Thom Ritter George

FOUR GAMES (Ballet), CN 289 (1977)

PROGRAM NOTES

Thom Ritter George wrote his ballet Four Games in the winter of 1976-1977.  The music was first produced in a staged performance on March 19 and 20, 1977, by the Pamela Bedford Dance Theater in Quincy, Illinois.  The composer conducted the Pamela Bedford Dance Theater Orchestra.  Both the music and the choreography of Four Games were conceived as light-hearted and, in many passages, comic.  Each of the major sections of the ballet has as its subject one of the well known children's games: Hide and Seek, Ball, Tag, and Races.  The score is dedicated to the composer's daughter Samantha.

The music opens with a bright fanfare for brass instruments.  The musical idea of the fanfare reappears in reorchestrated forms as interludes between the major sections of the work.  These interludes provide a frame in which the picture of the games is set.  At the very end of the ballet, the fanfare returns in its original scoring while the music of the "Races" game continues to the conclusion.  In the section marked "Game of Ball," the composer stingingly parodies a composition by the great German conductor Otto Klemperer.  Klemperer's "Merry Waltz" from his opera "Das Ziel" (The Goal) is twisted, pulled out of shape, subjected to bizarre interruptions of the accompaniment, and in general mocks the ostentatious ponderousness of the original.  The most serious section in the music is the "Game of Tag."  Here Dr. George juxtaposes two kinds of tag - one is the scampering/waiting variety of the game which children play.  The other is the flirtatious game of tag sometimes played by adults!

The instrumentation for Four Games is flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, two horns, trumpet, trombone, percussion, harp, and strings.

(TRGcm:2008.09.10)