Prokofiev in Paris: Reconstructing the Narrative of Sergei Prokofiev?s Emigre Period

Abstract

After migrating to the West in the wake of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and living in Paris for over a decade, Sergei Prokofiev moved back to the Soviet Union in 1936, during the height of Stalinism. To explain this puzzling decision, scholars have constructed narratives centered around homesickness, displacement, or disappointment with career failures in the West, portraying Prokofiev as a cultural outsider in Paris who was inevitably propelled back to his Soviet homeland. New evidence contradicts this portrayal, revealing that Soviet officials promised him abundant musical commissions, firm financial backing, and freedom to expand his international prestige if he were to relocate to Moscow (Morrison, 2008). For an émigré composer who had been competing for commissions in the West for over a decade, these promises were too compelling to ignore.

This study reassesses Prokofiev’s émigré period by rejecting teleological notions of an “inevitable” Soviet return, instead revealing the depth of influence Prokofiev had on his contemporaries in interwar Paris, and the simultaneous influence of his Parisian context on his own personal and compositional transformation throughout the period. It first demonstrates that Prokofiev cultivated a liminal space for himself as a cultural liaison in Paris, fostering professional connections between various national, religious, and artistic groups to which he had access as a migrant, becoming an influential figure whom the French, on both sides of the political spectrum, claimed as their own. It then explores the musical implications of his immersion in cosmopolitan Paris, using Florian Scheding’s (2019) framework of “migratory aesthetics” to reconceive three works of this period as products of his complex émigré identity and engagement with Parisian artistic movements. Lastly, it argues that Prokofiev’s Soviet return was not a result of failure in the West but was instead a logical next step after having found satisfaction in the international persona and style he had cultivated in Paris. “Prokofiev in Paris” concludes that by repudiating narratives of failure or victimhood, Sergei Prokofiev, who remains among the most enduring and popular composers of the twentieth century, might be restored from the periphery of our musicological narratives of twentieth-century music to a central position as a figure who influenced and contributed to key interwar artistic movements.