Ballet music for a modern age with Peter Salem, the composing mastermind behind Dutch National Ballet’s latest commission, Lady Macbeth
In the distance, a throbbing clarinet, an eerie electric piano, and breathy violas rustle in the undergrowth guarded by resonant double basses. Thudding drums mask the deliberate tapping of ballerina’s feet as they enter stage right. The tide, ebbs and flows as virginal white doves flutter high above. I am sold.
Lady Macbeth, which premiered in Amsterdam in April 2025, takes Shakespeare’s powerful tragedy and retells it from a female perspective, specifically that of Lady Macbeth. The challenge set by Dutch National Ballet’s (DNB) Artistic Director Ted Bransen five years ago was to show what happens ‘off-stage’. To depict Lady Macbeth’s descent into madness, her friendship with Lady MacDuff and her ultimate betrayal by a husband she was clearly devoted to.
DNB’s recent commission brought together the tried and tested creative team of choreographer-director Helen Pickett, director James Bonas and composer Peter Salem. An artistic team specialising in the retelling of literature classics from a slightly different perspective. Recent collaborations include Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (2019) for Scottish Ballet, and Gustave Flaubert’s Emma Bovary (2023) for National Ballet of Canada in Toronto.
But who is British film, and ballet composer, Peter Salem, known to some as the composer of the longstanding UK TV hit, Call the Midwife?
How did he create such explicit storytelling in this fresh and accessible score for one of Shakespeare’s most well-known tragedies, Lady Macbeth? And how does his score intertwine with Pickett’s onstage ‘gesture language’ to create a compelling narrative?
Chatting in DNB’s euphoric post-premiere celebrations, I learn that this love of storytelling came late in life. And that in the early days, he wasn’t even attracted to the traditional concept of programmatic music.
Instead, over the years, Salem has created his own electro-acoustic musical language using ‘live music’ in its ‘rawest form’. By creating an environment more akin to a recording studio, sounds are adjusted in real time by a sound engineer sitting at the rear of the auditorium.
In Salem’s world, it’s not just the conductor who is in charge of the overall result.
Creating the sound in the auditorium
Overseen by the composer himself, the result is a work in progress as individual sounds are tweaked on a nightly basis. Should the clarinet perhaps sound a little floatier? And was there perhaps too much trumpet reverb or distortion? Salem is acutely aware of how individual auditoriums affect the end result, and with the DNB’s very crisp acoustics, he tells me post-performance that perhaps a little more echo and reverb are needed to give some notes “a bit more of a tail”. This way of working feels quite natural to the British composer, and is a concept he has used many times in the past.
No click tracks. Just a deep understanding of the score is all that is required.
In the auditorium as the sounds blend together, the audience are left to ponder what is real, and what is not? The music, cleverly mirroring the characters’ doubts and nagging thoughts: Lady Macbeth, haunted by the three witches in her dreams: and Banquo’s voice festering in Macbeth’s deepest consciousness. Salem blends the sound and transports the audience.
I was curious to know more about the many sound effects. But also, to understand Salem’s creative process and the role certain instruments play in the creation of character.
Chatting over Zoom from his London studio shortly after the show, my eyes wander to the assortment of instruments hanging on the wall behind. A banjo, and perhaps a mandolin? A question for another time perhaps.
The creation of character
The challenge when creating a new ballet, I learn, is the creation of character. In this case, to create a character for whom the audience can not only relate to, but have sympathy for. And unlike previous collaborations, the team had to ”dig deep” into aspects of Lady Macbeth’s character to “give meat” to the many aspects left untold by Shakespeare – a surprisingly detailed business.
“Macbeth is interesting, but Lady Macbeth is even more interesting. We are not creating a new Macbeth, but a real Lady Macbeth, in which Macbeth is part of Lady Macbeth’s life instead of the other way around.” James Bonas
At the premiere, Olga Smirnova’s interpretation drew immense sympathy for her character’s plight. But as Salem explains, each ballerina brings their own interpretation. In the second cast led by Dutch ballerina Anna Tsygankova, Lady Macbeth is a tragic heroine “who is less likeable from the start”.
For Salem, everything changes with the killing of Banquo at the end of Act 1: “I can understand her feeling guilty about the consequences of killing a king, rather than feeling guilty about killing the king. The key is not to make her too mad, too soon, because I wanted to see her journey. This is what Shakespeare really doesn’t show.
“It reminds me of the film The Italian Job, where Michael Caine says: ‘You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!’
All they had to do was kill the king, and then they could be powerful and happy. But Macbeth becomes more and more paranoid and starts murdering people, and their world falls apart.”
In performance, Smirnova portrayed Lady Macbeth’s frustration – her controlling husband quickening her descent into turmoil. I saw the pain in her oh-so-subtle and descriptive hand gestures. And I even sympathised with the constraints experienced by women in early 16th century Scotland. Constraints, some may argue, that still exist today.
Salem continues: “She’s a woman in a society where women have very little power or influence, and that frustrates her. She thought that after killing the king and getting rid of the old regime, she would gain some control and freedom as a woman. But Macbeth completely shuts her down.”
This exploration of male and female roles in society, “in an age when we’re really not supposed to stereotype” is fundamental, Salem says.
“Shakespeare seems to be saying that these concepts of gender are completely wrong. Lady Macbeth thinks she’s got to take on the gender-stereotype of a man to be brutal and political, but the result is a disaster.”
Does Shakespeare question the very concept of manhood?
“Absolutely!” Salem retorts. “When Lady Macbeth berates her husband, telling him not to be so womanly; to pull himself together and go and kill the king! Macbeth is hopeless when it comes to being a man. Instead of being political and brutal, he becomes paranoid and starts killing all his friends.”
The creative process
“With regard to the creative process, in ballet, the music comes first,” Salem says. “For practical reasons. I get a treatment, and then I write the score and send tracks off to Helen to make sure it’s something she can work with and helps her to ‘see’ the scene. When I have a chance, I like to work with videos of the dancers, especially those from early workshops.”
Once the actual choreography rehearsals start, “inevitably, you’ll want to cut or expand little bits, but not a lot has changed.”
I learnt that on rare occasions, there may be requests for extra time to cope with scene changes… But adding even another minute’s worth of music can be dramatically challenging as well as practically difficult when 70 orchestral parts need to be amended. “You have to hope that any challenges with the set are overcome!” he adds.
A definition of Salem’s composing style
After a wry smile and a deep intake of breath, Salem tells me that while there is a sort of consistency to his output, like most composers, he’s not sure he actually has a style.
“Obviously I use elements of minimal music and aleatoric techniques, but my style is basically tonal, even old-fashioned, at times harking back to the language of Stravinsky. It’s a mixture of everything I’ve liked and absorbed. I try to use the simplest and most effective means possible, but it always ends up quite layered.”
I would go further.
In this latest score, Salem cleverly blends different genres to subliminally transport the listener to a recognisable physical context. In this case, the British Isles. The viola’s gripping opening solo – an expansive melody built on Vaughan Williams-like modal intervals – is a something (to my mind) only a British composer can truly create.
Listen also to principal viola Naomi Peter’s opening viola solo (3 mins in)
In contrast, a wild party celebrating Macbeth’s coronation as king uses Scottish reels full of scotch snaps, folk drum rhythms and Celtic harps to transport us to the rugged Scottish Highlands.
Mixed with a splash of Eastern European modality meets the rhythmic groove of club dance music, the hypnotic thrum of Irish sensation Riverdance, and indigenous Indian/ American rhythms, you could easily mistake the score for a film soundtrack. The composer, always with half an eye on the dancer’s rhythms, thinking: ‘What works for them?’
“All these styles are in my vocabulary, and I draw on them when it helps tell the story. I don’t limit myself. And with dance, I feel slightly liberated because I can use everything. I want to express everything: from fear, to hate, to love, to all the incredible things you can express through music. I am not a minimalist, but I use their techniques.
On reflection, Salem concludes: “My style is quite eclectic!”
“One of the challenges of this ballet was to create a sound world with a live orchestra which was sonically dark and atmospheric enough for the subject matter, in a fairly dry acoustic. Orchestras naturally produce a very ‘present’, sound, so the use of reverb and the addition of electronic sounds was critical to me.
“To have these colours available is fantastic!”
“In Lady Macbeth, I use string clusters a bit like those in Ligetti’s Atmosphères. I was worried this would take it into the realm of a 70s or 80s film score, but I tend to dirty them up by adding detuned keyboards to create slightly druggy sounds. I could have de-tuned the strings themselves, but there just isn’t the time required for this when rehearsing a big piece on a tight schedule . . . maybe next time!”
These ‘slightly druggy sounds’ are used to great effect when Lady Macbeth finds Lady Macduff drugged on the floor.
An extract from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 film: A Space Odyssey which features those of string clusters from Ligeti’s Atmosphères, (1961) full of distinct isolated orchestral sounds.
Creating a distinctive sound world
Salem uses individual instruments to create not only character, but to depict themes. The most obvious is the use of drums to depict manliness.
“Macbeth is a really difficult subject because you immediately think of trumpets and drums on the battlefield, and they certainly feature more than I thought they would! Instead, I use colour to aide my storytelling.
“I use drum rhythms and an SPD electronic drum pad shared between two percussion players, to depict the stereotypical idea of how to be a man. Drums also give weight to the celebratory scenes with their military association. As the soldiers return from battle and recount stories of the battlefield. However, I recycle these rhythms later for Lady Macbeth to draw parallels when she tries to be brutal and political”. Drums and trumpets are not just the domain of the males!
The trumpet as the barometer
“I tried to avoid the usual cliches when depicting dances from a specific period, so I tapped into the world of Club Dance rhythms using little trumpet rhythmic patterns on just one note, to suggest the new regime full of young people on the rise,” Salem explains. “As Macbeth’s world falls apart, the celebratory feel descends into darkness. The trumpet’s writing mirrors this descent and becomes quite wild and distorted.”
Letting the lower strings shine
The viola, likewise uses colour to mirror Lady Macbeth’s changing emotions. Her early frustrations as she plots with her husband are full of bright, high sounds “with just a little bit of tremolo”. But by the time we reach her eventual descent into “a crazy hysteria and despair”, the viola’s solo reaches parts of the instrument many viola players fear to tread, complete with added distortion!
Double basses and bassoons ground the sound and “pull everything down, especially when depicting sleep-walking sections. They make such a fantastic sound sliding down the instrument. They’re very sensual, earthy and dark which links well to the sexual and violent passages in the murder scene.”
Creating that Club Dance vibe
Helen Pickett had the idea to create a very fresh Shakespearean sub-plot full of humour, using every-day sounds. So Salem uses kitchen utensils and cutlery to augment orchestral effects and help create that Club Dance vibe in the kitchen scene where the cast are now clad in chef’s whites.
“I was trying to represent a kind of youthful, almost Posh and Beck’s kind of glitzy glamour. So we incorporated rhythmic elements of dance music. I just went around my kitchen testing all my Le Creuset pans, and sampled them in.” The result is a mixture of layered and incredibly complex live and sampled drum machine sounds providing the backdrop to some very angular dance moves. And by sampling the sounds instead of playing them live, Salem gets the sounds he wants. Rather clever!
I still had one niggling question which I had been unable to solve…
Throughout the performance, the rainmaker fascinated me as it loomed menacingly for each character’s fateful end. Salem explains that he did originally indicate a rainmaker in the score, but the DNB percussionists suggested using sandpaper instead!
The conductor
All of this is of course impossible without a conductor able to interpret a composer’s true intentions. So I ask how easy it was to translate his vision to the musical director Koen Kessels.
“Kessels is absolutely brilliant! He really got it. We talked a lot about the drama,” Salem says. “The Dutch Ballet Orchestra were amazing, especially principal viola, Naomi Peters.”
The future
Imminent projects include a piano quartet for Jane Austen’s anniversary, extending Emma Bovary by ten minutes for Toronto’s National Ballet of Canada, and visits to productions of The Crucible and Frida next year.
However, any hope of a short well-deserved break after producing three ballets in a row are a distant dream. With a further three more ballets in the pipeline, Salem emails with the news that “I’ve actually just agreed to create a new ballet for Northern Ballet: Gentleman Jack which opens in March!” British audiences are in for a treat!
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