Composers › Peter Ludwig Hertel › Programme note
Clog Dance from La Fille mal gardée (arr. Lanchbery)
Gerald Larner wrote 2 versions of differing length — choose one below.
arranged Lanchbery
Clog Dance from La Fille mal gardée
Unlike much of the music arranged by John Lanchbery for Frederick Ashton’s famous version of La Fille mal gardée (first performed at Covent Garden in 1960) the Clog Dance is not by Ferdinand Hérold. Lanchbery, who was principal conductor of the Royal Ballet at the time, took as his major source a score compiled by Hérold for a Paris Opéra version of La Fille mal gardée in 1828. But for the Clog Dance - which was suggested to Ashton by Stanley Holden, the original Widow Simone - he turned to a Fille mal gardée score written by Peter Ludwig Hertel in Belin in 1864. Stylistically anomalous though it might be, in Lanchbery’s witty orchestration Hertel’s music is certainly the perfect accompaniment to a comedy number danced by a man dressed as a woman in Lancastrian-style clogs.
From Gerald Larner’s files: “Clog Dance/w135”
arranged Lanchbery
Clog Dance from La Fille mal gardée
Much of the music arranged by John Lanchbery for Frederick Ashton’s famous version of La Fille mal gardée, first performed at Covent Garden in 1960, is by Ferdinand Hérold. Much of it, on the other hand, is not. Lanchbery, who was principal conductor of the Royal Ballet at the time, took as his major source the score put together by Hérold for a production of La Fille mal gardée at the Paris Opéra in 1828: that score includes music plundered not only from the original version of the ballet (first presented under a different title in Bordeaux in 1789) but also from three Rossini operas, including not least The Barber of Seville. Some of Hérold’s Rossini borrowings found their way from there into the Royal Ballet version. Lanchbery also drew on music for yet another Fille mal gardée, written by Peter Ludwig Hertel in Berlin in 1864.
As it happens, although his once highly successful score is now largely forgotten, Hertel wrote the music Lanchbery adapted for what has since turned out to be the most popular number in the Ashton version of the ballet, the Clog Dance from near the end of the first act. It became a clog dance apparently on the suggestion of Stanley Holden, the original Widow Simone, a character role always danced by a man. Certainly, after its teasing little introduction for clarinet and pizzicato strings, Hertel’s music, wittily scored by Lanchbery, is the perfect accompaniment to a comedy number danced Lancastrian-style in clogs.
From Gerald Larner’s files: “Clog Dance/w250”