Dance of the Hours

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File:Amilcare Ponchielli (before 1886) - Archivio Storico Ricordi FOTO000794 - Restoration.jpg

Amilcare Ponchielli, the composer, c. 1870s

Dance of the Hours (Italian: {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}) is a short ballet and is part of the Act III finale of the opera La Gioconda composed by Amilcare Ponchielli. It depicts the hours of the day through solo and ensemble dances. The opera was first performed in 1876 and was revised in 1880. Later performed on its own, the Dance of the Hours was at one time one of the best known and most frequently performed ballets.<ref>Dance of the Hours Flutetunes.com, 2010-08-04. Accessed October 2010]</ref><ref>New Jersey Symphony Orchestra Template:Webarchive Program notes. January 2010.</ref> It became even more widely known after its inclusion in the 1940 Walt Disney animated film Fantasia where it is depicted as a comic ballet featuring ostriches, hippopotamuses, elephants and alligators.

Description

The ballet, accompanied by an orchestra, appears near the end of the third act of the opera, in which the character Alvise, who heads the Inquisition, receives his guests in a large and elegant ballroom adjoining the death chamber. The music and choreography represent the hours of dawn, day (morning), twilight and night. Costume changes and lighting effects reinforce the progression. The dance is intended to symbolize the eternal struggle between the forces of light and darkness. It is about 10 minutes long.

Structure

The piece begins with an introduction in G major, with vocal assistance in the form of a recitative which is omitted in the symphonic version. Then follows in sequence: the dance of the hours of dawn, the hours of day, the hours of the night and the morning.

The episode devoted to dawn (in E major) merges with the extensive introduction to the episode dedicated to daytime hours, anticipating the rhythmic structure of four notes, which characterizes the episode. The transition point between the two episodes, where it marks the birth of the day, coincides with the intervention in fortissimo of the chorus ("{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}"), which follows a slow chromatic passage, typical of Ponchielli's style.

After a brief episode in [[C-sharp minor|CTemplate:Music minor]] devoted to the night, based on figuration in staccato, a connected and expressive melody in E minor, played by cellos, introduces the morning. A new pathetic melody in A minor extends to a broad phrase with initial tone in E minor.

A brief diminuendo precedes the attacca of the final coda in A major, a vigorous can-can in the manner of Romualdo Marenco's Template:Interlanguage link multi (1881), introduced by an abrupt change of tempo to allegro vivacissimo.

Derivative works

Dance of the Hours has been parodied twice in Disney cartoons. An extract was used by the early cartoon series Silly Symphonies.<ref>More Silly Symphonies: Volume Two Ultimate Disney. Accessed October 2010</ref> The ballet was used in full in the Walt Disney animated film Fantasia (1940), complete with ballet-dancing hippos, ostriches, alligators and elephants.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

The piece was the basis for several pop songs in the 1950s and 1960s, including "Idle Chatter" by The Andrews Sisters (1952),<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> "Like I Do" by Nancy Sinatra (1962),<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>, and the novelty hit "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh (A Letter from Camp)" (1963) and its sequel "Return to Camp Granada" (1965).<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

External links

• Template:IMSLP
• Full libretto of La Gioconda at Impressrio by Kernkonzepte, 2005
• Template:YouTube, choreography by Victoria Lyras