Overture di Ballo
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The Overture di Ballo is a concert overture by Arthur Sullivan. Its first performance was in August 1870 at the Birmingham Triennial Festival, conducted by the composer. It predates all his work with W. S. Gilbert, and aside from the Savoy Operas, is his most frequently played work for orchestra.
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[edit] Name
The title of the work as printed on the original programme was Overtura di Ballo – a linguistic slip on Sullivan’s part, as there is no Italian word overtura. When the score was published in 1889, the hybrid title Overture di Ballo was used. Arthur Jacobs suggests that it would have been better if Sullivan had called it A Dance Overture.[1]
[edit] Description
The work consists of a short emphatic introduction, followed by three distinct but thematically linked sections:
- a slow opening section in polonaise rhythm.
- a longer waltz section with the first subject played by the woodwinds and the second (syncopated) subject by the strings.
- a lively galop as a finale.
The version of the score published during Sullivan's lifetime takes eleven minutes or so in performance. In the 1980s, a longer version of the score was prepared, drawing on Sullivan’s manuscript and including two passages deleted by the composer before the original 1889 publication. One of the two is a formal recapitulation of the first waltz subject, making the whole middle section a classical example of sonata form.[2] Most performances in concert or on record use the shorter version, but the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company's 1992 recording uses the uncut text.[3]
[edit] Analysis
What makes the piece unusual is that (the first waltz tune excepted) all three dances use the same melodic theme. The rhythmic and harmonic treatment, however, gives each dance its own character. Liszt had developed this technique, but its use in a light orchestral piece was new. Sullivan later used the technique in his comic operas: for example the Lord Chancellor’s motif in Iolanthe, which appears in three different forms. After Sullivan’s death, Elgar adopted and extended the technique in his First Symphony, where the scherzo is scarcely recognisable as transformed in the adagio.
A section of the galop is the only music used by Sir Charles Mackerras in his ballet Pineapple Poll that is not taken from Sullivan's operas.
[edit] Recordings
As of July 2006, recordings conducted by Sir Adrian Boult, Anthony Collins, Alexander Faris, Arthur Fiedler, Sir Charles Groves, Tom Higgins, Frank James, Charles Mackerras, Sir Neville Marriner, John Pryce-Jones, and Sir Malcolm Sargent were or had been available in the UK.
[edit] Notes
[edit] External links
- Overture di Ballo at The Gilbert & Sullivan Discography
