Prokofiev: Piano Sonata No.8 Op.84

Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was born in 1891 in Sonstsovka - Current Krasne - in the Donetsk region, Ukraine - then part of the Russian Empire. His mother had devoted herself to studying the piano after the death of her two daughters, and Prokofiev felt  drawn towards  music by listening to her practice at night. At five he composed his first piano piece. At nine, he composed his first opera, The Giant, as well as an overture.

In 1902, Sergei Taneyev - director of the Moscow Conservatory – suggested that the composer's mother took him to take lessons in piano and composition with Alexander Goldenweiser. However, as Goldenweiser was not available, Taneyev made arrangements  for  Reinhold Glière to go over to  Sonstsovka that summer to teach Prokofiev composition. Later, Prokofiev would complain that   Glière had introduced him to antiquated phrasal structures and conventional modulations - which the composer had to "unlearn"[1].

Prokofiev then starts his experiments with dissonant harmonies and unusual metric structures, the very core of his unique compositional style. In 1904, he entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory. At that time, he had already composed two other operas, and was working on the fourth.

At  the Conservatory, Prokofiev - seen as an eccentric and an arrogant youth - studied with names like Nikolai Tcherepnin, Anatoly Lyadov and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. With the latter, he took lessons in orchestration. As a member of the St. Petersburg’s  music milieu, he soon  became known as an enfant terrible[2].

Prokofiev loses his father – and along with him his financial support - in 1910. At that time, however, he had already made a name as a composer - despite the scandals caused by the avant-garde nature of his works. In his Sarcasms op.17 for solo piano, for example, Prokofiev makes broad use of polytonality. One may also observe the continuous use of  chromaticism and dissonance in his Études Op.2 (1909) and  in the Four Pieces For Piano Op.4 (1908). His first two piano concertos also emerged in this period.

In 1913, Prokofiev made his first foreign trip. In London, he meets with Sergei Dhiaghilev -  founder of the Ballets Russes – , who commissions the composer’s first ballets, shortly after his return to Russia. Chout   Op.21 - whose theme is based on a folk tale written by the ethnographer Alexander Afanasyev - is  highly acclaimed by an audience that included Maurice Ravel and Igor Stravinsky on  its debut in Paris in 1921. The latter considers the ballet "the single piece of modern music that I could listen with pleasure."[3]

With the outbreak of World War I, Prokofiev returned to the Conservatory to study organ – so as to  avoid being called up for military service. The opera The Gambler Op.24 - based on the novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - had its première canceled in 1917, due to the February Revolution.

That same year, Prokofiev would compose his first symphony -   also known as the Classical –  a piece written in the Neoclassicist fashion, combining elements of Haydn’s classical style with early twentieth century Modernism. The  Symphony No. 1  and the  Concerto for Violin No. 1 Op 19 in D Major – written during that same period - had both their debuts -  scheduled for 1917 -  put off until 1918 and 1923 respectively . In 1918, after concluding there was no more room for modern music in Russia, Prokofiev decides to leave the country[4].

Prokofiev leaves for the United States in that same year of 1918. In the U.S.,  the composer is compared to other Russian exiles – like  Sergei Rachmaninoff; and inaugurates this  new phase with a solo concert in New York. After a series of successful concerts in Chicago,  he receives a contract from the director of Chicago Opera Association Cleofonte Campanini, who commissions Prokofiev’s  satirical opera The Love of Three Oranges Op 33. However, due to  Campanini’s illness and death, the opera had its premiere postponed until 1921 -  costing the composer his career in the U.S., as it consumed much of the composer’s time and efforts. 

Finding himself  in financial difficulties, Prokofiev leaves for Paris - where he resumes contact with Diaghilev. Later, he would move to the Bavarian alps,  in order to concentrate on composing The Fiery Angel Op.37 - based on the novel by Valery Bryusov.

At that point his music had acquired a following in Russia, and Prokofiev receives many invitations to return to the country. However, he decides to stay in Europe and marries the opera singer Lina Llubera - Codena Carolina’s  nom de plume.
 

On his return to  Paris, Diaghilev commissions Prokofiev to write the  modernist ballet Le Pas d'Acier, op.41 - whose purpose was to portray the process of industrialization in the Soviet Union. The ballet was warmly received by  both audience and critics upon its première on June 7, 1927[5].

That same year brought new commissions from Diaghilev and more concerts in Russia  - apart from a successful staging of The Love of Three Oranges in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad). Moreover, two of his older operas  were performed in Europe. In 1928, the composer produced the Symphony No. 3 op.44 - largely based on the upcoming The Fiery Angel. 

Between 1928 and 1929, Prokofiev composed his last ballet for Diaghilev - The Prodigal Son Op.46 - before the death of choreographer - months after the première in 1929. Later that year, the composer would  produce his Divertimento  Op.43.

In 1930, Prokofiev begins working on the  first ballet commissioned by Serge Lifar - the maître de ballet of the Opéra National de Paris[6]. The years 1931 and 1932 witness the completion of his Piano Concertos No 4 and No 5 Op.55, respectively. In 1933, Prokofiev   concludes his Symphonic  Song Op.57,  a work in one movement.

 The early 1930s marked Prokofiev’s wish to return to his homeland, with the  premières being gradually shifted from Paris to Russia. During that period, Prokofiev is commissioned to compose Lieutenant Kijé Op.60. Another commission – Romeo and Juliet Op.54,  which contains some of the most inspired and poignant passages in the whole of his work – comes from  the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad. The work’s happy ending, however – contrary to Shakespeare’s original text – causes the première to be put off until several years later.

The year 1936 sees Prokofiev’s  permanent return to the Soviet Union. It was the height of the so-called Great Purge (1936-1939) under Josef Stalin - a period marked by large-scale persecution of  political opponents and citizens suspected of conspiracy, leading to hundreds of arrests and arbitrary executions.   An official agency - the Union of Soviet Composers (1932-1957) – was set up in order to dictate “guidelines” to be followed by Russian composers   and supervise their compliance to them - in accordance with a resolution of the Communist Party (CPSU) entitled "On the Reconstruction of Literary and Artistic Organizations" (as of April 23, 1932). Symptomatically,  the extinction of the  Association for Contemporary Music – whose orientation was  Western and modernist – ensued.

The UCS emerged  as a powerful instrument of control over concert halls, theaters, music publishers, radio and television orchestras, chamber ensembles, music conservatories and institutes, and music stores. Besides the afore- mentioned attributions, the UCS also established rules and regulations for the profession of musician and mediated the relations  between the latter  and the Communist Party leadership.

The   binding link between the  intelligentsia and  artists to  party bureaucracy obviously constrained  artistic expression; Russian composers, now aligned with the official dictates, should create works  of a "democratic" and apologetic nature, praising Stalin and reinforcing  his cult of personality.

By restricting all external influences, the new policy of "monitoring"  musical production in Russia would  lead to the almost complete isolation of Soviet composers  from the rest of the world.

Forced to adapt to new circumstances, Prokofiev composed the series of Mass Songs  Opp.66, 79 and 89, a number of works for children (Three Songs for Children and Peter and the Wolf Op.68 Op.67) as well as the  Cantata for the Twentieth Anniversary of the October Revolution, Op 74. The latter was banned until 1966, given his sarcastic character. As pointed out by Ian MacDonald:

 The libretto for the Cantata is, in effect, a veiled critique of the Revolution up to the time it was written […]  the work starts in a vein of almost blatant irony before retrenching to a dry inscrutability secreted within some of the most absurdly grandiose pages ever perpetrated by a major composer. Opening in apocalyptic mood with an orchestral commentary on Marx's menacing epigraph "A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of Communism", Prokofiev moves into satirical overdrive with the overtly ridiculous "The Philosophers", in which an apparent attack on pre-Marxist thinkers carries undertones of derision directed against all "philosophers", including the 19th century anarcho-nihilists upon whose intolerant texts Lenin's violent revolution was founded. With "A Tight Little Band", we reach Lenin himself - and here again the title is to the point, for it was precisely the paranoiac élitism of the Bolsheviks which precipitated Russia into totalitarianism and civil war^[7].

The year 1938 brought the collaboration with filmmaker Eisenstein for the epic Alexander Nevsky. Prokofiev composed the Cantata Alexander Nevsky Op.78 -  a large-scale work for mezzo-soprano, orchestra and choir,considered one of his most inventive and dramatic pieces. The cantata turned out to be a huge success, being widely recorded and performed.

Prokofiev, then, composes his first Soviet opera -  Semyon Kotko Op 81 -   produced by the director Vsevolod Meyerhold. However, due to  Meyerhold's arrest in June 1939 by the NKVD - the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs - the première was postponed[8]. A few months after the conviction of Meyerhold, Prokofiev was summoned to compose the oratory Zdravitsa Op.85 - an ode to Stalin, on  occasion of his sixtieth birthday[9].

That same year,  Prokofiev composed the  Piano Sonatas Op.82 No. 6, No. 7 and No. 8 Op.83 Op.84 - also known as "war sonatas". The sonatas were performed by the Prokofiev (No. 6), Sviatoslav Richter (No. 7) and Emil Gilels (No. 8) - in 1940, 1943 and 1944, respectively[10].

According to Daniel Jaffe[11], having been forced to compose  in overt praise of  Stalin, Prokofiev set himself to work on the sonatas as an expression of his real feelings. Evidence of this was the fact that the Sonata No. 7 opened with a theme inspired in the lied Wehmut (“Sadness”) from the Liederkreis Op 39 by Schumann. The allusion to Wehmut apparently went unnoticed by the Soviet government - to the point of receiving, most ironically,  a Stalin Prize in 1943; the Sonata No. 8 also receive the award in 1946.

About the Sonata No. 6, says Russian virtuoso Evgeny Kissin :

 […] the experience Prokofiev portrays is that of the period of Stalinist repression, the 'cult of personality'. He truly captures this in the bitter, pompous opening theme of the first movement, a sort of 'Stalin leitmotif' which returns in the finale. The second movement is a parody of a military march, full of Prokofiev's veiled humour, sarcasm and mischief. The finale is truly a 'big sarcasm' and in the middle section Prokofiev recalls the 'Stalin leitmotif', giving it a completely different, ominous character to create a premonition of impending doom. And listen to what Prokofiev does at the very end of the coda: he crushes Stalin with the very weight of his own pompous leitmotif!^[12]

The German invasion of Russia in June 1941 caught  most Soviets by surprise. The administrative apparatus under Stalin was forced to react promptly and focus  all resources and attention on the war efforts. As a result, the Russians experienced a period of relative  slackening of ideological constraints on artistic production.

In that international political context, Russia restores - though temporarily - the connection with the West, and  modernist experimentalism regains momentum in Soviet music. It was the revival of the great  symphonic works – which contrasted with the simplistic opera-songs of the 1930s[13]. Not only Prokofiev - with his Symphony No. 5 - but also Myaskovsky, Shostakovich and Khachaturian produce great symphonies with war themes. Russian chamber music is also  revitalized.

During the war days, Prokofiev also works on  the opera War and Peace - based on Leo Tolstoy’s novel;  the Violin Sonata Op.80 No. 1; The Year 1941, Op.90; and the Ballade for the boy who remained unknown, Op.93.

Prokofiev began composing  the Violin Sonata No. 1 in 1938 - exactly two years after the beginning of the Great Purge. About seven million Russians had been sent to the gulags - labor camps - and half a million executed. Prokofiev would say at the time that its desolate scale  passages  should sound like “the wind in a graveyard." [14] As MacDonald points out:

                                                    […] the threnody of the first movement and pale, elegiac third speak for themselves. Elsewhere, the contrast of wanly tender measures with music of military brutality expresses the impact on Soviet life of Stalin's new-wave apparatchiki - thugs who despised intellectuals and were indifferent to culture. In classic style, the viciousness of these men was exceeded only by their stupidity. Like Shostakovich, Prokofiev satirised them with the musical image of a club-fingered amateur pianist spraying out wrong notes - a device employed in both the finale of his First Violin Sonata and the second movement of the Sixth Piano Sonata^[15].

Prokofiev composed both Ivan the Terrible Op.116 - for Eisenstein's film - and the ballet Cinderella Op 87 in 1943. In 1944, the composer begins his work on the Symphony No. 5 Op 100 - which would become his most famous symphony.

In the immediate postwar period, Prokofiev composes the Ode to the End of the War Op.80 - supposedly a piece of jubilation. However, the exaggerated instrumentation - the score is written for an orchestra that includes three saxophones, eight harps and four pianos – denotes the satirical character of the work. In fact, despite the grandeur expected  from any work inspired in a triumphant victory,  Prokofiev’s extravaganza is hardly justified in a country swept by famine – the outcome of Stalin’s internal politics of  prioritizing  military expeditures.   Finally, as highlighted by   conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra Vladimir Jurowsky, "and here is Prokofiev employing the elements of jazz,  of American bourgeois music, in a piece Intended to celebrate the great Soviet people's victory."[16]

Shortly afterwards,  Prokofiev suffers a concussion after a fall caused by a hypertensive crisis – from which he would never get  fully recovered. Despite the  reduction in productivity that resulted, the composer still had time to compose the Symphony No. 6 Op.111 and the Sonata for Piano  no. 9 Op.103 - written for Richter - before  the publication of the Zhdanov Decree  - by which the Communist Party imposed severe restrictions on artistic production in the Soviet Union, and threatened  persecution to those  whose works did not align with  the Party’s recommendations[17].

The decree meant the return of tight control of artistic production by the government - with the resumption of isolationism and anti-Westernism. Prokofiev - amid a group of composers that included Shostakovich, Khachaturian, Shebalin, Popov and Myaskovsky - was accused of "anti-democratic formalism" and once again found himself under the scrutiny of the UCS.

The ban on a large number of Prokofiev’s works  caused the majority of theatre and concert hall directors to refuse to program his music, causing severe financial constraints to the composer. This  -  coupled with the decline  his declining health status - led Prokofiev’s musical activities to a grinding halt.

In 1949 Prokofiev wrote his Sonata for Cello Op 119 –  dedicated to the young Mstislav Rostropovich. The composer also had the virtuoso in mind as he rewrote his Cello Concerto Op.58, transforming it into the Symphony-Concerto for Cello and Orchestra Op.125 - a milestone in the repertoire  composed for the instrument.

Prokofiev’s last public performance  occurred in 1952, as of  the première of Symphony No. 7 Op.131. The first conductor to perform  it persuaded Prokofiev to rewrite the finale, providing it with an optimistic tone in a way to  please the members of the Stalin Award Committee. 

Sergei Prokofiev is victimized by a brain hemorrhage at the age of 61 on March 5, 1953 - the same day Stalin’s death was announced.  

In the piece that follows -  the Piano Sonata No.8 Op.84 - notice the melancholy tone of the first movement (Andante dolce), as well as its tonal instability. Also remarkable is the broad use of dissonances in the final movement (Vivace).

Performed by Gilels. Enjoy!



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References: 

1. Books: 

CONQUEST, Robert. The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties. London, Macmillan, 1973.

JAFFÉ,, Daniel,  Sergey Prokofiev . London, Phaidon Press, 1998.

MEYER,  Leonard B.  Emotion and Meaning in Music. Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 1956.

MORRISON, Simon. The People's Artist: Prokofiev's Soviet Years.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2008, p.164.

NICE, David. Prokofiev: From Russia to the West 1891–1935.  New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2003.

PROKOFIEV, Sergei.  Prokofiev by Prokofiev: A Composer's Memoir. Translated by Guy Daniels. New York: Doubleday & Co, 1979.

_______________.  Sergei Prokofiev: Autobiography, Articles, Reminiscences. Translated by Rose Prokofieva. Jerusalem, The Minerva Group, Inc., 2000.

SCHWARZ, Boris. Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 1917-1981. Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1983.

TARUSKIN, Richard.  Music in the Early Twentieth Century. Oxford, New York, Oxford University Press, 2010.

2. Dictionary entries:  

MCALLISTER, Rita McAllister.  "Sergey Prokofiev" .The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians: London: Macmillan Publishers, 1980.  

3. Websites

ALTMANN, Jennifer Greenstein .  Le Pas d’Acier: The Steel Step.  Available at  http://www.princeton.edu/pr/pwb/05/0221/7a.shtml . Retrieved 6/19/2013.

MACDONALD, Ian. Prokofiev: Prisoner of the State: an interpretation of the composer's relationship with the Soviet regime.  Available at http://www.siue.edu/~aho/musov/proko/prokofiev3.html . Retrieved 6/25/2013.

STEWART, Andrew. Sergei Prokofiev: Beyond 'Peter and the Wolf' – the rehabilitation of Stalin's composer . Available at http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/classical/features/sergei-prokofiev-beyond-peter-and-the-wolf--the-rehabilitation-of-stalins-composer-6286438.html . Retrieved 6/19/2013.

WAKIN,  Daniel J. 8 . THE WEEK AHEAD: March 8 - March 14: Classical.  Available at http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE1DB1438F93BA35750C0A96F9C8B63&scp=4&sq=Chout%20Prokofiev%20Stravinsky&st=cse  . Retrieved 6/19/2013.

 

4. Recordings

KISSIN, Evgeny. Schumann, Prokofiev, Liszt, Chopin - Carnegie Hall Debut Concert. RCA Victor Red Seal, 1990.

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[1] PROKOFIEV, Sergei.  Prokofiev by Prokofiev: A Composer's Memoir. Translated by Guy Daniels. New York: Doubleday & Co, 1979, pp.53-54.

[2] MCALLISTER, Rita McAllister.  “Sergey Prokofiev”. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians: London: Macmillan Publishers, 1980.  

[3] WAKIN,  Daniel J. 8 . THE WEEK AHEAD: March 8 - March 14: Classical.  Available at: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE1DB1438F93BA35750C0A96F9C8B63&scp=4&sq=Chout%20Prokofiev%20Stravinsky&st=cse  . Retrieved 06/19/2013.

[4] PROKOFIEV, Sergei.  Sergei Prokofiev: Autobiography, Articles, Reminiscences. Translated by Rose Prokofieva. Jerusalem, The Minerva Group, Inc., 2000, p.50.

[5] ALTMANN, Jennifer Greenstein .  Le Pas d’Acier: The Steel Step.  Available at :  http://www.princeton.edu/pr/pwb/05/0221/7a.shtml . Retrieved 06/19/2013.

[6] NICE, David. Prokofiev: From Russia to the West 1891–1935.  New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2003, p.279.

[7] MACDONALD, Ian. Prokofiev: Prisoner of the State: an interpretation of the composer's relationship with the Soviet regime.  Available at:  http://www.siue.edu/~aho/musov/proko/prokofiev3.html

Retrieved 06/25/2013.

[8] JAFFÉ,, Daniel,  Sergey Prokofiev . London,, Phaidon Press, 1998, p.158.

[9] JAFFÉ, Daniel, op.cit., p.159.

[10] MORRISON, Simon. The People's Artist: Prokofiev's Soviet Years.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2008, p.164.

[11] JAFFÉ,, Daniel, op.cit,  p.160.

[12] KISSIN, Evgeny. Schumann, Prokofiev, Liszt, Chopin - Carnegie Hall Debut Concert. RCA Victor Red Seal, 1990.

[13] According to Taruskin, the "song opera" was an exclusively Soviet gendery, similar to a Broadway musical, but sung from beginning to end. See Taruskin, Richard. Music in the Early Twentieth Century. Oxford, New York, Oxford University Press, 2010, p.790.

[14] MACDONALD, Ian, op.cit.

[15] Ibidem.

[16] STEWART, Andrew. Sergei Prokofiev: Beyond 'Peter and the Wolf' – the rehabilitation of Stalin's composer . Available at  http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/classical/features/sergei-prokofiev-beyond-peter-and-the-wolf--the-rehabilitation-of-stalins-composer-6286438.html . Retrieved 06/19/2013.

[17] The Zhdanov Decree falls within the context of the so-called Zhdanov Doctrine - developed in 1946 by the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) Andrei Zhdanov. The doctrine contended the political and ideological division of the globe into two poles - the imperialist pole,  led by the United States;  and the democratic pole, under the auspices of the Soviet Union. Zhdanovism quickly extended to cultural policy, meaning the imposition of ideological guidelines over the production of artists, writers and intelligentsia as a whole.