Stephen D. Yaness, Ph.D. 1998

Advisor: Jon W. Finson

Dissertation Title: Prokofiev’s Ballets for Diaghilev

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Dissertation Abstract:

Sergey Sergeyevich Prokofiev is well-known to audiences as the composer of the popular Peter and the Wolf, Alexander Nevsky and Lt. Kije Suite as well as the ballets Romeo and Juliet and Cinderella. But the success of these pieces and other works from his career in the Soviet Union has overwhelmed his early work for Sergey Pavlovitch Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes: Chout (1921), Le pas d’acier (1927) and L’enfant prodigue (1929). These ballets usually garner no more than brief mention in the plentiful surveys of the Ballets Russes or in studies of Prokofiev’s much celebrated contemporary, Igor Stravinsky. However, knowledge of these works is crucial for an understanding of Prokofiev’s mature ballet style. These ballets provided his first theatrical successes in western Europe. Furthermore, they document the composer’s self-professed stylistic redirection away from Parisian modernism towards heightened lyricism—a style that is incorrectly associated with only his Soviet period works. 

Chapter One traces the fifteen year relationship between Diaghilev and Prokofiev during which the impresario influenced the composer at many important junctures. Though Diaghilev rejected Prokofiev’s first ballet Ala i Lolli as well as the first version of its successor, his tenacity, discernment and encouragement led to a fruitful collaboration. Chapter Two demonstrates that while Prokofiev followed Stravinsky to the Ballets Russes, he worked there on his own stylistic terms. Despite a common heritage each composer responded to Diaghilev’s call for an overt Russian style with a personalized “neokuchkism.” By comparing the original 1915 short score of Chout with the Diaghilev-directed revised version in Chapter Three I show how Prokofiev’s development as a ballet composer was indebted to the impresario’s guidance. Chapter Four examines the Janus-faced Le pas d’acier: on the one hand the most trendy work Prokofiev penned for Paris and on the other, the beginning of his shift towards a more prominent lyricism. Chapter Five summarizes the collaboration that produced one of the company’s enduring masterpieces, L’enfant prodigue. Its recognizable “new simplicity” is distinguished from Stravinskian neoclassicism. A summary of some common themes in Prokofiev’s ballets for Diaghilev precedes a brief valedictory.

Recipient of the Glen Haydon Dissertation Award

Dr. Yaness is an Associate Professor of Music History at Illinois Wesleyan University, where he has taught since 1999. He has published several articles on Prokofiev and is a pre-concert lecturer for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.