Dance Education
Giselle: The Score
At its premiere, the quality of the music for Giselle was the most convincing argument to date in favor of composing music for ballets rather than arranging pre-existing melodies. Up until then the most popular ballets used a pastiche of popular songs rearranged and orchestrated into danceable stew.
Apart from the fact that the score was the first to use all new composition, another prominent feature of the music for Giselle is the use of "leitmotiv" (a theme that recurs in the music to refer to a specific character or emotion) as a narrative device. Adam was not the first to use leitmotiv in a ballet; François Halévy was perhaps the earliest in his 1830 score for Manon Lescaut. However, Adam not only repeats themes as they are, or changes their keys to affect the mood, but also changes their tempi and rhythms to highlight the dramatic intent of the story.
Only a piano score was published in 1841. All orchestrations were made from this until Henri Busser published an orchestral score in 1924. A number of changes in the music had become "standard" by this time.
Music for the "Peasant pas de deux" was composed by Frédéric
Burgmüller and added for the first performance to please a wealthy
patron whose
mistress was Nathalie Fitzjames, the dancer who took the part of the
peasant
girl in its original staging. It is used to this day, although the
placement in
Act I varies, as does the number of dancers dancing it.
Ludwig Minkus made several changes to the score for the
Compiled from Ballet Notes