Expressions Presents: Having a Beethoven Ball

By Aileen Murakami

This article was originally published by the College of Humanities and the Arts in the summer 2024 edition of Expressions, a newsletter created by students in HA-187: Creative Team Practicum. The internship course gives students the opportunity to gain professional experience in writing, graphic design, photography, and video production.

In the spacious ballroom of the San José Woman’s Club, a live orchestra played Beethoven’s music on the raised stage at the top of the ballroom. Tables and chairs positioned around the outer edges of the ballroom, formed a wide open space for the dancers. Formally dressed ball attendees both young and old socialized as they danced; period dresses, elbow length gloves, coats, and cravats intermingling with modern dresses, suits, and ties. In the center of the ballroom dozens of pairs of dancers twirled each other around as they waltzed to the beat.

On April 27, San José State’s Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies coordinated with the College of Humanities and the Arts and its Symphony Orchestra and Collegium Musicum to host its second Beethoven Ball. The ball featured original music and dances from the kinds of dance events that took place in Vienna during Beethoven’s lifetime. Director of the Beethoven Center Erica Buurman says, “the Beethoven Ball is a chance to experience classical orchestral music in a different environment. You don’t just have to sit and listen quietly. You actually get to move and you get to dance and that’s how this music was intended to be heard in the first place.”

Extensive time and effort went into researching, developing and perfecting the music and dances for the Beethoven Ball from what remained of diagrams and sheet music preserved through the centuries. SJSU Music Professor and Collegium Conductor Gordon Haramaki worked with Buurman, SJSU Dance Lecturer Joan Walton, and historical dance groups Dance Through Time and Danse Libre who were invited to give demonstrative performances at the ball. Walton explained that some of the pieces featured in the Beethoven Ball haven’t been played for two hundred years. “Beethoven’s dance music wasn’t highly valued,” she says, which led to less attention being paid to it overall. In some cases, this resulted in the collaborators having “only the melody line or maybe a sketchy orchestration.” Two students from SJSU’s School of Music, Andrea Gutierrez and Ryan Oldfield, orchestrated music from some of these sources so that they could be played by a symphony orchestra, as originally intended. Haramaki worked closely with Walton to ensure that the tempos and lengths were suitable for the various dances performed during the ball.

Danse Libre’s Artistic Directors Kimber Rudo and David Starke contributed their expertise in historical dances to arrange the music with the dance. “Most people don’t think about Beethoven as having written dance music,” Starke explains. “Particular things that Beethoven wrote as dances are kind of forgotten. Dance music tends to be less musically interesting than music that’s written to listen to.”

Dance music is made for people to dance to, which means repeating or cyclical patterns, whereas listening music has more variations and variety, Artistic Director of Danse Libre Kimber Rudo points out. “Dancers don’t like it when the tempo changes a lot, but musicians do.”

This year San José State’s Symphony Orchestra and Collegium Musicum took part in the Beethoven Ball as the live orchestra. For principal flute player, Alex Mullane, ’24 Aviation, the Beethoven Ball was his first experience playing for a live dance event. “All of my events that I played for are strictly concerts where people come in, sit down, listen to the music, enjoy it and then leave,” Mullane explains. “For this dance event, we’re going to have a lot of people who are moving around constantly. And that’s just so different, but in a good way.”

For musicians there’s a lot more cohesion and coordination that needs to go into playing dance music, Mullane says. “We have to remember that there are going to be people who are following our lead. We have to make sure that we’re well coordinated because if we get off even for just half a measure, or even a split second, that’s gonna throw so many people off.”

Dance Through Time’s Artistic Director Jennifer Meller performed an opening solo called “Mrs. Santlow’s Minuet” from 1725. “The dance is thought to be born from the music,” Meller says. “So the music does in that sense come first. In a lot of these extant choreographies we imagine that the music and dance were created together.”

Walton held a dance workshop to teach the steps of the dances featured at the Beethoven Ball. The goal of the workshop was to teach attendees all of the set dances that have repeating structures and patterns. All dances performed at the Beethoven Ball were historically accurate due to detailed diagrams and records kept of previous events which occurred centuries ago. She taught two kinds of dances, a longways set and three quadrilles.

Walton explained how in a longways set “couples stand in long lines, with the men on one side and the women on the other, facing each other down the hall, like the sort of thing you would see in Jane Austen movies.” Meanwhile, quadrilles are “like the great-grandparent of the square dances” with four couples all facing inwards. At the ball, Walton called steps so people did not have to memorize them. Walton says, “Being in the same room with people who are dancing to live music is more enjoyable than if they were just sitting and listening at a concert.”

The main way to access live classical music and dances through concert halls and professional reenactment events is inaccessible for the majority of people. The same experiences cannot be heard or felt when the music is played on devices or applications.  “The Beethoven Ball is a proponent of a sort of rediscovery,” Starke explains. “Even people who are familiar with Beethoven may not have heard or seen these pieces before.”

The ball gave people an opportunity to learn the dances. It also made Beethoven’s lesser known dance music accessible to people who otherwise would never have been able to experience it. Walton says, “What’s great about historical dancing in particular, is that it can be done by dancers of any age and ability.”