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.
