Abstract
The music of Distant Beauties is based entirely on the Pas de Six from the prologue to Tchaikovsky’s and Petipa’s The Sleeping Beauty. The original orchestral score is reduced to just two single line instruments - flute and viola. The aim has not been to create an arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s music but to treat it as raw material from which a new piece may be fashioned. Tchaikovsky’s score is treated as a medium to be carved into and re-shaped, many notes are excised bringing into relief new melodies, revealing previously concealed music, or presenting streamlined, leaner versions of the originals. No attempt is made to compensate for the missing orchestral instruments with virtuosic flute and viola writing, instead the emphasis is on a direct and unadorned presentation in which sparsity and, occasionally, silence come to the fore.