The output of composer Joby Talbot is diverse, ranging from concertos, film scores and song arrangements to a cappella works. In 2011, he composed the score to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the first full-length narrative ballet score to be commissioned by The Royal Ballet in 20 years. This was swiftly followed by a second Royal Ballet commission – and another collaboration with choreographer Christopher Wheeldon – for The Winter’s Tale, premièred last spring. This season sees the première of Talbot’s first opera – Everest – for Dallas Opera. As part our Contemporary Month, we wanted to ask Talbot more about his writing for the stage and how collaborations with choreographers and librettists work, in particular.
You have written scores for concert hall, stage and screen. How does your approach differ in dealing with these different mediums? What challenges do these mediums present to you as a composer?
That's a big question! Well – my approach differs according to the needs of the project. In film scoring, the music usually takes a back seat, supporting the emotion of the picture while subtly enhancing structure and direction. Only occasionally does it come to the fore and lead the way. In ballet it's very different. The music creates the framework. The dancers are literally dancing to its tune. Even the person who's calling the show will be reading the cues from a copy of the score. And yet - conversely - it's the dancing that people have come to see. So you have to be careful not to overwhelm the choreography and get in the way.
In opera it's different again: now it's the singers people want to hear. And they want to see them act, so you have to leave room for that, and enable it to happen. A concert piece, meanwhile, is more fully about the music. The music must attempt to demand all the attention. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's more demanding to write, or more rewarding. Every genre has its challenges. Sometimes it's harder to play a supportive role than to take centre stage.
You’ve recently composed your second full-length work for the Royal Ballet. What degree of freedom are you given in composing a ballet? Describe your working relationship with the choreographer Christopher Wheeldon – was there much ‘writing to order’ or can you decide how long a particular section should last?
Well I guess it's all 'writing to order' in one sense. My primary role is to serve the project, and do my very best to ensure that the show will work. But I figure that if the musical structure functions well, then the whole thing stands a good chance of succeeding. However, creating cogent musical structures that last for several hours and also happen to tell an entirely non-musical story is no easy task. It's important, then, to be involved in the creative process from the very start, and Chris Wheeldon and I will typically sit down (sometimes with a dramaturge, sometimes without) and work out the scenography – the basic structure of the piece – together before anything else is done. That way we can decide how we intend to present the narrative through both dance and music from the off, making sure we're both on the same page from the beginning.
A detailed, scene-by-scene breakdown of the piece is the result – the equivalent of a story board in movies. This will have quite accurate timings that we've agreed upon together – yes. It's understood that they'll remain flexible, but in practice they rarely change, and we are often surprised by how close to our original conception the finished show turns out to be. A certain amount of rewriting is inevitable, but so far in my working relationship with Chris, he has never asked me to redo anything that I didn't feel was helping the show develop, and I think that's a good sign of a very healthy collaboration. I love working with Chris – he is brilliant.
In writing a ballet for such a huge company, did you feel you had to alter your style at all to make it ‘accessible’ to a wider public than would normally consider attending contemporary music concerts?
Not in the slightest. The Royal Ballet has a sophisticated audience who I'm sure are quite capable of dealing with any difficulties I can throw at them. Having said that, I do think that with ballet – and especially with narrative ballet – it does pay to try to be very clear. Subtle nuances which might play well in the concert hall tend to get lost on the big stage with hundreds of dancers flying about, so I try to make the emotional beats big and strong. But there is no sense of 'dumbing down', no. I'm being as emotionally and artistically honest in the music for Alice and The Winter's Tale as I have been in anything I've written.