The Trouble With Ballet (and quartets with 7 movements)
I’ve consistently had difficulties getting Shostakovich’s string quartets 9, 10 and 11 really embedded in my head. That is, they’re not all absorbed and understood and fused in like 12, 13 and 8 are - even though I’ve listened to them over and over again. They just won’t stick. I think it’s because they have too many movements. It’s hard to see everything in context.
With ballet the problem is similar: each individual movement, which typically last for four or five minutes each, stands out beautifully. Taken as a whole it just can’t compete with the wonderful unification a symphony or concerto usually presents (unless it’s really rubbish). I suppose with ballet it is intended to be shown with dancers flitting and floating and flopping all over the stage, so the need for the music to live out alone by itself is not as strong.
This distance between sections juts out at me right in the ears when I listen to the Shostakovich quartets with more than five movements, they don’t seem unified. Perhaps I really need to blast myself with them even more to hear to the similar musical themes, but it’s tricky. I feel I should have found them by now.
Interestingly (to me anyway, it probably isn’t really all that interesting in the grand old scheme of things) is that I do not have this problem with the song cycles - Alexander Blok, Marina Tsvetaeva, etc. These seem greatly more consistent, and locked in musical ideas and step.
Perhaps I’m just bad at hearing musical themes. Damn you, my non musical history!
