He rivals Dimitri Shostakovich as the most important Russian composer of the 20th century. Yet Sergey Prokofiev didn't always seem typical composer fare.
While on his final tour of the US in 1938, Prokofiev gave an interview to the New York Times. The reporter described his ‘cool and pleasantly untemperamental manner of address’, which ‘bespoke the industrial executive rather than the creator of music’. Indeed, his appearance – balding and far from handsome, perfumed and decked out in suits – was scarcely that of a conventional composer, nor one who had chosen two years earlier to settle in Stalin’s Russia.
By then Prokofiev had already composed several works for Soviet audiences, some of which remain his most widely known: the film soundtrack Lieutenant Kijé, the ballet Romeo and Juliet, and the 'symphonic tale for children', Peter and the Wolf. Yet there’s a lot more to Prokofiev than these wholesomely democratic works.
Who was Sergey Prokofiev?
Sergey Prokofiev was undoubtedly one of the most significant composers of the 20th century. who wrote colourful, characterful and beautifully orchestrated music across a wide range of genres and forms including ballet, opera, symphony and concerto, solo piano and more.
When was Prokofiev born?
The composer was born on 27 April 1891, in the village of Sontsovka (now Sontsivka) in the Donetsk region of Russia (now Ukraine). His father worked as a soil engineer on a large estate owned by a former fellow student; his mother devoted much of her life to music, decamping to Moscow or St Petersburg for two months of piano lessons each year.
Where did Prokofiev grow up?
The young Prokofiev spent his childhood in Sontsovka (now Sontsivka) in the Donetsk region of Russia (now Ukraine). He was a clever child: as well as composing his first piece for piano at age five, the future composer had learned to play chess by age seven.
Wild landscapes and rural retreats held an abiding attraction for Prokofiev. His early childhood was spent in Sontsovka, a rural estate in Ukraine far from any music-making other than by the local peasants or by his mother, an amateur pianist.
By five, he was composing his first pieces for piano
Every evening he would listen to her practising Beethoven piano sonatas, then the simpler works of Chopin, Schumann and Liszt. By the age of five he was composing his first pieces for piano; then in 1900, inspired by seeing Charles Gounod’s Faust and Borodin’s Prince Igor on a family visit to Moscow, he composed his first opera, The Giant, aged eight.
A 13th birthday present of sheet piano music by Edvard Grieg stimulated Prokofiev’s interest in non-conventional harmonies. He studied with Rimsky-Korsakov at the St Petersburg Conservatoire but was influenced most by his fellow students, such as his friend Myaskovsky with whom he played through piano arrangements of the music of Beethoven, Glazunov and their contemporary Alexander Scriabin.
Lessons with leading Russians
At age 11-12, Prokofiev had two summers' worth of music lessons from the composer Reinhold Glière. Not long after, he enrolled (with encouragement from composer and teacher Alexander Glazunov) at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, where he studied piano with Alexander Winkler, harmony and counterpoint with Anatoly Lyadov, conducting with Nikolai Tcherepnin and orchestration with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (himself a gifted orchestrator).
How did his musical style develop?
It can be startling to encounter for the first time Prokofiev's ethereal First Violin Concerto (composed in his twenties in 1917), or the ferocious incantation Seven, They are Seven (1917-18; rev. 1933) or some of the poignantly reflective pieces in his piano cycle Visions fugitives (1915-17). Even in Stalin’s Russia, Prokofiev was to compose such works as the Second String Quartet (1941), with its wonderfully inventive and effective evocations of folk music native to the Caucasus where it was composed.
Prokofiev rebelled against the academicism of the Conservatoire, preferring the more adventurous St Petersburg Evenings of Contemporary Music which presented premieres of such foreign modernists as Debussy and Strauss, as well as works by Stravinsky and Prokofiev himself.
Even as a student, Prokofiev was aware of Stravinsky’s rapid rise to fame through his association with Sergei Diaghilev. On graduating in 1914, Prokofiev travelled to London to meet Diaghilev for himself and encounter the Ballets Russes.
What ballets did Prokofiev write?
His first ballet commission, Ala i Lolli, was never finished. That was because Diaghilev, perhaps recognising it as poor successor to Stravinsky’s revolutionary Rite of Spring, told Prokofiev to start again on a new ballet (Prokofiev subsequently salvaged the Scythian Suite from Ala i Lolli). The result was Chout ('The Buffoon': 1915, revised 1920), a work influenced by Stravinsky’s Petrushka but with an acerbic wit of its own.
For a time Prokofiev was friendly with Stravinsky and reacted enthusiastically to several works of Stravinsky’s including the ‘song games’ Pribaoutki. However, when Chout was finally staged in 1921, it proved all too successful for Stravinsky’s comfort.
Prokofiev then presented The Love for Three Oranges – originally premiered by Chicago Opera in 1922 – to Diaghilev for a possible staging; Stravinsky, who was present, went on the attack, reinforcing Diaghilev’s prejudice that opera was a moribund form.
A Modernist phase
The result was a full-scale row. Prokofiev, on the contrary, tried to be true to the spirit of his age with such aggressively ‘modernist’ works as the Second Symphony (1925) and in his ballet Le pas d’acier (1926) about the industrialisation of the Soviet Union.
The latter was a success in Western Europe, but it was condemned by the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM) as ‘counter-revolutionary’ and banned. Prokofiev, badly shaken by this rejection, started to develop what he called a ‘new simplicity’, a style of music meant to be readily understood by a wide audience and which would yet reward repeated listenings. It seems symbolic that his last and possibly his greatest ballet for Diaghilev, written in this style, was called The Prodigal Son (1929).
Soviet officials suggested that Prokofiev should be key in reviving music in the USSR
Prokofiev’s ‘new simplicity’ appeared to match the ideals of ‘Socialist Realism’ prescribed by Stalin within the Soviet Union in 1932. This, and the flattering suggestion by Soviet officials that Prokofiev should play a key role in reviving music within the USSR, helped to persuade him to return to Russia.
How Lieutenant Kijé brought Prokofiev back to Russia
Since fleeing revolutionary Russia in 1918, Prokofiev had struggled to find a musical home conducive to his strikingly original talent.
He initially spent four years in North America, where he completed two masterworks, premiered within a fortnight of each other in December 1921 – the melodically enraptured Third Piano Concerto and The Love for Three Oranges, a scintillatingly inventive opera which epitomised his bracing creative fusion of ‘the classical, innovative, motoric, lyrical and grotesque’.
'I am the least suited of men to live in exile’
Yet he never felt entirely happy on foreign soil. ‘I wandered through Central Park,’ he reflected despondently, ‘and thought of the wonderful American orchestras that cared nothing for my music, and who recoiled at the first sign of anything new.’
A move to the artistic hustle and bustle of 1920s Paris hardly improved matters. ‘Foreign air does not inspire me because I’m a Russian, the least suited of men to live in exile,’ he despaired. Accordingly, much of the music he produced at this time – including the ballet Le Pas d’acier (‘The Steel Step’), the Third and Fourth Symphonies, and Fifth Piano Sonata – only fleetingly capture his inspiration operating at white heat.
Prokofiev enters the world of film music
From 1929, Prokofiev began reassociating himself with Mother Russia, and although Moscow hardly welcomed Le Pas d’acier with open arms, renewed contact with the Homeland appears to have inspired a poignant distillation of his musical essence in the Fifth Piano Concerto. The turning point came when – despite being unsure what ‘sauce’ to put on it – he agreed, at the author’s suggestion, to compose the music for a forthcoming film adaptation of Yuri Tynyanov’s waspishly comical tale, Lieutenant Khize.
The story focusses on the eponymous soldier, whom Emperor Paul I assumes exists after spotting his distinctive name entered mistakenly in a set of official records. No one dares admit the clerical error, so an entire life history is quickly invented in order to save the situation. Prokofiev’s initial reluctance was entirely understandable – after all, movie soundtracks were still in their infancy and he may also have been aware of the young Dmitri Shostakovich’s early attempts at film music.
Nevertheless, viewing it as a unique opportunity for his work to reach a wider audience and to collaborate with the director Aleksandr Feinzimmer on his first major feature, he set to work and produced 16 short numbers, lasting around 15 minutes.
A melodically enchanted, emotionally beguiling soundworld
In contrast to the more generalised, post-Romantic mood music prevalent at the time, Prokofiev meticulously wove his inspiration into the narrative fabric of the film, and in so doing created a melodically enchanted, emotionally beguiling soundworld that would characterise much of his music during his period of repatriation.
Although he was not especially keen on the film itself, the music was another matter. So when the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra suggested he might turn it into an orchestral suite, despite the immense task of rescoring and restructuring involved – he despaired that the suite caused him ‘more trouble than the film itself’ – he was confidant he could produce a sure-fire winner.
Prokofiev and Christian Science
It has been suggested that Prokofiev’s ‘new simplicity’ actually reflected his increasing adherence to Christian Science, whose teachings he started to absorb from the mid-1920s. Christian Scientist art had ‘to be accessible, reflective of God’s egalitarian, universal love’.
Prokofiev’s adherence to certain tenets of Christian Science meant he turned against even such works of his own as the opera The Fiery Angel (1919-23, revised 1927) for its theme of necromancy, yet he never became puritanical, continuing to enjoy material pleasures like fine food and the latest gadgetry. That Christian Science and Socialist Realism nonetheless threatened to drive Prokofiev into a sterile cul de sac is evident in such stylistically anonymous works as Songs of Our Days (1937).
Against these, though, are the troubling, tragic masterpieces of his Soviet period such as the First Violin Sonata (started in 1938 but completed after World War II) and the Sixth Symphony (1947). These and other such works indicate that Prokofiev recognised the danger of losing his creative soul – not least because the era of Stalin’s Great Terror in the 1930s saw the arrest and death of several of Prokofiev’s close colleagues – and chose to remain true to himself and to the world as he saw it.
When did Prokofiev die?
Sergey Prokofiev died aged 61 on 6 March 1953 - famously, on the same day as Joseph Stalin.
The Prokofiev style
Prokofiev’s particular, and instantly recognisable style blends a few different elements:
Melodic Lyricism: Prokofiev's music can at times be dissonant or modernist - but you will also find those distinctive, memorable, song-like melodies threaded through it.
Rhythmic Drive: Take a listen to, say, the Third Piano Concerto and you'll instantly hear how Prokofiev's music is packed with bold, rhythmic energy. Syncopation, contrast, irregular accents: he keeps things rhythmically interesting.
Innovative Harmonies: Prokofiev embraced the 20th century's modernist spirit, experimenting with dissonance, changing harmonic centres, and strange tonalities. However, his music is generally more accessible (thanks, again, to that wondrous melodic gift) than the music of some of the avant-garde's leading lights.
Neoclassicism: Like Stravinsky, Prokofiev was attracted to the energy and sharp rhythms of the earlier classical forms.
What are Prokofiev's most famous pieces?
If you're wanting to get started on Prokofiev, we would recommend the First and Fifth Symphonies, the Third Piano Concerto, and the orchestral suites for Romeo and Juliet, the Lieutenant Kijé Suite and Peter and the Wolf. The two Violin Concertos are both gorgeous, the Sixth Symphony is a bleak masterpiece, the Second Piano Concerto is one of the most turbulent, demanding and gripping piano concertos of all... the list goes on.
Many of his works - especially those written for piano, ballet, and orchestra - are absolute staples remain of the repertoire, known and loved for their dazzling inventiveness, emotional range, and technical fireworks. Today, Prokofiev is celebrated as one of 20th century's great composers, alongside his compatriots Stravinsky and Shostakovich.
