Prokofiev, Sergey (Sergeyevich)

(b Sontsovka, Bakhmutsk region, Yekaterinoslav district, Ukraine, 11/23 April 1891; d Moscow, 5
March 1953). Russian composer and pianist. He began his career as a composer while still a student,
and so had a deep investment in Russian Romantic traditions – even if he was pushing those
traditions to a point of exacerbation and caricature – before he began to encounter, and contribute
to, various kinds of modernism in the second decade of the new century. Like many artists, he left
his country directly after the October Revolution; he was the only composer to return, nearly 20
years later. His inner traditionalism, coupled with the neo-classicism he had helped invent, now
made it possible for him to play a leading role in Soviet culture, to whose demands for political
engagement, utility and simplicity he responded with prodigious creative energy. In his last years,
however, official encouragement turned into persecution, and his musical voice understandably
faltered.

1. Russia, 1891–1918.

2. USA, 1918–22.

3. Europe, 1922–36.

4. The USSR, 1936–53.

WORKS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

DOROTHEA REDEPENNING

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1. Russia, 1891–1918.

(i) Childhood and early works.

(ii) Conservatory studies and first public appearances.

(iii) The path to emigration.

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Prokofiev, Sergey, §1: Russia: 1891–1918

(i) Childhood and early works.

Prokofiev grew up in comfortable circumstances. His father Sergey Alekseyevich Prokofiev was an
agronomist and managed the estate of Sontsovka, where he had gone to live in 1878 with his wife
Mariya Zitkova, a well-educated woman with a feeling for the arts. Prokofiev was the last of their
three children, but his two older sisters had died in infancy, so that to all intents and purposes
he grew up as a much indulged and pampered only child. His father supervised his general education
in the natural sciences; a French governess and also, at various periods, two German governesses
were engaged to teach him foreign languages; and his mother provided his early education in the
arts. His playmates were the employees’ children, who addressed him by the formal ‘you’, while he
used the familiar pronoun to them. This contributed to giving him a sense, from an early age, of
being privileged, indeed invulnerable and immune to criticism.

When he was four years old his mother began his first piano lessons, and his earliest attempts at
composition also date from this period: he described them in detail in his autobiography, with
musical illustrations. These childhood works include ‘Indian Galop’, various waltzes and marches,
one for four hands, and other small piano pieces written between 1896 and 1901. Visits to the opera
(in Moscow in the winter of 1899–1900 and St Petersburg two years later) acquainted him with the
standard stage repertory of Russia at the time – Gounod’s Faust, Prince Igor, The Sleeping Beauty,
A Life for the Tsar, Dargomïzhsky’s Rusalka, Rubinstein’s Demon, La Traviata, Carmen – and inspired
the ten-year-old boy to try his own hand at opera. He wrote Velikan (‘The Giant’) in February–June
1900, and this childhood opera, in three acts and six scenes, was performed for his family with his
playmates taking the parts. In 1901 he was busy with his second operatic project, on a subject of
the Robinson Crusoe type: Na pustïnnïkh ostrovakh (‘On Desert Islands’) of which only a few pages
survive. In his autobiography he dwelt at some length on his juvenilia, urging his readers to see
how the future opera composer was already emerging in the consistent ostinato structures, the
changes of dominant to tonic (although these are still simple), and the arrangement of motifs, also
still simple. These childhood works were collected in special albums, and the French governess
copied out several pieces. At the same time Prokofiev began planning a catalogue in which to enter
the titles and openings of his works. All his juvenilia are now in the Moscow RGALI (Rossiyskiy
gossudarstvennïy arkhiv literaturï i isskustva, fond 29).

In January 1902 the family stopped in Moscow on their way back from St Petersburg. The son of a
family they knew, Yury Nikolayevich Pomerantsev, a graduate of the Moscow Conservatory who later
became a ballet conductor at the Bolshoy, put them in touch with Sergey Taneyev. Taneyev
recommended that the young Prokofiev study theory with Pomerantsev, and a few lessons did take
place; in addition he suggested that one of his own students could act as private tutor to the boy
during the summer months in Sontsovka. The man Taneyev first thought of was the pianist Aleksandr
Goldenweiser, who had also studied composition; when he declined, Taneyev recommended the young
composer and pianist Reinhold Glière. Glière spent the summers of 1902 and 1903 at Sontsovka,
teaching Prokofiev theory, composition, instrumentation and piano; during the winter months the
boy’s instruction continued by correspondence. A phase of intensive and extremely productive
activity as a composer dates from this point, and it is clear that even as a boy Prokofiev was
developing the habit of working on several pieces at once. Glière urged him to begin by schooling
himself to write short pieces built into the structure of a cycle. Prokofiev therefore wrote a
number of small piano pieces (Pesenki, ‘Little Songs’, 1902–6), five series each of 12 pieces. Also
in 1902 he began work on a symphony in G major, dedicated to Glière; the first movement was
completed in full, the other movements only in piano score. The next year he wrote a violin sonata
in C minor to which he referred in the Ballade for cello and piano op.15 (1912). At the same time,
and encouraged by Glière, he set to music Pushkin’s ‘little tragedy’ Pir vo vremya chumï (‘A Feast
in Time of Plague’). When Glière sent him the score of Cui’s opera on the same subject, his
reaction, as he admits in his autobiography, was of jealousy. His account makes it clear that he
regarded the rival opera with hostility from the first, but at the same time he systematically
tried to learn from this more mature model. In 1904 he began work on his fourth youthful opera,
Undina, to a libretto by the Russian poet Mariya Kilstett taken from Friedrich de la Motte-Fouqué’s
story. He later cut the planned five acts to four, and the work was completed in vocal score in
1907.

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Prokofiev, Sergey, §1: Russia: 1891–1918

(ii) Conservatory studies and first public appearances.

In the spring of 1903 the 12-year-old Prokofiev was introduced to Glazunov, then a professor at the
St Petersburg Conservatory. Glazunov urged Prokofiev’s parents to let him study music, and won
their consent by arguing that the conservatory also provided a general education, so that the boy
would not need to attend an ordinary school as well. Prokofiev took some private lessons from
Mikhail Mikhailovich Chernov, a student about to take his examinations at the conservatory, and
passed the entrance examination in the autumn of 1904. He studied theory with Lyadov, whom he
described as ‘dry and sparing of words’, adding that he ‘took no interest in his pupil’s creative
development’. He also ventured to criticize Rimsky-Korsakov’s teaching of orchestration; however,
he expressed the utmost admiration for Rimsky-Korsakov’s later operas, particularly The Legend of
the Invisible City of Kitezh. In 1908 he began studying the theory of musical form with Vitols.
While a student he met Myaskovskiy, ten years his senior. A lifelong friendship between them
developed, and was maintained even during Prokofiev’s years abroad. It was a relationship allowing
room for frank and critical discussion of both men’s works.

The revolutionary unrest of the year 1905 was felt in the conservatory. One result was the
dismissal of Rimsky-Korsakov, who had supported the striking students, and Glazunov and Lyadov
resigned in solidarity, though all three returned in 1906. The young Prokofiev obviously paid
little serious attention to these events, and did not perceive their significance. In the spring of
1909 he completed his studies in composition, and graduated with the usual Russian diploma as free
artist. The pieces he offered as his examination works were his sixth sonata (numbered among his
juvenilia; only pencil sketches have been preserved) and a scene from an opera A Feast in Time of
Plague (not the same as his earlier opera). These works, Prokofiev tells us, were not well
received, so that his final grade was only ‘good’. It seems his years at the conservatory left no
lasting mark on him, but merely reinforced a process of development that had begun early and was
progressing steadily all the time, hardly affected by his studies. After his examination in
composition, he took courses to train as a concert pianist, changing from Alexander Winkler to the
highly regarded Anna Yesipova, the teacher of many outstanding Russian pianists. At the same time
he began to study conducting with Nikolay Tcherepnin, the only lecturer at the conservatory whom he
took really seriously; he also respected him as an analyst. Tcherepnin even taught him, he said, to
appreciate the orchestral sound of Haydn and Mozart. He took his examinations in both these
practical disciplines in the spring of 1914. For the piano examination he played his own First
Piano Concerto, and won the first prize on which he had set his heart.

During his time at the conservatory he wrote a Symphony in E minor, many small-scale piano works
and six early sonatas, some of which he utilized later. He left the Sonata in B major of 1904
alone; the Sonata in F minor of 1907 was revised to become his First Sonata op.1 (1909); the Sonata
in A minor (also 1907) became the Third Sonata op.28 (1917); the fourth youthful sonata (1908) is
lost; the Sonata in C minor of 1908 became the Fourth Sonata op.29 (1917); and, as mentioned above,
only sketches remain of the sixth or ‘Conservatory Sonata’. Other compositions of this early period
also found their way into the catalogue of Prokofiev’s mature works. Four piano pieces of 1907–8
became op.3 (1911), and four further pieces of 1908 op.4 (1910–12); the Sinfonietta in A major
(1909) was revised to become op.5 (1914) and in its final form became the Sinfonietta for Small
Orchestra op.48 (1929). Early works also live on in the Ten Piano Pieces op.12 (1913) and the
Second Sonata op.14 (1912), which incorporates the second of two discarded sonatinas. All his life
Prokofiev retained the habit of reworking his musical ideas, either because they pleased him or for
financial reasons.

Other student works include two choruses with orchestral accompaniment to poems by Bal'mont (op.7,
1909–10), originally intended for the student choir, and two songs to texts by Bal'mont and Aleksey
Apukhtin (op.9, 1910–11), both diptychs reacting to the literary symbolism of the period. The
symphonic poems Snï (‘Dreams’, op.6, 1910) and Osenneye (‘Autumnal Sketch’, op.8, 1910, second
version 1915, third version 1934) were influenced by Skryabin’s orchestral Rêverie and
Rachmaninoff’s Isle of the Dead and Second Symphony, which shows that Prokofiev was pitting
himself, quite deliberately, against the two leading (and creatively contrasting) composers of the
previous generation. He also wrote his first two piano concertos, the second revised in 1923, as
well as the five piano pieces Sarkazmï (‘Sarcasms’), the Toccata for piano, and Gadkiy utyonok
(‘The Ugly Duckling’) for voice and piano. In 1912 he made the decision to write for transposing
instruments in C and for english horn and trumpets in the alto clef, dispensing with the tenor
clef. He kept to this manner of writing throughout his life.

The operatic fragment Maddalena op.13 (1911, revised in 1913), after the play of the same name by
one Baroness von Lieven, was to have been performed in the conservatory, but proved too difficult
for the forces available. Prokofiev had completed the piano score of this one-act opera, but
orchestrated only the first of its four scenes. The material remained with the Edition Russe de
Musique after the composer’s emigration to Paris; Edward Downes discovered it in 1953 and completed
the orchestration. The action takes place in 15th-century Venice. Maddalena is leading a double
life, as a married woman and also, incognito, as the mistress of a friend of her husband; incited
by Maddalena, the two men kill one another in a fight. This dark drama reflects the inner turmoil
of its eponymous heroine, besides displaying one aspect of the struggle for emancipation in the
early 20th century, in that passion is set above bourgeois morality. The work already contains
basic features characteristic of the operatic composer Prokofiev was to become: clear contrasts,
differentiated motifs relating to the characters and situations, musical-dramatic movement with its
own inner tempo, and a highly strung female character such as Prokofiev developed further in
Paulina in lgrok (‘The Gambler’), Renata in Ognennïy angel (‘The Fiery Angel’), and to some extent
Natasha in Voyna i mir (‘War and Peace’).

Through his former teacher Chernov, Prokofiev met some of the organizers of the Evenings of
Contemporary Music in 1908, including the critics Vyacheslav Karatïgin and Walter Nuvel', who was a
friend of Diaghilev. Between 1900 and 1912 these recitals took place about six times a season in St
Petersburg, and it was here that Prokofiev made his début as a composer on 18/31 December 1908,
with seven of his piano pieces written in 1907–8: Skazka (‘Tale’), Snezhok (‘Snow’), Vospominaniya
(‘Reminiscences’), Porïv (‘Elan’), Molbï (‘Imploring Requests’), Otchayanie (‘Despair’), and
Navazhdeniye (‘Suggestion diabolique’). Works by Myaskovsky also had their first public
performances at the same recital. From then on Prokofiev regularly appeared at these evenings,
performing both his own compositions and those of others. He first introduced himself to Moscow
audiences on 21 February/6 March 1910, with a performance of his Etudes op.2 and Sonata op.1, at
one of a series of concerts given by the soprano Mariya Deisha-Zionichkaya. Other important
performances took place in the summer recital programmes of the Evenings of Contemporary Music. In
Moscow, where a concert series of the same name had begun, Konstantin Saradzhev conducted
Prokofiev’s orchestral pieces Dreams and Autumnal Sketch in 1911; the contact was provided by
Myaskovsky, whose works Saradzhev had performed earlier. 1912 saw Prokofiev’s first appearance as
soloist with an orchestra when he played his First Piano Concerto with great success, as he tells
us, first in Moscow and then under Aleksandr Aslanov in Pavlovsk, near St Petersburg. The Second
Piano Concerto, which he played at its première a year later on 23 August/5 September 1913, also in
Pavlovsk and under Aslanov, created a sensation which the composer describes with evident pride in
his autobiography. The work was roundly condemned in the conservative press, while progressive
critics such as Karatïgin reviewed it favourably. Though still a student, Prokofiev had established
himself, in the recitals of the Evenings of Contemporary Music, as a controversial innovator. He
was also looking for a publisher. Koussevitzky, who had founded his own orchestra and the Edition
Russe de Musique in 1909, and with whom Prokofiev later had a fruitful relationship, rejected his
works at this point on the recommendation of his advisers Skryabin, Rachmaninoff and Medtner.
Initally the St Petersburg publisher Boris Jürgenson, son of Tchaikovsky’s publisher Pyotr
Jürgenson, also rejected Prokofiev, but then, thanks to the intervention of Aleksandr Ossovsky, he
published the First Sonata and the Four Pieces op.3. Prokofiev remained with Jürgenson until 1916
and then changed to the publishing firm of Gutheil, which Koussevitzky took over that year, though
he kept the firm’s old name.

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(iii) The path to emigration.

Prokofiev had visited France, England and Switzerland in the summer of 1913, and a year later his
mother gave him a trip to London as a graduation present. Here he heard Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé
and Stravinsky’s Firebird, Petrushka and Rite of Spring, the last of which he regarded with
unconcealed scepticism. Nouvel introduced him to Diaghilev, who was in London with his ballet, and
Prokofiev played him his Second Piano Concerto. This is said to have given Diaghilev the idea of
commissioning Ala i Lolli, for which he suggested the symbolist poet Sergey Gorodetsky as author of
the scenario. He turned down Prokofiev’s proposition for The Gambler, since he thought opera had no
future. When Prokofiev travelled to Rome in the spring of 1919, with considerable difficulty
because of the war, and showed Diaghilev his sketches for the ballet, the impresario let the
project drop. On this visit he had another meeting with Stravinsky, whom he had known in St
Petersburg; the reservations the two composers had about each other remained unchanged. Also in
Rome he encountered Marinetti and the ideas of Italian futurism, but they left him indifferent. He
also played his Second Piano Concerto in Rome on 7 March 1915, his début abroad.

Using music from the aborted ballet, he wrote the Skifskaya syuita (‘Scythian Suite’) op.20
(1914–15), directly inspired by the Rite of Spring. It was first performed at the beginning of
1916, with the composer conducting, and created as much of a sensation as the Second Piano
Concerto. From Prokofiev’s account of this event in his autobiography, written in the provocative
style of the Russian literary futurists, it is clear that he was seeking to create just such a
scandal as Stravinsky had, to shock his audience and thus attract attention. With its harsh tone
colours, frequent accumulations of dissonances, obsessive pedal-note and ostinato techniques, and
extremely large orchestra, playing forte or fortissimo for long passages, the Scythian Suite is
indeed a challenge, but it remains remarkably traditional in its formal layout and thematic
structure. The four movements – an allegro with two contrasting themes (but not written as a sonata
movement), a scherzo and trio, a slow movement and a rondo-like finale – correspond to the
movements of the traditional symphony. Rhythm and metre remain simple; all four movements are in
4/4, and as is usually the case with Prokofiev, there are no changes of time signature or complex
superimpositions of different rhythms and metres such as are found in Stravinsky from the first,
and even in earlier Russian composers. The melodies are simple, indeed plain; large intervals (9ths
and even larger) are preferred in expressive passages. In addition, there are direct changes to
another key as the melodic movement progresses. Harmonies move in independent layers subordinate to
tone colours and registers, and displace one another so that a polytonal effect or a kind of
heterophony is created (Karatïgin spoke correctly, in a review, of ‘a new heterophony’). This
peculiar ambivalence – with an aggressive tonal structure and an accumulation of dissonances on the
one side, and on the other an uncomplicated formal construction, clear melodies, simple rhythms and
harmonies varied by direct changes of key – is a characteristic feature in the young Prokofiev, and
in modified form he displayed it all his life. The archaic and pagan subject survives in the titles
of the movements of the suite: ‘The Worship of Veles and Ala’, ‘The Idols and Dance of the Evil
Spirits’, ‘Night’ and ‘Lolli’s Journey and Sunrise’. They reflect the rejection of a civilization
felt to be over-refined, a longing for the primitive and for closeness to the earth and old
rituals, ideas that run through the symbolist literature of the time and that also surface in
Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.

Prokofiev returned to a subject of this nature in the cantata Semero ikh (‘They are Seven’) op.30,
written in 1917–18 and revised in 1933, after Bal'mont’s poem ‘Cries from Primeval Times’, with the
subtitle of ‘Chaldean Invocation’. The text concerns seven giants who destroy the world with
terrible violence. Prokofiev relates his choice of subject to ‘the events of the revolution shaking
Russia’; it may also perhaps be a reaction to the horrors of World War I. He introduced several new
effects, such as the whispering of the chorus at the beginning, choral glissandi, expansive col
legno parts, and a large body of percussion principally used as solo instruments. This work had its
première in Paris in 1924, under Koussevitzky. The description of it as a cantata is an addition of
the Soviet publisher, and one Prokofiev vigorously rejected, on the grounds that it allowed
associations of an outworn character, though he did also use the term himself. This was his first
publication in the Soviet Union.

During Prokofiev’s 1919 visit to Rome, Diaghilev’s idea for the ballet The Tale of the Buffoon took
shape, and he commissioned Prokofiev to write this work, Skazka pro shuta, also known by the French
transliteration Chout. The story comes from Aleskandr Afanas'yev’s collection of Russian folk
tales, which had already served as Rimsky-Korsakov’s source for a number of works. Diaghilev asked
for something typically ‘Russian’; he was well aware of the attractions of the exotic, as Russian
music was perceived to be in western Europe, and Prokofiev did include some national folk elements
in his music. The score was completed in 1916, but the première did not take place until 17 May
1921, in Paris, conducted by Prokofiev himself.

In the period leading up to his emigration, besides revising juvenile works for his Third and
Fourth Sonatas, he wrote the Sarcasms, op.17, 1912–14, five piano pieces which he performed to
acclaim at the recitals of the Musical Contemporaries, which had superseded the Evenings of
Contemporary Music, and the Mimoletnosti (‘Visions fugitives’, op.22, 1915–17), a cycle of 20 piano
pieces with a title suggested by a poem of Bal'mont’s. At the same time he began working on his
First Violin Concerto, op.19 (1916–17), which did not receive its première until 1923 in Paris, and
on the opera Igrok (‘The Gambler’), op.24 (1915–17), from Dostoevsky’s novel of the same name, a
project in which he was encouraged by Albert Coates, who had become chief conductor of the
Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg in 1911. The work went into rehearsal, and Prokofiev had this
first version of the opera printed in vocal score for the purpose, but because of resistance by the
singers and the revolutionary unrest in February 1917 the opera remained unperformed.

Prokofiev showed quite another side of himself in the Classical Symphony op.25 (1916–17). His
much-quoted remark – ‘I thought that if Haydn were alive today he would compose just as he did
before, but at the same time would include something new in his manner of composition. I wanted to
compose such a symphony: a symphony in the classical style’ – reads like an early confession of
neo-classicism. Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, the key neo-classical work, was not begun until two years
later. Prokofiev was certainly referring back to classical models here, for instance in the
proportions of the symphony, the well balanced sonata movements in the opening allegro and the
finale, the triad-based melodies and the occasional Alberti bass figures. However, the stylization
also includes Baroque elements, particularly in the third movement, a gavotte, and in the regular
accompanying chords of its predecessor. These were also the direct harmonic idioms typical of
Prokofiev which mark the symphony a 20th-century work.

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Prokofiev, Sergey

2. USA, 1918–22.

Prokofiev remarked in his autobiography that: ‘the February Revolution took me by surprise in
Petrograd. Like those circles in which I moved, I welcomed it joyfully’. The 19th Vision fugitive,
he said, reflects the revolutionary events. He was genuinely enthusiastic about the idea of
revolution, as a radical break with tradition, and he sought to give it artistic shape. He found
inspiration less in music than in literature, for instance in Mayakovsky’s forceful, anti-bourgeois
lyrics, and in the collection published by the Russian futurists under the provocative title A Slap
in the Face of Public Taste. In his autobiography (published in extracts in SovM, 1941–6) he went
on to explain that he had no very clear idea of the October Revolution, and ‘I had not yet become
aware that I, like every other citizen, could be useful to the revolution’. This was written at the
end of the 1930s and beginning of the 1940s, when it would have been dangerous to write anything
that might be seen to contravene Soviet ideology. We may believe Prokofiev when he claims to have
felt enthusiasm for a revolution in art; his expressions of enthusiasm for the political
revolution, however, and for the idea of being useful to it, are precautionary measures, of which
there are many in the book. For instance, he emphasized his allegedly revolutionary and proletarian
origin by pointing out that his father maintained contact with revolutionary groups in the 1870s,
and that his mother’s forebears had been serfs. In fact he must have recognized quite early that
the revolution and the incipient civil war would leave him no room for artistic development, and he
took the decision to go to the USA in the spring of 1918. He travelled to Petrograd and gave
several concerts there, including the premières of the Mimoletnosti (‘Visions Fugitives’), the
Third and Fourth Sonatas, and the Classical Symphony. He met Mayakovsky, called on Anatoly
Lunacharsky, then cultural commissar, and applied to him for permission to go abroad. Lunacharsky
granted it, as he did to many other great Russian artists. On 7 May 1918 Prokofiev travelled from
Petrograd through Siberia to Vladivostok and on to Tokyo, where he gave some concerts. He arrived
in New York at the beginning of September 1918.

He described his years abroad as a gradual process of failure, blaming the difficult conditions of
American and European musical life. Even if his generally negative account of cultural conditions
in the west was written with an eye towards Soviet censorship, the facts show that his years in
exile were not as successful as he had planned and hoped. He had arrived in the USA without any
firm agreements, and at first tried to make his way as the interpreter of his own works. The first
piano recital he gave in New York, on 29 November 1918, was, he said, ‘seen on the surface as a
success’. Following his manager’s advice, he had also included some works by Skryabin and
Rachmaninoff in the programme, as older and more accessible music than his own. In saying that he
had misjudged the rather conservative musical taste of the American public, ‘while Rachmaninoff,
who had come to New York at about the same time and played a classical programme with only two or
three of his own preludes, was much more successful’, his admission that he himself achieved only a
succès d’estime barely conceals a weightier problem he had not previously recognized: Rachmaninoff
was the leading Russian pianist in the USA. Rachmaninoff had introduced himself to the American
public as early as the 1909–10 season, and had composed his Third Piano Concerto for that tour.
Like Prokofiev, he had emigrated after the Revolution. American agents had engaged him for a tour
comprising 36 concerts in the 1918–19 season, and over the next few years he gave 60 to 70 concerts
every season. If Prokofiev were to compete, he would have to emphasize his image as a pianist. His
summing up of his first season in America sounds resigned: ‘The public here is not used to
listening to the works of a single composer for a whole evening. People want a varied programme as
a showcase for popular pieces. Rachmaninoff has accepted this compromise. I could not even dream of
the overwhelming success he has with his concerts’.

Yet the first years in the USA were not as dismal as Prokofiev described them in his autobiography.
He appeared in New York in two concerts with the ‘Russian Orchestra’, an ensemble of emigrants,
under Modest Altschuler. He played his First Piano Concerto and several solo works, and the
Classical Symphony was performed too. In Chicago, Friedrich Stock conducted two concerts including
the Scythian Suite and, again, the First Piano Concerto. From then on Prokofiev regularly appeared
in American concert halls. He also performed in Canada in 1919, and took account of the wish for
older music by, for instance, arranging a Buxtehude organ fugue for piano, and at Stravinsky’s
suggestion adapting some of Schubert’s waltzes and ländler into a suite. Interest shown in
Prokofiev’s works by American publishing firms caused him to write two collections of piano pieces:
Skazki staroy babushki (‘Old Grandmother’s Tales’, op.31, 1918), and four dances (op.32, 1918).
However, they were not published in America, because Prokofiev would not accept the conditions he
was offered; he gave both works their premières at his piano recitals in New York early in 1919. he
was commissioned by the Jewish ensemble Simro, whose members had emigrated from the Soviet Union,
to write the Overture on Hebrew Themes for clarinet, string quartet and piano (op.34, 1919,
orchestrated 1934), which had its première in New York in 1920 with Prokofiev himself at the piano.
Only a few recordings of Prokofiev himself have survived. Reports of his playing, which apparently
changed little over the years, focus on the following characteristics: an emphasis on metre and
rhythmic pulse, an almost complete eschewal of rubato, a striving after transparency of texture
and, especially in the interpretation of his own works, an exaggeration of performance indications;
only with dynamic markings did Prokofiev, in his own works as well as those of others, allow
himself generous latitude.

On his début in Chicago, in 1919, he met Cleofonte Campanini, conductor of the Chicago Opera. This
meeting led to the commission for Lyubov' k tryom apel'sinam (‘The Love for Three Oranges’, op.33,
1919), a subject he suggested, since the score of The Gambler, in which Campanini was also
interested, had been left behind in Petrograd. However, the première of the opera, Prokofiev’s best
known and most successful work in the genre, was postponed when Campanini died in December 1919. It
was postponed again next season because Prokofiev was demanding compensation for the delay from the
management of the opera company, who were unwilling to pay it. The work did not go into rehearsal
until a year later, when Mary Garden had taken over as director; the première, conducted by
Prokofiev, took place on 30 December 1921. The libretto is based on Gozzi’s commedia dell’arte play
L’amore delle tre melerance and on the comedy of the same name by Konstantin Vogak, Vsevolod
Meyerhold and Vladimir Solov'yev. Meyerhold had published a magazine from 1914 to 1916 entitled The
Oranges, or Dr Dapertutto’s Magazine. The play Prokofiev used as basis for the libretto was
published here for the first time, and provided the idea of an anti-bourgeois, anti-illusionist
drama which brings the artificial, artistic element to the fore and dispenses with psychological
study of the characters. The three planes of the action – represented by the fairytale characters
(the Prince, Truffaldino), the underworld figures (Fata Morgana, the magician Celio), and the
watching eccentrics, empty-heads and adherents of tragedy and comedy – are constantly disintegrated
and rearranged like a mosaic, as Asaf'yev put it. This is particularly clear in the debates about
the theatrical genre, or when the eccentrics intervene in the action in a parody of the deus ex
machina, save Princess Ninetta and put Fata Morgana to flight. Prokofiev claimed to have ‘chosen a
simpler musical language than in The Gambler, taking American taste into consideration’. Certainly
he showed an honest readiness to adapt – a frequent feature of his work. It is also true that he
was sparing with chromatics and dissonances in this opera. However, the musical language is by no
means ‘simpler’, based as it is on a fine web of contrasting themes and motifs. This enables
Prokofiev to dispense with traditional arias, recitatives and other self-contained numbers (the
only one is the famous March), and ensures the smooth inner tempo of the musical-dramatic action.
Another feature is the parody of traditional operatic emotions.

After his second rather unsatisfactory season in America, Prokofiev turned his thoughts to Europe
again. He spent the next three years giving concerts and composing in Europe during the summer
months and returning to the USA for the winter season. In April 1920 he was in Paris and London,
where he had discussions with Diaghilev about the performance of The Tale of the Buffoon, postponed
since 1915, and began revising and orchestrating the score. Meanwhile, Koussevitzky too had left
the Soviet Union, and wished to introduce himself to the Parisian public with the Scythian Suite.
So two of Prokofiev’s works had their premières in Paris very close together: the Scythian Suite
under Koussevitzky on 29 April 1921, and The Tale of the Buffoon under Prokofiev himself on 17 May.
They instantly made him famous and placed him on a par with Stravinsky.

He spent the summer of 1921 in Brittany, and completed the Third Piano Concerto op.26, the first
sketches for which go back to 1917. At the same time he had the idea of composing a two-movement
‘white’ quartet, i.e. a work without any accidentals, but abandoned it. The themes intended for the
second movement are incorporated into the finale of the concerto. At this period Bal'mont too was
staying in Brittany; he wrote a poem in the symbolist spirit on the new piano concerto and on
Prokofiev. It ends with the lines:

‘But the tide foams wildly on, over all:
Prokofiev! Music and youth blossom,
In you the orchestra yearned for musical flight,
And the invincible Scythian beats the tambourine of the sun.’

His reunion with Bal'mont inspired Prokofiev to compose the Five Poems op.21 (1921), his last
settings of the poet. Using Bal'mont's texts, he had previously written two poems for female chorus
and orchestra (op.7, 1909–10), the two songs. It is of Other Planets (op.9, no.1, 1910–11) and In
My Garden (op.23, no.4, 1915), and the cantata They are Seven. The Third Piano Concerto,
predominantly still diatonic (once again, perhaps with American taste in mind), is extremely
effective and contains reminiscences of Russian folklore. Prokofiev gave it its première on 16
December 1921 in Chicago under Friedrich Stock, and played it the next month in New York under
Coates; it became his best-known concerto. In 1932 it became the first of his works he recorded,
with the London SO. Despite the success of The Love for Three Oranges and this concerto, however,
he summed up 1921–2 with the remark that ‘the final result of the season spent performing in
America … was as good as nil’; he decided to move to Europe.

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Prokofiev, Sergey

3. Europe, 1922–36.

(i) Musical activities and works.

(ii) Contacts with the Soviet Union.

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Prokofiev, Sergey, §3: Europe, 1922–3

(i) Musical activities and works.

In March 1922 Prokofiev went to live in southern Germany, near the monastery of Ettal, where, he
said, he found the right atmosphere in which to continue work on Ognennïy angel (‘The Fiery Angel’,
op.37), which he had begun, uncommissioned, directly after finishing The Love for Three Oranges.
However, it was years before the opera was finally completed, since he had difficulty interesting
an opera house in it. Mary Garden, who had wanted to bring it to Chicago, had left her post there.
In 1926, when Bruno Walter, head of the Berlin Opera, was considering a production, Prokofiev began
revision and orchestration. The score was not finished until 1927, and Koussevitzky gave a concert
performance of parts of the opera in Paris. The première of the whole work did not take place until
after Prokofiev’s death: in a concert performance in Paris on 25 November 1954, and in a stage
production at La Fenice a year later. The libretto is based on the symbolist novel by Valery
Bryusov; the action takes place during the humanist period in and around Cologne (Agrippa von
Nettesheim, a historical figure, appears as the representative of humanism). The protagonist
Renata, who seeks in vain for Madiel, her ‘fiery angel’, with the help of the knight Ruprecht,
vacillates throughout from hysteria to madness to dark brooding and is burnt as a witch at the end.
Bryusov in his novel and Prokofiev in his libretto were less concerned with historical accuracy
than with the field of tension between superstition and irrationality, reason and a questionable
belief in progress. In Renata, a continuation of the character type represented by Maddalena and
Paulina (in The Gambler), Prokofiev created a complex female figure torn apart by inner conflict. A
dense and extremely impressive musical language, symphonic over long passages, corresponds to the
character of the protagonist, with complexes of themes for the individual characters.

When it appeared that the extremely difficult part of Renata might be another reason militating
against a stage production, Prokofiev used the material for his Third Symphony op.44 (1928), which
was first performed at the beginning of 1929 with him conducting in Brussels and Pierre Monteux in
Paris, and which has entered history as the ‘Fiery Angel symphony’. Prokofiev protested against
this name on the grounds that the opera derives from previous material which was not at first
specific to the operatic genre (specifically the rejected ‘white quartet’, also incorporated into
the Third Piano Concerto), and which is neutralized, so to speak, in its symphonic form. After The
Fiery Angel Prokofiev felt that he had failed as a composer of opera and avoided the genre which
was really closest to his heart until 1939, when, long after his return to the Soviet Union, he
began writing Semyon Kotko.

He lived for over a year in Ettal, using it as his base while he gave concerts in almost all the
countries of Europe. On the occasion of a revival of The Tale of the Buffoon in the summer of 1923,
Diaghilev expressed an interest in The Love for Three Oranges, perhaps because this work can be
understood as a parody of 19th-century opera tradition. When Prokofiev played him the opera there
was a violent argument between the composer and Stravinsky, who was also present, over their
respective aesthetic positions, and the tension between them, artistic and personal, was never
entirely overcome. While living in Ettal Prokofiev also wrote a new version of the Second Piano
Concerto (1923) and his Fifth Sonata op.38 (1923). On 1 October 1923 he married the Spanish singer
Lina Llubera, who sometimes gave performances of his songs.

Later that month the Prokofievs moved to Paris. The delayed première of the First Violin Concerto
took place on 18 October 1923 under Koussevitzky, with Marcel Darieux as the soloist. The reactions
of the press were mixed: in the circle of Les Six the work was criticized as old-fashioned. The
Second Piano Concerto and the Scythian Suite, performed the following year, were much more
successful. Consequently, and with his characteristic willingness to adapt, Prokofiev decided to
write a symphony ‘of iron and steel’. This Second Symphony op.40 (1924–5) is a brittle work shot
through with abrupt contrasts, in two movements: a very complex sonata movement and a set of
variations. At its première, conducted by Koussevitzky on 6 June 1925, it met with a lukewarm
response. Prokofiev summed up his feelings: ‘this was perhaps the only time I felt afraid I might
be becoming a composer of the second rank’. He rightly saw this symphony, with the Sarcasms, the
Scythian Suite and They are Seven, as the richest in dissonance of all his works; the symphony, he
said, was in part inspired by the atmosphere of Paris, since the public there was not afraid of
difficult sounds. Such reflections are wide of the mark: the wealth of dissonance – which is not
the same thing as complexity – can be traced back to a plain, often diatonic kernel; in other
words, the process of composition takes a clear course beginning with a theme, a melody and a
relatively simple accompaniment which is then made denser in several stages.

While engaged on the Second Symphony Prokofiev was writing a chamber piece in six movements for a
touring ballet company, a piece danced as Trapetsiya (‘Trapeze’), but known in the concert
repertory as the G minor Quintet op.39 for oboe, clarinet, violin, viola and double bass. The
European première of The Love for Three Oranges took place in Cologne in 1925, and a year later the
opera had its first performance in Berlin. Meanwhile, in the summer of 1925 Diaghilev had suggested
a ballet on a Soviet subject. The title – Stal'noy skok or Le pas d’acier (‘The Steel Step’) – was
his idea, and he drew up the scenario together with the painter and stage designer Georgy Yakulov.
The glorification of machines and their movement in the ballet is in the tradition of futurism and
early Soviet constructivism: there is no real plot, but instead scenes of a poster-like nature,
though no political propaganda was intended. ‘In our ballet hammers large and small, transmission
shafts turning and flywheels, as well as flashing coloured light signals, were shown on stage. All
came to a climax in a general creative upsurge in which the groups of dancers had to work at the
machine and at the same time illustrate the working of the machines in dance’, wrote Prokofiev of
this ballet, and he emphasized that he had turned to a simpler language, by which he meant
abandoning chromatic density and dissonances in favour of diatonicism and a style reminiscent of
the music hall. He worked out the orchestration when he was in the USA to give 14 concerts during
the 1925–6 season, and developed a method of including detailed instructions in the piano score, so
that writing out the full score would be a mechanical process. Later, during his time in the Soviet
Union, he perfected this technique to such an extent that he could leave other people to write out
his scores. The première of Le pas d’acier in Paris on 7 June 1927, and the first London
performance of 4 July 1927 attracted much attention – the work was erroneously taken to be
Bolshevist propaganda – but did not establish the ballet in the repertory.

After writing several smaller works – the Overture op.42 for 17 instrumentalists (1926, revised for
full orchestra 1928), written for the opening of an American Pianola Society concert hall but given
its première in Moscow, the Divertimento op.43 for orchestra (1925–9), first performed under
Prokofiev in Paris in December 1930, and the two piano pieces Veshchi v sebe (‘Things in
Themselves’, op.45, 1928), given their première by the composer in New York early in 1930 – as well
as the Third Symphony, Prokofiev received in the autumn of 1928 what was his fourth ballet
commission from Diaghilev and the latter’s last such request, resulting in Bludnïy sïn (‘The
Prodigal Son’, op.46, 1928). With a scenario by Boris Kochno, this is a plain, retrospective work
in the spirit of neo-classicism; the première took place in Paris under Prokofiev on 21 May 1929.
He then worked material from the ballet into his Fourth Symphony op.47 (1930), commissioned for the
50th anniversary of the Boston SO and given its première on 14 November 1930 without any very great
success.

The Gambler had its première in Brussels on 29 April 1929, and maintained its place in the
repertory for two years. With a view to a planned performance in Leningrad which never
materialized, Prokofiev had thoroughly revised the opera in 1927. With its directly literary
emphasis and eschewal of closed musical forms, and its contemplative ensembles or large choruses,
it belongs to the tradition of ‘opéra dialogué’ which had been begun at the end of the 1860s by
Dargomïzhsky with The Stone Guest and Musorgsky with The Marriage, and was continued by
Rimsky-Korsakov with Mozart and Salieri and Rachmaninoff with The Miserly Knight. Prokofiev
followed this tradition by incorporating passages of direct speech from Dostoyevsky’s novel into
the libretto, basing his formal construction on a differentiated system of characteristic motifs,
and using no choruses except in the scene in the gambling hall (Act 4, scene v). The work shows
Prokofiev’s liking for exaggerated, grotesque, even humiliating situations, in which the
protagonists are under great psychological pressure, so that a very tense and chromatically dense
language is appropriate. His liking for comic situations is also clear, for instance in the
unexpected appearance of the grandmother when the other characters think she is on her deathbed and
are already dividing up her inheritance. The rapid changes of mood and expression, and a certain
brevity in the various sections of the music, produce an effect close to the techniques of film
cutting.

In the early 1930s Prokofiev wrote a series of commissioned works. His First String Quartet op.50
(1930) was written for the Library of Congress in Washington, which was commissioning works by
famous composers for its collection of manuscripts. The quartet is in three movements, and strikes
a neo-classical note which the composer achieved, according to his own account of it, by turning
back to an intensive study of Beethoven’s quartets. In the summer of 1930 Serge Lifar, ballet
master of the Paris Opéra, commissioned a work to be dedicated to the memory of Diaghilev. Under
the title of Na Dnepre (‘On the Dnieper’ or ‘Sur le Borysthène’ after the old name of the river),
Prokofiev wrote an atmospheric piece again without any real plot. Stylistically it is similar to
The Prodigal Son, and at its première on 16 December 1932 it was such a dismal failure, despite the
expensive production (with sets by Larionov and costumes by Goncharova), that Lifar removed it from
the repertory at once and did not pay Prokofiev the full agreed sum of 100,000 francs. There was a
lawsuit, which Prokofiev won. He wrote his Fourth Piano Concerto op.53 (1931) for the Austrian
pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right hand in World War I. Wittgenstein rejected the
concerto, and Prokofiev never carried out his plan to revise it for both hands and the work was not
performed until 1956. The last two great works to be first heard by western European audiences were
the Fifth Piano Concerto op.55 (1932, première on 31 October 1932 in Berlin under Furtwängler),
which was not very well received, and the Second Violin Concerto op.63 (1935), commissioned by
admirers of Robert Soetans, who gave the première in Madrid on 1 December 1935. The work’s clear
tonality and reminiscences of Russian folklore are indications of the ‘new simplicity’ for which
Prokofiev was striving in the early 1930s.

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Prokofiev, Sergey, §3: Europe, 1922–3

(ii) Contacts with the Soviet Union.

Directly after settling in Europe, Prokofiev resumed contacts with the Soviet Union, and despite
his increasing success in the 1920s and early 30s, in the USA as well as western Europe, he
purposely intensified them. A new journal which appeared in 1923 and ceased publication after three
numbers) – K novïm beregam (‘Towards New Shores’), named after a famous remark of Musorgsky’s –
devoted four articles to Prokofiev in its first issue, giving an extensive and very laudatory
account of his work and activities abroad. From then on almost all his works were played regularly
in the Soviet Union (as well as the west), some even having their premières there: the Bal'mont
Poems in 1923, the G minor Quintet and the Overture op.42 in 1927, the suite from Le pas d'acier in
1928, the Sinfonietta in 1929, the piano pieces from the Prodigal Son and the Sonata for two
violins in 1932, the Symphonic Song in 1934 and the Three Piano Pieces op.59 in 1935.

In addition, and beginning with the cantata They are Seven, many works appeared in print not under
Koussevitzky’s Gutheil imprint but in the Soviet Union (published by the All Russian Music
Publishing House – later Muzgiz, the State Music Publishing House); the Soviet publications
included the piano scores of Le pas d’acier and On the Dnieper, which at the time had been
performed complete only in western Europe. Prokofiev must have intended to make sure that, though
absent, he was prominent in Soviet musical life. It is very likely, too, that he kept open the
possibility of his return, at least after 1922. He was never an emigrant in the legal sense: when
France granted the Soviet Union diplomatic recognition in 1924, he registered as a Soviet citizen,
and never concealed the fact that in principle he welcomed the developments in his native land.

In January 1927 he accepted an invitation to make a two-month concert tour in the Soviet Union. He
gave eight concerts in Moscow, with four different programmes, including the Third Piano Concerto,
which he played with Persimfans, a conductorless orchestra. In Leningrad he gave the same four
programmes, attended a performance of The Love for Three Oranges, which had become part of the
repertory there, and encountered several works by young Soviet composers, including Shostakovich’s
First Sonata and a septet (also known as a chamber symphony) by Gavriil Popov, which he
particularly liked. Then there were concerts in Kharkiv, Kiev and Odessa. A tour of the Soviet
Union planned for 1928 fell through; in November 1929 Prokofiev travelled to Moscow again, but did
not appear as a pianist because he had injured his hands in a car accident. He attended rehearsals
for a new production of The Love for Three Oranges, which had now established itself firmly in the
Moscow repertory as well. A plan for staging Le pas d’acier – the symphonic suite from it had been
performed several times – was thwarted by the resistance of the Russian Association of Proletarian
Musicians, which supported an aesthetic of primitive affirmation and saw the ballet as a caricature
of Soviet ideals. Prokofiev visited the Soviet Union for the third time in November 1932 and took a
flat in Moscow, but he still made Paris his main home. He travelled to Paris from Moscow for the
première of the ballet On the Dnieper, and from there went on to the USA for a three-month tour.

He recorded his impressions of his first visit to the Soviet Union in a diary; its existence was
long known to Soviet musicologists, but they ventured to publish it only in the context of
perestroika and to celebrate the centenary of the composer’s birth. Two aspects of this diary made
any earlier publication in the Soviet Union seem inopportune. Firstly, Prokofiev regarded the
political system sceptically and sometimes even critically (in contrast to his public
pronouncements and despite his agreement with it in principle). Secondly, he was interested
principally in musical life under the new circumstances, and the opportunities it could offer him.
The political system interested him only in so far as it might be useful or injurious to his
career, and in connection with the compromises he might have to make. He obviously regarded the
diary as a document for his eyes only, intended to help him decide between the Soviet Union and the
west. It was also meant as an antidote to the blurred judgements or rose-tinted visions of memory.
Prokofiev’s keen analytical gift of observation is revealed. He soberly noted the changes that had
occurred during the ten years of his absence. He was clear in his own mind that art in the Soviet
Union was subject to political and social ideals, and that these ideals – not criteria immanent in
art – would decide between success and failure in any doubtful case. By 1932 at the latest he had
consciously assessed the field of tension between adaptation and self-assertion. Moreover, since
the end of the 1920s he had been seeking to find a simpler musical language, and he believed his
aesthetic of a new simplicity could be combined with the official Soviet concept of art. So much
does he make of this accord in his comments in the press (Vechernaya Moskva, 6 December 1932;
Sovetskaya muzïka 1933, no.3; Isvestiya, 16 November 1934; Vechernaya Moskva, 23 January 1936) that
it is difficult to know which was more important to him: proclaiming his own ideal of art or paying
homage to an aesthetic dictated from outside. He signalled his readiness to adapt with a collection
of folk and choral songs (op.66, 1935), one of which, ‘Anyutka’, was awarded a prize by Pravda. The
Soviet side came halfway to meet him too: in 1932 he was commissioned to write film music for
Poruchnik Kizhe (‘Lieutenant Kijé’) and a little later to write incidental music for Yegipetskiye
nochi (‘Egyptian Nights’), a Muscovite collage made from Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra, Shakespeare’s
Antony and Cleopatra and Pushkin. Both scores provided material for symphonic suites (opp.60 and
61, 1934). At the end of 1934 the Leningrad opera house (now renamed after Sergey Kirov, an
associate of Stalin’s who had been murdered on 1 April that year) negotiated with Prokofiev for the
ballet Romeo and Juliet; when this project fell through, the Bol'shoy in Moscow commissioned the
score.

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Prokofiev, Sergey

4. The USSR, 1936–53.

(i) Return and first Soviet works.

(ii) World War II and after.

(iii) ‘Zhdanovshchina’.

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Prokofiev, Sergey, §4: The USSR, 1936–53

(i) Return and first Soviet works.

In the summer of 1936 Prokofiev finally moved to the Soviet Union, to live there with his wife and
two sons. Stalin’s power politics were approaching their ghastly climax in the purges at this time.
It must remain an open question how far Prokofiev was able to assess the existing political
structures, which were very dangerous for his non-Russian wife. In his public utterances, he
explained his return in terms of patriotic feeling and homesickness. ‘I must see the real winter
again’, and ‘hear the Russian language in my ears’, he told French friends. Such sentiments seem
out of tune with his down-to-earth, clear-thinking character. He must have had other and more
convincing reasons for taking such a step, and we can only conjecture what they were. Between 1926
and 1936 Shostakovich was the leading, most highly regarded and most internationally renowned
composer of the Soviet Union. His second opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (given its
première on 22 January 1934) had been performed 83 times in Leningrad and 94 times in Moscow within
two years, until it found itself a political target. On 28 January 1936 the article ‘Chaos instead
of Music’ appeared in Pravda. Ostensibly it was a venomous condemnation of the opera and its
composer, but first and foremost it was a politico-cultural manifesto seeking to base all Soviet
art on the principles of ‘socialist realism’. It terrified all Soviet artists and shook their
creative confidence; Shostakovich’s career as a composer was at a temporary end, only to be
re-established with the première of his Fifth Symphony in 1937. One reason for Prokofiev’s
departure from America had been Rachmaninoff’s greater success, and in Europe he came second to
Stravinsky; he returned to the Soviet Union just when Shostakovich was out of the running as a
rival.

We must assume that a decision to return to the Soviet Union was also made palatable to him by
promises of privileges. He retained his passport, with which he could travel abroad without the
humiliating petitions usually necessary in the Soviet Union, and he continued to give guest
performances in Europe and even undertook an American tour in 1938. Then the trap snapped shut: he
was asked to hand in his passport for the transaction of a formality, but did not get it back, so
that there could be no question of further tours abroad, as he later told the violinist Mikhail
Goldstein.

As a composer, Prokofiev was cautious and ready to adapt in the first years after his return. In
1936 and 1937, like all composers in the Soviet Union, he was busy with works to mark the centenary
of Pushkin’s death, celebrated as a great event. However, his music for a film version of Pikovaya
dama (‘The Queen of Spades’) and two sets of incidental music for stage performances of Boris
Godunov and Yevgeny Onegin were not performed; some of their themes were later incorporated into
other works (Semyon Kotko, War and Peace, Eighth Sonata). At the same time he was writing music for
children, no doubt partly with his growing sons in mind. In addition, music for children was highly
valued in the Soviet Union, and even composers of the first rank took it very seriously. Prokofiev
wrote Music for Children, twelve easy piano pieces (op.65, 1935, seven of them arranged for
orchestra in 1941), three songs for children (op.68, 1936–9), and the rightly famous symphonic
fairytale Petya i volk (‘Peter and the Wolf’, op.67, 1936), for which he wrote the text himself,
providing opportunities to use instruments and tone colours with sensitive educational skill. He
was also turning to genres favoured by official Soviet cultural policy, as in his Four Marches
op.69 for wind band (1935–7), Russian Overture op.72 inspired by folklore (1936), op.79 song cycle
on patriotic texts (1939) and four patriotic cantatas. However, Pesni nashikh dney (‘Songs of Our
Times’ op.76), a suite in nine movements for solo voices, chorus and orchestra (1937) was
criticized by Soviet writers as excessively simple, and the cantata for the 20th anniversary of the
October Revolution (op.74, 1936–7) – a monumental work in ten movements for two professional
choruses, an amateur chorus, symphony orchestra, wind band, percussion ensemble and accordion band,
to texts by Marx, Lenin and Stalin – was not granted permission for performance by the Committee
for Artistic Affairs, on the grounds that it did not meet the criteria of ‘socialist realism’. Not
until April 1966 was the work performed. In 1939, for Stalin’s 60th birthday, Prokofiev wrote the
cantata Zdravitsa (‘Hail to Stalin’, op.85), an occasional work on folk tunes of the most varied
nationalities of the Soviet Union and one of countless works of homage to Stalin from this period.
With a revised text, it maintained its place in the Soviet repertory even after the dictator’s
death. The cantata Aleksandr Nevskiy (op.78, 1938–9), drawn from the score for Eisenstein’s film,
was the only work of this time to be praised outside as well as within the Soviet Union.
Prokofiev’s second work for Eisenstein, the film music for Ivan Groznïy (‘Ivan the Terrible’,
op.16, 1942–5) also exists in an oratorio arrangement by the conductor Abram Stasevich (1961).

Only two works of Prokofiev’s first years back in the Soviet Union are not marked by political
considerations. He had begun his Cello Concerto op.58 in 1933, but did not finish it until 1938. It
failed miserably at its première (with Berezovsky on 26 November 1939), and Prokofiev revised it,
following the critical advice of Myaskovsky. In this version Pyatigorsky performed it in the USA in
1940; then a further revision was made in 1950 at the urging of Rostropovich. The other
non-political work, Romeo and Juliet, had been finished in 1936; while writing it Prokofiev
considered giving the story a happy ending, but rejected the idea as sacrilege to Shakespeare.
Since the Bol'shoy rejected the work as too complicated, and the Leningrad School of Choreography
also backed out of a contract made in 1937, the première did not take place until December 1938,
and then in Brno. Prokofiev had previously arranged two symphonic suites (opp.64a and b) and a
collection of ten piano pieces (op.75) from the ballet, and these were performed very successfully
in 1936 and 1937. In 1946 he arranged a third orchestral suite (op.101). The first performance of
the ballet in Leningrad was on 11 January 1940, in a magnificent production with the prima
ballerina Galina Ulanova as Juliet. At the request of the choreographer, Leonid Lavrovsky,
Prokofiev made many alterations and composed two extra numbers (no.14, Juliet’s Variations, and
no.20, Romeo’s Variations). Romeo and Juliet soon became a showpiece of Soviet ballet and entered
the international repertory.

Prokofiev returned to opera after a break of over ten years with Semyon Kotko op.81 (1939),
attempting to treat a modern Soviet subject in the manner of the ‘song opera’ then officially
favoured, for which Ivan Dzerzhinsky’s now long-forgotten Quiet Flows the Don was regarded as the
model. Prokofiev’s opera was based on the story I am the Son of the Working People by Valentin
Katayev, published in 1937, and Katayev worked with the composer on the libretto. The action takes
place in the Ukraine during the Civil War, with young revolutionaries as the protagonists. In his
setting of the text Prokofiev complied with the demand for song-like music, the folk idiom,
revolutionary emotion and propagandist art. Though the music is distinguished from other Soviet
works of this period (for instance, Khrennikov’s In the Storm) by a fine network of characteristic
motifs, short sections in the manner of film scenes and a wealth of ideas, and though Prokofiev
found an intelligent way of presenting the idea of socialist realism, this very connection with the
ideals of the time is an obstacle to the wider dissemination of the opera. The work also failed in
the Soviet Union. Preparations dragged on a long time, because Meyerhold, who was to direct the
work, was arrested in June 1939. As a result, the première did not take place until 23 June 1940.
The opera set off a violent dispute, which was won by the narrow-minded cultural ideologues, so
that the piece was taken out of the repertory in 1941 and not performed again until after
Prokofiev’s death.

In spite of this failure he immediately began another operatic project, Obrucheniye v monastïre
(‘Betrothal in a Monastery’, op.86, 1940), based on Sheridan’s comedy of mistaken identity, The
Duenna, made into a libretto by Mira Mendel'son, Prokofiev’s new companion. The opera is
neo-classical, with clear references to Mozart and Rossini. It is often described as a Soviet
counterpart to The Love for Three Oranges, though it is far inferior in musical versatility, comedy
of situation and irony with respect to the operatic genre. It did not have its première until after
the end of the war, on 5 May 1946 in Prague (the first performance in Leningrad followed on 3
November), and it too was unable to maintain its place in the repertory.

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Prokofiev, Sergey, §4: The USSR, 1936–53

(ii) World War II and after.

On 21 June 1941 Germany attacked the Soviet Union, and the so-called ‘Great War of the Fatherland’
began. Prokofiev was evacuated in August, like all important artists. His travels took him to
Nalchik in the northern Caucasus, then in November to Tbilisi, in June 1942 to Alma-Ata, in June
1943 to Perm' in the Urals, and back to Moscow in October 1943. During this period he was, like
Myaskovsky and several other composers, awarded the highly regarded title Honoured Artist of the
RSFSR. His creative work during the war years was along two lines: he reacted to the events of the
war with propaganda music, and he devoted himself increasingly to chamber works. He completed the
three piano sonatas he had begun simultaneously in 1939 (opp.82–4), and they were given their first
performances during the war by Sviatoslav Richter and Emil Gilels. The Ninth Sonata op.103 was
added in 1947, and he was planning two more sonatas in 1953, the year of his death. The Second
String Quartet op.92 (1941) is based on Kabardinian themes from Nalchik, which give this work a
modal character and brittle charm characteristic of the folk music of one of the areas to which
Prokofiev had been evacuated. The Flute Sonata op.94 (1943), of which the composer also arranged a
version for violin as his Second Violin Sonata, became a popular repertory piece thanks to its
playful elegance. With its dark colours, the First Violin Sonata op.80, begun in 1938 and completed
in 1946, seems like an intimate reflection of the events of the war. In 1947 came a Sonata op.115
for unaccompanied violin. All these works are without non-musical function; like the Fifth Symphony
op.100 (1944), they display the freely tonal harmonies, melodic and thematic wealth of ideas and
lyrical expressivity characteristic of the mature Prokofiev – qualities that have established these
works firmly in the international repertory.

Of those compositions relating to the war, the only ones to find much favour in the Soviet Union
were the March op.99 for military band (1943–4) and the arrangements of folksongs for voice and
piano (op.104, 1944), intended as an expression of patriotic feeling. The first two songs in the
collection, ‘In the Summer of the Snowball Bush’ and ‘The Green Grove’, were even awarded a prize.
The other war-related works – the Symphonic March op.88 (1941), the Seven Choral Songs op.89
(1941–2), the symphonic suite The Year 1941 op.90 and the Ballad of an Unknown Boy op.93 (1942–3) –
were honestly intended as expressions of resounding patriotism, yet they too were negatively judged
by critics whose opinion carried weight (Shostakovich and Myaskovsky), and were soon forgotten. The
sensation caused in the Allied countries by Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony (1941) also renewed
western interest in Prokofiev’s music during the war, especially in England and the USA – interest
not in the explicitly patriotic Soviet works, but in the cantata Aleksandr Nevskiy, the Fifth
Symphony, the Sixth and Seventh Sonatas, the two suites from Romeo and Juliet, and earlier
compositions such as the Classical Symphony, the Scythian Suite, Peter and the Wolf, and the suite
from the film music to Lieutenant Kijé.

The main works of the war years are the opera Voyna i mir (‘War and Peace’, op.91), after Tolstoy,
which was written in its first version in 1941–2 and had its première in a concert performance
during the war, on 16 October 1944, and the ballet Zolushka (‘Cinderella’, op.87, 1940–44). The
latter did not receive its première until 21 November 1945, in Moscow, and joined the international
repertory, if in a place second to Romeo and Juliet. Then the end of the war was celebrated by
Soviet composers with festive works. Prokofiev contributed his Ode on the End of the War op.105
(1945), a monumental work in one movement for eight harps, four pianos, wind ensemble, percussion
and double basses, which was intended as a mighty dithyramb, with the archaic Russian sound of
bells, but baffled the audience at its première on 12 November 1945 and was condemned by the
critics.

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Prokofiev, Sergey, §4: The USSR, 1936–53

(iii) ‘Zhdanovshchina’.

During the war art had been less strictly supervised by the state. Certain works (in particular
literary works by Zoshchenko and Akhmatova, and the films of Eisenstein, but also music by
Shostakovich and Prokofiev) had aroused great interest in the west, and had deviated from the ideal
of ‘socialist realism’. But in the years 1946–8 four major resolutions affecting cultural policy
were passed. The man responsible was Andrey Zhdanov, the leading cultural ideologue of the
Stalinist period, and they paralysed cultural life until Stalin’s death in 1953. Hence the informal
term ‘Zhdanovschchina’ for this terrible period, though Zhdanov himself had died suddenly in August
1948. The first resolution, of 14 August 1946, related to the Leningrad literary journals Zvezda
and Leningrad; the second, of 26 August 1946, affected the theatrical repertory; the third, of 4
September 1946, was aimed at the Soviet film industry, in particular Eisenstein and the second part
of Ivan the Terrible, for which Prokofiev had written the score. The resolution on music was not
passed until two years later. These state measures were intended to bring art back to a unified
party line, emphasizing the folk tradition and an affirmative outlook. At first Prokofiev did not
let them affect him; he was busy with three symphonic suites from Cinderella, and another suite, of
waltzes from various of his works (opp.107–10, all 1946). At the same time he was completing the
Sixth Symphony, a thoughtful work in three movements which he initially wished to dedicate to the
memory of Beethoven, and he made a new version of the Fourth Symphony (op.112, 1947), though this
was not performed until 1957. He also paid tribute to the 30th anniversary of the October
Revolution with two works: the symphonic poem Tridtsat' let (‘Thirty Years’, op.113) and the
cantata Rastsvetay moguchiy kray (‘Flourish, Mighty Homeland’, op.114), to a text by Yevgeny
Dolmatovsky.

On 10 February 1948 the resolution ‘On the Opera “The Great Friendship” by Vanno Muradeli’ was
passed. Perhaps the saddest document in Soviet musical history, this decree was directed not so
much against the composer Muradeli – forgotten today, along with the work which aroused Stalin’s
ire at the time and which was the ostensible occasion for official criticism – as against the great
composers of the Soviet Union. To Prokofiev, it was a blow from which he did not recover. After
1948 he was a sick and deeply insecure man; the few further works he wrote before his death bear
traces of this insecurity. What happened at the time can be reconstructed from a special number of
Sovetskaya muzïka published in 1991 on the centenary of Prokofiev’s birth. Four days after the
passing of the resolution, a ban on the performance of certain works by Prokofiev was issued by the
highest authority; on 16 February Prokofiev acknowledged his alleged artistic errors in a letter of
self-abasement; this letter was read out to a meeting of the Union of Composers on 17 February; on
20 February his first wife Lina was arrested; on 3 December his Povest'o nastoyashchem cheloveke
(‘The Story of a Real Man’) was given a private performance before members of the Union of
Composers at the Kirov and so savagely criticized that there could be no question of a public
première; on 28 December he again accused himself of his alleged artistic errors in an open letter
to the Union of Composers.

In the resolution Zhdanov had attacked Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Khachaturian, Myaskovsky and
several other composers by name, denouncing their works for ‘formalistic distortions and
anti-democratic tendencies’, as a ‘rejection of the principles of classical music’ and for the
‘dissemination of atonality’. Comprehensive polemics of this nature were nothing new to Soviet
artists. Zhdanov referred expressly to the article attacking Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth which had
appeared in Pravda in 1936, and it was not forgotten that the composer had been regarded thereafter
as persona non grata, had lost the positions he held and even faced arrest. The artists rebuked for
nonconformity in 1946 had also lost their opportunities to work and be published. It was clear to
the composers, therefore, what this resolution meant for them. Only Prokofiev, who had hitherto
remained unaffected, does not seem to have understood the threat represented by the Zhdanov
tribunal at once. Rostropovich commented that Prokofiev had ‘always been a great child, of
astonishing naivety. … When Zhdanov made his caustic speech attacking the composers in the Central
Committee, Prokofiev was in the hall. There was a deathly silence, but he went on talking to his
neighbour, the next conductor of War and Peace’.

In his long letter of 16 February 1948 to the Union of Composers, Prokofiev wrote that his state of
health did not allow him to attend their meeting; he welcomed the resolution because it had created
‘the conditions for the recovery of the entire organism of Soviet music’. It was particularly
important, he continued, because it had shown ‘that the formalistic movement which leads to the
impoverishment and decline of music is foreign to the Soviet people and because it has shown us,
with the utmost clarity, the aims toward which we must strive in order to serve the Soviet people
as best we can’. Passages of self-accusation and justification follow. Under the influence of
western currents, Prokofiev said, he was guilty of formalism and atonality, but in such works as
Romeo and Juliet, Aleksandr Nevskiy, the cantata Hail to Stalin and the Fifth Symphony, he hoped he
had overcome these tendencies successfully. Finally he expressed his gratitude to the party ‘for
the clear guidelines laid down by the resolution’.

Here we see a great artist forced by an unspoken but only too comprehensible threat to ape the
language of narrow-minded cultural bureaucrats, deny his own talent and abase himself. Such
confessions and self-accusations were usual in Soviet cultural politics. After Lady Macbeth,
Shostakovich had found a specific musical vocabulary with which he could reflect official
criticism, the threat of power, and the tragic events in the Soviet Union. He reacted to the
resolution with the choral works Song of the Forests and The Sun Shines Over Our Homeland, wrote a
primitive song of praise to Stalin which has only recently become known again in the Soviet Union,
and apart from that composed works to be put quietly away (the First Violin Concerto, the cycle
From Jewish Folk Poetry), works in which he took the mechanisms of suppression as his theme.
Prokofiev did not have such a vocabulary at his disposal, nor did he need it, for in his view
tragic themes and a critical relation to contemporary history did not have a place in music; he had
thought that art and politics could be kept separate. Accordingly, he was helpless and baffled in
the face of the resolution. He obviously hoped to come to some agreement with his tormentors, for
in his letter to the Union of Composers he promised to take the recommendations of the Central
Committee to heart in his new opera, The Story of a Real Man, to strive for a simple harmonic
language and to make use of Russian folksongs – and he meant his promise seriously.

When Prokofiev wrote his letter of contrition he did not know that some of his works were already
banned. The extract concerning him from ‘Order no.17 of the Committee for Artistic Affairs of the
Ministerial Council of the USSR, Main Department for Control of Theatrical and Musical Programmes’,
dated Moscow, 14 February 1949, runs:

The following works of Soviet composers at present on the programmes of concert organizations are
to be removed from the repertory and may not be played: Prokofiev: symphonic suite ‘1941’, Ode on
the End of the War, Festive Poem [Vstrecha Volgi s Donom], Cantata on the 30th Anniversary of the
October Revolution, Ballad of an Unknown Boy, Piano Sonata no.6.

The list of banned works is surprising and revealing, for it affects not works which might be
suspected of ‘formalism’, but compositions with unambiguously Soviet subjects. It is relatively
improbable that Stalin’s cultural ideologues did not see the principles of ‘socialist realism’
realized in these particular works (although the Ode on the End of the War and the Ballad of an
Unknown Boy were not published in Prokofiev’s lifetime). The list of banned works, rather, is
arbitrarily drawn up with deliberate intent: only in this way could music directors and programme
planners be so thoroughly alarmed that they would not venture to include any works by Prokofiev in
the repertory at all. A good year later the ban was lifted, in a decree dated 16 March 1949 and
signed by Stalin himself. There was a very practical reason for the rescinding. Skostakovich was to
travel to the World Peace Congress in the USA in the spring of 1949, at Stalin’s express wish. He
declined to go on the grounds that he would not know what to say when he was asked why his and his
colleagues’ compositions were not played at home.

The heaviest and most threatening blow to Prokofiev followed after Zhdanov’s tribunal and his
letter of contrition when his first wife was arrested, accused of spying and treachery, and
condemned to 20 years in a labour camp. Prokofiev heard the news from his sons, and he must have
tormented himself with self-reproaches, for it was possible that he had contributed to the
situation. As early as 1941, he had left his family and gone to live with the writer Mira
Mendel'son, who wrote the librettos for his operas Betrothal in a Monastery, War and Peace and The
Story of a Real Man and the scenario for the ballet Skaz o kammenom tsvetke (‘The Stone Flower’).
‘When my father decided to legalize his new marriage’, Svyatoslav Prokofiev recalled:

the court told him, much to his relief, that a divorce was unnecessary: the marriage he had
contracted on 1 October 1923 in Ettal in Germany was declared null and void because it had not been
registered in a Soviet consulate. Mother, who had gone to the USSR as his wife, ceased to be his
wife at all at some mysterious moment. Father, convinced that his marriage to mother was legal,
turned to the next highest court, but there he was told the same thing – so he could marry his
second wife without going through a divorce first.

In view of the arbitary and unpredictable Soviet system, it is hard to decide whether there is any
connection linking Prokofiev’s public humiliation, his marriage to Mira Mendel'son and the arrest
of Lina Prokofieva. Nor should Prokofiev be blamed for acting irresponsibly and risking his first
wife’s arrest in marrying again. He was under enormous psychological pressure, and lived in
constant anxiety after 1948: if Lina had been arrested and deported on the flimsiest of grounds,
then the same thing could happen to his two sons, himself, or even Mira Mendel'son. Lina spent
eight years in labour camps, and was released in 1956 on the grounds of ‘suspension of the
proceedings’. She died on 3 January 1989 in London.

Prokofiev hoped to rehabilitate himself with his seventh opera, The Story of a Real Man op.117
(1947–8), based on the story of the same name by the war reporter Boris Polevoy, who was awarded
the Stalin Prize, second class, in 1946. The plot concerns an airman who loses both legs when his
plane is shot down, but who fights heroically on. Prokofiev’s failure was the result of his attempt
to fulfil the demands of the resolution too scrupulously. The patriotic and sentimental tone is
overdone, the musical language so simple, unspecific and banal over long passages that the opera
became an unintentional caricature of the principles of ‘social realism’. Prokofiev tried to defend
himself against its rejection in his second long letter to the Union of Composers, which shows how
earnestly he had wanted to adapt and how unjustly he now felt he had been treated:

It was clear from the resolution … that the party and the government allot special significance to
operas on Soviet subjects, and that the composition of such an opera is particularly important for
the Soviet people. Consequently I felt bound to devote my powers to a work in this area, and I
laboured unceasingly for almost a year on a Soviet opera … In my opera I endeavoured to be as
melodic as possible and write melodies that would be very easily understood. In the depiction of my
hero I was particularly concerned to indicate the internal world of a Soviet man, love of the
homeland and Soviet patriotism. 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 to hear no criticism.

This letter, like The Story of a Real Man itself, betrays a dire sense of helplessness and artistic
insecurity. After these events Prokofiev composed very little more: there could be no compromise
between the narrow-minded official aesthetic and his own concept of art, and he found no critical
answer to the humiliations he had to endure. In addition he was a sick man; he suffered from
nervous headaches and had several heart attacks, and his doctors strictly forbade work. His works
now were seldom performed or printed, so that he had economic problems too. On 20 March 1952 the
Committee for Artistic Affairs made a very modest petition to the Central Committee of the
Communist Party, asking the composer to be allowed a pension of 3000 roubles a month and a single
payment of 25,000 roubles. The request was partially granted with a decree of 22 April 1952 giving
him 2000 roubles a month. This document too is signed by Stalin himself.

In the last years of his life Prokofiev was working further on War and Peace and trying to change
and extend his style in conformity with the 1948 resolution. The opera had been given a second
concert performance directly after the end of the war, on 7 June 1945. Following the advice of the
conductor Samuil Samosud, Prokofiev had added two scenes to the original version (the new additions
were scene ii, the ball at Catherine’s court, and scene x, the council of war in Fili). Of this
second version, now in 13-scenes and a choral prologue, and intended to be played over two
evenings, the first part (eight scenes) was performed on 12 June 1946 in Leningrad in a production
by Boris Pokrovsky, conducted by Samosud, and met with a favourable response. No one dared perform
the second part in the poisoned atmosphere of the three first resolutions affecting art, and after
1948 performance became absolutely unthinkable. In the hope that the opera might yet be staged,
Prokofiev worked until 1953 on a third version, cut to 11 scenes again. It was not given even in a
concert performance until the summer of 1953, after the composer’s death; the stage production
followed in Leningrad on 1 April 1955. The 13 scene version, much cut, was performed on 8 November
1955 at the Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre in Moscow; the première of the full opera took place on 15
December 1959 at the Bolshoy.

Besides working on War and Peace, Prokofiev was writing works in the spirit of ‘social realism’: a
‘Soldiers’ Marching Song’ (1950), the eight-movement suite Zimniy kostyor (‘Winter Bonfire’,
op.122, 1949), the oratorio Na strashe mira (‘On Guard for Peace’, op.124, 1950) and the symphonic
festive poem Vstrecha Volgi s Donom (‘The Meeting of the Volga and the Don’, op.130, 1951) for the
opening of the Volga-Don Canal. The fairytale ballet The Stone Flower op.118 (1948–50) did not have
its première until 12 February 1954, and has not kept a place in the repertory, nor have the four
orchestral suites Prokofiev drew from it (opp.126–9, all 1951). The late instrumental works are
curiously colourless, and conspicuous for an almost excessive tendency to simplicity; there is
nothing here of the lively nonconformity of the young Prokofiev. This is true also of the Symphonic
Concerto op.125 for cello and orchestra (1950–52) and the unfinished Cello Concertino op.133
(1952), both written for Rostropovich, and also the Seventh Symphony op.131 (1951–2).

From the first Prokofiev sought to conduct a dialogue with his public by adapting to prevailing
tendencies. As a young composer he startled his audiences with his provocative tone colours and
tone combinations, his many dissonances and his sheer volume of sound. He found inspiration in the
Russian futurists of the circle of Mayakovsky, but also in Stravinsky’s ballets, then seen as
challenging. In other words, he took his bearings from those who represented the avant garde of the
time. In the USA he strove, as he said, to find a simpler musical language without sacrificing his
artistic integrity, and The Love for Three Oranges was the impressive result. In Europe he reacted
to a more sophisticated public with differentiated formal structures and more complex harmony.
Finally, in the Soviet Union, he adapted to the never clearly defined maxims of ‘socialist
realism’. However, in his comments intended for public consumption he always emphasized that a
simpler musical language was not to be confused with excessive simplicity and composing to a
stereotyped pattern, and in the USSR too, for all his caution, he succeeded in retaining his
unmistakable style. It must remain an open question whether the many works concretely motivated by
Soviet events, in which function takes precedence to the extent that artistic quality is
irrelevant, were written out of genuine conviction or should be seen as efforts to conform.
Prokofiev held no position in cultural politics, for instance in the Union of Composers, nor did he
ever take a teaching post. Unlike Shostakovich and many of his colleagues, he never became a member
of the Communist Party, so that he retained a certain freedom of space in which to manoeuvre. It
was not until 1948 that Soviet cultural policy really caught up with him and destroyed him both
artistically and physically.

A large number of the works that are free from political professions have a firm place in the
international repertory, and he is rightly counted one of the major composers of the 20th century.
He was not a great influence on younger generations of composers, unlike Schoenberg, Berg and
Webern, Stravinsky, Bartók and Messiaen – except in the Soviet Union, where Soviet-trained
musicians of a whole generation took their guidelines from either Shostakovich or Prokofiev,
raising the achievement of one or the other to the status of a philosophy of life, and passed on
their stylistic features to those who followed.

Prokofiev’s death on 5 March 1953 passed almost unnoticed, for Stalin died on that same day.

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Prokofiev, Sergey

WORKS

Editions:

Sergey Prokof'yev: sobraniye soch i neniy [complete works], ed. N.P. Anosov and others [20 vols.]
(1955–67/R as The Collected Works in 80 Volumes, New York, 1979/R as The Complete Works in 93
Volumes [with addns], New York, 1980)

operas

ballets

other dramatic works

orchestral

vocal orchestral

other vocal works

chamber and instrumental

piano

other works

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Prokofiev, Sergey: Works

operas

op.

–

Velikan [The Giant] (3, Prokofiev and others), vs, 1900, unpubd; Kalnga guberniya, private home,
sum.1901

–

Na pustïnnïkh ostrovakh [On Desert Islands], (ov. and 3 scenes of Act 1, Prokofiev), 1900–02,
unpubd

–

Pir vo vremya chumï [A Feast in Time of Plague] (1, Prokofiev, after A.S. Pushkin), vs, 1903, 1
scene rev. 1908–9, unpubd

–

Undina (4, M. Kilstett, after F. de la Motte Fouqué), 1904–7, unpubd

13

Maddalena (1, Prokofiev, after M. Lieven), 1911–13, inc., concert perf., BBC, London, 25 March 1979
orchd E. Downes]

24

Igrok [The Gambler] (4, Prokofiev, after F. Dostoyevsky), 1915–17, rev. 1927–8; Brussels, Monnaie,
cond. M. Corneil de Thoran, 29 April 1929; see orch works, op.49

33

Lyubov' k tryom apel'sinam [The Love for Three Oranges] (prol, 4, Prokofiev, after C. Gozzi), 1919;
Chicago, Auditorium, cond. Prokofiev, 30 Dec 1921 as L'amour des trois oranges; see orch works,
opp.33bis, 109, pf works, op.33ter

37

Ognennïy angel [The Fiery Angel] (5, Prokofiev, after V. Bryusov), 1919–23, rev. 1926–7; Act 2 in
concert perf., Paris, cond. S. Koussevitzky, 14 June 1928; complete, Paris, Champs Elysées, cond.
C. Bruck, 25 Nov 1954 as L'ange de fen; see orch works, op.44, vocal orch works, op.37bis

81

Semyon Kotko (5, V. Katayev, Prokofiev, after Katayev), 1939; Moscow, Stanislavsky, cond. M.N.
Zhukov, 23 June 1940; see orch works, op.81bis

86

Obrucheniye v monastïre [Betrothal in a Monastery] (4, Prokofiev, M. Mendel'son, after R.B.
Sheridan: The Duenna), 1940–41; Prague, National 5 May 1946; Russ. première, Leningrad, Kirov,
cond. B. Khaikin, 3 Nov 1946; see orch works, op.123

-

Khan Buzay, 1942–, inc., unpubd

91

Voyna i mir [War and Peace] (5, epigraph, Prokofiev, after L. Tolstoy), 1941–3, rev. 1946–52; II
scenes, concert perf., Moscow, Actors' Club, 16 Oct 1944; Pf I, 8 scenes, Leningrad, Malïy, cond.
S.A. Samosud, 12 June 1946; complete (13 scenes), with cuts, Moscow,
Stanislavsky-Nemirovich-Danchenko, cond. A. Shaverdov, 8 Nov 1955; Moscow, Bol'shoy, cond. A.
Melik-Pashayev, 15 Dec 1959, first relatively complete perf., incl. epigraph; see orch works,
op.110, pf works, op.96

117

Povest' o nastoyashchem cheloveke [The Story of a Real Man] (4, Prokofiev, Mendel'son, after B.
Polevoy), 1947–8; private concert perf., Leningrad, Kirov, cond. Khaikin, 3 Dec 1948; staged,
Moscow, Bol'shoy, cond. M.F. Ermler, 8 Oct 1960

–

Dalyokiye morya [Distant Seas] (Prokofiev, after V.A. Dïkhovichnï), 1948–, inc., unpubd; planned as
op.118

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Prokofiev, Sergey: Works

ballets

20

Ala i Lolli (S. Gorodetsky, Prokofiev), 1914–15, withdrawn, unpubd; see orch works, op.20

21

Skazka pro shuta [The Tale of the Buffoon] (Chout) (6 scenes, Prokofiev, after A. Afanas'yev),
1915, rev. 1920; Paris, Gaîté Lyrique, cond. Prokofiev, 17 May 1921; see orch works, op.21bis

39

Trapetsiya [Trapeze] (1), 1924; Berlin, Romanov Company, late 1925; music also as Quintet, op.39

41

Stal'noy skok [The Steel Step] (Le pas d’acier) (2 scenes, Prokofiev, G. Yakulov), 1925–6; Paris,
Sarah Bernhardt, cond. Désormière, 7 June 1927; see orch works, op.41bis

46

Bludnïy sïn [The Prodigal Son] (L’enfant prodigue) (3, B. Kochno), 1928–9; Paris, Sarah Bernhardt,
cond. Prokofiev, 21 May 1929; see orch works, opp.46bis, 47

51

Na Dnepre [On the Dnieper] (Sur le Borysthène) (2 scenes, S. Lifar, Prokofiev), 1930–31; Paris,
Opéra, cond. P. Gaubert, 16 Dec 1932; see orch works, op.51bis

64

Romeo i Dzhuletta [Romeo and Juliet] (4, Prokofiev, others, after W. Shakespeare), 1935–6; Brno,
cond. Q. Arnoldi, 30 Dec 1938; see orch works, opp.64bis, 64ter, 101, pf works, op.75

87

Zolushka [Cinderella] (3, N. Volkov), 1940–44; Moscow, Bol'shoy, cond. Y. Fayer, 21 Nov 1945; see
orch works, opp. 107–10, chamber works, op.97bis, pf works, opp.95, 97, 102

118

Skaz o kammenom tsvetke [The Tale of the Stone Flower] (4, L. Lavrovsky, Mendel'son, after P.
Bazhov), 1948–53; Moscow, Bol'shoy, cond. Fayer, 12 Feb 1954; see orch works, opp. 126–9

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Prokofiev, Sergey: Works

other dramatic works

incidental music

–

Yevipetskiye nochi [Egyptian Nights] (Pushkin, Shakespeare, G. Shaw), 1934; Moscow, Kamernïy, April
1935; see orch works, op.61

70bis

Boris Godunov (Pushkin, produced Meyergold), 1936; Moscow, Central Children’s Theatre, April 1957;
selected nos. from opp.70, 70bis and 71 arr. as Pushkiniana by Rozhdestvensky (1962)

71

Yevgeny Onegin (Pushkin), 1936, unpubd; BBC, London, 1 April 1980

77

Hamlet (Shakespeare), 1937–8; Leningrad, 15 May 1939; see pf works, op.77bis

film scores

–

Poruchnik Kizhe [Lieutenant Kijé], 1933, unpubd; film unrealized; see orch works, op.60, other
vocal works, op.60bis

70

Pikovaya dama [The Queen of Spades] (after Pushkin), 1936; film unrealized

–

Aleksandr Nevskiy (dir. S. Eisenstein), Mez, chorus, orch, 1938, unpubd; see vocal orch works,
op.78, other vocal works, op.78bis

–

Lermontov, 1941, unpubd; see orch works, op.110, pf works, op.96

–

Kotovskiy, 1942, unpubd

–

Partizanï v stepyakh ukrainï [The Partisans in the Ukrainian Steppes], 1942, unpubd

–

Tonya, 1942, unpubd; film unrealized

116

Ivan Groznïy [Ivan the Terrible] (dir. Eisenstein), part 1, 1942–4, part 2, 1945, unpubd; arr. as
orat by A. Stasevich, 1961

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Prokofiev, Sergey: Works

orchestral

–

Symphony, G, 1902, unpubd

–

Symphony no.2, e, 1908, unpubd, reworked in Piano Sonata no.4

5

Sinfonietta, A, 1909, rev. 1914–15, unpubd; rev. as op.48

6

Snï [Dreams], sym. tableau, 1910, unpubd

8

Osenneye [Autumnal Sketch], small orch, 1910, rev. 1915, 1934

10

Piano Concerto no.1, D , 1911–12

16

Piano Concerto no.2, g, 1912–13, unpubd; rev. 1923

19

Violin Concerto no.1, D, 1916–17

20

Suite from Ala i Lolli (Skifskaya syuita [Scythian Suite]), 1914–5

21bis

Suite from The Tale of the Buffoon, 1920

25

Symphony no.1 ‘Classical’, D, 1916–17

26

Piano Concerto no.3, C, 1917–21

29bis

Andante from Piano Sonata no.4, 1934

33bis

Suite from The Love for Three Oranges, 1919, rev. 1924

34bis

Overture on Hebrew Themes [after chbr work], 1934

40

Symphony no.2, d, 1924–5; see also op.136

41bis

Suite from The Steel Step, 1926

42

Overture, B , chbr orch, 1926, unpubd

42bis

Overture, B , full orch, 1928

43

Divertissement, 1925–9; see pf works, op.43bis

44

Symphony no.3, c [material from The Fiery Angel], 1928

46bis

Suite from The Prodigal Son, 1929

47

Symphony no.4, C [material from The Prodigal Son], 1929–30, unpubd; rev. as op.112

48

Sinfonietta, A [rev. of op.5], 1929; see pf works, op.52

49

Four Portraits and Dénouement from The Gambler, 1931

50bis

Andante from String Quartet no.1, str, ?1930, unpubd

51bis

Suite from On the Dnieper, 1933

53

Piano Concerto no.4, B , left hand, 1931

55

Piano Concerto no.5, G, 1931–2

57

Symphonic Song, 1933, unpubd

58

Cello Concerto, e, 1933–8

60

Suite from Lieutenant Kijé, with Bar ad lib, 1934

61

Suite from Egyptian Nights, 1934

63

Violin Concerto no.2, g, 1935

64bis

Suite no.1 from Romeo and Juliet, 1936

64ter

Suite no.2 from Romeo and Juliet, 1936

65bis

Letniy den' [Summer Day], children’s suite [after nos.1, 9, 6, 5, 10–12 of pf work op.65], small
orch 1941

69

Four Marches, military band, 1935–7

72

Russian Overture, with quadruple ww, 1936; rev. with triple ww, 1937, unpubd

81bis

Suite from Semyon Kotko, 1941

88

Symphonic March, B , 1941, unpubd

89bis

March, A , military band [after no.2 of 7 Songs, op.79], ?1941

90

1941-y god [The year 1941], suite, 1941

99

March, B , military band, 1943–4

100

Symphony no.5, B , 1944

101

Suite no.3 from Romeo and Juliet, 1946

105

Ode to the End of the War, wind, 8 hps, 4 pf, perc, dbs, 1945

107

Suite no.1 from Cinderella, 1946

108

Suite no.2 from Cinderella, 1946

109

Suite no.3 from Cinderella [3rd no. from The Love for Three Oranges], 1946

110

Waltz Suite [from Cinderella, War and Peace and Lermontov], 1946

111

Symphony no.6, e , 1945–7

112

Symphony no.4, C [rev. of op.47], 1947

113

Tridtsat' let [30 years], festive poem, 1947

120

Pushkin Waltzes, 1949, unpubd

123

Letnyaya noch' [Summer Night], suite from The Duenna, 1950

125

Symphony-Concerto, e, vc, orch, 1950–51, rev. 1952 [after op.58]

126

Wedding Suite from The Tale of the Stone Flower, 1951

127

Gypsy Fantasy from The Tale of the Stone Flower, 1951, unpubd

128

Urals Rhapsody from The Tale of the Stone Flower, 1951, unpubd

129

Khozyayka mednoy gorï [Lady of the Copper Mountain], suite from The Tale of the Stone Flower,
unrealized

130

Vstrecha Volgi s Donom [The Meeting of the Volga and the Don], festive poem, 1951

131

Symphony no.7, c , 1951–2

132

Cello Concertino, g, 1952, completed by Rostropovich and Kabalevsky

133

Piano Concerto no.6, 2 pf, str, 1952, inc.

136

Symphony no.2, d [rev. of op.40], unrealized

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Prokofiev, Sergey: Works

vocal orchestral

7

Two Poems (K. Bal'mont), female chorus, orch, 1909–10, unpubd: Belïy lebed [The White Swan], Volna
[The Wave]

18

Gadkiy utyonok [The Ugly Duckling] [after song op.18], 1v, orch

30

Semero ikh [They are Seven] (cant., after Bal'mont), T, chorus, orch, 1917–18, rev. 1933

35bis

Mélodie [no.2 from 5 Songs, op.35], 1v, orch, ?1920

37bis

Ognennïy angel [The Fiery Angel], vocal suite from opera, 1v, orch, 1923, inc., unpubd

67

Petya i volk [Peter and the Wolf] (Prokofiev), tale for children, narrator, orch, 1936

74

Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution (K. Marx, V. Lenin, I. Stalin), 2
choruses, orch, military band, accordion band, perc band, 1936–7, unpubd

76

Pesni nashikh dney [Songs of our Times], solo vv, chorus, orch, 1937: Marsh [March], Cherez mostik
[Over the Bridge], Bud'te zdorovï [Good Luck], Zolotaya Ukraina [Golden Ukraine], Brat za brata
[Brother for Brother], Devushki [Maidens], Dvadtsatiletnïy [The 20-Year-Old], Kolïbelnaya
[Lullaby], Ot kraya do kraya [From Shore to Shore]

78

Aleksandr Nevskiy (cant., V. Lugorsky, Prokofiev) [from film score], Mez, chorus, orch, 1939

85

Zdravitsa [Hail to Stalin], chorus, orch, 1939

93

Ballada o malchike, ostavshemsya neizvestnïm [Ballad of an Unknown Boy] (P. Antokol'sky), S, T,
chorus, orch, 1942–3, unpubd

114

Rastsvetay, moguchiy kray [Flourish, Mighty Homeland] (Ye. Dolmatovsky), cant. for the 30th
anniversary of the October Revolution, 1947

122

Zimniy kostyor [Winter bonfire] (S. Marshak), suite, reciters, boys’ chorus, orch, 1949–50

124

Na strazhe mira [On Guard for Peace] (orat, Marshak), Mez, reciters, chorus, boys’ chorus, orch,
1950

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Prokofiev, Sergey: Works

other vocal works

choral

66a

Two Choruses, vv, pf, 1935: Partizan Zheleznyak, Anyutka

66b

Four Songs, 1v/vv, pf, 1935: Rastyot strana [The Fatherland Awakens], Skvoz snega i tumanï [Through
Snow and Fog], Za goroyu [Beyond the Hill], Pesnya o Voroshilove [Song about Voroshilov]

89

Seven Songs and a March in A, vv, pf, 1941–2: Pesnya [Song], Pesnya smelïkh [Song of the Brave],
Klyatve tankista [The Tankman’s vow], Sïn Kabardï [Son of Kabarda], Podruga boytsa [The Soldier’s
Sweetheart], Frits [Fritz], Lyubov' voyna [Love of War]; nos.1–2 and 7 unpubd

98

National Anthem (S.V. Mikhalkov, El-Registan), 1943, All-Union Hymn (S.P. Shchipanchev), 1946; both
in sketches, unpubd

121

Soldiers’ Marching Song (Lugovsky), 1950

songs, 1 voice, piano

-

Juvenilia, unpubd: Skazhi mne [Tell Me] (M.Yu. Lermontov), 1903; O, net, ne Figner [Oh, No, not
Figner], 1903; Smotri, pushinki [Look, the Down] (Prokofiev), 1903; Uzh ya ne tot [I am no Longer
the Same] (Pushkin), 1903: Mastitïye, vetvistïye, dubï [Ancient, Gnarled Oaks] (A. Maykov), 1906–7

9

Two Poems, 1910–11: Yest' drugiye planetï [It is of Other Planets] (Bal'mont), Otchalila lodka [The
Drifting Boat] (A. Apukhtin)

18

Gadkiy utyonok [The Ugly Duckling] (after H. Andersen), 1914, orchd; see vocal orch works, op.18

23

Five Poems (Bal'mont), 1915: Pod krïshey [Under the Roof], Seroye platitse [The Little Grey Dress],
Doversya mne [Follow me], V moyem sadu [In My Garden], Kudesnik [The Prophet]

27

Five Poems (A. Akhmatova), 1916: Solntse komnatu napolnilo [The Sun has Filled my Room],
Nastoyashchaya nezhnost' [True Tenderness], Pamyat' o solntse [Memory of the Sun], Zdravstvuy
[Greetings], Seroglazïy korol' [The King with Grey Eyes]

35

Five Songs without Words, 1920; see vocal orch works, op.35bis, chbr works, op.35bis, pf works,
op.52

36

Five Poems (Bal'mont), 1921: Zaklinaniye vodï i ognya [Incantation of Fire and Water], Golos ptits
[Birdsong], Babochka [The Butterfly], Pomni menya [Remember Me], Stolbï [The Pylons]

–

Five Kazakh Popular Songs, 1927

60bis

Two Songs from Lieutenant Kijé, 1934: Stonet sizïy golubochek [Moans the Little Grey Dove], Troika

68

Three Children’s Songs, 1936: Boltunya [Chatterbox], Sladkaya pesenka [Sweet Song], Porosyata [The
Little Pig]

73

Three Romances (Pushkin), 1936: Sosnï [Pine Trees], Pumyanoy zareyu [With a Blush], V tvoyu
svetlitsu [In your Brightness]

78bis

Three Songs from Aleksandr Nevskiy (Lugovsky), 1939: Vstavayte, lyudi russkiye [Arise, Men of
Russia], Otzovitesya, yasnï sokolï [Mark, ye Bright Falcons], A i bïlo delo na Neve-reke [And it
happened on the Neva River]

79

Seven Songs, 1939: Pesnya o rodine [Song about the Fatherland], Stakhanovka, Nad polyarnïm morem
[On the Polar Seas], Provodï [Send-Off], Smelo vperyod [Bravely Forward], Shyol stanitseyu Kazak
[Through the Village Came a Cossack], Hey, po doroge [Hey, to the Road]; see orch works, op.89bis

104

Twelve Russian Folksongs, 1944

106

Two Duets, Russian folksong arrs., T, B, pf, 1945

–

Pro soma [Broad and Deep the River Flows] (S. Mikhalkov), inc., unpubd

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Prokofiev, Sergey: Works

chamber and instrumental

–

     Juvenilia, vn, pf, unpubd; Sonata, c, 1903; Little Song, d, 1903; Little Song no.2, c, 1904

12bis

     Humoresque Scherzo, 4 bn [after no.9 of 10 pf Pieces, op.12], 1915

15

     Ballade, c, vc, pf, 1912

34

     Overture on Hebrew Themes, c, cl, str qt, pf, 1919; see orch works, op.34bis

35bis

     Five Melodies, vn, pf [after 5 Songs, op.35], 1925

39

     Quintet, g, ob, cl, vn, va, db, 1924; see ballets, op.39

50

     String Quartet no.1, b, 1930; see orch works, op.50bis, pf works, op.52

56

     Sonata, C, 2 vn, 1932

80

     Sonata no.1, f, vn, pf, 1938–46

92

     String Quartet no.2 (on Kabardinian themes), F, 1941

94

     Sonata, D, fl, pf, 1943; arr. as op.94bis for vn, pf, 1944

97bis

     Adagio, vc, pf [from Cinderella], 1944

115

     Sonata, D, unison vns/vn, 1947

119

     Sonata, C, vc, pf, 1949

134

     Sonata, c , vc, inc., unpubd

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Prokofiev, Sergey: Works

piano

juvenilia

Indian Galop, F, 1896; March, C, 1896; Waltz, C, 1896; Rondo, C, 1896; March, b–D, 1897; Polka, G,
1899; Waltz, G, 1899; Waltz, C–G, 1899; March, 1900; [untitled work], 7 pieces, 1901; Little Songs,
1st ser., 12 pieces, 1902; Bagatelle no.2, a, 1902; Little Songs, 2nd ser., 12 pieces, 1903;
Sonata, B , 1904; Little Songs, 3rd ser., 12 pieces, 1903–4; Variations on ‘Chizhika’, 1904; Little
Songs, 4th ser., 12 pieces, 1905; Polka mélancolique, f , 1905

Little Songs, 5th ser., 12 pieces, 1906; Song without Words, D , 1907; Intermezzo, A, 1907;
Humoresque, f, 1907; [untitled work] b , 1907; Oriental Piece, g, 1907; [untitled work], c, 1907;
Sonata no.2, f, 1907, reworked in op.1; Sonata no.3, a, 1907, reworked in op.28; 4 Pieces, 1907–8,
rev. as op.3; Sonata no.4, ?1907–8, lost; 4 Pieces, 1908, rev. as op.4; Sonata no.5, c, 1908,
reworked in op.29; Examination Fugue, 1908; Andante, c, 1908, inc.; 2 Pieces, 1908; Study, c, 1908;
Piece on Es–C–H–E, 1908; Sonata no.6, ?1908–9, lost

For 4 hands: March, C, 1897; March, C, 1899; March, F, 1899; Piece, F, 1899; Piece, d, 1900; Piece,
with zither, 1900, inc.; Bagatelle no.1, c, 1901

mature works

1

Sonata no.1, f [after Sonata no.2, 1907], 1909

2

Four Etudes, 1909

3

Four Pieces [rev. of 4 Pieces, 1907–8], 1911: Skazka [Story], Shutka [Jest], Marsh [March], Prizrak
[Phantom]

4

Four Pieces [rev. of 4 Pieces, 1908], 1910–12: Vospominaniya [Reminiscences], Porïv [Elan],
Otchayanie [Despair], Navazhdeniye (Suggestion diabolique)

11

Toccata, d, 1912

12

Ten Pieces, 1906–13: March [after Little Songs, 5th ser., no.6], Gavotte, Rigaudon, Mazurka,
Capriccio, Legenda, Prelude, Allemande, Humoresque Scherzo, Scherzo; see chbr works, op.12bis

14

Sonata no.2, d, 1912

17

Sarkazmï [Sarcasms], 5 pieces, 1912–14

22

Mimoletnosti (Visions fugitives), 20 pieces, 1915–17

28

Sonata no.3 (from old notebooks), a [after Sonata no.3, 1907], 1917

29

Sonata no.4 (from old notebooks), c [after Sonata no.5, 1908 and Sym., 1908], 1917

31

Skazki staroy babushki [Old Grandmother’s Tales], 4 pieces, 1918

32

Four Pieces, 1918: Dance, Minuet, Gavotte, Waltz

33ter

March and Scherzo from The Love for Three Oranges, 1922

38

Sonata no.5, C, 1923, rev. as op.135

43bis

Divertissement [after orch work], 1938

45

Veshchi v sebe [Things in Themselves], 2 pieces, 1928

52

Six Pieces, 1930–31: Intermezzo, Rondo, Etude [all from The Prodigal Son], Scherzino [from 5 Songs,
op.35], Andante [from Str Qt no.1, op.50], Scherzo from Sinfonietta, op.48]

54

Two Sonatinas, e, G, 1931–2

59

Three Pieces, 1933–44: Progulka [Promenade], Peyzazh [Landscape], Pastoral Sonatina, C

62

Mïsli (Pensées), 3 pieces, 1933–4

65

Music for Children, 12 pieces, 1935; see orch works, op.65bis

75

Ten Pieces from Romeo and Juliet, 1937

77bis

Gavotte [from Hamlet], 1938

82

Sonata no.6, A, 1939–40

83

Sonata no.7, B , 1939–42

84

Sonata no.8, B , 1939–44

95

Three Pieces from Cinderella, 1942

96

Three Pieces, 1941–2: Waltz [from War and Peace], Contredanse, Mephisto-waltz [both from Lermontov]

97

Ten Pieces from Cinderella, 1943

102

Six Pieces from Cinderella, 1944

103

Sonata no.9, C, 1947

135

Sonata no.5, C [rev. of op.38], 1952–3

137

Sonata no.10, c, inc., unpubd

138

Sonata no.11, unrealized

–

Dumka, after 1933, unpubd

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Prokofiev, Sergey: Works

other works

Music for gymnastic exercises, ?1936, inc., unpubd

Arrs.: D. Buxtehude: Organ Prelude and Fugue, pf, 1920/?1918; F. Schubert: Waltzes, suite, pf,
1920/?1918, pf 4 hands, 1923


Principal publishers: Boosey & Hawkes, Editions Russes de Musique, Gutheil, Jürgenson, Muzgiz

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Prokofiev, Sergey

BIBLIOGRAPHY

general

writings on particular works

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Prokofiev, Sergey: Bibliography

general

M. Calvocoressi: ‘Sergej Prokofjew’, Musikblätter des Anbruch, iv (1922), 172

K novïm beregam, i (1923) [Prokofiev issue]

B. de Schloezer: ‘Igor Strawinsky und Sergej Prokofjew’, Melos, iv (1924–5), 469–81

B. Asaf'yev: S. Prokof'yev (Leningrad, 1927)

G. Abraham: Eight Soviet Composers (London, 1943)

I.V. Nest'yev: Prokofiev: his Musical Life (New York, 1946)

Tempo, no.20 (1949) [Prokofiev issue]

A. Werth: ‘The Real Prokofiev’, The Nation, clxxvi (1953), 285

S.I. Shlifshteyn, ed.: S.S. Prokof'yev: materialï, dokumentï, vospominaniya [Materials, documents,
reminiscences] (Moscow, 1956, 2/1961; Eng. trans., 1960, 2/1968: Ger. trans., 1965)

M. Sabinina: Sergey Prokof'yev (Moscow, 1957), 2/1960

I. Martïnov: Lavreat leninskoy premii Sergey Prokof'yev (Moscow, 1958)

I.V. Nest'yev: Prokof'yev (Moscow, 1957, enlarged 2/1973; Eng. trans., 1960/R)

C. Samuel: Prokofiev (Paris, 1960/R; Eng. trans., 1971)

SovM (1961), no.4 [special issue]

L. Berger, ed.: Chertï stilya S. Prokof'yeva [Aspects of Prokofiev’s style] (Moscow, 1962)

A. Bïkov, ed.: ‘Pis'ma S.S. Prokof'yeva k V.V. Derzhanovskomu’ [Prokofiev’s letters to
Derzhanovsky], Iz arkhivov russkikh muzïkantov (Moscow, 1962), 93–118

S.I. Shlifshteyn, ed.: Notograficheskiy spravochnik S.S. Prokof'yeva [Reference list of Prokofiev's
works] (Moscow, 1962)

M.R. Hofmann: Serge Prokofiev (Paris, 1963)

H.A. Brockhaus: Sergej Prokofjew (Leipzig, 1964)

L.E. Hanson and E. Hanson: Prokofiev (London and New York, 1964)

S. Birman: ‘Vstrecha s Prokof'yevïm’ [A meeting with Prokofiev], SovM (1965), no.9, pp.82–6

M. Rayment: Prokofiev (London, 1965)

I.V. Nest'yev and G.Y. Edel'man, ed.: Sergey Prokof'yev: stat'i i materialï [Articles and
materials], 2 vols. (Moscow, 1965)

S.I. Shlifshteyn, ed.: Sergey Prokof’yev/Sergei Prokofiev (Moscow, 1965)

P. Atasheva and M. Kozlova, eds.: ‘Iz perepiski S. Prokof'yeva i S. Eyzenshteyna’ [From the
correspondence of Prokofiev and Eisenstein], SovM (1966), no.6, pp.105–14

L. Danko: S.S. Prokof'yev (Moscow and Leningrad, 1966)

Yu. Kremlyov: Ėsteticheskiye vzglyadï S. Prokof'yeva [Prokofiev’s aesthetic standpoint] (Moscow,
1966)

SovM (1966), no.4 [special issue]

V. Blok: ‘Neopublikovannïye rukopisï’ [Unpublished manuscripts], SovM (1967), no.4, pp.93–9

S. Morozov: Prokof'yev (Moscow, 1967)

‘S. Prokof'yev: pis'ma k V.Ye. Meyekhol'du’ [Letters to Meyerhold], Muzïkal'noye nasledstvo, ii/2
(Moscow, 1968), 214–31

V. Seroff: Sergei Prokofiev: a Soviet Tragedy (New York, 1968)

E.F. Findell: ‘Dokumente aus der Sammlung Paul Wittgenstein’, Mf, xxiv (1971), 422–31

H.L. Kaufman: The Story of Sergei Prokofiev (New York, 1971)

I.V. Nest'yev: ‘Novoye o velikom mastere’ [News about the great master], SovM (1971), no.4,
pp.48–56

V. Blok, ed.: S.S. Prokof'yev: stat'i i issledovaniya [Articles and research] (Moscow, 1972)

S. Prokofiev: Autobiografiya, ed. M.G. Kozlova (Moscow, 1973, 2/1982)

S. Moisson-Franckhauser: Serge Prokofiev et les courants esthétiques de son temps (Paris, 1974)

R. Yurenev, ed.: ‘Eyzenshteyn v vospominaniyakh sovremennikov’ [Eisenstein in his contemporaries’
reminiscences] (Moscow, 1974)

P. Rame: ‘Pis'ma S.S. Prokof'yeva – B.V. Asaf'yevu’ [Prokofiev’s letters to Asaf'yev], Iz proshlogo
sovetskoy muzïkal'noy kul'turi, ii (Moscow, 1976), 4–54

D. Kabalevsky and M. Kozlova, eds.: S.S. Prokof'yev i N.Ya. Myaskovskiy: perepiska [Prokofiev and
Myaskosky: correspondence] (Moscow, 1977)

V. Khalif, ed.: ‘Perepiska S.S. Prokof'yeva s L.M. Glagolevoy’ [The letters between Prokofiev and
L.M. Glagoleva], Pamyatniki kul'turï: novïye otkrïtiya, pis'mennost', iskusstvo, arkheologiya.
Yezhegodnik 1978 (Leningrad, 1979), 227–32

O. Prokofiev: ‘Papers from my Attic; my Father, his Music, and I’, Yale Literary Magazine,
cxlviii/2 (1979), 17–29

Prokofiev by Prokofiev: a Composer’s Memoir (London, 1979)

M.H. Brown: ‘Skryabin and Young Prokofiev, 1905–15: Promethean vis-à-vis Pragmatist’,
Kaufman-Festschrift (New York, 1981), 371–80

V. Dukhovskaya: ‘Zametki iz dnevnika’ [Remarks from the diary], SovM (1981), no.4, pp.93–7

I. Kunin: ‘Sorok let druzhbï’ [Forty years of friendship], SovM (1981), no.4, pp.97–100 [about
Prokofiev and Myaskovsky]

N. Savkina: Sergey Sergeyevich Prokof'yev (Moscow, 1981; Ger. trans., 1984/R)

J. Jaroszewicz: Prokofiew (Kraków, 1983)

S. Prokofiev: ‘Detstvo’ [Childhood] (Moscow, 1983)

A. Lischké: Prokofiev (Madrid, 1985)

S. Prokofiev: ‘Velichiye chelovecheskogo dusha …’ [The greatness of the human spirit …], SovM
(1985), no.5, pp.63–8

M.H. Brown and N. Rodriguez, eds.: ‘Prokofiev’s Correspondence with Stravinsky’, Essays for Gerald
Abraham (Ann Arbor, 1985), 217–92

M.H. Brown: ‘Stravinsky and Prokofiev: Sizing up the Competition’, Confronting Stravinsky
(Berkeley, 1986), 39–50

S. Neef: ‘Wechsel der Perspektive. Zum Schaffen von Sergej Prokofjew’, MG, xxxvii/10 (1987), 523–7

I. Nest'yev: ‘Chetïre druzhbï’ [Four friendships: Asaf'yev, Myaskovsky, Prokofiev, Suvchinsky],
SovM (1987), no.3, pp.83–95

D. Gutman: Prokofiev (London, 1988)

P. Lerhman: ‘A Schoenberg Note about Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Stravinsky and Koussevitzky’, Journal
of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute, xi/2 (1988), 174–80

H. Robinson: ‘Sergey Prokofiev, a Biography’ (New York, 1988)

O. Prokofiev, ed.: Soviet Diary 1927 and Other Writings (London, 1991)

V. Varunts, ed.: Prokof'yev o Prokof'yeve: stat'i, interv'yu [Prokofiev on Prokofiev: articles,
interviews] (Moscow, 1991)

SovM (1991), no.4 [special issue]

‘S.S. Prokof'yev glazami sovremennikov’ [Prokofiev through the eyes of his contemporaries], SovM
(1991), no.11, pp.78–89

Sergej Prokofjew: Cologne 1991

T. Schipperges: Sergej Prokofjew (Reinbeck, 1995)

M. Biesold: Sergej Prokofjew: Komponist im Schatten Stalins: Eine Biographie (Berlin, 1996)

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Prokofiev, Sergey: Bibliography

writings on particular works

operas

other dramatic works

orchestral works

piano work

analytical and other technical studies

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Prokofiev, Sergey: Bibliography

operas

for further bibliography see GroveO (R. Taruskin)

V. Fyodorov: “‘Guerre et paix” de Prokofiev’, Polyphonie, i (1947–8), 78–83

M. Sabinina: ‘“Voyna i mir”’, SovM (1953), no.12, pp.29–38

C. Bruch: ‘“Ognyonnïy angel” v Parizhe’, SovM (1955), no.7, pp.128–30

Yu. Keldïsh: ‘Yeshchyo ob opere “Voyna i mir”’ [More about the opera ‘War and Peace’], SovM (1955),
no.7, pp.33–40

S. Shlifshteyn: ‘“Voyna i mir” v malom opernom teatre’ [‘War and Peace’ in the small opera
theatre], SovM (1955), no.7, pp.60–67

D. Mitchell: ‘Prokofiev’s “Three Oranges”: a Note on its Musical-Dramatic Organisation’, Tempo,
no.41 (1956), 20–24

H. Swarsenski: ‘Prokofieff’s “The Flaming Angel”’, Tempo, no.39 (1956), 16–27

L. Polyakova: ‘Voyna i mir’ Prokof'yeva (Moscow, 1960, rev. 2/1971)

A. Zolotov: ‘Ode to Heroism: “The Story of a Real Man” at the Bolshoy Theatre’, Current Digest of
the Soviet Press (1960), no.48

A. Klimovitsky: Opera Prokof'yeva ‘Semyon Kotko’ (Moscow, 1961)

R. Jahn: ‘Von “Spieler” zur “Erzählung von Wahren Menschen”’, Musik und Gesellschaft, xi (1961),
232–8

B. Yarustovsky: ‘Prokof'yev i teatr’, SovM (1961), no.6, pp.66–80

S. Shlifshteyn: ‘S. Prokofiev i yego opera “Povest' o nastoyashchem cheloveke”’ [Prokofiev and his
opera ‘The Story of a Real Man’], SovM (1961), pp.23–37

D. Lloyd-Jones: ‘Prokofiev and the Opera’, Opera, xiii (1962), 513–20

A. Porter: ‘Prokofiev’s Early Operas’, MT, ciii (1962), 528–30

M. Sabinina: ‘Ob opere kotoraya ne bïla napisana’ [About the opera that was never written], SovM
(1962), no.8 pp.41–8 [on Khan Buzay]

L. Danko: Operï S. Prokof'yeva (Leningrad, 1963)

L. Polyakova: ‘O poslednem opernom zamïsle S. Prokof'yeva “Dalyokiye morya”’ [On Prokofiev’s last
operatic idea ‘Distant Seas’], SovM (1963), no.3, pp.53–6

D. Razer: “‘Duėna” Prokof'yeva i teatr’, Muzïka i sovremennost', ii (Moscow, 1963), 24–61

G. Orjonikidze: ‘Opera – skertso’, SovM (1964), no.11, pp.56–61 [on Love for Three Oranges]

A. Jefferson: ‘The Angel of Fire’, Music and Musicians, xiii/12 (1964–5), 32–5

E. Mnatsakanova: ‘Neskol'ko zametok ob opere Prokof'yeva “Igrok”’ [Some notes on the opera ‘The
Gambler’], Muzïka i sovremennost, iii (1965), 122–44

E. Mnatsakanova: ‘Prokof'yev i Tolstoy’, Muzïka i sovremennost, iv (1966), 162–85

G. Pugliese: ‘The Unknown World of Prokofiev’s Operas’, High Fidelity, xvi/6 (1966), 44–50

A. Stratiyevsky: ‘Nekotorïye osobennosti rechitativa operï “Igrok”’ [Some characteristics of the
recitative in the opera ‘The Gambler’], Russkaya muzïka na rubezhe XX veka, ed. M. Miklhailov and
Ye. Orlova (Moscow, 1966), 42–70

A. Porter: ‘Prokofiev’s Late Operas’, MT, cviii (1967), 312–14

A. Volkov: ‘Ob opernoy forme u Prokof'yeva’, Muzïka i sovremennost', v (Moscow, 1967), 74–117

R. McAllister: ‘Prokofiev’s Early Opera “Maddalena”’, PRMA, xcvi (1969–70), 137–47

R. McAllister: ‘Natural and Supernatural in “The Fiery Angel”’, MT, cxi (1970), 785–9

R. McAllister: The Operas of Sergei Prokofiev (diss., U. of Cambridge, 1970)

G. Ordzhyonikidze: ‘Shol soldat s fronta’ [A soldier left the front], SovM (1970), no.8, pp.27–36
[about Semyon Kotko]

R. McAllister: ‘Prokofiev’s Tolstoy Epic’, MT, cxiii (1972), 851–55

O. Stepanov: Teatr masok v opere Prokof'yeva ‘Lyobov' k tryom apel'sinam’ [The theatre of masks in
Prokofiev’s ‘Love for Three Oranges’] (Moscow, 1972)

M. Sokol'sky: ‘Uroki “Igroka”’ [The lessons of ‘The Gambler’], SovM (1975), no.7, pp.54–7

M.H. Brown: ‘Prokofiev’s War and Peace: a Chronicle’, MQ, lxiii (1977), 96–106

E. Kröplin: Das Opernschaffen Sergei Prokofjews. Ein Beitrag zur Entwicklung des sozialen
Musiktheaters (Leipzig, 1978)

G. Fyodorov: ‘Trinadtsat' ikh’ [Thirteen of them], SovM (1979), no.9, pp.83–91

A. Grzegorek: ‘Recytatyw jako postawowy element dramaturgii muzycznej w operze Prokofiewa “Wojna i
pokój”’ [Recitative as a major element in the dramatic form of Prokofiev’s opera ‘War and Peace’],
Muzyka, xxv/4 (1980), 75–91

E. Kröplin: Frühe sowjetische Oper. Schostakowitsch, Prokofjew (Berlin, 1985)

S. Neef: ‘Zur Aneignung sowjetischer Opern in der DDR’, Oper heute, ix (1986), 65–80

H. Robinson: ‘Love for Three Operas. The Collaboration of Vsevolod Meyerhold and Sergei Prokofiev’,
Russian Review, xlv (1986), 287–304

R. Taruskin: ‘Tone Style and Form in Prokofiev’s Soviet Operas’, Studies in the History of Music,
ii (1988), 215–39

N. Shvidko: ‘Maddalena Prokof'yeva i problema stanovleniya yego rannego opernogo stilya’
[Prokofiev’s ‘Maddalena’ and the problem of staging his early operatic style] (diss., Leningrad,
1988)

M. Aslan‘ian: ‘Nekotorïye nablyudeniya nad vokal'nïm stiltem operï S. Prokof'yeva “Igrok”’ [Some
observations on the vocal style of Prokofiev’s opera ‘The Gambler’], Problemï muzïkal'noy nauki,
vii (Moscow, 1989), 142–57

M. Rigoni: ‘Serge Prokofiev: “histoire d’un homme veritable” ou l’itinéraire d’un musicien en
période révolutionaire’, Les cahiers du CIREM, xiv–xv (1989–90), 111–85

N. Savkina: ‘Tri portreta i razvyazka’ [Three portraits and a dénouement], SovM (1990), no.4,
pp.108–11

H. Robinson: ‘Flirting with Decadence: Sergei Prokofiev and “Ognennïy angel”’, OQ, viii/4 (1991–2),
1–7

B. Spassov: ‘Die Verwandlung des “Dämonsujets” in Brjusovs Roman “Der feurige Engel” und ihre
Darstellung in Prokofieffs gleichnamiger Oper’, Welttheater, Mysterienspiel, Rituelles Theater, ed.
P. Csobadi (Salzburg, 1992), 507–16

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Prokofiev, Sergey: Bibliography

other dramatic works

P.-O. Ferroud: ‘The Ballets of Sergei Prokofiev’, The Chesterian, xv (1933–4), 89

S. Katanova: Baletï S. Prokof'yeva (Moscow, 1962)

U. Seelmann-Eggebert: ‘Prokofjew und die Filmmusik’, NZM, Jg.125 (1964), 522

R. Zanetti: ‘Prokofieff und Diaghilew’, Melos, xxxii (1965), 443–7

P.D. Roberts: ‘Prokofiev’s Score and Cantata for Eisenstein’s “Aleksandr Nevsky”’, Semiotica, xxi
(1977), 151–61

M. Hunt: ‘The Prodigal Son’s Russian roots. Avant Garde and Icon’, Dance Chronicle, v (1982), 24–49

H. Robinson: ‘The Most Contemporary Art: Sergey Prokofiev and Soviet Film’, Studies in Comparative
Communism, xvii (1984–5), 203–18

K.D. Stephenson: The Tonal Style of Prokofiev’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ (diss., U. of Iowa, 1989)

C. Richter: ‘Die Gavotte aus S. Prokofjews “Romeo and Julia”. Anregungen für die Betrachtung und
Erörterung des Komischen in Musik’, Music und Bildung, xxiii/6 (1991), 179–81

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Prokofiev, Sergey: Bibliography

orchestral works

M. Montagu-Nathan: ‘Prokofiev’s First Piano Concerto’, MT, lviii (1917), 12–13

L. Biancolli: S. Prokofiev and his Orchestral Music (New York, 1953)

E. Lockspeiser: ‘Prokofieff’s Seventh Symphony’, Tempo, no.37 (1955), 24–7

W.W. Austin: ‘Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony’, MR, xvii (1956), 205–20

V. Blok: Kontsertï dlya violoncheli s orkestrom S. Prokof'yeva (Moscow, 1959)

T. Bogdanova: ‘O ladovïkh osnavakh i variatnosti stroyeniya melodii v pozdnïkh simfoniyakh
Prokof'yeva’ [About the modal bases and the variety of forms of the melodies in Prokofiev’s late
symphonies], Trudï kafedrï teorii muzïki, ed. S. Srebkov (Moscow, 1960)

F. Del'son: Fortepiannïye kontsertï S. Prokof'yeva (Moscow, 1961)

M.H. Brown: The Symphonies of Prokofiev (diss., Florida State U., 1967)

M. Tarakanov: Stil simfoniy Prokof'yeva [The style of Prokofiev’s symphonies] (Moscow, 1968)

G. Wappler: Der Typ des Prokofjewschen Klavierkonzerts. Seine Stellung und seine Bedeutung in der
Gegenwartsmusik (Leipzig, 1976)

L. Henderson: ‘How the Flaming Angel became Prokofiev’s Third Symphony’, MR, xl/1 (1979), 49–52

A. Konieczna: ‘III symfonia Sergiusza Prokofiewa: jej geneza a interpretacja’, Muzykologia
krakowska (Kraków, 1987), 107–20

H. Loos: ‘Form und Ausdruck bei Prokofjew: die Oper “Der feurige Engel” und die “Dritte
Symphonie”’, Mf, xliii (1990), 107–24

L. Henderson: ‘A Comparative Study of Prokofiev’s Cello Concerto, op.58 and Sinfonia Concertante,
op.125’, MR, lii/2 (1991), 123–36

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Prokofiev, Sergey: Bibliography

piano work

F. Merrick: ‘Serge Prokofiev’s Sixth Piano Sonata’, MT, lxxxv (1944), 9–11

F. Merrick: ‘Prokofiev’s Piano Sonatas 1–5’, MT, lxxxvi (1945), 9–11

F. Merrick: ‘Prokofiev’s Piano Sonatas’, PRMA, lxxv (1948–9), 13–21

F. Merrick: ‘Prokofiev’s Ninth Piano Sonata’, MT, xcvii (1956), 649

W. Siegmund-Schultz: ‘Prokofjew und die Sonate’, Sowjetwissenschaft, Kunst und Literatur, v (1957),
54–63

L. Gakkel: Fortep'yannoye tvorchestvo S.S. Prokof'yeva [Prokofiev’s piano works] (Moscow, 1960)

G. Orjonikidze: Fortep'yannïye sonatï Prokof'yeva (Moscow, 1962)

P.R. Ashley: Prokofiev’s Piano Music: Line, Chord, Key (diss., Rochester U., 1963)

M.H. Brown: ‘Prokofiev’s Eighth Piano Sonata’, Tempo, no.70 (1964), 9–15

E. Roseberry: ‘Prokofiev’s Piano Sonatas’, Music and Musicians, xxi/7 (1970–71), 38–47

L. Chaikin: ‘The Prokofieff Sonatas: a Psychograph’, Piano Quarterly, lxxxvi (1974), 8–19

V. Palinova: ‘Vazhnaya cherta fortepiannogo tvorchestva’ [The defining characteristics of
Prokofiev’s piano works], SovM (1981), no.4, pp.88–93

R.G. Martin: The Nine Piano Sonatas of Sergei Prokofiev (diss., U. of Lexington, 1982)

L. Schick: ‘Serge Prokofieffs “Kindermusik” op.65’, Üben und Musizieren, iv/5 (1987), 375–80

S.M. Flaskend-Rathunell: The Influence of Scriabin on Prokofiev’s Early Piano Works: op.1 through
op.29 (diss., American State U., 1990)

P.D. Roberts: Modernism in Russian Piano Music: Scriabin, Prokofiev and their Contemporaries
(Bloomington, IN, 1993)

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Prokofiev, Sergey: Bibliography

analytical and other technical studies

N. Zaporozhets: ‘Nekotorïye kompozitsionnïye osobennosti tvorchestva S. Prokof'yeva’ [Some
compositional features of Prokofiev’s works], Voprosï muzïkoznaniya, iii, ed. V. Gordeyeva (Moscow,
1960), 39–85

T. Boganova: Natsional'no-russkiye traditsii v muzïke S.S. Prokof'yeva (Moscow, 1961)

L. Berger, ed.: Chertï stilya S. Prokof'yeva [Features of Prokofiev’s style] (Moscow, 1962)

Y. Soroker: Kamerno-instrumental'nïye ansambli S. Prokof'yeva (Moscow, 1963)

V. Blok: Muzïka S. Prokof'yeva dlya detey [Prokofiev’s music for children] (Moscow, 1969)

M. Aranovsky: ‘Stilevïye chertï instrumental'noy melodiki rannego Prokof'yeva’ [Stylistic features
of instrumental melody in early Prokofiev], Voprosï teorii i ėstetiki muzïki, iv, ed. Yu. Kremlyov
(Leningrad, 1965)

V. Blok: ‘Osobennosti variovaniya v instrumental'nïkh proizvedeniyakh Prokof'yeva’ [Characteristics
of the variation technique in Prokofiev’s instrumental works], Muzïka i sovremennost', iii, ed. T.
Lebedeva (Moscow, 1965), 145–69

T. Ter-Martirosian: Nekotorïye osobennosti garmonii Prokof'yeva [Features of Prokofiev’s harmony]
(Moscow and Leningrad, 1966)

Festschrift für Lev Mazel' (Moscow, 1967)

Yu. Kholopov: Sovremennïye chertï garmoniya Prokof'yeva [Contemporary aspects of Prokofiev’s
harmony] (Moscow, 1967)

M. Aranovsky: Melodika S. Prokof'yeva (Leningrad, 1969)

M. Skorik: ‘Ladovaya sistema S. Prokof'yeva’ [Prokofiev’s modal system], Muzïka XX veka (Kiev,
1969)

Yu. Paisov: ‘Yeshchyo raz o politonal'nosti’ [Once again about polytonality], SovM (1971), no.4,
pp.56–60

V. Kholopova: ‘Simmetriya intervalov v muzïke Prokof'yeva’ [Interval symmetry in Prokofiev’s
works], SovM (1972), no.4, pp.100–06

V. Blok: Violonchel'noye tvorchestvo Prokof'yeva (Moscow, 1973)

A. Schnittke: ‘Osobennosti orkestrovogo golosovedeniya S. Prokof'yeva’ [Features of Prokofiev’s
orchestral voice leading], Muzïka i sovremennost', viii (Moscow, 1974), 202–28

V. Simkin: ‘O tembrovom mïshlenii S. Prokof'yeva’ [Prokofiev’s thinking about timbre], SovM (1976),
no.3, pp.113–15

V. Blok: Metod tvorcheskoy rabotï S. Prokof'yeva [The working methods of Prokofiev] (Moscow, 1979)

Yu. Kholopov: ‘Der russische Neoklassizismus’, Jahrbuch Peters 1980, iii (1981), 170–99

R. Bass: ‘Prokofiev’s Technique of Chromatic Displacement’, MAn, vii/2 (1988), 197–214

D. Moyseyeva: Traktovka sonatno-simfonicheskogo tsikla v tvorchestve Sergeya Prokof'yeva [The
treatment of the symphonic sonata cycle in Prokofiev’s work] (diss., Leningrad, 1988)

N.B. Minturn: An Integral Approach to the Music of Sergey Prokofiev using Tonal and Set Theoretic
Analytical Technique (diss., Yale U., 1988)

M. Yakubov: ‘Sekventsii Prokof'yeva’ [Prokofiev’s sequences], SovM (1989), no.5, pp.81–93

A. Klimov: ‘Gorizontal'naya i vertikal'naya vvodnotonovïye sistemï (nekotorïye ladogarmonicheskiye
yavleniya v muzïke S. Prokof'yeva i D. Shostakovicha)’ [Horizontal and vertical systems of leading
tones (some modal/harmonic phenomena in the music of Prokofiev and Shostakovich)], Problemï
muzïkal'noy nauki, vii (Moscow, 1989), 90–102

N. Livintinskaya: ‘Igra kak odna iz form kompozitorskogo mïshleniya Sergeya Prokof'yeva’
[Performance as a form of compositional thought in Prokofiev’s work], Moskovskiy muzïkoved, i
(Moscow, 1990), 20–35

S. Volenko: Muzïkal'nïye proobrazï v rannem tvorchestve Sergeya Prokof'yeva (diss., Leningrad,
1990)

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