Ballet Music: A Graceful Genre

 When you watch a ballet performance, it can be easy to take the music for granted and focus on the skill of the dancer. Sometimes the music gets overlooked. In fact, there is a whole genre of music called Ballet Music. It is specifically designed to be danced to. Prior to the huge popularity of ballet, regular ballroom dance music was used. However, as it grew in popularity and became more standardized, the music too became standardized. So while you might not have known that some music exists specifically for ballet, you can still find out about some great composers and enjoy their music.

John Weaver was a ballet composer considered to be a specialist in creating music specifically to dance to. He was one of the pioneers in that area, and started trying to compose music that told a specific story. In ballet music, there are usually certain characters established by the music, and their traits can be seen repeated through different notes and tones. For example, someone might be dancing quickly and intensely as the music sounds aggressive. This would indicate that the character is aggressive. Sometimes the stories would even be sung in word form, though this is not a particularly popular method anymore.

Although ballet music is pleasant enough when listened to by itself, it is still meant to be listened to accompanied by the dancing of the ballerina. In fact, composers often choreograph the dances themselves, or write down basic indicators of what they expect the dancers to be doing. However, it isn’t ever completely specific. Often, many different choreographs will be written for a given piece of music, allowing dancers to use the same music but learn new things at the same time – also, giving novice dancers and advanced dancers the chance to dance to the same song.

Lots of old ballet music has been released into the public domain, which means that you can download it for free and use it in your own performances. Whether you need music for a ballet class, you want to practice on your own, or you just want to listen to some beautiful classical music, ballet music is a great choice. So check out some of the most influential artists – including Jules Massenet, Riccardo Drigo, Aram Khachaturian, and Igor Stravinsky, among many other extremely talented composers.