A writing that dictates the choreography: Dante Sonata by Frederick Ashton

Zicari, Ida (2013) A writing that dictates the choreography: Dante Sonata by Frederick Ashton. Studia Musicologica, 54 (4). pp. 417-429. ISSN 1788-6244

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Abstract

If Liszt’s early work Don Sanche ou le Château d’Amour, that includes danced parts, is not taken into account, he never composed music for dance. In the twentieth century, however, the composer’s music became an interesting material for choreographers and dancers. My paper is focused on a choreographic interpretation of Liszt’s Dante Sonata, made by Frederick Ashton. This choreography was realized by Ashton in 1940 in London, in collaboration with Constant Lambert. Ashton’s Dante Sonata is an abstract and symbolic ballet. He created the association between dance and music on a relationship of correspondence point to point of the two languages and on a cultural and emotive communion with Liszt. My study wants to show what the Ashtonian choreography highlights: Liszt renews the traditional sonata form from its inside; he gives it a new lymph by making it go through a symbolic content; the symbolized literary content is the Dantesque medieval allegory of the Christian ascensional course transformed by Hugo in metaphor of the restless walk of the romantic man. So, Liszt invests the medieval epic literary model of the great themes of the Romantic generation and renews, under its influence, the sonata form.

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