Musical Blessings
By Emily Hubbard
In Perrault’s “Sleeping Beauty in the Wood” Sleeping Beauty is blessed by the fairies with musical skills such as singing “like a nightingale” and playing “every instrument with consummate skill.” The next natural form of adaptation for the story is to set it to music so that audiences can hear what music in Sleeping Beauty’s universe might sound like.
Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky did this when he adapted the story into his ballet The Sleeping Beauty from 1890. One of the most memorable pieces from the ballet is Op. 66, Act I Garland Waltz, often known as “Sleeping Beauty Waltz”, which occurs as the villagers are celebrating Princess Aurora’s sixteenth birthday. In ¾ meter, the waltz lends itself to dancing.
The lilting melody of the famous waltz has found its way into multiple forms of entertainment and even various cultures. Strangely enough, Sergei Rachmaninoff’s arrangement of the waltz for four hands on piano makes an appearance in a Japanese anime titled Your Lie in April. The show follows incredibly talented, young pianist Arima Kousei as he rediscovers his love for piano and enters piano competitions again while overcoming traumatic experiences. Two characters, Kousei and Nagi, use this piece for a piano competition.
In both Tchaikovsky’s ballet and Your Lie in April, music plays an important role. Especially in Your Lie in April, musical perfection is the goal of the pianist competitors. Certainly, having Sleeping Beauty’s musical abilities is the envy of all musicians.
