Christoph Willibald Gluck

Ballet Music

To conclude Series II (Dance Dramas) from the Gluck Complete Edition (GGA), this volume of Christoph Willibald Gluck's earliest contributions to the genre comprises six ballet scores from 1759 ("La Promenade", "Les Jardiniers", "Les Turcs", "Les Savoiards", "Les Amours de Flore et Zéphire", and "Le Suisse") as well as the ballet music for "Les Vendanges", which dates from 1761. These works belong to the compositions – also called "Krumau ballets" because of their musical transmission – which Gluck created in Vienna between 1759 and 1765 for the court theatres in Laxenburg and Schönbrunn as well as the Kärntnertortheater, and which are to be attributed to him as a ballet composer around the middle of the 18th century in Viennese theatre life based on the considerations presented in the general preface.

Together with volumes II/3 to II/5, ballet music by Gluck is available whose sources come from the former Schwarzenberg court archive in Ceský Krumlov, Czech Republic, and which until the Velvet Revolution of 1989, lay behind the Iron Curtain remaining largely inaccessible and unexplored by Western scholars. These volumes reflect two fundamental developments in Gluck research: on the one hand, they provide a significantly expanded, historically more accurate idea of what it meant to compose for the ballet in the 18th century; on the other hand, they bring to light an immense treasure trove of sources formerly of Viennese provenance.

In addition to the detailed introduction by this volume’s editor on the ballet choreographies of Gasparo Angiolini and Carlo Bernardi, on the formation of the ballet troupes of the Viennese theatres in Gluck's early years there, on ballet types and genres, as well as a detailed account of the individual titles, the volume includes a general preface to volumes II/3 through II/5 by Bruce Alan Brown, which discusses Gluck's ballet music in Vienna in general as well as the development of research into this genre. Extensive illustrations (partly from the so-called "Durazzo Collection") with reference to the choreographies enrich the discussions. The ballet works, which have survived in only one source each, appear in print for the first time in this volume of the Gluck Complete Edition.