his name has slowly begun to re-surface. Two works, Don Quixote (1869) and La Bayadère (1877), have been presented in their entirety for the first time to new audiences all over the world. The musical and dramatic power of both ballets has taken people by surprise. The stories have a very real human appeal, the choreography attracts the admiration of balletomanes, and the music, with its rhythm, verve, and beauty of melody, holds attention and engages the heart wherever it is heard. This introduction seeks to discover something more behind the blank façade of Minkus’s life and work. What do we actually know about him as a man and as an artist? Are we able to apprehend his oeuvre as a whole, and how much can we establish from the available material? What is the nature of the music he created for those few works that have survived the years, and that have come to the fore again recently to delight those who have ears to hear? This study includes iconography from the life and times of the composer, many musical examples from his works, and a comprehensive bibliography and discography.

A ballet in three acts and four scenes by Léo Delibes.

Musicians who work professionally with ballet and dance companies sometimes wonder if they haven’t entered a foreign country—a place where the language and customs seem so utterly familiar and so bafflingly strange at the same. To someone without a dance background, phrases and terms--boy’s variation, pas d’action, apothéose—simply don’t fit their standard musical vocabulary. Even a familiar term like adagio means something quite different in the world of dance. Like any working professional, those conductors, composers, rehearsal pianists, instrumentalists and even music librarians working with professional ballet and dance companies must learn what dance professionals talk about when they talk about music. In Ballet Music: A Handbook Matthew Naughtin provides a practical guide for the professional musician who works with ballet companies, whether as a full-time staff member or as an independent contractor. In this comprehensive work, he addresses the daily routine of the modern ballet company, outlines the respective roles of the conductor, company pianist and music librarian and their necessary collaboration with choreographers and ballet masters, and examines the complete process of putting a dance performance on stage, from selection or existing music to commissioning original scores to staging the final production. Because ballet companies routinely revise the great ballets to fit the needs of their staff and stage, audience and orchestra, ballet repertoire is a tangled web for the uninitiated. At the core of Ballet Music: A Handbook lies an extensive listing of classic ballets in the standard repertoire, with information on their history, versions, revisions, instrumentation, score publishers and other sources for tracking down both the original music and subsequent musical additions and adaptations. Ballet Music: A Handbook is an invaluable resource for conductors, pianists and music librarians as well as any student, scholar or fan of the ballet interested in the complex machinery that works backstage before the curtain goes up.

Daniels’ Orchestral Music is the gold standard for all orchestral professionals—from conductors, librarians, programmers, students, administrators, and publishers, to even instructors—seeking to research and plan an orchestral program, whether for a single concert or a full season. This sixth edition, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the original edition, has the largest increase in entries for a new edition of Orchestral Music: 65% more works (roughly 14,050 total) and 85% more composers (2,202 total) compared to the fifth edition. Composition details are gleaned from personal inspection of scores by orchestral conductors, making it a reliable one-stop resource for repertoire. Users will find all the familiar and useful features of the fifth edition as well as significant updates and corrections. Works are organized alphabetically by composer and title, containing information on duration, instrumentation, date of composition, publication, movements, and special accommodations if any. Individual appendices make it easy to browse works with chorus, solo voices, or solo instruments. Other appendices list orchestral works by instrumentation and duration, as well as works intended for youth concerts. Also included are significant anniversaries of composers, composer groups for thematic programming, a title index, an introduction to Nieweg charts, essential bibliography, internet sources, institutions and organizations, and a directory of publishers necessary for the orchestra professional. This trusted work used around the globe is a must-have for orchestral professionals, whether conductors or orchestra librarians, administrators involved in artistic planning, music students considering orchestral conducting, authors of program notes, publishers and music dealers, and instructors of conducting.

This book offers something entirely new: detailed scene-by-scene descriptions of the action and dancing of Giselle, Paquita, Le Corsaire, La Bayadère, and Raymonda, bringing the reader far closer to what the audience saw when the curtain went up on these five classic story ballets than has heretofore been possible. Drawing on archival documents, the authors show that these ballets were like today's pop entertainment: funnier, more violent, more spectacular, and with female characters far stronger than one might expect. This rigorously researched book fills huge gaps in dance history and is bound to be of interest to practitioners, scholars, and devotees of ballet and the arts.

"At its debut in 1866, La Source already had it all: dagger-wielding Muslims dominating veiled women, a magic flower in a green ecology, and a full blown environmental crisis at the end. When the Paris Opera ballet restages this Orientalist and colonial drama in 2011, and again in 2014, the contemporary context of homegrown jihad, climate politics and a law banning the dissimulation of the face in public spaces, keeps it relevant. At four historic performances, over 150 years, this book explores the resonance of La Source's double narrative in its contemporary contexts: the biopolitics of bodily hybridity and regeneration and the cosmopolitics of the exploitation of human and natural resources"--