The Four Temperaments

The Four Temperaments or Theme and Four Variations (The Four Temperaments) is an orchestral work and ballet by Paul Hindemith. Although it was originally conceived as a ballet for Léonide Massine, the score was ultimately completed as a commission for George Balanchine, who subsequently choreographed it as a neoclassical ballet based on the theory of the four temperaments.

The music was premiered in Switzerland by the Stadtorchester Winterthur under the direction of Hermann Scherchen on March 10, 1943. However, Balanchine created the choreography a few years later. The ballet, The Four Temperaments was the first work Balanchine made for the Ballet Society, the forerunner of the New York City Ballet, and premiered on November 20, 1946, at the Central High School of Needle Trades, New York, during the Ballet Society's first performance. Though at the premiere, critics did not receive the ballet well, it was later acknowledged as a "masterpiece," and was revived by ballet companies worldwide.

Hindemith's score was borne from the success of his previous collaboration with Massine, Nobilissima Visione. Initially, they both conceived of a ballet based on the paintings of Pieter Brueghel the Elder, a score which the composer was projecting to being akin to a "Flemish peasant Persephone." Although Hindemith had composed a significant portion of the score according to Massine's scenario by 1940, he lost confidence in the choreographer after he devised an entirely new scenario for the work. On April 26, 1940, Hindemith wrote to his publisher, Willy Strecker of B. Schott's Söhne, that he had "broken off" his partnership with Massine, but that work on the score was continuing on schedule. Although definitive proof has not been established, it is generally believed that Hindemith's music from his aborted project ultimately became The Four Temperaments. On November 4, 1940, Hindemith wrote that the music was "quite good and worthy of a better cause."

Balanchine first commissioned the score from Hindemith for his own amusement, as a way to spend his income from working on Broadway and Hollywood, hoping he could enjoy listening to and play it on the piano. At the time, Balanchine approached Hindemith's agent about a commissioned and learned that it would cost five hundred dollars, but Hindemith was unavailable at the time. A year later, he became available, and the first part of the music was sent to Balanchine a week later. The piece, "Theme with Four Variations (According to the Four Temperaments), for string orchestra and piano", had its first hearing at Balanchine's apartment in 52 Street, Fifth Avenue, Manhattan, conducted by Edvard Fendler, Nicholas Kopeikine on the piano, and the orchestra consisted of Balanchine's friends including Nathan Milstein, Samuel Dushkin, Léon Barzin and Raya Garbousova.

Balanchine first considered using Hindemith's score for a ballet in 1941, when the American Ballet was going tour in Latin America, sponsored by the State Department. The piece would be titled The Cave of Sleep, and Pavel Tchelitchew was brought in to design, but the project was abandoned due to its cost and Hindemith's objection.

Hindemith's piece was ultimately used in The Four Temperaments, the first ballet George Balanchine choreographed for the Ballet Society. The Ballet Society, co-founded by Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein, was a subscription-only company that would mainly perform new works, and the forerunner of New York City Ballet. One of the lead dancers in the original cast, Tanaquil Le Clercq, was seventeen when she created a lead role in this ballet, which was also her first professional solo role.

The costumes of the original production were designed by Kurt Seligmann, and were deemed impractical. Le Clercq called them "hideous" and "gave you a feeling of claustrophobia I can't describe." She noted the costumes include a wig with "a large white horn in the middle like a unicorn's," which she called "very irritating." It also included wings with "fingers enclosed." Starting with a 1951 New York City Ballet revival, the costumes were replaced with practice clothes, which include black leotards for women, white T-shirts and black tights for men.

... [The ballet] is an expression in dance and music of the ancient notion that the human organism is made up of four different humors, or temperaments. Each one of us possesses these four humors, but in different degrees, and it is from the dominance of one of them that the four physical and psychological types—melancholic, sanguinic, phlegmatic, and choleric—were derived ... Although the score is based on this idea of the four temperaments, neither the music nor the ballet itself makes specific or literal interpretation of the idea. An understanding of the Greek and medieval notion of the temperaments was merely the point of departure for both composer and choreographer.