For the exercise Music Between the Wars, I have chosen Neo-classical composer Sergey Prokofiev. I have been studying his life and works with Grove Music on-line as my main source.
Prokofiev was born in the Ukraine in 1891 and his early education was at home. He wrote several works as a child and started cataloguing his work from a young age. He attended the St Petersburg Conservatory from 1903 and was taught by Rimsky-Korsakov amongst others. He studied composition and piano and got first prize in graduating on piano, playing his own piano concerto. His first public appearances were at the evenings of contemporary music organised in St Petersburg at the time.
Following the revolution Prokofiev followed Rachmaninov in emigrating to America but did not find the success that Rachmaninov achieved in the New World. He did however achieve success with his ‘Classical’ symphony which was written in the style of Haydn but also contained elements of 20th century music in the work. He also found some success in Chicago and the Chicago Opera commissioned him to write the comic opera Love for Three Oranges, which remains his best known operatic work.
After failing to totally establish himself in America Prokofiev returned to western Europe and came to the next stage in his progression as he adopted many of the developments that were taking place in European music at the time. During the late 1920’s he visited Russia on a few occasions and eventually took a flat in Moscow and moved there permanently with his family in 1936. He was permitted to leave during his early years in Moscow and toured the USA a couple of times, but his passport was then taken on a technicality and never returned.
In his early days back in the Soviet Union Prokofiev was able to produce work in a style of new simplicity that he had been seeking and was unable to produce in western Europe. However the Soviet authorities started to impose restrictions on the type of work artists could produce, looking for works that met their definition of ‘social realism’. Prokofiev was picked out as not producing work that met this criteria and was made to apologise and explain his failure in two letters to the Union of Composers. This broke him as an artist and during his final years he suffered from illness and produced little work of significance. He died in 1953 on the same day Stalin died.
I have chosen two pieces from his time spent in Western Europe and a late work when he was trying to write music that would meet the criteria of ‘social realism’.
Symphony No 3 in C minor, Op. 44 (1928)
This work is from the ‘third period’ in Prokofiev’s career, the European period. This is reflected in this work being tonally progressive. The first movement begins on a dissonant chord and there are plenty of examples of dissonance throughout the work. Prokofiev, does however retain a formal structure in the symphonic tradition with a sonata form first movement, followed by a slow movement, which is the most consonant movement of the work. There is little change in tempo within each movement except the finale, which starts off quickly, followed by a reprise of some of the material used earlier in the symphony, before quickening to the climax of the work. All elements of the orchestra are used to create a colourful timbre. I would say the work is largely diatonic with the low notes associated with the minor key.
The work was premièred on May 17th 1928 in Paris by the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris, conducted by Pierre Monteux and the score was derived from the opera The Fiery Angel, following encouragement from conductor Serge Koussevitzky. The work was well received at the time by both public and critics but had been neglected until re-emerging in recent times as a fine symphony, especially following the interpretation by conductor Michael Tilson Thomas.
Violin Concerto No 2, Op. 63 (1935)
Prokofiev’s second violin concerto was one of his last works to be premièred in Western Europe. He had been living in Europe permanently since 1922 and would return to the Soviet Union to live in 1936. The work was commissioned by admirers of the French violinist Robert Soetens (1897-1997) and he was the soloist for the première in Madrid on December 1st 1935. The concerto was written whilst Prokofiev was on an extensive European tour as a performer, and so parts were written in several different countries.
This work is an example of Prokofiev’s move towards the neo-classical simpler form of music he was looking to create. The first movement opens with a few dissonant chords but the work is generally consonant and tonal. Prokofiev uses elements of Russian folklore in the rhythms and melodies in the first and third movements. A striking feature in the first movement is pizzicato playing at the end. The middle movement is in the form of a more traditional slow movement, with a sonorous melodic timbre . The final movement is fast in tempo and constantly changing rhythms. Prokofiev uses castanets and bass drum as percussion plays an important part in this finale. The feature of the castanets may well have been due to the venue of the planned première.
I have researched various reviews of this and can find little evidence of anyone not liking this piece either at it’s première or subsequent performances and recordings. Paul Sertosky, the only adverse critic I found, felt Prokofiev lacked the ability to write in musical form, attacking the first and last movements especially (Sertosky, 2008). Stephen O. Murray considers it one of the four best violin concerti of the twentieth century with those of Bartok, Berg and Sibelius (Murray, 2006)
The Story of a Real Man, op. 117 (1947-48)
Although this work was later than 1945, I thought it worth listening to as it was Prokofiev’s reaction to the decree of 1948 by Zhdanov and the Committee for Artistic Affairs that Soviet artists should produce works of ‘socialist realism’. Although the work does meet the criteria of being simple and on a Soviet patriotic subject, it was not received well in it’s day and did not have the result that Prokofiev hoped for.
The work is an opera in three acts based on a story about a Soviet pilot during the war who lost both his legs. Following an opening ‘Epigraph’ which consists of a ‘patriotic’ style chorus. The opening of act one starts with a brass and percussion to simulate the crash of the plane. The rest is a fairly conventional opera with a simple melody and fairly basic orchestration, which fits into the expected conventions of ‘socialist realism’.
Prokofiev wrote, in a second letter to the Union of Composers, how he had worked hard to write a work of ‘socialist realism’: “In my opera I endeavoured to be as melodic as possible and write melodies that would be easily understood” (Redepenning). He went on to reveal the anguish he felt at the critical failure, “It gave me pain to hear the comrades’ critical opinions. However I would rather write operas on Soviet subjects, and even hear criticism if they do not succeed, than not to write and hear no criticism” (Redepenning). The failure of this work pretty much finished Prokofiev as a composer as he realised that he could not write anything that would be accepted by the Soviet authorities. He did produce some works and worked on War and Peace, an earlier opera to make it fit the conventions of ‘socialist realism.’
References
Murray, S (2006), Epinions [online]. Shopping.com Incorporated. Available from: http://www.epinions.com/review/musc_mu-263244/content_225977732740?sb=1, accessed on February 12th 2012.
Redepenning, D, “Prokofiev, Sergey.” in Grove Music On-line. Oxford Music Online. Available from: http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article_citations/grove/music/22402, accessed on February 19th 2012.
Sertosky, P (2008), Open Writing Web Magazine [online]. Paul Sertosky. Available from: http://www.openwriting.com/archives/2008/05/prokofievs_viol_1.php, accessed February 12th 2012.