Britannica Sources used in this answer

Why did Sergey Prokofiev write Peter and the Wolf for the Moscow Children’s Theatre?

Created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.

Portrait of composer Sergey Prokofiev, circa 1938, wearing round glasses, a suit, and a tie, looking slightly to the side. — Sergey Prokofiev Sergey Prokofiev.

Sergey Prokofiev wrote Peter and the Wolf because he was commissioned by the Moscow Children’s Theatre to compose a piece specifically for their young audience.1

The work was designed to introduce children to classical music and help them learn to identify the distinct sounds of various orchestral instruments. To achieve this, Prokofiev assigned a specific instrument or class of instruments to each character in the story:1

Bird: Flute
Cat: Clarinet
Duck: Oboe
Grandfather: Bassoon
Wolf: Horns
Hunters: Percussion
Peter: The string section1

Prokofiev chose a simple prose narrative for the piece, intentionally omitting rhyming verses so that the text would not distract the listeners from the music itself.1