The Quest (ballet)
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The Quest is a ballet score by William Walton, written for a ballet of the same title, now lost, choreographed by Frederick Ashton in 1943. Two versions of the score exist: one for the small orchestra for which Walton wrote (because of wartime constraints), and a posthumously constructed version rescored for an orchestra of the larger size usually favoured by the composer. The ballet, with a scenario by Doris Langley Moore, was based on The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser. It was first given by the Sadler's Wells Ballet company.
By the 1940s Walton was an established composer, known for works including a symphony, three concertos, the cantata Belshazzar's Feast and the "entertainment" Façade.[1] From the last, he had fashioned two orchestral suites, which the choreographer Frederick Ashton used for his 1931 ballet Façade. During the Second World War Walton worked with the Army Film Unit and Ashton was in the Royal Air Force. Kenneth Clark, an influential figure in the arts world, secured Ashton six weeks' leave of absence from the Air Ministry to create a new ballet for the Sadler's Wells company.[2] By 1943 the company was performing mostly away from London, taking ballet round the country, with its dancers, orchestra and backstage staff heavily depleted by wartime conscription.[3]
Ashton chose to create what he later called "a piece of wartime propaganda", depicting the triumph of good over evil.[4] He chose a story from The Faerie Queene by the Elizabethan poet Edmund Spenser, and quickly chose his collaborators to get the piece created and staged within six weeks. The scenario was by his friend Doris Langley Moore, the costumes and scenery by John Piper and the music by Walton.[5]
Robert Helpmann played the hero, Saint George, opposite Margot Fonteyn as Una, the personification of Truth. Her alter ago, played by Beryl Grey, was Duessa, "the scarlet whore", embodying Falsehood. The Seven Deadly Sins led by Pride appear in Scene 3 and holiness returns in the fifth and final scene with Faith, Hope and Charity. Walton's music, composed in great haste, followed the scenario carefully, though without great enthusiasm on his part. A slow and painstaking writer as a rule, he called on Roy Douglas and Ernest Irving to help with the orchestration. He wrote of The Quest in 1957:
The ballet was premiered on 7 April 1943 at the New Theatre in London and then taken out on tour. It was well received at the premiere,[7] and, despite the composer's reservations, was a success, being given 93 performances over the next two years.[8] The ballet historian Geraldine Morris suggests that the work fell out of favour after the war because of its wartime "propagandist, patriotic elements".[8] One critic wrote in 1943 that The Quest should be seen by everyone, "for as the curtain falls one is tempted to cry with Shakespeare: 'God for Harry, England and St George'".[9] After 1945 the work dropped out of the repertoire and Ashton's choreography is now lost.[8]
