Scènes De Ballet – Ashton and Stravinsky Modernism

Abstract

'If God said, you have one left that would be it.'1 It was in these terms that Ashton spoke of his 1948 Scenes de Ballet. To Stravinsky's eponymous score, this ballet for Margot Fonteyn, Michael Somes, a further four men and twelve women, with scenery and costumes by Andre Beaurepaire, has become one of Ashton's most widely acclaimed works. Yet there remains much more to be said about this extraordinarily complex ballet, particularly about its musical aspects and treatment of a score by the twentieth century's most celebrated ballet composer. First, Ashton's ballet can be set in a fuller historical context. In an essay contemporary with the making of the work, Ashton tells us that Stravinsky had 'always been a favourite composer', and 'among the few composers of today who thinks in a really contemporary way'.2 Given Stravinsky's already seminal role as a ballet composer, there might well have been something of an aura attached to the act of setting his music. Ashton particularly admired the work of Balanchine and Nijinska and their Stravinsky ballets that he certainly knew by 1948. He had seen Balanchine's Apollo (1928) and Nijinska's Les JNoces (1923) (and had danced in the latter's Le Baiser de la fee (1928)), and these ballets undoubtedly informed his note that the score 'works up to a true apotheosis in the magnificent style so typical of Stravinsky'. Ashton also claims satisfaction that