S.S. Prokofiev. Around the Ballet

Main Article Content

Natalia P. Savkina

Abstract

Prokofiev began writing ballet works at the time of the most sudden change in the genre’s musical history. His active joining to this art came sometime after three Russian ballets by Stravinsky were staged. Generally contacting with choreographers was hard for Prokofiev. Conflict situations emerged constantly: before composition and after one, and sometimes they broke out into something unexpected. Will the order be received? Will the idea acquire the attributes of practical implementation? And, accordingly, will it come to the premiere? And then the money problems were starting. The documental sources for this article had been found in the Serge Prokofiev’s Archive (SPA) in London (before 2013) and in the todayʼs archive location –in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library of the Columbia University (New York, since 2014).
These materials introduce some episodes of Prokofiev’s collaboration with workers of the ballet world. Semantic accents of a different nature emerge in the letters: new data of a factual nature appear; creative factors show up in an unusual light. Documentary sources notify Prokofiev’s failed projects with Ida Rubinstein and Sergei Gorodetsky, the difficulties of staging “Steel Lope”, the music content of the ballet “On the Dnieper” as the composer himself initially understood it.
In the correspondence concerning theatrical disorders, hard negotiations with the co-authors the processes of the cultural and artistic life in Europe in 1920s is reflected.


Keywords: Russian ballet of Sergei Diagilev, S. Prokofiev, G. Iakulov, L. Miassin, S. Lifar,
M. Larionov, S. Gorodetsky

Article Details

How to Cite
Savkina Н. П. (2022). S.S. Prokofiev. Around the Ballet. Music Scholarship / Problemy Muzykal’noj Nauki, 49(4), 75–88. Retrieved from https://musicscholar.ru/index.php/PMN/article/view/1411
Section
Musical Theater
Author Biography

Natalia P. Savkina, P.I. Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory, Moscow, Russia

PhD (Arts), Associate Professor at the History of Russian Music Department