The Ballerina

Ray Moore

Timeline

Ray Moore (Born 1939)

  1. In the 1950s Ray Moore began his musical training at the Royal Military School of Music at Kneller Hall and The Guildhall School of Music in London. 
  1. In 1963 and joined the Band of the Welsh Guards as also played as a pianist and saxophonist in London. He played for many music occasions from playing piano in New York bars, to playing for investitures in Buckingham Palace, London.
  1. On leaving the army, he took the post of MD for a London-based cabaret team and with them toured the ‘cabaret circuit’ in the north of England.
  1. In 1982 he established Moore Music in Northampton in partnership with his wife, Eileen.

Style

At Moore Music, Ray and Eilen Moore provide individual and group tuition in piano and keyboard for children and adults. As he says:

Remember, it’s never too late to learn to play the piano or keyboard!

Although it was composed quite recently, The Ballerina is written in a ROMANTIC style. It is also programmatic music in that it depicts a scene or tells a story

Interpretation

  • Here is a painting by the French artist Edgar Degas who is famous for his paintings of ballerinas. Try to capture this atmosphere in your performance:
  • The playing should always be light and elegant. The staccato notes should be clean and crisp. The word simile mean continue in a similar way – so all the quavers can be treated staccato. The semiquavers can all be played legato:
  • The last note in each group of semiquavers should also be staccato:
  • Make sure the discord in bar 10 is played with a strong forte and accent. What do you think happens in the story here?
  • In the last line play confidently in the lead up to the pause with maybe a very slight ritardando. You can hold this pause for a lot longer than it looks Then finish off quietly at the original tempo. Just place the last two notes carefully without rushing:

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