ABSTRACT
As with Le Pas d';acier, the initial idea for L'Enfant prodigue may have come from outside the Ballets Russes circle. L'Enfant prodigue had the least amount of precompositional collaboration of any of Prokofiev's ballets for Diaghilev. Although Prokofiev had begun to turn to a simpler, more accessible style with Le Pas d'acier, it is L'Enfant prodigue that provides the obvious paradigm for his later style. In L'Enfant prodigue Prokofiev's lyricism and stylistic downsizing became an immediately recognized phenomenon. With L'Enfant prodigue come the first extant examples of rejected material since the 1915 version of Chout. Prokofiev's redirection of style in Le Pas d'acier and L'Enfant prodigue does not necessarily imply a conscious response to the Stravinsky-led neoclassical thrust of the 1920s, even though the latter did draw many composers into its wake. Diaghilev loved the way Prokofiev's cellos sang out in L'Enfant prodigue, and by comparison he considered Stravinsky's latest music to be dry.
