ABSTRACT
The use of existing, normally concert, scores by choreographers has a long history. Research into nineteenth-century uses of concert music is still limited, but there seems little doubt that the procedure became far more widespread and wide-ranging during the twentieth century. Music was a liberating force. Its forms, such as repetition, theme/variation structures and contrapuntal textures, could play an important part in the development of new choreographic forms, particularly more expansive 'symphonic' forms without the restraints of plot. Music was now intended to serve dance, composed for dance, sometimes even after the dance, by specialist 'in-house' dance composers, and, if not a commission, then the music had to be contemporary or traditional American. The new theory overlapped with the old as practitioners of music interpretation and visualisation continued to operate, while Balanchine and Leonide Massine established models for music-based choreography within ballet.
