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Throughout the 1930’s, Ashton had provided the burgeoning British ballet scene with a stream of new works. Eclectic in his choice of music, he had worked with English composers such as Peter Warlock (Capriol Suite), William Walton (Façade), and Lord Berners (A Wedding Bouquet), as well as using arrangements of composers such as Liszt and Meyerbeer (Mephisto Waltz and Les Patineurs respectively). These arrangements were provided by Constant Lambert, whose expertise and guiding hand as musical director were such important factors in the company’s progress. There had also been Ashton’s realisation of Stravinsky’s Le Baiser de La Fée for Sadler’s Wells in 1935, the year in which he was appointed chief choreographer of the company. In the earlier part of the decade, Ashton had already provided the Vic-Wells Ballet with new work: Regatta (1931) had been commissioned from him as guest choreographer, and Les Rendezvous (1933) dated from the year he joined the company. After the outbreak of war in 1939, the music of Liszt (again arranged by Lambert) was the choice for a ballet depicting the battle between the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness; first staged in January 1940, Ashton’s Dante Sonata (inspired by illustrations of scenes from Dante’s La Divina Commedia) was a clear comment by the choreographer on the tragic sequence of events that had taken Europe into war for the second time in the 20^th century.

With the outbreak of war, Ashton found himself in the RAF, wondering how he would have the opportunity at some time in the future to develop his choreographic career. He knew that he hadn’t yet said nearly enough. During what was a frustrating and unhappy time for him, he read particularly the works of mystical authors, especially St. John of the Cross and St. Theresa of Avila. Towards the end of the war, when he was stationed at the Air Ministry as an Intelligence Officer, he had a chance to see what was happening on the ballet stage (there was at this time a notable tendency towards literary and dramatic works), though he did not himself yet have the opportunity for creating new work.

Eventually that opportunity came. The horrors and frustrations of wartime over, Ashton was able to provide what he felt was needed as an antidote to the representational work of the previous few years. In the starkness of the early post-war era, the time was right for him to clarify his thoughts. His choice of music for what became a defining work lay with César Franck’s Symphonic Variations for Piano and Orchestra. This was a work he had known for some time, and he had hoped there would be an opportunity for using it, though his original ideas had been towards a ballet with a distinct scenario rather than a plotless one. Ashton’s Symphonic Variations was one of a number of his ballets at this time in which the title was derived from the title of the music, evidence of a tendency to allow himself to be led by the music. And indeed he was led by his love of the music for Symphonic Variations; this was one occasion when he disagreed with Constant Lambert over the choice of a score for a new ballet. Lambert had considerable misgivings about the use of symphonic music for ballet (and there had been a trend in that direction during the 1930’s, especially with the ballets of Massine). In the event Lambert could see the success of the outcome of Symphonic Variations. The pianist at the first performance of the ballet was Angus Morrison, a friend of both Ashton and Lambert, who worked with Ashton when the initial ideas for the ballet were being worked out.

Even then, despite the lengthy experimentation Ashton undertook as he prepared the work, he found that he had not, at first, learned to eliminate enough. The ballet was almost complete when one of the six dancers, Michael Somes, had to take time out for a knee operation. The first night was postponed for about two months. When rehearsals recommenced, Ashton simplified the choreography yet further. The designer, Sophie Fedorovitch, was also present at rehearsals, and was involved in discussions about the progress of the ballet. Eventually the work received its premiere, pared and purified, responding to the music with an economy of expression that provided a starting point from which other ballets, whether plotless or not, could grow. By the end of 1948, Ashton had continued his and the company’s development by producing both abstract and narrative work. First he returned to the music of Stravinsky for Scènes de Ballet, given its première in February of that year. Before creating this ballet, Ashton immersed himself in the theories of Euclidean geometry as he worked out logical patterns for the dance. But Ashton was also well known as a man of the theatre, and in December 1948 came the première of his first full-length work, Cinderella. Here was a story ballet full of English theatrical tradition, imbued with Ashton’s theatrical sense, but strengthened by the experience of the two earlier works.

Symphonic Variations

Music by César Franck (1822-1890), composed 1885, and first performed in Paris at the Société nationale de musique on 1^st May 1886.

Choreography by Frederick Ashton first performed by Sadler’s Wells Ballet at Covent Garden on 24^th April 1946, with Fonteyn, May, Shearer, Somes, Shaw, Danton (décor by Sophie Fedorovitch).

The composer and his music

César Franck was born in 1822, a native of Liège. This part of Belgium (French-speaking Wallonia) had always identified itself strongly with France (especially so in the case of Liège), but Franck also had ancestors of Germanic stock. His father hoped that he would make a career as a virtuoso pianist, to which end the young César studied at both the Liège and Paris Conservatoires. Eventually, Franck did become a significant figure in French music, exerting an extremely powerful influence on the direction of new music in his adopted country, though it was as an organist, teacher, and composer rather than as a piano virtuoso.

In 1844 the family settled in Paris. Two years later, Franck left the family home to fend for himself, and in 1848 married an actress, much to his father’s displeasure. He had not achieved any great success as a pianist or composer, and instead found work as a teacher and organist. At this time, French organ music had lost the pre-eminence it had achieved during the 17^th century. The colour and dignity of the compositions for the fine organs of the baroque had given way to pallid compositions of no great depth; significant French composers seemed to have no great interest in writing for the instrument. However, in the mid-century a man of great imagination started to produce new organs that were ideally suited to the temperament and ideals of musicians of the romantic era. Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, the builder of many magnificent organs needed only a performer-composer of the first rank to make the most of the capabilities of these instruments; that he found in César Franck, who became attached to the firm. In 1858 Franck was appointed organist at the new basilica of Ste. Clotilde, a post he held with great distinction till his death. It was not only his ability as an executant that was acclaimed; his legendary skill at improvisation attracted the attention of Franz Liszt who hailed him as the greatest improviser since Bach. At last, Franck’s music attracted attention, the Six Pieces for Organ being published in 1862. In 1872 Franck was appointed professor of organ at the Paris Conservatoire. 

During the 1870’s Franck became heavily influenced by the music of Wagner, especially the intense chromaticisms of Tristan und Isolde. Wagner had divided the musical world; he was an influence that could not be ignored. Composers striving for new directions generally either adopted his techniques or studiously avoided them. Inevitably the influence of a German composer in French music was a contentious issue after the French defeat against Prussia in 1870, but there was a desire amongst some to give French music a new depth and seriousness. The best French music before Franck was often characterised by a certain Gallic elegance and charm, and these continued to be the attributes of one thread in French music represented by composers such as Fauré. However, too frequently such qualities were lost in a tendency towards the sentimental and superficial. Franck was attracted by the rich chromaticism of Liszt and Wagner, but he tempered this expressive emotionalism with careful attention to traditional classical attributes of compositional method that would keep his strongly colourful brand of romanticism in check. He developed a strong adherence to cyclic principles in his structures, and his rich musical language, with its balance between expressivity and control, greatly impressed a number of admirers, including composers such as d'Indy (who wrote a biography of Franck), Chausson, Dukas, Duparc, and Lekeu. After Franck’s death, his ideals were perpetuated by those who styled themselves the Bande à Franck.

Franck’s most significant compositions, whether oratorio, orchestral, chamber, or keyboard, date from the 1870’s and 1880’s. However, his work did not immediately attract great attention; Paris at that time was more interested in opera than serious concert music, and Franck therefore appeared to be somewhat on the periphery of French musical life. However, his influence as a teacher continued to be strong. He was known to his pupils as Pater seraphicus, such was his genial nature, and one of these (Vincent d’Indy) organized a concert of his music in 1887. Nevertheless, his symphony baffled listeners when it was first heard in 1889. However, it must be said that Franck helped to re-establish an audience for pure music in France at this time. He was a warm-hearted but serious artist, who made a great contribution to the development of French chamber and orchestral music at a time when the Société nationale, founded in 1871 after the nation’s military defeat in the Franco-Prussian war, was providing a platform for new instrumental composition by French composers. Franck was made a Chevalier du Légion d’Honneur in 1885. Many of the leading names in French music were present at his funeral, the oration being given by a fellow composer, Emmanuel Chabrier.

Symphonic Variations

The Variations Symphoniques for piano and orchestra date from 1885, the first performance being given on 1^st May 1886 with Franck conducting. Piano concertos written during the 19^th century were often bravura affairs, involving at some point at least an amount of virtuoso fireworks between soloist and orchestra. For Franck, the balance had to be redressed. The score still provides plenty of drama, contrasted with beautifully lyrical passages, but this is not simply an opportunity for virtuoso display on the part of the soloist; Franck is more thoughtful than that.

The work begins in F sharp minor. After a strong opening statement from the orchestra, terse and direct, the pianist responds with a short expressive phrase that is built into something slightly longer, but always with falling phrases, in a mood of limpid lyricism. At the opening of the ballet, the six dancers are motionless on stage; the three girls then respond to the piano, but cease dancing as soon as the orchestra takes its turn again. Anyone who has heard any of the organ music of César Franck will know of the composer’s ability to spin out a melodic line, almost a product, it would seem, of Franck’s genius for improvisation. The initial themes of orchestra and piano are exchanged in just such a dialogue, with a time change from four to three beats in a bar allowing plucked strings with staccato woodwind to play two phrases of what will become the variation theme. The piano builds a longer, more intense, version of its own opening phrases in the manner that again recalls the improvisatory ruminations of Franck’s organ music. The orchestra rejoins, and eventually a strong climax is reached, after which the piano is left alone to announce quietly the whole of the melody that will be the subject for the six variations that follow.

The first variation is based on dialogue between soloist and orchestra. The second gives the theme to the cellos, and the third allows the piano to be accompanied by plucked strings and woodwind. The fourth variation brings more drama to the music, changing key and leading to a softer (but still fairly rapid) variation where the piano becomes the accompanist. For the final variation the music reaches a moment of calm in F sharp major as the piano provides a beautiful counterpoint to the orchestra, the theme being played first by the cellos then passed to the woodwind. The key becomes minor again as the cellos take up the short idea first played by the piano at the opening. This time, however, the music gathers pace. The major mode is re-established, and a brilliant finale ensues. The variation theme re-appears as the bass at one point in this final musical dance, and there is a brief moment of respite at a slower speed, but the quick tempo is soon resumed as soloist and orchestra hurtle joyously to the end.

It is evident that this music provides the ideal vehicle for Ashton’s purpose. There is a luxuriance of romantic expression, bound by a firm adherence to classical principles. Within little more than 15 minutes there is a variety of mood from the contrasts at the opening, terse then languid in turn, through moments of drama as well as limpid clarity to a breathless conclusion reached with a lightness of touch that Ashton would have enjoyed replicating.

The use of six dancers inevitably gives opportunity for exploiting different combinations of male and female dancers. The opening exchanges between piano and orchestra, as already noted, prompt responses from the women to the piano phrases while they remain still for the orchestra. They are then joined by the leading man, who dances with them, then remains still as they dance about him. When the piano announces the variation theme, it is left to the three men to dance, either antiphonally or in unison. The variations elicit dances first by the men and women in alternation, then by two women, then two women and one man for the third variation. A solo man dances to the fourth variation, followed by the principal ballerina for the fifth. The sixth and final variation, for which the speed decreases markedly, provides the ideal music for a pas de deux.

As the music prepares for the finale, all six dancers are involved. The three couples are then used in various ways, sometimes with the central couple to the fore, as the finale unfolds. When the conclusion is reached the dancers recall their opening poses.

Scènes de Ballet

Music by Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)), composed in 1944 for the Billy Rose revue The Seven Lively Arts, and first performed on 7^th December of that year at the Ziegfeld Theatre, New York, with Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin (choreography by Dolin).

The choreography of the complete work by Frederick Ashton first performed by Sadler’s Wells Ballet at Covent Garden on 11^th February 1948, with Margot Fonteyn and Michael Somes (décor by André Beaurepaire).

The composer and his music

From the moment he burst onto the scene with his score for Firebird in Paris in 1910, Igor Stravinsky was destined to become a dominant musical voice in the world of ballet, let alone the rest of the musical world. Raised in the shadow of the Maryinsky Theatre in old St. Petersburg (his father was a bass singer in the Imperial Opera, and a friend of Petipa), Stravinsky grew up with a strong memory of the traditions of Russian ballet during the late 19^th century; he later wrote about his boyhood memories of the early performances of Sleeping Beauty. Although he shocked musicians and dancers alike with The Rite of Spring in 1913, Stravinsky remained acutely aware of the traditions of the classical dance in the Russia he remembered, and retained a deep affection for the music of his compatriot Tchaikovsky. In 1928 Stravinsky paid homage to the music of his predecessor in Le Baiser de la Fée, written for Ida Rubinstein’s company. The first performance of that production, with choreography by Nijinska, was given in Paris five months after Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes had danced the première of Balanchine’s version of Apollo. It did not escape Stravinsky’s notice that the date set for the premiere of Le Baiser de la Fée happened to be the thirty-fifth anniversary of Tchaikovsky’s death.
 

During the 1930’s new opportunities for Stravinsky came mainly from the USA, even though he had become a French citizen in 1934, hoping fervently to be fully accepted in French musical life. A concert tour to the United States in 1935 included an opportunity for meeting with Balanchine and Kirstein to plan the ballet score Jeu de Cartes, which was completed upon Stravinsky’s return to France in 1936. Eventually, at a difficult time when he lost his mother, wife, and daughter, Stravinsky left France for the New World, arriving in 1939 to take up the position of Chair of Poetry at Harvard University. 

During the 1920’s and 30’s, Stravinsky’s idiom, with its accent on clarity and avoidance of romantic expression or over-statement, marked him out as a leading exponent of neo-classicism. This continued during his early years in America, reaching its zenith with the opera The Rake’s Progress (1951); later, the elderly Stravinsky would astound the musical world by striking out on a totally new path, adopting the serial technique he had so far conspicuously avoided. However, notwithstanding the technique of the moment, it has to be said that there is still an abiding identity in Stravinsky’s music; he adopts an idiom and manages always to make it his own. The same can be said for his fascination with jazz. From the time when the conductor Ansermet brought him copies of ragtime compositions back from the USA after a tour by the Ballets Russes during the 1^st World War, Stravinsky was prone to adapt jazz idioms for his purpose, as in The Soldier’s Tale (1918). However, that work was written in Europe just getting to know about jazz; in the USA Stravinsky was able to experience the real thing, and wrote the Ebony Concerto for Woody Herman's jazz band (New York, 1946).

Scènes de Ballet

In the spring of 1944, Stravinsky received a call from the impresario Billy Rose offering him $5,000 for a 15-minute ballet to be part of a revue entitled The Seven Lively Arts. Stravinsky accepted the task and set to work, adapting his craft for the limelight of Broadway; high art was making an excursion into the world of popular theatre (or was it the other way round?). The featured performers in the cast list included (among many others) names such as Beatrice Lillie, Alicia Markova, Anton Dolin, Benny Goodman, Dolores Gray….the list seemed to be endless. The show was staged at the Ziegfeld Theatre, New York (owned by Billy Rose), opening in December 1944, with previews the previous month in Philadelphia. Top of the credits for Music and Lyrics was the name of Cole Porter (the show included such popular numbers as “Ev’ry time we say goodbye”). Tucked in below Mr. Porter’s name on the list of credits was the line: “Ballet music by Igor Stravinsky”. Further down the list, after credits for production, staging, lighting, sketches, and musical staging, were the words “Ballets choreographed by Anton Dolin”. This is how Scènes de Ballet started life, in a shortened version since Stravinsky would not agree to alterations in his score; some of the original eleven numbers were therefore cut. The show was produced during the period when Markova and Dolin were dancing for American Ballet Theatre; it was Markova who had insisted to Billy Rose that Stravinsky was the greatest living composer, and was the right man to ask for ballet music.
 

The première for the work led to a famous exchange of telegrams. Billy Rose contacted Stravinsky, saying that the ballet was a “great success”. However, clearly not understanding Stravinsky’s astringent musical style, he then suggested it could be an “outstanding success” if the orchestration were re-worked by Robert Russell Bennett, the Broadway musician responsible for orchestrating most of the best known shows of the time (including those of Cole Porter).  Stravinsky sent back a message that he was “satisfied with great success”!

The composition of Scènes de Ballet encouraged Stravinsky to use his gift for orchestration to the full, including a piano with the orchestra as he sought to heighten the instrumentation for the context in which the piece would be played. However, there would only be one further composition connected with the music entertainment industry, the Ebony Concerto.

In Scènes de Ballet, there are echoes of Apollo, and not just in the final apotheosis. There is, inevitably, a touch of bittersweet in the harmonic language, but this is generally Stravinsky for a sweeter tooth, the trumpet solo for the male dancer in the pas de deux being a notable example. When the trumpet melody is played in a fully scored version, Stravinsky shows himself as being quite capable of letting himself go, but one senses that he is always keeping a careful rein on his music; there is still a certain wryness about his dabbling with the world of commercial music.

It is well known that Ashton approached the task of choreographing Scènes de Ballet armed with textbooks on Euclidean geometry. He wanted to make floor patterns for the dancers that would be equally satisfying (though different) when viewed from any angle, and had the dancers moving along geometric lines in rehearsal. Having purified his language in Symphonic Variations, he found in Stravinsky’s score the ideal vehicle for experiments with the way in which he wanted to design his choreography. From the romanticism of Franck’s score, albeit with a clear element of control asserted by classical virtues, Ashton turned to a living composer whose work he greatly admired; one who had made an impact as a writer for the ballet with a fresh voice, though here providing a set of dances with a sweeter tinge to his neo-classical idiom than usual. In a score lasting hardly any longer than Symphonic Variations Ashton had opportunity for ensemble dances, a pas de deux with male and female solos, and a final apotheosis in a traditional format for pure dance. Ashton is said to have considered this one of his best works.

With the first staged performance of Scènes de Ballet using only part of the music, the first complete performance of the score had been given under Stravinsky’s direction at a concert by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in February 1945. Two years later, Stravinsky received a letter from Ralph Hawkes (of the famous music publishers) concerning a request for permission for the score to be used at Covent Garden. In May 1947, Ralph Hawkes received a letter from Stravinsky affirming that he was right to refuse permission for Ashton to lengthen Scènes de Ballet; Stravinsky was protective of his art when he could be, even though (or perhaps because) he had had a tougher time with Disney over the use of The Rite of Spring for the 1939 film Fantasia. Stravinsky was a realist in the hard commercial world; but he was caught out when he arranged Happy Birthday in 1955 as a present for the 80^th birthday of his old friend the conductor Pierre Monteux (who had directed the first performances of Petrushka and The Rite of Spring). Assuming that Happy Birthday was anyone’s property, he was surprised to discover that this was not the case when he heard from the copyright owners; eventually he was not required to pay for the right to use the tune in his composition.

Scènes de Ballet has perhaps not had the attention it might have received as a concert piece, compared with Stravinsky’s other scores of this era. Ballet scores (or suites derived from them), if they are good, can stand by themselves as concert music. The fact that it is less austere than others of Stravinsky’s neo-classical scores should not be a deterrent. In a letter dated December 1945, Poulenc wrote asking Stravinsky to send him copies of new works as they were published; of Scènes de Ballet, which he already had, Poulenc wrote that it was “especially ravishing”.*

* Stravinsky – Selected Correspondence (ed. Craft) – Faber and Faber

Cinderella

Music by Serge Prokofiev (1891-1953); first performed by the Bolshoi Ballet, Moscow on 21^st November 1945 with choreography by Zakharov.

Choreography by Frederick Ashton first performed by Sadler’s Wells Ballet at Covent Garden on 23^rd December 1948, with Moira Shearer as Cinderella, Michael Somes as the Prince, Robert Helpmann and Frederick Ashton as Cinderella’s step-sisters, and Pamela May as the Fairy Godmother (décor by Jean-Denis Maclès).

The composer and his music

Although he was never completely at home outside his native Russia, Serge Prokofiev made a great impact in the West during the early decades of the 20^th century. He had entered the St. Petersburg Conservatoire in 1904, and soon made a name for himself as the enfant terrible of Russian music. He visited London in 1914 where he met Diaghilev. Still basking in the controversy caused by commissioning and staging Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (1913), Diaghilev hoped to perpetuate such dramatic primitivism by commissioning a score from Prokofiev for his company. However, when he heard some of Prokofiev’s music for the proposed ballet (Ala et Lolly) Diaghilev decided not to proceed with the project. The composer therefore recycled the music for concert use as The Scythian Suite in 1916. (The score was later choreographed, however, first in Berlin in 1927). Nevertheless, Diaghilev was keen to keep Prokofiev interested in writing for the ballet, and discussed the young composer’s work with Stravinsky. Prokofiev’s next ballet score Chout (the French transliteration for the Russian word for clown) was written in 1915, but it had to wait till 1921 for its first staging when Diaghilev’s fortunes revived after the 1^st World War.

Prokofiev lived in Paris during the 1920’s at a time when the French capital was a vibrant centre for new music. He had already achieved some notable first performances, ranging from the popular Classical Symphony (Petrograd 1918) to the opera The Love for Three Oranges (Chicago 1921); new compositions such as his 3^rd piano concerto were now received to great acclaim. During the 1920’s, new music in Paris acquired a chic neo-classicism, with the transparency and clarity of earlier eras being qualities that were prized by young composers. However, Prokofiev stood slightly apart from the tendency of his compatriot Igor Stravinsky to follow the ‘back to Bach’ idiom, as can be heard in the grittiness of his recently rediscovered ballet score Trapèze dating from the early years of the decade. If some of the music proposed for Ala et Lolly ten years or so earlier tended towards noisy bombast, Prokofiev’s musical style regained a welcome lyricism during the later 1920’s. This became particularly evident in the score for The Prodigal Son (1929), the last commission for Diaghilev before the latter’s sudden death in August of that year.
 

Prokofiev and Stravinsky now moved in opposite directions. During the 1930’s Stravinsky gradually built contacts in the USA, and later made his home there. Prokofiev, on the other hand, made various return visits to his native Russia from 1927; in 1933 he spent half the year in Russia in two extended visits. By the end of 1935 he had returned permanently to his homeland, having settled in Moscow; his wife Lina and their two sons joined him in 1936. Prokofiev’s last journey taking him out of the USSR was in early 1938. Unfortunately, his return to the USSR coincided with the growing strictures of Stalin’s régime and the restrictions on artistic expression in accordance with the doctrine of Socialist Realism. Perhaps Prokofiev thought that he was too well known internationally to be restricted in his activities. If so, he was soon to find how wrong he was. Why Prokofiev returned to Soviet Russia when he did, and how long it took him to realise just how much at odds he could be with officialdom are still intriguing questions, though it is clear that at heart he was strongly attached to Mother Russia. Nevertheless, Prokofiev responded with some brilliant film music (Lieutenant Kijé and Alexander Nevsky) as well as his ballet scores. Indeed the score of Romeo and Juliet was produced not long after the Soviet Composers’ Union (meeting in February 1935) had heard many delegates speaking against absolute (i.e. non-descriptive) symphonic music, declaring that the propaganda ‘song symphony’ accorded with the official ideal. No doubt the score of Romeo and Juliet (1935-6) with its emotional subject dealt with through symphonic structures in its manipulation of themes was designed to appeal directly to the Soviet people; Prokofiev would use this popular example of his craft in his defence when subject to official criticism in 1948. However, while the score for Romeo and Juliet had an inauspicious start, at first being pronounced ‘undanceable’, that for Cinderella (1940-44) was applauded from the time of its first performance in Moscow in November 1945.

Prokofiev was haunted by the powerful figure of Zhdanov throughout this time. Zhdanov had gained power after the assassination of Kirov. The latter had been the rising star of the communist party in Leningrad, too charismatic a star for Stalin’s liking it would seem, and willing to argue with Stalin, though apparently the leader’s protégé. In December 1934 Kirov was assassinated (no doubt under Stalin’s orders); in the following year the Leningrad Academic Theatre for Opera and Ballet was renamed in his memory. Sergei Kirov had loved the theatre. His successor as secretary of the Leningrad communist party, Andrei Zhdanov, was a different proposition for artists. Zhdanov had been behind the formulation of the doctrine of socialist realism adopted by the Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934. Rising to the ranks of the Politburo in 1939 he was involved in the great purge of the communist party between 1934 and 1941, leading to the execution of tens of thousands as well as the deportation of huge numbers to Siberia.

Prokofiev had been married since 1923 to Carolina Codina, a Spanish-born singer of Spanish-Alsatian/Polish descent; they had married in Germany. Lina, as she was known, was in a difficult position in Soviet Russia considering her Spanish birth and Western connections, especially when Prokofiev become involved with a young graduate of the Moscow Literary Institute, Mira Mendelson, whom he met in 1939. The affair became more intense, and in March 1941, Prokofiev left his family to set up home with Mira, though he continued to provide financially for Lina and their sons. He was now at work on various new compositions, including the ballet Cinderella which had been commissioned soon after the first Russian performances of Romeo and Juliet by the Kirov Ballet in 1940. However, work on Cinderella soon had to be put aside. With the German invasion of Russia in June 1941 shattering the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact, a plan was evolved for Prokofiev (in common with other notable figures) to be evacuated. Lina decided she would prefer to be in Moscow with her two sons rather than be evacuated with her husband and Mira. Prokofiev, in poor health (he had had the first of a series of heart attacks earlier in 1941) left for the Caucasus with Mira, and they stayed in Tbilisi. He worked furiously at various patriotic projects, including his opera War and Peace (which he dearly wanted to see on the stage) and film music for Eisenstein (Ivan the Terrible); some of that film music was written in a small town not far from the Chinese border.

There were occasional visits to Moscow, but it was not until October 1943, when the Soviet army had repelled the Nazi invasion, that Prokofiev and Mira made a permanent return to the capital. Part of 1943 had been spent at Perm in the Urals, a relaxing area of great beauty where he was able to finish the piano score for Cinderella, though it was well into 1944 before the orchestration was complete. The ballet received a triumphant première in November 1945. Nonetheless, these continued to be difficult times for Prokofiev. His health was deteriorating, with periods of very high blood pressure constantly occurring. His personal situation was no easier, and the grip of Cold War mentality was seizing all areas of Soviet life. Once again Zhdanov came to the fore, as Stalin’s spokesman on cultural matters. He led the post-war attack on artists and intellectuals who it was deemed did not conform to the spirit of the communist party. The ‘crime’ committed by erring composers was labelled ‘formalism’, originally intended to indicate a pre-occupation with intellectual form over content, but inevitably covering anything remotely connected with new trends in the capitalist West. During the notorious Zhdanov Conference that concluded in February 1948, Prokofiev was one of the many artists (including other eminent composers such as Khachaturian and Shostakovich) who were denounced for their bourgeois western tendencies, this despite the great success of much of Prokofiev’s music, including his 5^th symphony (1944) and his opera War and Peace (eventually staged in 1946). Like others, Prokofiev was directed to confess his ‘shortcomings’ in an open letter to the Union of Soviet Composers. Too ill to attend in person, his letter was read aloud before the Central Committee, then published in the Soviet Press. He pleaded his case, indicating his music for the film Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Romeo and Juliet as proof of his desire to write music that met with approval. Ironically, Zhdanov died in August 1948, after which Stalin reorganised the Leningrad Party.

Just as Zhdanov was conducting his proceedings in 1948, tragedy struck for Prokofiev in another direction. On the 20^th February, Lina was tricked into meeting a stranger, expecting to receive a parcel from a friend in Leningrad; she was pushed into a car and arrested. Lina was then taken to the notorious Lubianka prison, and accused of spying for foreign powers. Her sentence was to be sent to the labour camps of Siberia. Lina’s fate was typical of the treatment of a multitude of relatives and close friends of well-known individuals in Stalinist Russia. Now imprisoned in a country she had not wanted to go to in the first place, she would never see her former husband again. It would not be till 1956, three years after the composer’s death, that Lina would be released, along with thousands of others set free by Kruschev as part of a new direction for the post-Stalinist Soviet Union. Her sons, Sviatoslav (24 at the time of his mother’s arrest) and Oleg (then 19) had been left to tell their father and Mira what had happened. The effect on Prokofiev must have been the sharper since he had married Mira just five weeks before Lina’s arrest. The path to their marriage had been made easier since a decree had been passed by the Supreme Soviet in 1947 forbidding Soviet citizens to marry foreign nationals. The decree was retrospective, which had made her position impossible; although now a Soviet citizen she was originally Spanish. To what extent Prokofiev was aware of the vulnerability of Lina’s situation can be debated; his grasp of how political power might affect people’s lives can be questioned. He also lost at this time one of his most trusted friends and advisors, the film director Sergei Eisenstein who died on the 11^th February, barely more than a week before Lina’s arrest. It seemed as if events were conspiring to break his spirit.

Prokofiev’s last years were times of hardship, ill health, and criticism; he lost the pre-eminent position he had once held in Soviet society. His declining years did see a brief but rewarding collaboration when he got to know a brilliant young musician, the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. Prokofiev first heard Rostropovich in 1947, when the cellist was just twenty. In due course, in 1949, a cello sonata was completed in collaboration with Rostropovich, who gave the work its première. Within the next three years, Prokofiev produced first of all a Sinfonia Concertante for cello and orchestra (based on an earlier concerto for the instrument) and then completed his seventh symphony. Meanwhile, he was working on what would be his final ballet score, The Stone Flower. Based on folk tales from the Urals, the libretto was devised jointly by Mira and the choreographer Leonid Lavrosky. However, this enterprise brought the composer little satisfaction; disagreements ensued about the score, and revisions were demanded when parts of it were played. Success in the theatre seemed to elude him now; the staging of the second part of his opera War and Peace had been cancelled when it was due to receive its first performance in 1947. But the final irony was yet to come; after all his battles with officialdom, Prokofiev died on the same day as Stalin, 5^th March 1953, The Stone Flower still awaiting its first performance.

Cinderella

Prokofiev’s ballet Cinderella was first conceived in 1940 when Romeo and Juliet had at last been produced in Russia, to great success. Radin, Director of the Kirov Theatre, had asked Prokofiev to write another ballet score, and after consideration the story of Cinderella was fixed upon. (Discussions involving Galina Ulanova, who was the first Juliet in Lavrosky’s production, had centred first on her suggestion of the story of the Snow Maiden; the composer preferred not to follow Rimsky-Korsakov’s famous score based on that story, albeit that the earlier composer’s work was for the opera stage). Prokofiev set to work on Cinderella, but soon the realities of war and the invasion of the USSR by Hitler’s troops required that the fairytale ballet be put aside in favour of patriotic music. The opera War and Peace also occupied a great deal of the composer’s time. In 1943, Prokofiev returned to the score of Cinderella, quickly completing its orchestration in 1944. The première took place at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow in November 1945, the first Bolshoi production of a Prokofiev ballet. Prokofiev had inevitably imagined Ulanova as Cinderella, but in the event the première was danced by Olga Lepeshinskaya; Ulanova danced the role at later performances. The choreography was by Zakharov, who had been a student of Radlov’s in Leningrad. The score was hailed immediately as a great addition to the Russian ballet repertoire, praised by fellow musicians and dancers alike. In the spring of 1946, the ballet was danced for the first time by the Kirov, with Natalia Dudinskaya as Cinderella; the choreography was by Konstantin Sergeyev (Dudinskaya’s husband) who also appeared as the Prince. Sergeyev had been the first Romeo in Lavrosky’s Romeo and Juliet.

Prokofiev himself said of the ballet that he wanted to make the music ‘danceable’, using the traditional structures of classical ballet. He also stated that both he and Volkov (the librettist) shared the intention that the audience should feel the characters to be real people with real emotions. This is immediately felt at the opening of the ballet, where two themes contrast Cinderella’s melancholy with her dreams of happiness. The first theme has a yearning quality, while the second clearly refers to a dream of a happier life. However, it flows into a shortened reprise of the first theme, making an ABA form for the first number; the dream has faded and reality has returned. These themes are associated with Cinderella as the story unfolds, appearing in various orchestrations. We do not have to wait long for a re-appearance of the first theme; as soon as the stepsisters have finished their dance, squabbling over a shawl, Cinderella turns to a portrait of her mother. The initial mood of melancholy returns, to be followed by a new theme in a major key, recalling happier times. The entry of Cinderella’s father to share memories of her mother brings about stronger and deeper sounds from the orchestra, adding a new depth to this part of the story, underlining the desire of composer and librettist to show the characters as possessing real emotions behind the figures of fairyland – people who live, love, and suffer; they did not want the audience to feel indifferent to the joys and sorrows of the characters. To this is added the magical fairytale element, sometimes combining those qualities with themes already heard but dressed up in a different orchestration; the entry of the beggar-woman (fairy godmother) brings about shimmering sounds from the orchestra, but then combined with the theme representing Cinderella’s melancholy.

Throughout the ballet, the musical numbers are clearly defined, with rhythmic character that is a gift to choreographer and dancers. The musical language of the mature Prokofiev balances his capability for wit and biting irony with impassioned lyricism; there is the motoric rhythmic drive that makes him such a natural composer for dance music, together with the capability for giving an apparently unassuming melody a sudden twist and the harmonic language that refreshes customary procedures. In composing Cinderella, Prokofiev’s desire to adhere to classical tradition led him to include dance forms such as the Gavotte and Mazurka, as well as Passepied,  Bourrée and Galop. The music for the Gavotte is first heard played on stage by two violinists to accompany the sisters’ dancing lesson. Suitably unsophisticated in its arrangement, the gavotte is combined with the music that introduced them, described as a pas de châle (“shawl dance”, since they squabble over a shawl before each dances with her half after it is torn in two).
 

Left alone when the others have gone to the ball, Cinderella’s wistful thoughts are portrayed first of all by the second theme that was heard at the opening of the ballet, then a more graceful version of part of the gavotte. This leads to hints of a waltz with a gentle but evocative melody. The melody disappears; her prince is not real. Only the accompanying chords remain. The waltz belongs to her dreams; in the here-and-now it is the gavotte, formerly played for her step-sisters but now presented in a more refined version that is played as she dances with her broom as an imaginary partner.

The passepied (rather like a fast minuet) makes an appearance near the beginning of Act 2 when Cinderella’s father and step-sisters arrive at the ball; the indications from the orchestra are naturally that this is not the most sophisticated dance, and the music has a fairly rustic sound at times. The cavaliers who are bravely going to partner the stepsisters first have their own dance (the music here is a bourrée) before the stepsisters join them. Then, as so often happens in ballet scores, it is the Mazurka that provides the music for a celebratory court dance.

Inevitably the moments of strong emotional content are accompanied by swirling waltz tunes. A waltz is played as Cinderella leaves for the ball with her attendants, but this is a different waltz compared with the tune hinted at while Cinderella was left at home to dream of what might be. The waltz associated with her dreams halfway through Act 1 provides the music for her dance with the enraptured prince when they first meet during Act 2. Solos for the Prince and Cinderella naturally follow, but the stepsisters have no intention of being left out of the picture. Oranges are rare gifts in the Prince’s kingdom; a pavan is played combined with a quotation from the well-known march in Prokofiev’s own opera, The Love of Three Oranges. After a version of the shawl-dance as a tarantella for the squabbling sisters, the pas de deux for Cinderella and the Prince that follows is derived from the second theme from the opening of the ballet (i.e. the music associated with Cinderella’s dreams). There then follows a reverse of the sequence at the end of act 1. There the dark sounds of bassoons, cellos, and horns accompanied the warning that the spell will be broken on the last stroke of midnight, but all had been forgotten as she was whisked away to the sound of a waltz. Now it is the same waltz (following the pas de deux) for the whole court that is interrupted as midnight strikes. In the original scenario Cinderella is confronted by twelve dwarfs: the guardians of midnight. The 2^nd Act ends with an altered and impassioned version of a tune that had suggested her ‘happiness’, now laden with poignant discords.

In Ashton’s choreography, the 3^rd Act of the ballet is considerably shortened, omitting the earlier part of the act. In the original score, the 3^rd act begins with the Prince travelling the world in search of Cinderella. This gives opportunity for the inclusion of three galops and movements entitled Temptation and Orientalia; the latter an obvious continuation of the fascination that Russian ballet has always shown for the exotic. The third galop is followed by a reprise of the opening of the ballet, with the theme representing Cinderella’s melancholy leading to dreamlike snatches of the music played at the ball, but ending optimistically with a version of her ‘happiness’ theme as she discovers the shoe in her pocket. With the arrival of the Prince, and the demise of the romantic hopes nurtured by the stepsisters, the story is eventually brought to its happy conclusion with the aid of the fairy godmother who reappears to transform Cinderella into a princess. Cinderella and her Prince then dance to a slow waltz, one of the longest movements in the ballet along with the Grand Waltz from the middle of Act 2 and the pas de deux from the latter part of the same act. The final movement is a radiant apotheosis based on the second theme from the Introduction; dreams of happiness have become a reality.

Prokofiev’s score, with its luminous sounds often engendering a wistfulness quite unlike the passionate drama of Romeo and Juliet has perhaps never been as popular with audiences as the earlier ballet. Inevitably much of the music associated with Cinderella is wistful, and when she is ultimately united with her Prince the score becomes very dreamy in the slow waltz, violins playing rich harmonies at a high pitch to add to the effect. But there is also a great deal of colour, and not only for the magical effects. Music associated with the Prince is suitably bold, and the waltz that ends the first and second acts conjures up images of swirling dancers, and yet there is something not quite real about it, an underlying darker element.

After the première, Prokofiev’s fellow composer Dmitri Shostakovich wrote a review of the ballet in Pravda. “With this work the art of the ballet has taken a great step forward”, he wrote; “it is an outstanding work, worthy of the great tradition of Russian ballet”. There are many opportunities for contrast, not only the moments quoted above (and of course the graphic description of the clock striking midnight) but also in the colourful music afforded to the fairies of the seasons and their cavaliers. But this is also a score with a darker side; it isn’t solely concerned with luminescence. Produced in fits and starts whenever he was able to work on it, Cinderella was written at a time when Prokofiev experienced much unhappiness and uncertainty in his own life, both for personal and political reasons. Prokofiev said that he wanted above all to portray the poetic love of Cinderella and the Prince, the growth of that love, the obstacles that had to be overcome, and the final realisation of happiness. It is tempting to look for autobiographical signposts perhaps, but whether or not these exist it is a score of great charm and assured writing for the ballet stage.

At the same time as Ashton was preparing his choreography, which would be the first full length English ballet in the classical tradition, Prokofiev’s life was going through one crisis after another. The year 1948 saw a stark contrast in the fortunes of Ashton, Stravinsky, and Prokofiev. Ashton had now produced three contrasting works for the new resident company at Covent Garden, after which he would continue assuredly to build a repertoire. On the other side of the Atlantic, Stravinsky had seen the première of his latest collaboration with Balanchine, Orpheus, presented by Ballet Society at New York City Center in April of that year, performances that had helped secure an invitation to Balanchine for his group to become the resident company at the Center. In October 1948, Orpheus was performed again by Balanchine’s company, this time as part of the inaugural programme of New York City Ballet. Prokofiev, on the other hand, had less to look forward to. But despite the sadness of his declining years he had made an outstanding contribution to ballet music; the fact that his score of Cinderella was seized upon by Ashton so soon after its première says as much.