<P> Some contemporaries of Tchaikovsky recalled the composer taking great interest in the life story of Bavarian King Ludwig II, whose tragic life had supposedly been marked by the sign of Swan and could have been the prototype of the dreamer Prince Siegfried . However, Ludwig's tragic death happened 10 years after the first performance of the ballet . </P> <P> Begichev commissioned the score of Swan Lake from Tchaikovsky in May 1875 for 800 rubles . Tchaikovsky worked with only a basic outline from Julius Reisinger of the requirements for each dance . However, unlike the instructions for the scores of The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, no written instruction is known to have survived . </P> <P> From around the time of the turn of the 19th century until the beginning of the 1890s, scores for ballets were almost always written by composers known as "specialists," who were highly skilled at scoring the light, decorative, melodious, and rhythmically clear music that was at that time in vogue for ballet . Tchaikovsky studied the music of "specialists" such as the Italian Cesare Pugni and the Austrian Ludwig Minkus, before setting to work on Swan Lake . </P> <P> Tchaikovsky had a rather negative opinion of the "specialist" ballet music until he studied it in detail, being impressed by the nearly limitless variety of infectious melodies their scores contained . Tchaikovsky most admired the ballet music of such composers as Léo Delibes, Adolphe Adam, and later, Riccardo Drigo . He would later write to his protégé, the composer Sergei Taneyev, "I listened to the Delibes ballet' Sylvia'...what charm, what elegance, what wealth of melody, rhythm, and harmony . I was ashamed, for if I had known of this music then, I would not have written' Swan Lake ."' Tchaikovsky most admired Adam's 1844 score for Giselle, which used the Leitmotif technique: associating certain themes with certain characters or moods, a technique he would use in Swan Lake, and later, The Sleeping Beauty . </P>

Who is responsible for interpreting a ballets scenario