16 Delicious Pastiche Ballets, or, The Genius of Repurposed Music

Here's a fascinating list to really set your toes tapping--16 ballets based on "repurposed" music!
Stravinsky/Gallo/Pergolesi: Pulcinella
Stravinsky/Tchaikovsky: The Fairy’s Kiss
Mackerras/Sullivan: Pineapple Poll
Mackerras/Verdi: The Lady and the Fool
Beecham/Handel: Love in Bath
Beecham/Handel: The Gods Go a’Begging
Strauss/Couperin: Verklungene Feste
Walton/Bach: The Wise and Foolish Virgins
Glazunov/Douglas/Chopin: Les Sylphides
Dorati/Strauss II: Graduation Ball
Désormière/Strauss II: Le Beau Danube
Tommasini/Scarlatti: The Good-Humored Ladies
Respighi/Rossini: La Boutique Fantasque
Respighi/Grechaninov et al: La Pentola Magica
Rosenthal/Offenbach: Gaité Parisienne
Shchedrin/Bizet: Carmen Ballet

[@martinhaub2602]

The Hershy Kay arrangement of Gottschalk's music into "Cakewalk" is splendid fun and sadly seems to have disappeared from view. Ormandy and Fiedler recorded it thankfully. Would make great fodder for community/amateur orchestras.

[@edwinbaumgartner5045]

This is the right delicious music for hot summer days. I like them all. They're great. Let me just add Benjamin Britten's Rossini-Stuff, the "Soirées musicales" and the "Matinées musicales". They have a rather complicated story: At first, Britten wrote his the Rossini-adaptions as music for the film "The Tocher". Then, he formed them to the "Rossini Suite". In both cases he used a few instruments and boy's choir (this version was recorded by Steuart Bedford on EMI - a funny entertainment). Afterwards, he was so pleased in arranging Rossini that he scored the pieces for orchestra, adding some movements and dividing the result into ""Soirées Musicales" and "Matinées Musicales", both of which have been intended as ballet music (and have been recorded often, f.e. by Richard Bonynge). One of the choreographers was Georges Balanchine. Britten's scoring adds some bright colours to the Rossini. They are enjoyable and funny pieces of Britten's lighter vein. The second work I want to add is "Caravaggio", a full length ballet, in which the italian composer Bruno Moretti uses music by Claudio Monteverdi, sometimes just arranging it for great orchestra, sometimes transforming it heavily. The result is a work of dark colours, sometimes it sounds as if a late romantic composer re-invents the music of Monteverdi, blending it with more recent compositional techniques. I'm not sure, if it works as pure music, in a concert or on CD, but performed as ballet as intended, it is very ejoyable.

[@bloodgrss]

My life in musical joy and beauty would have been so much less without Beecham's wonderful Handel ballets! Indeed, it is long overdue for a complete recording in modern sound, if a great conductor not obsessed with period performance mentality could be persuaded to do so. Here's hopin'...

[@mike-williams]

There's also the genre of pastiche suites, not put together for dance, such as Henze's Telemannia, Casella's Scarlattiana, and of course Tchaikovsky's Mozartiana falls into this as it was not originally conceived for ballet.

[@markzacek237]

And more fun! The Manon ballet arr. by Lucas, recorded by Bonynge. Built from Massenet’s orchestral suites, operas, oratorios, but most delightfully, his sublime Valse lente. La Fille de Mam’zelle Angot ballet arranged from Lecocq, though not from the delightful ballet within the operetta itself. Bonynge recording. Also, Roland Petit’s Pique Dame from Tchaikovsky, of course. Lacombe recording.

[@canoodlian1226]

So, help me out here: if every day Dave talks about more music than I can listen to during the day, will I ever get to hear all the music he talks about?

[@michaelshulman5068]

It's not a ballet, but Leroy Anderson did a funny piece based on Wagner's music. It almost sounds like something Schickele would have written.

[@lednew2010]

You might be referring to his "The Classical Jukebox."

[@FREDGARRISON]

Martin Haub mentioned Hershey Kay's arrangement of Gottschalk's music into the ballet "CAKEWALK". Besides the Fiedler and Ormandy recordings, there's a complete recording of the ballet by The Louisville Orchestra, Akira Endo conducting on the ALBANY label. If it's still available, you should check it out. Believe KZbin has it on their site. Good video as always, Dave....

[@marlute]

There is also Monotones a ballet based on the piano music of Satie arranged by Debussy and others. It was on LP but I don’t think it ever made it to CD.

[@dennischiapello3879]

I hoped you'd mention The Night Shadow, by Vittorio Rieti, using themes from Bellini's operas. Balanchine set a semi-ironic story ballet to it (he may have commissioned the score), later changing the title to La Sonnambula, which is still widely produced among American ballet companies. It's very much in the Stravinsky-Pulcinella mold. Unfortunately, I've only ever found one recording, on Seraphim, with Terence Kern conducting the London Festival Ballet Orchestra. I'm afraid the score exists only for Balanchine nuts, which is a shame. I think it's a masterpiece.

[@whistlerfred6579]

A nice combinations of old favorites and newer music that I will have to hunt down. I had heard that Leroy Anderson and Peter Bodge also did an arrangement of Les Sylphides for the Boston Pops. I've found excerpts of this arrangement (conducted by Stokowski, no less!) but have been unable to track down a complete recording. Anybody have a lead on this?

[@johnmontanari6857]

Too much fun! The finale of Pulcinella was the theme music to the first professional classical show I ever did on radio, though I can't take credit for the choice. I can't hear it anymore without appending the network tag. Another piece I enjoyed airing was Francaix's frothy ballet "Scuola di ballo," based on Boccherini. With that combo of composers, what could go wrong?

[@vrixphillips]

one of my favorite pastiche ballets is Lambarena: Bach to Africa, an Homage to Albert Schweitzer. Incredible mixture of the music of Bach and African rhythms. Watching it was really something special. Although... I guess that's not really "pastiche" if it's unchanged Bach with an added/expanded rhythm section... I mean, the pastiche is all about changing it into someone else's personal language, no? Or at least changing the orchestrations a little. This was largely a mixtape + dancers.