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© Copyright 2000, Jim Loy
A couple of times, in Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet ballet, we hear the ugliest, most teeth grating, dissonance in all of music, the minor second. I think Prokofiev was trying to tell us something about the story. Beautiful as this perfect, sad love story is, there is much ugliness here. In fact, it is not a love story at all, but a story of hate, hate that destroys everything and everyone. Hate destroys the people who hate, and it destroys those whom they love. Love does not stand a chance.