Serge Prokofieff and his orchestral music — A Reader’s Guide

dullness of sitting and drumming one thing over and over,” Prokofieff wrote, “mother hurried to keep me supplied with new pieces so that the amount of music I studied was enormous.”

This exposure to music continued when the family moved to Moscow. There Prokofieff attended the opera repeatedly and soon developed a taste for composing for voice himself. One of these early efforts was submitted to the composer Taneieff, who advised the family to send their son to Reinhold Gliere for further study. This early attraction for the theatre was later to culminate not only in several operas of marked originality but in numerous scores for ballet and the screen. To the end Prokofieff never quite lost his childhood passion for the stage. One has only to hear his music for the “Romeo and Juliet” ballet and the opera, “The Love of Three Oranges” to realize how enduring a hold the theatre had on him.

Emboldened by Taneieff’s reaction, the eleven-year-old boy next showed him a symphony. Prokofieff himself told the story to Olin Downes, who interviewed him in New York in 1919 for the “Boston Post.” Taneieff leafed through the manuscript and said:—“Pretty well, my boy. You are mastering the form rapidly. Of course, you have to develop more interesting harmony. Most of this is tonic, dominant and subdominant [the simplest and most elementary chords in music], but that will come.”

“This,” said Prokofieff to Mr. Downes, “distressed me greatly. I did not wish to do only what others had done. I could not endure the thought of producing only what others had produced. And so I started out, very earnestly, not to imitate, but to find a way of my own. It was very hard, and my courage was severely put to the test in the following years, since I destroyed reams of music, most of which sounded very well, whenever I realized that it was only an echo of some one’s else. This often wounded me deeply.

“Eleven years later I brought a new score to Taneieff, whom I had not been working with for some seasons. You should have seen his face when he looked at the music. ‘But, my dear boy, this is terrible. What do you call this? And why that?’ And so forth. Then I said to him, ‘Master, please remember what you said to me when I brought my G-major symphony. It was only tonic, dominant and subdominant.’

“‘God in heaven,’ he shouted, ‘am I responsible for this?’”

Prokofieff was scarcely thirteen when another distinguished Russian composer entered his life—and again by way of an opera score. Alexander Glazounoff was so impressed by a work entitled “Feast During the Plague” that the boy was promptly enrolled at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. That was in 1904. There he remained for ten years, among his teachers being Liadoff, Tcherepnin, and Rimsky-Korsakoff. From them he absorbed much of the prodigious skill as colorist and orchestrator that later went into his compositions, besides a thorough schooling in the nationalist ideals of Russian music.

At the same time he was already feeling the urge to express himself in a bolder and more unorthodox style of writing. This rebelliousness was later to lead to controversial clashes over several of his scores. By the time he left the Conservatory in 1914, Glazounoff knew that Prokofieff had wandered off into paths of his own. Yet he arranged for a trial performance of Prokofieff’s First Symphony. This proved crucial, for it attracted the notice of an influential group of vanguard musicians and, perhaps even more important, a publisher. Yet, when he graduated, it was not as composer but as pianist, that Prokofieff carried off first prize. Shortly after his graduation, Prokofieff’s father died, and when the First World War broke out later that summer, he was granted exemption from military service because of his widowed mother.

During the war years Prokofieff composed two works that would appear to be at opposite extremes of orchestral style—the “Classical Symphony” and the “Scythian Suite”. One is an unequivocal declaration of faith in the balanced serenity and suavity of the Mozartean tradition, and the other rocks with an almost savage upheaval of barbaric power. Over both, however, hovers the iron control and superb sureness of idiom of a searching intellect and an unfailing artistic insight. The two works represent two parts rather than two sides of a richly integrated personality.

The revolution of February, 1917, found Prokofieff in the midst of rehearsals of his opera “The Gambler,” founded on Dostoievsky’s short novel, to a text of his own. Production was indefinitely suspended because of the hardships and uncertainties of the social and political scene. Actually it was not till 1929 that the opera was finally produced, in Brussels, Prokofieff having revised it from the manuscript recovered from the library of the Maryinsky Theatre of Leningrad. When the October Revolution had triumphed, Prokofieff applied for a passport. His intention was to come to America, where he was assured a lucrative prospect of creative and concert work. The request was granted, with this rebuke from a Soviet official:—

“You are revolutionary in art as we are revolutionary in politics. You ought not to leave us now, but then, you wish it. We shall not stop you. Here is your passport.”

Prokofieff proceeded to make his way to America, following an itinerary that included Siberia (a small matter of twenty-six days), Hawaii, San Francisco, and New York, where he arrived in August, 1918. A series of recitals followed at which he performed several of his own compositions, and the Russian Symphony Orchestra featured some of his larger works.

A picturesque and revealing reaction to both Prokofieff’s piano-playing and music was that of a member of the staff of “Musical America” who was assigned to review the visitor’s first concert at Aeolian Hall on November 20, 1918.

“Take one Schoenberg, two Ornsteins, a little Erik Satie,” wrote this culinary expert, “mix thoroughly with some Medtner, a drop of Schumann, a liberal quantity of Scriabin and Stravinsky—and you will brew something like a Serge Prokofieff, composer. Listen to the keyboard antics of an unholy organism which is one-third virtuoso, one-third athlete, and one-third wayward poet, armed with gloved finger-fins and you will have an idea of the playing of a Serge Prokofieff, pianist. Repay an impressionist, a neo-fantast, or whatever you will, in his own coin:—crashing Siberias, volcano hell, Krakatoa, sea-bottom crawlers! Incomprehensible? So is Prokofieff!”

A commission for an opera from Cleofonte Campanini, conductor of the Chicago Opera Company, was to result in what ultimately proved to be his most popular work composed for America—the humorous fairy-tale opera, “The Love of Three Oranges.” Campanini, however, had died in the interim, and it was Mary Garden, newly appointed director (she styled herself _directa_!) of the Chicago company, who undertook the production of the opera in Chicago in 1921. Its reception in Chicago and later at the Manhattan Opera House was scarcely encouraging. Almost three decades were to pass before a spectacularly successful production, in English, by Laszlo Halasz at the New York City Center gave it a secure and enduring place in the active American repertory.

Prokofieff next went to Paris, where he renewed ties with a group of Russian musicians and intellectuals, among them the two Serges who were to become so helpful in the development of his reputation as a dominant force in modern music. These were Serge Diaghileff and Serge Koussevitzky. For Diaghileff he wrote music for a succession of ballets, among them “Chout” (1921), “Pas d’Acier” (1927), and “The Prodigal Son” (1929). Considerable interest was aroused by “Pas d’Acier”, which was termed both a “labor ballet” and a “Bolshevik Ballet” by various members of the press both in Paris and in London, where the work was given in July, 1927. It was a ballet of factories and firemen, of lathes and drill-presses, of wheels and workers, and it brought Prokofieff the dubious title of composer laureate of the mechanistic age.

Koussevitzky had begun his celebrated series of concerts in Paris in 1921. This proved a perfect setting for the newcomer. Again and again the programs afforded him a double hospitality as composer and pianist. Koussevitzky introduced the Second Symphony and when he later took up the baton of the Boston Symphony, Prokofieff was among the first composers invited to appear on his programs in either or both capacities. In 1929, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Boston Symphony, it was to Serge Prokofieff that Koussevitzky went for a symphonic score to commemorate the occasion. The resulting work was Prokofieff’s Fourth Symphony. It was not till 1927 that Prokofieff, absent from his homeland for nine years, decided to return, if only for a visit. Of this period away from home, Nicolas Nabokov, who knew Prokofieff well, had this to say in an article written for “The Atlantic Monthly” in July, 1942:—

“From 1922 until 1926 Prokofieff lived in France and travelled only for his annual concert tours. In Paris he found himself surrounded by a seething international artistic life in which the Russian element played a great part, thanks mainly to Diaghileff and his Ballet. Most of these people were expatriates, in various degrees opposed to the new regime in their motherland. Prokofieff had too close and too profound a relation with Russia to lose himself in this atmosphere. He kept up his friendships with those who stayed in Russia and those who were abroad by simply putting himself, in a certain sense, outside of the whole problem. It was interesting to watch how cleverly he succeeded in this position. There was nothing strained or unnatural about it. He earned the esteem of both camps and the confidence of everyone. From a production by the Ballet Russe of his latest ballet, Prokofieff would go to the Soviet Embassy, where a party would be given in his honor, and at his home you would find the intellectuals arriving from Russia, among them his great friend, Meyerhold, Soviet writers, and poets.

“In 1927 he dug out his old Soviet passport and returned for a short while to Russia. As a result of this first trip came his ballet ‘Pas d’Acier’. This was Prokofieff’s greatest success in Paris. It coincided with a turn in French public opinion toward Russia, with the beginning of the Five-Year Plan, and the increasing interest in Russian affairs among the intelligentsia of Western Europe. For several years to come Prokofieff kept up the dual life of going to Russia for several months and spending the rest of the time in Paris, until finally the demands of his country inwardly and outwardly became so strong that he decided definitely to return and settle in Moscow.”

Prokofieff had again visited America in 1933. In New York, within the space of a few days, he performed his Fifth Concerto with Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony, and his Third Concerto with Bruno Walter and the Philharmonic-Symphony. So many references have been made in these pages to Prokofieff as his own soloist, that perhaps a few balanced words from Philip Hale on the subject may be appropriate at this point. After having heard him several times in Boston, the late critic and annotator, declared:—

“His pianistic gifts are unusually great; there was reason for his being recognized in America primarily as a pianist and only later on as a composer. Though possessed of all these exceptional attainments, Prokofieff uses them within the rigid limits of artistic simplicity, which precludes the possibility of any affectation, any calculating of effect whereby an elevated style of pianism is sullied. In any case I have never heard a pianist who plays Prokofieff’s productions more simply and at the same time more powerfully than the composer himself.”

Prokofieff’s return to Russia opened a new and active chapter of his career. Almost overnight he began to identify himself with the ideals of Soviet musical organizations insofar as they were concerned with education and the fostering of a community feeling of cultural solidarity. The attraction of the theatre was stronger than ever, and soon he was composing operas, ballet scores, incidental music for plays, and music for films. Indeed, the composition that virtually reintroduced him to the Russian public was the striking score for the film “Lieutenant Kije.” This delighted one and all with its pungent wit and satiric thrusts at the parading pomp and stiffness of the court of Czar Paul. Less successful was the first performance in Moscow in 1934 of a “Chant Symphonique” for large orchestra. This drew the reproach that it echoed “the disillusioned mood and weary art of the urban lyricists of contemporary Europe.”

Another composition of this period was a suite prepared by Prokofieff from a ballet entitled, “Sur le Borysthène.” Interest attaches to this ballet because of a significant verdict pronounced by a Paris judge in Prokofieff’s favor. The ballet had been commissioned by Serge Lifar and produced at the Paris Opéra in 1933. The contract had stipulated one hundred thousand francs as payment for the work. Only seventy thousand francs were paid, and Prokofieff sued for the remainder. Lifar contended in court that the unfriendly reception accorded the production proved the ballet was “deficient in artistic merit.” The court’s judgment, rendered on January 9, 1934, read in part: “Any person acquiring a musical work puts faith in the composer’s talent. There is no reliable criterion for evaluation of the quality of a work of art which is received according to individual taste. History teaches us that the public is often mistaken in its reaction.”

Prokofieff made his last trip to the United States in February, 1938. In several interviews with the press he laid particular stress on how Russia provided “a livelihood and leisure” for composers and musicians of all categories. Later, the League of Composers invited him to be guest of honor at a concert devoted entirely to his music. Prokofieff was to have made still another visit to America late in 1940 on the invitation of the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Society. The invitation was accepted, but Prokofieff never came. The reason given was that he could not secure the required visas. Prokofieff was to have conducted a series of concerts with the Philharmonic-Symphony. The Society accordingly asked another distinguished Russian composer to direct the concerts, a Russian who had not set foot in his native land since the Revolution—Igor Stravinsky.

Prokofieff was again at work on an opera—“The Duenna”—when his country once more found itself at war with Germany. Both the opera and a new ballet, “Cinderella”, were immediately shelved, and Prokofieff dedicated his energies and talents to expressing in music the determination of the Soviet people to resist the Nazi invasion and join in the world struggle to crush Fascism. Instead of light operas and fairy-tale ballets, he now composed a march, two war songs, and a symphonic suite “1941,” a title which explains itself. As the war dragged on with its deadening weight of horror, and its unprecedented drama of resistance, the feelings it gave rise to inspired Prokofieff to compose an opera based on Tolstoy’s monumental historical novel, “War and Peace.” America learned of its completion on January 1, 1943 in a communication that conveyed New Year’s greetings “to our American friends on behalf of all Soviet composers.”

The opera caused Prokofieff considerable trouble because of its unparalleled length. Cuts and revisions were made, scenes transposed and replaced, and yet Prokofieff was never quite satisfied with the work. Excerpts were performed in Moscow, and again the music of Prokofieff became a bone of lively contention between those who thought he had captured the spirit of the novel and those who thought he had not. There was general agreement, however, that Prokofieff had written a magnificent and stirring tribute to Russian valor and patriotism. Together with his music for the films “Ivan the Terrible” and “Alexander Nevsky”, the new opera offered an impressive panorama of Russian history. There are in “War and Peace” eleven long scenes and sixty characters. The work was much too long for a single evening, and when it was finally produced in Moscow in 1946, only the first part was performed. A stage premiere had been promised in Moscow as early as 1943, but technical difficulties caused its postponement. Plans for a Metropolitan production for the season of 1944-45 also had to be abandoned.

In 1945 Prokofieff composed his Fifth Symphony, which is considered by many critics the greatest single achievement of his symphonic career. Prokofieff has himself spoken of it as “the culmination of a large part of my creative life.” The symphony was warmly received both in Russia and in America. It has generally been assumed that it depicts both the tragic and heroic phases of the world crisis and an unshaken confidence in final victory over Nazi barbarism. Prokofieff himself would provide no clue to its program other than that it was “a symphony about the spirit of man.”

When Germany was at last defeated, Prokofieff’s pen was again busy celebrating the event. This time it was an “Ode to the End of the War”, scored for sixteen double basses, eight harps and four pianos. In 1947 Prokofieff composed his Sixth Symphony, and it was shortly after its first performance that the Central Committee of the Communist Party issued its stinging denunciation of certain tendencies in the music of Prokofieff and six other Soviet composers. The occasion of the official rebuke was a new opera by Vano Muradeli, “Great Friendship.” This work was found offensive as a distortion of history and a false and imperfect exploitation of national material. Having disposed of Muradeli, the Committee concentrated its attack on the Symphonic Six—Shostakovich, Prokofieff, Khatchaturian, Shebalin, Popoff, and Miaskovsky.

“We are speaking of composers,” read the statement, “who confine themselves to the formalist anti-public trend. This trend has found its fullest manifestation in the works of such composers [naming the six] in whose compositions the formalist distortions, the anti-democratic tendencies in music, alien to the Soviet people and to its artistic taste, are especially graphically represented. Characteristics of such music are the negation of the basic principles of classical music; a sermon for atonality, dissonance and disharmony, as if this were an expression of ‘progress’ and ‘innovation’ in the growth of musical composition as melody; a passion for confused, neuropathic combinations which transform music into cacophony, into a chaotic piling up of sounds. This music reeks strongly of the spirit of the contemporary modernist bourgeois music of Europe and America, which reflects the marasmus of bourgeois culture, the full denial of musical art, its impasse.”

Like the other six composers, Prokofieff accepted the rebuke and made public acknowledgment that he had pursued paths of sterile experimentation in some of his more recent music. He declared that the Resolution of the Central Committee had “separated decayed tissue from healthy tissue in the composers’ creative production,” and that it had created the prerequisites “for the return to health of the entire organism of Soviet music.”

Prokofieff’s _mea culpa_ was first contained in a letter addressed to Tikhon Khrennikoff, general secretary of the Union of Soviet composers. It had been Khrennikoff, who, in a semi-official blast at these “tendencies” had first hurled the charge of “formalism” at Prokofieff and his colleagues, Khrennikoff evidently had in mind certain patterns and formulas of the more extreme innovations of modern music, like Arnold Schoenberg’s twelve-tone row and the many flourishing European schools of atonality, dissonance, and startling instrumental groupings.

“Composers have become infatuated,” said Khrennikoff, “with formalistic innovations, artificially inflated and impracticable orchestral combinations, such as the including of twenty-four trumpets in Khatchaturian’s ‘Symphonic Poem’ or the incredible scoring for sixteen double-basses, eight harps, four pianos, and the exclusion of the rest of the string instruments in Prokofieff’s ‘Ode on the End of War.’”

In pleading guilty to the charge of formalism, Prokofieff attempted to explain how it had found its way into his music:—

“The resolution is all the more important because it has demonstrated that the formalist trend is alien to the Soviet people, that it leads to the impoverishment and decline of music, and has pointed out with definitive clarity the aims which we must strive to achieve as the best way to serve the Soviet people. _Speaking of myself, the elements of formalism were peculiar to my music as long as fifteen or twenty years ago. The infection was caught apparently from contact with a number of Western trends._”