great 20th century ballet music

[Madiel]

You're the only one here who has took any kind of offense to my initial post to you.

  Well, duh.

Oh, enjoy your discussion with another poster about the importance of dance to ballet, apparently having started as a direct result of our little exchange. 

[Monsieur Croche]

Dance is hardly an "accompaniment" in ballet; it is the focal point of the art, and when some of the lackluster ballet scores that known as musique dansant in the 19th-century French tradition (Adam, Minkus, Delibes, etc.) are considered, it might be said that music is the accompaniment rather than vice versa. Some of this music, like Adam's score for Giselle or Delibes's for Coppelia, does little more than mark time and set generalized moods; while displaying a degree of charm, it is almost unlistenable for itself. It was perhaps only with the three major ballets of Tchaikovsky, and more decisively with composers like Prokofiev, Ravel, and Stravinsky, that ballet music emerged with the prominence we all expect from the best concert scores.

^ To this especially, as well as a number of other points made in your post...
Bravo.

The fluffiest of orchestrations of Chopin's piano music as rendered by a pastiche collective of various composers [Stravinsky was one of them] that is the score of Les Sylphides, with the addition of its being a ballet blanc, may altogether qualify this ballet as the ultimate prize-winner poster boy [or girl] for being completely dependent upon all its elements to be thought anything viable at all. Michel Fokine's choreography, I'm sure, helps this all along

Les Sylphides may well be the most rapidly fleeting bit of ballet ephemera out there... yet, the piece endures, charms if viewed and heard in real time, and remains steadfastly in the canon of the repertoire.

[Drasko]

To revise my remarks from another thread, even Balanchine famously said that if you weren't interested in the dancing, you could close your eyes and experience a good concert. Nonetheless, unless one has actually experienced the dancing, I don't think one is in the position of saying "I just want to hear the music" or that the choreography is some kind of intrusive accompaniment that one can simply discount. Many of the great ballets (especially the Stravinsky-Balanchine partnerships) were created collaboratively, and the relation between the dance and music is integral and mutually reinforcing. Now I don't want Mirror Image or anyone like-minded to get all huffy on this point; I am simply suggesting that you actually experience some staged ballets before making your mind up.

It is absolutely true that many ballets exist coherently on their own as music, and I have no issue with hearing many great ballet scores as concert works. Stravinsky said he preferred Le Sacre as a concert piece, and on the few occasions I have seen it danced the experience has not been satisfactory. On the other hand, seeing Petrouchka made me realize how closely the music mirrored the choreography, with numerous small gestures in the music having significance that is clear only when the work is staged. And if you have never seen the famous "starburst" tableau at the end of Stravinsky's Apollo, then I would say you have not experienced Apollo. I've been fortunate enough to see this ballet danced live by the great David Hallberg, formerly of American Ballet Theatre and now with the Bolshoi, who is often spoken of as the finest American classical male dancer today, and also by the rising star Chase Finlay from the New York City Ballet.

Agon in particular takes on wholly new dimensions when you see it danced, in that Balanchine's choreography sets up a whole layer of visual counterpoint to the music. Just to point out some obvious examples, watch the very beginning and ending, how the line of eight male dancers begins the work with their backs to the audience and closes it by reversing the same pattern. Or the short internal prelude that is repeated exactly three times in the music, but each time uses a different configuration of dancers. The counterpoint between music and dance is at its most complex in the central pas de deux, which was famously (and for its time -1957 - radically) first danced by Diana Adams and Arthur Mitchell, a white ballerina and black danseur. It is as if the 12 dancers in Agon are a set of visual instruments adding new layers of orchestration to the musical work. I myself have seen Agon danced three times live by the New York City Ballet, and though I have heard the recordings many more times, the experience of seeing this work adds layers of dimension I still find inexhaustible.

Similarly, Bernstein's score for Fancy Free is great fun on its own, but it is even more fun in my opinion when seen with the choreography (the scenario of three sailors on shore leave in New York, meeting a couple of girls at a bar) that Jerome Robbins devised for it in collaboration with Bernstein. The work was a major hit when first performed in 1944, and still excites audiences today.

That said, the whole issue is complicated by the facts that (a) some ballets were choreographed after the fact to existing pieces, (b) some ballets like Nutcracker exist in multiple choreographies, (c) some ballets like Miraculous Mandarin and Jeux are heard more often in concert or recordings than seen on stage. And so I don't discount the idea of ballet-as-music; I simply suggest that until you've seen a fair number of danced ballets, you're not in a position to discount the dancing.

Dance is hardly an "accompaniment" in ballet; it is the focal point of the art, and when some of the lackluster ballet scores that known as musique dansant in the 19th-century French tradition (Adam, Minkus, Delibes, etc.) are considered, it might be said that music is the accompaniment rather than vice versa. Some of this music, like Adam's score for Giselle or Delibes's for Coppelia, does little more than mark time and set generalized moods; while displaying a degree of charm, it is almost unlistenable for itself. It was perhaps only with the three major ballets of Tchaikovsky, and more decisively with composers like Prokofiev, Ravel, and Stravinsky, that ballet music emerged with the prominence we all expect from the best concert scores.

Spot on, all this! If I could articulate them half this good my thoughts on ballet would be pretty much along the same lines.

I have similar dissatisfaction with most choreographies of Rite, famous ones like Bausch or Bejart included. The only one that works for me is Angelin Preljocaj's, for his own ensemble. It can be seen complete on youtube (nsfw).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vACqF__MnpE

[Peter Power Pop]

Oh, and how could I have forgotten: Ludomir Różycki Pan Twardowski! Insanely popular in Poland (and some success abroad as well, I believe) before WWII. Good, old-fashioned, 19th-century-like (slightly Tchaikovskyan even) ballet music. Though the use of the orchestra is quite modern.

Here's a taste:

https://youtu.be/26eve5dqJ-8

https://www.youtube.com/v/26eve5dqJ-8

[Gaspard de la nuit]

Did anyone mention Respighi's Belkis or Schmitt's Salomé? While they're probably not the greatest ballets of the 20th century, they're two very popular works that should at least be mentioned.