You know, when we talk about the giants of culture,
like the institutions that completely define
a century of art, we have this really bad habit
of looking only at the marquee names. The ones
on the posters. Exactly. We completely fixate
on the prima ballerina because, well, she's the
one catching the light. Or we obsess over the
conductor. Or the visionary choreographer. Right,
because their names are the ones bolded in all
the history books. Yeah. It's basically the...
The great man theory of history but applied to
the arts. We just really want a singular genius
to worship. We really do. But if you actually
dig into the machinery of these places, if you
look at the source material, you realize the
genius isn't usually a solo act. It rarely ever
is. It's supported by this massive invisible
infrastructure. And for today's deep dive, I
want to talk about one specific piece of human
infrastructure who honestly basically held the
Royal Ballet together for over 40 years. It's
an incredible story. And she didn't do it from
a podium or, you know, center stage. No, she
did it from a piano bench. We're talking about
Hilda Gaunt. Hilda Gaunt. It's a name that, unless
you are a totally diehard scholar of British
dance history, you've probably never heard. Most
people definitely haven't. But the picture painted
of her in these biographical records and historical
accounts from Wikipedia covering roughly 1906
to 1975, it's just captivating. It really is.
Because we aren't talking about some stiff formal
accompanist in a recital hall. We are talking
about this change smoking hard -drinking musical
powerhouse who sat at a battered upright piano
day in and day out yes literally shaping the
way British Ballet actually sounds from the shadows
and shaping really is the right word here because
it's easy to look at her title you know rehearsal
pianist, and just assumed she was background
noise. Like a metronome with a pulse. Exactly.
But when you look at the historical accounts
of her work starting around 1931, you realize
that rehearsal pianist is a massive understatement.
A huge understatement. In her case, it was a
lot more like musical director by proxy. That's
the part that really grabbed me when I was looking
at the sources. I think we need to dispel this
idea that a rehearsal pianist just sits there
and plays plink plonk while the dancers stretch.
Oh, absolutely not. If you're playing for a company
on the level of the Vic Wells Ballet, which is
what eventually becomes the Royal Ballet, the
job is physically and intellectually brutal,
isn't it? Oh, it's foundational. Okay. You have
to essentially be a full orchestra reduced to
ten fingers. Which is wild to think about. It
is. I mean, think about a classic ballet score,
something like Stravinsky or Tchaikovsky. You've
got brass sections. Percussion. Soaring strings,
woodwinds, and a rehearsal pianist has to translate
all of that texture, all of that weight onto
a single keyboard. You have to play the energy
of the orchestra, not just the melody. Precisely.
And they have to do it with the exact correct
percussive attacks so the dancers can actually
feel the beat in their bodies. And you're doing
this for, what, hours on end? Hours. often stopping
and starting every four bars because the choreographer
wants to change a tiny step. That sounds exhausting.
It requires a level of patience and stamina that
honestly most concert pianists simply don't have.
But Hilda Gaunt wasn't just good at this. She
was the absolute gold standard. Right, because
she was a serious British pianist who started
gaining attention in the late 1920s and early
30s. Yeah, and then she joins the company in
1931. Right at the foundation. This is the era
of building something from nothing. And she gets
paired up with Constant Lambert. The musical
director. Now, Lambert is a legend in his own
right. Brilliant, chaotic, totally a genius.
But the record suggests that Hilda wasn't just
his assistant. Not at all. She was practically
his other half musically. She was assisting with
the musical supervision of classic ballet scores.
Which is a heavy responsibility. I mean, she
was making real decisions about tempos, about
cuts. How the music would breathe. Exactly. In
a lot of ways, she was the bridge between Lambert's
high -level musical vision and the sweaty physical
reality of the dance studio. And that reality
got incredibly dark, incredibly fast. Because
we have to talk about the war years now. The
Second World War. Yeah. Because if managing a
ballet company is hard in peacetime, doing it
while the Luftwaffe is dropping bombs seems impossible.
The war completely dismantled the normal operations
of the arts in the UK. Right. The government
realized they needed to keep morale up, so they
sent companies touring across the country. But
you couldn't just tour a full symphony orchestra.
It was considered a luxury. You can't fit 60
musicians and all their massive instruments on
a train moving through a blackout zone. It was
too expensive and far too dangerous. So the orchestra
had to be cut. Which leaves the ballet with a
massive problem. You can dance without sets.
You can dance in terrible costumes. But you cannot
dance without music. Enter Hilda. Enter Hilda
Gaunt and the two piano arrangement. I love this
part. For a huge portion of the war, the entire
orchestra for the Royal Ballet's extensive UK
tours was literally just Hilda Gaunt and Constant
Lambert sitting at two pianos. Sometimes Harold
Rutland would sub in, right? Yes, sometimes Harold
Rutland. But Hilda was the anchor. She was the
reliable one. Just... Try to imagine the acoustics
of that for a second. You're the listener. You're
sitting in a drafty theater in some provincial
town. You're there for an escape from the blitz.
Right. You want a distraction. And instead of
that lush, sweeping, orchestral sound you expect
from Swan Lake, you get this percussive, driving,
intense piano sound. It completely changes the
entire character of the performance. It makes
it so much more raw and immediate. And what's
incredible to me is that the sources say this
was done to general acclaim. Which is shocking
when you think about critics. Critics are usually
such purists you'd totally expect them to complain
that it sounded thin or cheap. The fact that
they didn't complain is a massive testament to
Gaunt's sheer power and skill. Yeah. Because
to fill a whole theater with just pianos, you
have to play with immense physical force. You're
creating dynamic swells that mimic a hundred
instruments. It's an athletic feat. She wasn't
just keeping time, she was carrying the emotional
weight of the entire production on her back,
night after night. While living a pretty grueling
life, let's be honest. Oh, absolutely. Touring
in wartime meant cold trains, bad food, rationing,
constant fear, which naturally brings us to the
vibe of Heldegant. The personality behind the
piano. Because we have to move away from just
dry dates here. She wasn't this austere, terrifying
matron. The descriptions of her are so vivid,
they feel like scenes from a movie. Annabelle
Fargin's description is probably one of the best
primary sources we have for the atmosphere of
those rehearsals. She was a ballerina, right?
Yes. And she describes Hilda sitting at the piano,
usually a battered upright, not some pristine
concert grand. Naturally. With a cigarette permanently
drooping from her mouth. I can just see it, the
smoke curling up into her eyes while she's playing
some incredibly complex passage. And she had
this husky, smoky voice. Vargen notes that she
was often the only filter through which information
about a new ballet could be sifted. A gossip
filter. That is such a crucial insight into how
organizations actually work. Oh, totally. Think
about it. In any high -pressure office, and a
ballet company is definitely a high -pressure
office, there is always that one person who actually
knows what's going on. The person you go to when
you're too scared to ask the boss. Exactly. The
choreographers, people like DeVille Waugh or
Ashton, they were terrifying distant authority
figures. But Hilda was right there in the corner.
She was accessible. If you wanted to know if
you were getting a solo, or if the director was
in a bad mood, you didn't go to management, you
went to Hilda at the piano. She was the emotional
hub of the room. The water cooler and the therapist
rolled into one. And that extended to the leadership,
too. There's that amazing anecdote from Frederick
Ashton about why Constant Lambert bonded with
her so much. Right. It wasn't just her playing.
Ashton said Gaunt endeared herself to Lambert
because she was, quote, a tremendous drinker.
And she was always on tap. Always on tap. It's
a funny line, but it really points to something
deeper about the culture of elite ballet. Yeah,
it shows how they survived it. We shouldn't romanticize
the alcoholism. It was clearly a coping mechanism
for the stress. But you have to understand the
isolation of leadership. Lambert was under immense
pressure. Exactly. He was lonely. Hilda provided
a peer relationship. They could drink together,
smoke together, complain about the dancers together.
That informality, that camaraderie, it creates
a kind of trench warfare bond. It cemented her
position not just as an employee, but as an indispensable
creative partner. It really humanizes the high
art. We see the polished performance, but we
don't see the hungover rehearsals or the stress
smoking. Hilda represents that gritty reality,
but I want to pivot back to her creative collaboration
because there's a story that proves she was way
more than just a placeholder. You're talking
about The Quest. The Quest in 1943. This is probably
the most significant example of her invisible
hand in the creative process. So the company
is commissioning this new ballet. The music is
by William Walton. A titan of British music.
A titan who is notoriously slow at finishing
things. Which is a nightmare. The premiere is
fast approaching. The dancers are ruddy. Frederick
Ashton is ready to choreograph. But the score
isn't finished. You literally can't choreograph
a ballet if you don't know how long the music
is or what the rhythm is going to be. So Ashton
is stuck. He can't afford to wait. So he turns
the hill to gaunt and essentially says... Make
something up. Right. He asks her to improvise
music at the right length and tempo that fits
the idea of the scene so he can actually start
building the movement. Just pause on that for
a second. Ashton is choreographing to her improvisation.
Yes. That means the foundational rhythm of the
dance, the phrasing, the emotional peaks. They
are all reacting to Hilda Gaunt's brain, not
William Walton's. That is the crucial point here.
Because when Walton's real score finally arrived,
late as expected, Ashton didn't scrap his choreography.
He couldn't. It was too late. Right. He just
tweaked the steps to fit the new music. But the
skeleton of the ballet was already built. and
it was built on Gond's musical instincts. It
totally blurs the line of authorship. The program
probably said, music by Walton, choreography
by Ashton. But the structure was essentially
music by Gond. She acted as a literal placeholder
for the composer. The person in the room solving
the immediate crisis often leaves a bigger fingerprint
on the work than the famous person commissioned
to write it. And that deep understanding of the
works is what led to her becoming the institutional
memory of the Royal Ballet. Let's talk about
that. The keeper of the repertoire. I was looking
at the notes on the revival of Sylvia in 1963.
This brings up a massive issue in dance history.
which is preservation. Right, because today we
have 4K video of everything. We have video. We
have advanced notation systems. But back then,
a ballet existed almost entirely in the bodies
of the dancers. So if a dancer retired, that
knowledge left with them. It could literally
disappear. Yeah. Sylvie had been out of the repertoire
for four years by 1963. That's a long time. People
forget the nuances. Exactly. So when they decided
to bring it back, they didn't just read a book.
Director John Field looked to Hilda to help reconstruct
it. She knew the work when others had forgotten
it. She was like the backup hard drive for the
institution. She remembered the exact tempos.
She knew where a jump needed to be slower or
where a transition needed a slight pause. She
was holding the continuity of the royal ballet
in her head. Without people like her, these great
works would have degraded over time. They would
have just become pale shadows of themselves.
She kept them sharp. And she didn't slow down
either. You'd think by the 1970s she'd be taking
it easy. She was nearing the end of her life.
But in 1974, she takes on what might be her most
complex musical challenge yet. L 'histoire de
Manon. Yes. Choreographed by Kenneth McMillan.
It's considered one of the great dramatic ballets
of the 20th century. The music is credited to
Jules Massenet. But the catch is, Massenet never
wrote a ballet called Manon. Right. So where
did the score actually come from? It was a compilation.
Hilde Gaunt collaborated with Leighton Lucas.
And they basically had to sift through Messonnier's
entire catalog. Operas, orchestral suites, songs.
They took all this existing music and stitched
it together to form a coherent narrative structure
for a three -act ballet. People might hear that
think, oh, it's just making a mixtape, putting
one nice song next to another. But it's infinitely
harder than that. This is real musicology and
arranging. You have to match keys, right? Exactly.
You can't just jump from C major to F sharp minor
without it sounding completely jarring. You have
to match the instrumentation. And you have to
create a dramatic arc that rises and falls with
the story of the dance. If the music peaks too
early, the choreography feels anticlimactic.
If it doesn't build enough, the whole scene feels
flat. So she was analyzing the emotional narrative
of the ballet and finding the exact right bars
of music from a dead French composer to support
it. Taking existing music and shaping it into
dance. It proves she possessed a composer's understanding
of structure and a dramaturg's understanding
of story. It's an incredible capstone to her
career. From the battered upright piano in the
30s to arranging a masterpiece in the 70s, she
really saw the entire golden age of British ballet.
She didn't just see it. She was the engine that
powered it. There is one final credit of hers
from the source material that I just love. It's
the ultimate metaphor for her entire life and
career. You're talking about the film credit.
Yes. The famous 1948 film The Red Shoes. The
most famous ballet movie ever made. If you look
at the credits, Hilda Gaunt is listed as the
accompanist, but we should clarify for the listener
if you actually watch the movie. You won't see
her. No, she is heard but not seen. Millions
of people have watched that movie and heard her
playing. They've heard that specific touch, that
exact attack we were talking about earlier. But
they're watching the actors on screen. It sums
up her existence perfectly. She was the audio
track to the visual spectacle. The audience is
there for the visuals, the costumes, the leaps,
the drama, but the entire visual experience rests
entirely on the sonic foundation that she built.
High culture so often relies on this gritty unglamorous
labor. People like Gantt who literally keep the
tempo so everyone else can shine. We really tend
to erase the labor from art, don't we? We want
it to feel like magic. We don't want to think
about the sweat or the hangovers or the battered
pianos. But Hilda Gantt forces us to look at
the labor. She reminds us that high culture is
actually just really hard work done by talented
people over a very long period of time. And often
done without any applause. She did this for 40
years, mostly in the shadows, not for the fame,
but just because the work needed to be done.
holding the Royal Ballet together through war
and peace. It's deeply humbling. It really is.
So that is the story of Hildegandt, the invisible
engine of the Royal Ballet. But before we wrap
up this deep dive, I want to leave you, the listener,
with a final thought to mull over. Something
to explore on your own. Exactly. I want you to
look at the organizations or the art forms that
you love. Maybe it's your workplace, maybe it's
community theater or your favorite sports team.
Look at the people holding it together. Right,
who is the heldagant? Who is that person sitting
at the battered desk or the piano making sure
the show actually goes on, even if they never
get the standing ovation? They might be a little
rough around the edges, but if they left, the
whole thing would collapse. Maybe it's time we
finally noticed them.