Barry Wordsworth

I had hoped to reproduce here the full version of an interview I did with Barry Wordsworth several years ago for Dance Now, the occasion for reprising it now being his very welcome return to the Royal Ballet as music director. However, on reflection, I've desisted from that idea. Apologies to those of you who followed a link here and have been disappointed. I believe, however, that I can reasonably reproduce the quotes from Barry that I used in that article (it was the Winter 2003-'04 edition, and featured interviews with several dance conductors).

"Ballet deprives a conductor of two crucial artistic levers: the ability to choose tempi and to direct."

"Barry Wordsworth now brings a metronome to every rehearsal, in effect as an insurance policy. ‘I am fed up with being told that I am non-reliable. The dancers reckon that they are absolutely infallible and they don’t realise that, just like any of us, their metabolisms change.’"

"Wordsworth has noticed that changes in dancers’ technique have had a major impact on musical performance, with members of the corps in both Royal Ballet companies having technical - although not necessarily artistic - standards comparable to those of principals thirty years ago. ‘This frequently means that, instead of keeping the choreography simple, because they have these flashy techniques, they want to show them off. I hear the people taking the rehearsals say ‘Oh darling, do more of this, more of that’. Frequently ‘more of this’ and ‘more of that’ means that the music has got to go slower. It becomes extremely self-indulgent. Although the dancers are having a wonderful time, it is not adding up to a performance.’"

"Wordsworth insists it is the conductor’s duty to ensure that the dancers place their technical sophistication at the service of the music. He has frequently to argue that a score be performed at its originally intended tempo, rather than that ‘the music be fooled around so that that they can do three double tours, instead of two.’ As he explains, ‘You play in tempo right up to the last moment and then there is a huge gap while they do their double whatevers, and finally the orchestra is allowed to play the last chord when the guy hits the deck. It basically means that ballet is turning into a kind of circus act. The conductor is often the only person around who is prepared to stick his neck out. This doesn't always make you very popular, or make the dancers very grateful to you.’"

"For Barry Wordsworth, the conductor on the podium – and his colleagues on the music staff - should be the ‘musical conscience of the company’, influencing musical style, how dancers perceive music, the commissioning of scores, and the choice of other musicians to work with the company."

Because choreographers and artistic directors are so chary of new commissions, ballet has lost something of its edge as an art, according to Barry Wordsworth. ‘If you have something to say, and you are going to use music, why use music from a different time to say something for today? The chances are that the composer is dead, so that if you want to change something, you have not got that musical inspiration to work with. It is not thought- through artistic experience’

"Orchestras cannot relate as easily to a ballet performance as to an opera. In Wordsworth’s words, ‘it is far less involving for an orchestra to accompany the tap-tap-tap of the dancers’ feet, rather than the coloratura of some wonderful soprano, who they can all hear'."