Why were you attracted to this project?
Lar Lubovitch and the American Ballet Theater asked me to write a three-act ballet, which I believe is the first American commission ever of a three-act ballet. That’s the kind of work that was done lastly by Stravinsky. Certainly it’s the kind of work that hasn’t been done for years and years and years. I like the idea of doing a narrative ballet, a ballet that tells a story that is in three acts as opposed to just a riff on a story. The fact that there was never a substantial work of “Othello” composed by and other major composer is another reason I decided to get into it. It’s a very simple story; simple without being simple-minded. It gets complicated in its psychology and its emotionality, so in that respect it was the perfect subject for me for a ballet.
What was your real challenge when composing for ballet?
The real challenge was writing a balanced score. Everyone knows what’s going to happen in “Othello”. That Desdemona’s going to get choked in the end and it’s going to end tragically. The challenge was to get gradually dark as the hour and twenty minutes of the evening elapsed, so that you had a place to go. The idea behind this production was to have a sense of lightness, a sense of falling in love, a sense of courtliness in the beginning, and then slowly get into the psychological areas, and then into horrific areas, and then into the confusion of his jealousy and the final murder. The challenge was not to be too dark too fast because you have a long way to go in an evening in the theater.
Do you think composing for dance is similar to film scoring because you are composing to visual elements?
Yes, it has its similarities, except in dance you don’t have editing. Someone goes out there and dances a dance. You don’t edit for close-ups or two-shots or long shots; it’s presentational, it’s right there, and the audience is looking at it. There are no close-ups and you dance. So it doesn’t beat any relationship to film in that way. It has its own limitations though. You can only dance a solo for so long, you can only dance a duet for so long, before the body starts getting fatigued. You can’t write an hour-long solo without thinking of the fatigue situation in a dancer, but it is like film in the way that you have to say, ‘This is five minutes, this is three minutes, this is ninety seconds, this is that way,’ and you have to learn the steps and basically know what the steps are going to be, what the choreography is going to be. There has been notation of ballet steps that certain composers have learned, but I think in this particular case the choreography demonstrated the steps for me, so I was able to understand what to do.
I was surprised when hearing Othello. Your composition in the beginning seemed more mainstream than your other projects.
That goes back to the fact that I couldn’t get dark too fast. That’s the thing about dong a narrative ballet; you must follow the story. So, yes, it might seem mainstream in the beginning, but they eventually all start to unravel. I tried to have a series of little short pieces that were lyrical and humorous, presenting different characters.
The first act was a series of divertissement ending in the first really dark situation, which is the introduction of Iago and Emilia. The second act is basically one large tarantella that gets more and more distorted. In other words, the theme gets more surrealistic until the end when it gets incredibly rhythmic. It constantly reaffirms the idea of a sense of nervousness and impending doom. Then in the third act I go to the darkest place, so now it leaves me that one extra card where I could have the murder of Desdemona. This is a transcendental beautiful moment because there was nothing more beautiful for Desdemona than dying at the hands of Othello. That second-to-last piece, ‘Adagietto’, had a certain transcendence and certain yearning for the light. The last piece, ‘Coda Agitato’, ends in a wildly rhythmic modified repetition of material from the tarantella.
You seem to really excel at this type of dramatic orchestral composition. Is this another side of you we will hear more of in the future?
I’d love to. I love ballet; this is a side of me that’s with me at all times. I don’t think it’s that much different than concertos, string quartets, and brass quartets, but it’s not that unrelated to other dramatic works that have a text and a narrative. I feel very comfortable in this world. There’s talk about even the music to “Interview with the Vampire” developing into a ballet, sort of like “The Nutcracker Suite” for Halloween. It has a great deal of sensuality, darkness, and mood, also rhythmic aspects in the score that could be wonderful ballet. I’m talking to a specific choreographer and a major dance company about it, but nothing’s been decided yet. I’d love to do new ballets from scratch; there are certain choreographers in the world that are very exciting to me and it would be a great joy.