Social history would be enriched by the experience of music. How did it feel at the time? Music provides, if not a way of knowing how it felt, at least some clues.
In November 1945 at the close of that terrible war, Prokofiev’s Cinderella premiered at the Bolshoi. During the war there had been some easing in the regimentation of art, but in this score Prokofiev stuck with the neo-classicism that had got him through thus far. At the end of Act 1, the ball scene, there is a waltz for the prince and Cinderella. For the Russian audience, the key references for a romantic waltz in a ballet would be Tchaikovsky – the Waltz of the Flowers, the waltz from Sleeping Beauty.
Good stuff. But as the YouTube comments show, a long way from lush.
By 1945 the joint efforts of Prokofiev and Shostakovitch had established ‘wrong-note classicism’ as a Soviet establishment style. But in a piece like this, I’d argue, the style reverts to its 1920s origins and once again becomes satirical. In the context of the ballet as a whole there’s a further layer: Cinderella’s music when alone and dreaming is far more gratifying. But now here she is in the arms of power and the milk has curdled. Sneaky.
And yet . . . Perhaps these sour memories were as much romance as people could take.
There’s an obit here from someone else who feels embraced by the music-making. Some links, as well. Sue Steward points to the autobiographical undertones of the songs the sisters wrote and the way women found their experiences reflected in them. In a quiet, slightly enigmatic way, the work is strongly feminist. Spoilt males crop up a lot, especially on the album ‘Dancer with Bruised Knees’. But the females are always complicit, the tone more wry than angry.
Howard Jacobson, in his Independent column a while back
It is a universal law that people give a bad account of themselves when they speak. They cannot find the words for what they truly feel. At a loss, they say what someone else has said, or what they think they should say, and end up parodying what is in their hearts.
Hence the need for literature.
As with what they speak, so with what they hear. Which is why you will find so many intelligent people prepared to listen to and read material that is beneath them. It is as though aesthetically and linguistically we lag behind our own natures. Thus we see adults who have thought long and felt deeply squandering themselves on Harry Potter.
Hence the need to teach literature.
Ronald Searle's 'Look Back in Anger', 1956
So it’s finally changed, and after only fifty-something years. From an interview with British playwright, Polly Denham (Weekend Australian, January 23-24)
. . . a focus on the middle classes is the defining feature of a trend in British theatre.”That was part of the impetus for writing [That Face]: people in pearls watching plays about people doing skag in outer Leeds. Theatre is meant to be a culture of self-examination.”
Kate McGarrigle, who died in January.
The McGarrigle Sisters had their breakthrough as performers with Kate and Anna McGarrigle. That’s still most people’s favourite album, certainly it’s mine.
Sentimental, adolescent, breathy, hoky, they say. Sure, I say, but who cares. Here’s ‘Gentle Annie’ from The McGarrigle Hour.
The sisters made very few rules for themselves: if they liked a song, they sang it, and if it didn’t happen to be a folksong, too bad. So they sang all sorts of things, musical hall songs, French-Canadian popular songs, even cabaret, and perennials from writers like Stephen Foster: “Gentle Annie” dates from1856. They were raised singing some of this repertory, and they tried to recreate that family-round-the-piano atmosphere in their delivery and arrangements and in whole albums like The McGarrigle Hour. On that CD they’re joined by, amongst others their friends Linda Ronstadt and Emmy-Lou Harris, Kate’s children Martha and Rufus Wainwright and Kate’s ex-husband, Loudon Wainwright. So the songs of their childhood became the songs of their present and the family of origin became the family in the present, broken-but-intact.
