Job, a masque for dancing

Encyclopedia : J : JO : JOB : Job, a masque for dancing

Job: A Masque for Dancing is a ballet written by the famous British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. It was written between 1927 and 1929 and premiered in 1930, conducted by Vaughan Williams himself. The score is dedicated to the conductor Adrian Boult.

The ballet is based on William Blake's work Illustrations of the Book of Job and was conceived by the scholar Geoffrey Keynes and the artist Gwendolen Raverat, who then approached Vaughan Williams with a request to write the score (RVW and Raverat were cousins).

The work is commonly separated into 12 different parts:

Introduction
Saraband of the Sons of God
Satan's Dance of Triumph
Minuet of the Sons of Job and Their Wives
Job's Dream
Dance of the Three Messengers
Dance of Job's Comforters
Elihu's Dance of Youth and Beauty
Pavane of the Sons of the Morning
Galliard of the Sons of the Morning
Altar Dance
Epilogue

Vaughan Williams was so taken with the idea that after an abortive attempt to secure a staging from Sergei Diaghilev's Ballet Russes, he abandoned hope of any stagings and created a score that was much larger-scale than any conventional theater pit would be able to handle. The first performance, in October of 1930 at the Norwich Festival, was a concert performance with full orchestra; Constant Lambert then created a reduced orchestration suitable for a theater pit orchestra, and this is how the work was first staged in June of 1931 at Sadler's Wells. That same summer the American dancer Ted Shawn created an outdoor production for the Lewisohn Stadium concerts in New York City, which was scheduled for three performances in July 1931.

In 1948 the staging moved from Sadler's Wells to Covent Garden, whereupon the full orchestra could be used; unfortunately the original Raverat set designs would no longer suit the much larger stage and new set designs were commissioned.

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.