Billy the Kid (ballet)

Billy the Kid
Choreographer Eugene Loring
Music Aaron Copland
Based on the story of Billy the Kid
Premiere 16 October 1938
Civic Opera House (Chicago)
Original ballet company Ballet Caravan Company
Setting Wild West

Billy the Kid is a 1938 ballet written by the American composer Aaron Copland on commission from Lincoln Kirstein. It was choreographed by Eugene Loring for Ballet Caravan. Along with Rodeo and Appalachian Spring, it is one of Copland's most popular and widely performed pieces. The ballet is most famous for its incorporation of several cowboy tunes and American folk songs and, although built around the figure and the exploits of Billy the Kid, is not so much a biography of a notorious but peculiarly appealing desperado as it is a perception of the pioneer West, in which a figure such as Billy played a vivid role.[1]

It was premiered on 16 October 1938[2] in Chicago by the Ballet Caravan Company, with pianists Arthur Gold and Walter Hendl performing a two-piano version of the score. The first performance of Billy the Kid in New York City occurred on 24 May 1939, with an orchestra conducted by Fritz Kitzinger.

Story

The story follows the life of the infamous outlaw Billy the Kid. It begins with the sweeping song "The Open Prairie" and shows many pioneers trekking westward. The action shifts to a small frontier town, in which a young Billy and his mother are present. The mother is killed by a stray bullet during a gunfight and Billy stabs his mother's killer, then goes on the run.

The next scene shows episodes in Billy's later life. He is living in the desert, is hunted and captured by a posse (in which the ensuing gun battle features prominent percussive effects) and taken to jail. Billy manages to escape after stealing a gun from the warden during a game of cards and returns to his hideout, where he thinks he is safe, but sheriff Pat Garrett catches up and shoots him to death. The ballet ends with the 'open prairie' theme and pioneers once again travelling West.

Order of numbers

  1. Introduction: The Open Prairie
  2. Street Scene in a Frontier Town
  3. Mexican Dance and Finale
  4. Prairie Night (Card Game at Night, Billy and his Sweetheart)
  5. Gun Battle
  6. Celebration (After Billy's Capture)
  7. Billy's Death
  8. The Open Prairie Again

Music

Cowboy and folk tunes were heavily used, for instance:[3]

It also includes the Mexican Jarabe dance, played in 5/8 by a solo trumpet, just before "Goodbye Old Paint".[3]

Cover

The eight movements of Billy The Kid make up the first seven tracks of jazz guitarist Bill Frisell's album "Have a Little Faith".

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Walter Terry, Ballet Guide, 1976, p. 57
  2. ↑ This October 16 premiere date is persistently but incorrectly listed as October 6 in many standard reference works and Copland biographies, but contemporary advertisements and reviews in Chicago newspapers confirm October 16 as the correct premiere date.
  3. 1 2 Elizabeth Bergman Crist (Dec 11, 2008). Music for the Common Man: Aaron Copland during the Depression and War. Oxford University Press. p. 74. ISBN 9780199888801.

External links

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