Maestro Peter Bay on the story behind the music in GISELLE
By Eva Kahn
At a young age, Peter Bay played the flute and could pluck out a tune on the piano. Now, as the music director of the Austin Symphony Orchestra for more than 20 years and the primary conductor for Ballet Austin, Maestro Bay is preparing his orchestra to accompany Ballet Austin in its latest production of the Romantic Era classic, GISELLE. A well-versed and widely-known conductor, Bay enjoys working with Ballet Austin because he can conduct music that he might not choose for the symphony to play on its own.
Here are some excerpts from our conversation with Bay on GISELLE’s score and how the music helps advance the ballet’s storyline.
Who composed the score for GISELLE?
“The score for GISELLE was originally written by Adolphe Adam, who was a French composer and lived in the first half of the 19th century. Since Adam’s ballet premiered, there have been many reformulations of the score — various choreographers who have added to the score by various other composers, one of them being Riccardo Drigo [an Italian composer of widely-known ballet scores]. Ludwig Minkus, who wrote the score for the ballet Don Quixote, is one of the composers who added movements. There was a fellow named Friedrich Bergmüller who was asked to write an additional Pas de Quatre for the ballet.
“The music is, in a way, rather simple — it conveys simple ideas, which is one of the reasons people remember the music.” — Maestro Peter Bay
“A lot of other hands have stuck their fingers into the score and have added to it, but the original score was done by Adam who, in his day, was one of the more famous composers. His music was performed in all the major capitals: St. Petersburg, London, Paris, Berlin. He was known primarily as an opera and a ballet composer. Outside of GISELLE, we don’t really hear any of these pieces anymore.
“The one piece everyone hears every Christmas is a short song called ‘Cantique de Noël,’ and we know it as ‘O Holy Night.’ Adam was the composer of that brief song.”
The ballet, GISELLE, takes place entirely outdoors. How does the music attain that pastoral quality that sets the scene so well?
“One of the things that has changed the most is the sound of the orchestration. I have never heard, nor found a recording, of the score the way Adam originally wrote it, for a medium-sized orchestra, without trombones and all of the extra instruments. Over time there have been at least half a dozen arrangers or composers who have re-orchestrated the piece.
“The version we’re doing was done by a fellow named by Daniel Stirn, who was a French ballet conductor or arranger. When he re-orchestrated the piece, he kept the same pastoral qualities that Adam originally wrote in the score. For example, we hear hunting horns when the hunt is on the way in the ballet. That scoring sounds very obvious: You use French horns for hunting horns. Whenever there are calm pastoral moments, we hear pastoral instruments such as strings sustaining a sound, or a flute or clarinet solo.
“The music is, in a way, rather simple — it conveys simple ideas, which is one of the reasons people remember the music. It highlights what’s going on stage very beautifully. If you’re thinking of the progression of ballet music, you have Adam and people like Minkus, and then Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky comes afterward. This is the beginning of what we call Romantic music. Tchaikovsky and Sergei Prokofiev took it to another level after that.
“One device that Adam uses to help the audience understand what’s going on is what we call ‘leitmotifs.’ There’s a certain melody that’s always used for Giselle. There’s a certain melody that’s used when there’s a reference to the Giselle and the Count — their love music, the hunting music — you always hear the horns playing. When the ghost-like characters, the Wilis, show up, the music always recurs in basically the same form. So you can follow what’s going on in the story even if you don’t know it by listening to the music and watching the dancers.”
The music is very transportive. Although the story of GISELLE is grounded in reality, what does the orchestra do to achieve that mystical quality?
“When Adam wrote the music, he was somewhat of a pioneer. He didn’t want to just copy the style of music that his contemporaries were writing. He spiced up the music with different kinds of sounds and sound effects. The strings make all sorts of different kinds of colors, whether they’re moving their bow very quickly — what we call a ‘tremolo.’ There’s the use of the mute, which makes a hazy, covered sound. There’re all sorts of musical touches that Adam puts in the score that help convey the various mystical qualities in the story. And the combination of winds with strings is very typical at times. He does a little bit of experimenting, as Tchaikovsky was to do later, and Prokofiev after him, too.”
See Maestro Peter Bay conduct the Austin Symphony Orchestra during Ballet Austin’s four performances of GISELLE, this Mother’s Day weekend, May 10–12, at the Long Center. For tickets and show information, visit https://balletaustin.org/performances/giselle2019
