Henze's heart, however, was in the theatre. After his Ballet Variationsz was published in 1949, he was hired as director of the Wiesbaden ballet. While at Wiesbaden he wrote several ballets, including Jack Pudding (staged 1951), The Labyrinth (1951), and Der Idiot (1952), based on the Dostoevsky novel, The Idiot
Influenced by his experience in the theatre, Henze's music at this time was essentially dramatic, freely combining modern serial sound patterns with more thematic neoclassical tonal and harmonic...