Page 274 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

272

I DETEST IMITATION.

I DETEST HACKNEYED

DEVICES

ROMEO AND JULIET (1936), SERGEI PROKOFIEV

ollowing Russia’s October opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk)
IN CONTEXT Revolution of 1917, when the Prokofiev turned his ballet into
F cold reality of Bolshevik rule orchestral suites.
FOCUS replaced the euphoria at the end of Despite the Stalinist purges,
Russian emigrés
tsarism, Russian composers faced Prokofiev returned to the Soviet
BEFORE a choice: whether or not to stay in Union in 1936, probably believing
1920 Stravinsky’s Symphonies their homeland. Much depended on that his fame would protect him.
of Wind Instruments, based on social status. Sergei Rachmaninov The same year, he wrote his most
Russian folk music, signals the chose exile, as did the privileged popular work, Peter and the Wolf. In
end of his “Russian phase.” Stravinsky, who was already living 1940, the first full-scale production
in Switzerland. The more lowly born of the ballet Romeo and Juliet took
1926 Living in New York, Prokofiev, who was sympathetic to place in Leningrad, but only after
Rachmaninoff writes Three Bolshevism, stayed, but in 1918, Prokofiev was forced to change the
Russian Songs, a rare tribute frustrated by the post-revolutionary orchestration, remove parts, and
to the music of his homeland. turmoil, Prokofiev accepted an offer reinstate the story’s sad ending. ■
to conduct in the United States and
AFTER remained there for the next 18 years.
1948 The Central Committee
of the Communist Party of Reluctant exile
the Soviet Union passes a Prokofiev kept ties with the Soviet
resolution accusing Prokofiev, Union and, in 1934, wrote Romeo
Shostakovich, Aram and Juliet. The music follows the The time is past when
Khachaturian, and other drama of the story—soft, humorous, music was written for
composers of “anti-democratic and intense in turn—but Prokofiev’s a handful of aesthetes.
tendencies,” and rejecting “the ballet was notable in that he gave Prokofiev
principles of classical music.” Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers a
happy ending. After two companies
1959 In Moscow, the full pulled out of staging the production
version of Prokofiev’s epic (amid concern over the authorities’
opera War and Peace is staged denunciation of Shostakovich’s
for the first time, six years after
the composer’s death. See also: Le Sacre du printemps 246–251 ■ Spartacus 309

US_272-273_Prokofiev_McFee.indd 272 26/03/18 1:01 PM