The illustrated covers from 19th century ballet reductions. A beautiful, unexplored territory

Abstract

During the 19th century both, the publication of dancer´s lithographs and the musical reductions of the most successful parts of the ballets, contributed to the dissemination and circulation of romantic ballets, their performers, and their music off-stage. Thus, many dances became accessible and recognizable to the society that played and also danced them in public and private spaces. At the same time, an equally important phenomenon arose that combined both elements mentioned above: the illustrated covers of musical reductions from the most outstanding dances from the ballets. On them the dancers who performed them usually appeared lithographed and worked as a decorative and especially advertising element of these scores.

Finding examples of these illustrated covers of dance´s reductions from 19th-century ballet will be one of my objectives, an aspect that is not included in the existing compilations on the subject. Also, the particularities of ballet lithographs of the period will be pointed out, the characteristics of these covers will be analyzed and explained from an artistic/graphic point of view, and the peculiarities of Spain regarding the use of these illustrated reductions will be briefly described. To do so catalogues of sheet music editions, musical archives, collections, libraries and museums that keep these materials have been consulted.

The information collected will demonstrate the existence of these materials, still little studied, as well as their outstanding role in different fields, because they are not only the testimony of musical legacy, but also provide historical, sociological, commercial, biographical, choreographic, artistic, graphic and scenographic information.