4.2.2 For the people verses of the people

to create a musical language that was still rooted in his previous progressive style, but Prokofiev was certainly aware of the music style of preference in the Soviet Union. The music of the suites is extremely light at times, such as in his early first violin concerto (1917), but often blunt and pompous, a style referred to in the Soviet Union as Monumentalism. The ballet was an instant success88, and not only in the Soviet Union.

The suites are now part of the canon of twentieth-century orchestral literature; the ballet is one of the (few) permanent repertoire pieces of ballet literature. Prokofiev had managed to write a twentieth-century music-for-the-millions that was at once personal and topical. Monumentalism - which would from now on remain a hallmark of his orchestral music - also made the work unmistakably a product of Soviet Realism. However, most of Romeo and Juliet was written outside the Soviet Union and once he was caught in the system, Prokofiev managed only one more time to write an orchestral work of the same importance and with the same spontaneity and urgency - his 5th Symphony of 1944. The opportunity was there, it was missed, or rather crushed - the opportunity to write a truly high-quality Soviet music for the people that would have been a counterbalance to Western music, which was becoming increasingly elitist. Soviet music was doomed to sound conservative and uninspired within the confines of the Satz, with, of course the brilliant exception of Dimitri Shostakovich. Soviet music became a major influence on those composers - especially in the U.S.A. - who, loathing the achievements of the Second Viennese School and the Paris School, admired Soviet music and considered it a legitimisation of their own conservatism.

4.2.2 FOR THE PEOPLE VERSUS OF THE PEOPLE In the first years after the 1917 revolution, many Russian artists and intellectuals generally sympathised with the ideal of a social, classless, and just society.89 The best-known composers together formed the ACM: the Association for Contemporary Music and for a number of

88 The premiere did not take place until 1940, after many difficulties with the dancers, who had problems with the many syncopations in the music. 89 As early as the nineteenth century, there was a strong awareness in the Russian music world of the social force and role of classical music. Tchaikovsky’s endeavours to bring ballet music, which in Moscow at the time was dominated by third-rate music from the West, to a higher level and thereby reach out to the people with high-quality ballet music, was but one example of this. And we know how brilliantly he achieved this!