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Opus 4, No. 2: Jungian “Personality Type” Analysis Applied To Music

October 23, 2012 by 4dancers

by Allan Greene

One of my all-time favorite ballets, and one of the great dance creations of the Twentieth Century, is Balanchine’s “Four Temperaments”.  When I was Company Pianist with the Dance Theater of Harlem we must have performed it fifty times.  I did maybe twenty performances as the piano soloist with orchestras in Paris, Houston and the Spoleto USA Festival.  I am steeped in this work.                                   

At the time I was performing it, however, I was completely unaware of the connection between the four medieval “temperaments” or “humors” (choleric, melancholy, sanguine, and phlegmatic) and the much more recent work of the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung.  In the early 1920’s Jung synthesized ideas dealing with the relationship between physiology and personality, many of which he had come across in readings about world civilizations, into what he called the Psychology of Type (his 1921 book was called Psychologische Typen).  He noted how the differentiation of four personality types was common to the classical Greece (through the physician Galen), the medieval Persian physician Avicenna and early modern Europe. 

At first Jung drew on these historical ideas to resolve the conflict he was having with his mentor, Freud.  The two had a celebrated professional break-up in 1912, and Jung spent some time trying to reconcile with himself why this had occurred.  Out of this he created the concepts of introvert and extrovert, which have morphed into touchstones of our modern psychology.  In Psychologische Typen he extended the number of personality types to eight.

The idea for Balanchine’s Four Temperaments was not Balanchine’s (nor was it Galen’s) but, according to program notes for the American Symphony Orchestra prepared by Adrian Corleonis, came from the composer Paul Hindemith.  Corleonis doesn’t show however where Hindemith came across the idea.  It’s always possible that he was familiar with Carl Nielsen’s Second Symphony (1901), nicknamed also “The Four Temperaments”.

The essential idea in all of this is that there are four kinds of personality: one tending toward sadness (melancholy), one tending toward hesitance (phlegmatic), one tending toward cheerfulness (sanguine) and one tending toward anger (choleric).  All human beings possess one of these four personality types, and, according to pre-Modern medical science, must be treated appropriately.

It is my belief that all pieces of music, too, are constituted of recognizable “personalities”, and the best performances of them understand and animate the interaction of these personalities. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Editorial, Music & Dance Tagged With: balanchine, Ballet, carl jung, company pianist, dance, dance theatre of harlem, four temperaments, music theory, piano soloist

10 Questions With…Allan Greene

June 5, 2012 by 4dancers

Allan Greene

Today on 10 Questions With… we have Allan Greene, a pianist that works in the dance world…

We would also like to welcome Allan to our contributing writer staff here at 4dancers. He’ll be writing a new monthly column appropriately titled, “Music Notes”…

1. How did you get started in music?

I started composing on my own when I was eight years old after I tired of copying songs from our third grade songbooks. The next year I began studying the cello at my elementary school, and the next year I began studying piano with the wife of one of my father’s electronic engineer colleagues. Things moved rapidly from there.

The cantor at my family’s synagogue recommended me to a Viennese choir-master who passed me on to an eccentric Juilliard-trained pianist. The intensity of the Juilliard training was too much for me and conflicted with Boy Scouts and after-school basketball. I moved on to a retired violinist / pianist who devoted his Saturdays to me, and presented me in recital several months before my 16th birthday.

All the while I was composing on my own. At the age of twelve I was composing suites of atonal works, for various chamber music combinations as well as solo piano. My high school choir performed a setting I created of a poem by James Joyce. Stylistically, I was heading out the trajectory blazed by Charles Ives, inventing what I called “stream-of-consciousness music” analogous to Joyce’s literary technique: I created a musical narrative out of musical objets trouvés, using juxtaposition of styles and recognizable snippets to shape the drama. A generation later, due to the invention of sampling synthesizers, personal computers and audio production software, some of my ideas were independently showing up as common compositional tools in film and television scores.

2. What brought you into the dance world?

Accompanying ballet and modern dance classes was a work-study contract gig available at Carleton College (Northfield, Minnesota) in my freshman year. After a term washing dishes at one of the college’s cafeterias, it was a god-send. I found it easy, delightful to watch and participate in, and, importantly, made being a musician both quotidian and artistic. I’ve never liked having the spotlight trained on me, so this allowed me to participate and observe simultaneously. Accompanying dance became a laboratory for me to study the effect on collaborating artists of all kinds of music and all sorts of harmonies, melodies, rhythms and textures. It still is.

3. Where has your career taken you in terms of playing for dancers? [Read more…]

Filed Under: 10 Questions With..., Music & Dance, Music Notes Tagged With: abt, allan greene, american ballet theater, balanchine, Ballet, ballet music, dance class, dance theatre of harlem, four temperaments, modern dance, music for dance, piano, the joffrey ballet, Tisch School of the Arts

10 Questions With…Dalia Rawson

January 23, 2012 by 4dancers

I’m always amazed at the things I learn about dancers when I read these interviews, and today is no exception. Meet Dalia Rawson. Read her story. Be amazed. She’s one impressive lady…

Dalia Rawson in "Graduation Ball", Photo by Marty Sohl

1. How did you become involved with dance?

The first time I ever moved might be considered dancing. I had been either very small or very still while my mother was pregnant with me. She says that late in the pregnancy she had never felt me move or kick. My parents had a season subscription to the Joffrey Ballet in NYC, and while watching the performance in the theater, my mother felt me move, apparently reacting to the music by kicking and rolling, for the first time.  When I was a baby they called me twinkle toes, because I couldn’t keep still if there was any music playing. I was in local dance class by age two, a more serious ballet school at age six or seven, and San Francisco Ballet School at age nine.

2.    What are you currently doing in the field?

Currently I choreograph and set ballets and I teach. I am the Artistic Director of The Rawson Project Contemporary Ballet, a small company I founded in 2010 for which I have created a small repertory of original works. I am also the Ballet Mistress of Ballet San Jose School where I teach all levels of the professional division, and Rehearsal Assistant for Ballet San Jose, for whom I run rehearsals and re-stage works.

3.    Would you share a special moment from your career with readers? [Read more…]

Filed Under: 10 Questions With... Tagged With: balanchine, Ballet, ballet san jose, catharine grow, choreographer, dalia rawson, four temperaments, joffrey ballet, patricia perez, swan lake, the rawson project, todd fox

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