Billy the Kid (ballet)
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Billy the Kid is a 1938 ballet written by the American composer Aaron Copland and commissioned by Lincoln Kirstein. It was choreographed by Eugene Loring for Ballet Caravan. Along with Rodeo and Appalachian Spring, it is one of Copland's most popular and widely performed pieces. The ballet is most famous for its incorporation of many cowboy tunes and American folk songs.
[edit] Story
The story follows the life of the infamous outlaw Billy the Kid. It begins with the sweeping song "The Open Prairie" and shows many pioneers trekking westward. The action shifts to a small frontier town, in which a young Billy and his mother are present. Billy's mother is killed by an outlaw, and Billy himself kills the murderer, and goes on the run.
The scene then shifts to years in the future. Billy is an outlaw living in the desert. He is captured by a posse (in which the ensuing gun battle features prominent percussive effects) and taken to jail, but manages to escape after stealing a gun from the warden during a game of cards. Returning to his hideout, Billy thinks he is safe, but Pat Garrett catches up and kills Billy. The ballet ends with the 'open prairie' theme and pioneers once again travelling west.
[edit] Sections
Billy the Kid is divided into eight sections:
- Introduction: The Open Prairie
- Street in a Frontier Town
- Mexican Dance and Finale
- Prairie Night (Card Game at Night)
- Gun Battle
- Celebration--Billy in Prison--Billy's Escape--Billy in the Desert
- Billy's Death
- The Open Prairie Again
Billy the Kid was composed in 1938 for the American Ballet Caravan after their director, Lincoln Kirstein, asked Copland to write a ballet about the great American outlaw. Copland wrote the ballet in one act and split it into seven movements.
The opening movement is titled "The Open Prairie". Copland utilises harmonies bases on fifths to give a sense of emptiness and loneliness with the main theme raising and falling above. This leads into the second movement, "Street in a Frontier Town," where Copland manages to visualise in music a town with cowboys sauntering around, some on horseback, some with lassos. The opening theme is played on the piccolo (tin whistle if a stage performance) and is based on the cowboy tune "Great Granddad." A Mexican theme enters which indicates a Mexican woman dancing a Jarabo. Copland achieved this Mexican feel with the use of rhythm, using the song "Come Wrangle yer Bronco" against a time signature of 5/8.
A fight between two drunks that is hinted at in the trombones by the tune "Git along Little Doggies" interrupts all of this. In the ensuing chaos two shots ring out killing the twelve-year-old Billy’s mother. Billy, enraged, grabs a cowhand’s knife and kills his mother’s murderer. Thus, the young outlaw's life begins.
As "Street in a Frontier Town" comes to an end, Copland uses the tune of "Goodbye Old Paint" that has already been hinted at earlier in the movement.
The suite progresses onto "Card Game at Night," where Copland manages to calm the whole work down and create a sense of contentment and friendship with the use of the tune "Oh Bury Me Not On The Lone Prairie" as the inspiration. This is soon followed by the "Gun Battle." Here, through clever use of timpani, bass trombone, snare drum, muted trumpets and some close chords in the strings and upper winds, the vision of a raging gunfight is depicted.
After dying away to nothing, the "Celebration Dance" shows how Copland could also show humour in his work by having the jaunty and quite spiky dance melody in the upper instrumentation written in C while the accompanying bass line supports this a semi-tone higher in C#.
The orchestral suite then misses out Billy’s escape with his Mexican girlfriend and the love pas de deux that again includes a variation of "Come Wrangle Yer Bronco."
Rich descending chords in the strings depict Billy’s death, with occasional accompaniment by upper winds. The suite then ends where it began, on the "Open Prairie," but this time, to help with the feeling of finality, Copland uses the whole orchestra with the brass playing big chords of leaping fifths. This is all strong motivation to lead us to the conclusion that Copland wanted the audiences loyalties to lie with the now dead outlaw.
