Job, a masque for dancing

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Job: A Masque for Dancing is a ballet written by the famous British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. It was written between 1927 and 1929 and premiered in 1930, conducted by Vaughan Williams himself. The score is dedicated to the conductor Adrian Boult.

The ballet is based on William Blake's work Illustrations of the Book of Job and was conceived by the scholar Geoffrey Keynes and the artist Gwen Raverat, who then approached Vaughan Williams with a request to write the score (RVW and Raverat were cousins).

The work is commonly separated into 12 different parts:

  1. Introduction
  2. Saraband of the Sons of God
  3. Satan's Dance of Triumph
  4. Minuet of the Sons of Job and Their Wives
  5. Job's Dream
  6. Dance of the Three Messengers
  7. Dance of Job's Comforters
  8. Elihu's Dance of Youth and Beauty
  9. Pavane of the Sons of the Morning
  10. Galliard of the Sons of the Morning
  11. Altar Dance
  12. Epilogue

Vaughan Williams was so taken with the idea that after an abortive attempt to secure a staging from Sergei Diaghilev's Ballet Russes, he abandoned hope of any stagings and created a score that was much larger-scale than any conventional theater pit would be able to handle. The first performance, in October of 1930 at the Norwich Festival, was a concert performance with full orchestra; Constant Lambert then created a reduced orchestration suitable for a theater pit orchestra, and this is how the work was first staged in June of 1931 at Sadler's Wells. That same summer the American dancer Ted Shawn created an outdoor production for the Lewisohn Stadium concerts in New York City, which was scheduled for three performances in July 1931.

In 1948 the staging moved from Sadler's Wells to Covent Garden, whereupon the full orchestra could be used; unfortunately the original Raverat set designs would no longer suit the much larger stage and new set designs were commissioned from John Piper.

Advanced Search
Included Web Search Engines


Safe Search

close

Top Matching Results

Occasionally Search.com will highlight specialized results that are based on the context of your query. Examples of specialized results include specific links to news, images, or video.

Top Matching Results may highlight information from other Search.com pages, content from the CNET Network of sites, or third party content. The listings are based purely on relevance. Search.com does not receive payment for listings in this section but our partners that provide this data may get paid for listing these products.

Sponsored Links

This section contains paid listings which have been purchased by companies that want to have their sites appear for specific search terms and related content. These listings are administered, sorted and maintained by a third party and are not endorsed by Search.com.

Search Results

Search.com sends your search query to several search engines at one time and integrates the results into one list which has been sorted by relevance using Search.com's proprietary algorithm. You can customize the list of search engines included in your metasearch from the preferences.

The search engines that are used in your metasearch may allow companies to pay to have their Web sites included within the results. To view the Paid Inclusion policy for a specific search engine, please visit their Web site. Search.com does not accept payment or share revenue with any search engine partner for listings in this section.