ABSTRACT
As an art-form ballet undoubtedly exercises a powerful attraction on the musician. With the heart-beat and the rhythm of breathing the very principle of music is linked with the human body, with man’s physical frame. Ballet, then, can be regarded as an art-form eminently congenial to the musician who approaches it from the point of view of its possibilities as Theatre and Drama. The musical treatment is designed to assist the distinction, in the theatre, between the interior world and the “real”, naturalistic environment in which Don Quixote finds himself. Clearly, the enchantment of pure dancing and abstract ballet is akin to the pleasure of absolute music. Any amount of trouble is worth facing for the sake of a successful presentation of a dramatic situation: in other words it must be faced that a dramatic point can sometimes only be made at the cost of the balletic pointes, a case of point-counter-pointes.
