A Futurist and the sun of the Russian music

The Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev’s legacy includes not only world-class operas, ballets, and symphonies. He created a special musical language, innovative and one-of-a-kind. The public sometimes rejected Prokofiev’s works, which is not surprising, because he wrote not for the ‘here and now’ but aiming at the future.

A child prodigy

Sergei Prokofiev was born on April 23, 1891 in Sontsovka village of Yekaterinoslav Governorate (now Donetsk Oblast in Ukraine). The composer’s father, also named Sergei, managed the estate of his friend with whom they studied together in the Agricultural Academy, while his mother Maria ran the household. She loved to play music and that passion played a decisive role in the future composer’s life, as he himself wrote in his autobiography: 

“I could hear Beethoven and Chopin since birth, and I remember myself consciously despising light music by the age of 12. When my mother was waiting for me to be born, she played for up to six hours a day, and the future little man was informed by music”. As a boy, Sergei began to learn to play the piano under his mother’s guidance. Interestingly, she had her own approach to developing her son’s abilities.

Prokofiev recalled: “My mother approached my musical development with great care and caution. The main point was to keep the child interested in music and, God forbid, not to alienate him with boring studies. Hence, as little time as possible for exercises and as much as possible for literature. It’s a wonderful point of view that mothers should remember.”

Prokofiev’s ability to compose music manifested very early — he composed his first piano piece at the age of five and a half, and at the age of nine created The Giant opera. His mother realised that her teaching skills were not enough, and on a trip to Moscow the child prodigy was brought to composer Sergei Taneyev. Taneyev was very impressed and arranged for the legendary music teacher Reinhold Gliere to teach Prokofiev composition.

Sergei Prokofiev entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory with two folders of his own works. He graduated as a composer in 1909 and as a pianist in 1914. Prokofiev performed his First Piano Concerto at the graduation and was awarded the honorary Rubinstein Prize.

Musical Futurist

Prokofiev’s first performance took place in 1908 at a concert arranged by the Evenings of Modern Music club in St Petersburg. Critics noted the young composer’s undeniable talent, extravagance and unbridled imagination. Passion for inventing new harmonies is a typical feature of Prokofiev’s musical works, and he consciously began complicating the material since his childhood.

Here is how he recalls one important conversation with Taneyev: “When I showed him a symphony composed under Gliere’s guidance at the age of 11, Taneyev praised it, but noted that the harmony was too simple… And then he laughed. This bruised my ego. Not that I burst into tears or had a sleepless night, but somewhere deep down inside I had the thought that the harmony was too simple. When, at the age of 18, I showed him my four studies, he asked me why there were so many different harmonic sequences. I reminded him of a conversation we had a few years earlier. He humorously clutched his head and exclaimed: “Was it really me who pushed you down this path?!”.

Prokofiev never quit this path even when the audience rejected him. During the premiere of the Second piano concerto in 1913, some audience members demonstratively left because the piece was just too wild and futuristic for them. And only the most forward-looking music admirers realized that the author was simply ahead of his time.

Critic Vyacheslav Karatygin wrote: “The audience booed. That is all right. In ten years’ time they will atone for yesterday’s whistles with unanimous applause for the new, famous composer with a European fame!” This was exactly what happened. By late 20th century, the concerto became part of the world’s musical heritage. Renowned pianist Sviatoslav Richter included it in his “three whales of pianism”, along with Beethoven’s Sonata No. 29 and Brahms’ Variations.

Life Abroad

In 1918, Prokofiev leaves to America and tours extensively across the US and Europe. While abroad, he composed operas Love for Three Oranges (1919) and Fiery Angel (1919–1927), ballets Leap of Steel (1925), Prodigal Son (1928), and On the Dnieper (1930), the Second (1925), Third (1928) and Fourth (1930) symphonies, as well as the Third (1917–1921), Fourth (1931), and Fifth (1932) Piano Concertos and the Second violin concerto (1935).

The Leap of Steel ballet was commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev who wanted to stage a “Bolshevik ballet about Soviet Russia”. As envisioned by Prokofiev and librettist Georgi Yakulov, the Leap of Steel does not glorify the Bolshevik ideas but vividly and ironically demonstrates the achievements of the Soviet industrialization. One can feel the irony even from the title that uses the word leap instead of step or pace.

While composing this ballet, Prokofiev for the first time used a method that he would often use in his future works. He was forced to work while on the road during the tours, so this is what he did: “It was hard to compose the score given the bumpy rides, so I decided to do all preliminary work in the train carriage, not only figuring out which instrument would play this melody or that accompaniment, but elaborating every beat to the very bottom, to every doubling, to the distribution of the instruments in the chords, to the last stroke, accent or nuance, so that when I would step on the firm ground again, all that was left to do was to mechanically write down everything that I thought over in the carriage and marked out in pencil in the piano score.”

More than just a composer

Prokofiev returned to the USSR in 1936. That same year, he composed a symphonic fairy tale Peter and the Wolf for the Central Children’s Theatre. He wrote the script as well as the music. The fairy tale was devised to introduce the kids to the world of musical instruments. Each character symbolises an instrument, for instance, a flute represents a birdie, an oboe — a duck, while a clarinet is a cat. The idea was so innovative that Walt Disney’s studio released a cartoon Peter and the Wolf based on Prokofiev’s fairy tale.

The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 is reflected in Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony and in the epic War and Peace opera. Patriotism and protection of one’s country are key themes of the musical score to Sergei Eisenstein’s film Alexander Nevsky. Some episodes of this film were specifically edited to a musical soundtrack. Music from the film is known as the Alexander Nevsky cantata. 

Sergei Eisenstein admired Prokofiev’s ability to see a figurative image behind the sounds. Indeed, the cantata literally depicts the confrontation between the Russian people and the Livonian knights: the Russian theme is conveyed through harmonious melodies, while the theme of the invaders is represented by dissonant music and a meaningless set of Latin words. The Prokofiev and Eisenstein duo was perhaps the only time in the history of cinema when the director and the composer worked as equals, because composers are usually commissioned to write music by directors. 

But that was Prokofiev’s nature — he never did what others did. He began composing his latest ballet, The Tale of the Stone Flower, because no one had ever worked with Pavel Bazhov tales before him. While working on the music, Prokofiev studied the Ural folklore. In public festivities scenes and at Katerina’s bachelorette party, one can hear remastered folk songs. The first rehearsals of The Tale of the Stone Flower took place at the Bolshoi Theatre on March 1, 1953. On March 5, Sergei Prokofiev suddenly died of brain haemorrhage. That day he was working on the score for the scene where Katerina meets Danila.

Other Prokofiev

When we speak of outstanding personalities, it is hard to imagine that they could have chosen a different trade. Could Prokofiev become someone other than a musician? He probably could. Sergei Prokofiev had great literary talent, as evidenced by his Autobiography, Diaries and opera librettos. Moreover, Prokofiev played chess since early childhood, and played like a pro! He proudly recalled a game that he drew against World Champion Emanuel Lasker. He loved innovations and experiments in chess as well — when he was young, Prokofiev “was obsessed with a thought to substitute the square chess board with a hexagonal one with hexagonal fields”.

Prokofiev did not become a chess genius, but he was a musical genius for sure. At inauguration of a monument to the composer in Moscow, renowned conductor Valery Gergiev called Prokofiev a 20th century Mozart: “There were no melodists in the 20th century like Prokofiev. It will be long before we have composers of talent equal to that of Sergei Prokofiev”.

Tatiana Borisova