Sergei Prokofiev
From Philosopedia
Sergei Prokofiev (27 April 1891 - 5 March 1953)
The Russian composer Prokofiev (alternative transliterations of his name include Sergey or Serge and Prokofief or Prokofieff) was born in Sontsovka (now the village of Krasnoe, Krasnoarmiysky Raion, in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine). He became one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century. An only child, he had a mother who was a pianist and a father who was an agricultural engineer. By the age of 7, he showed excellence in music and chess, competing against some world champion chess players of that time.
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Personal
His earliest composition, written in F major, did not use the B-flat because, he explained, he did not like to touch the black notes. His eccentricity showed up when he moved to St. Petersburg and entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory, where some classmates thought he was arrogant and an enfant terrible, but he found the school boring. He studied under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, among others.
In 1918 he made the move to San Francisco, where he was compared to other famous Russian exiles such as Sergei Rachmaninoff. Finding himself with financial problems, he moved to Paris, then to the Bavarian Alps with his mother. In 1923 he married the Spanish singer Lina Llubera. A 1929 car accident slightly injured his his hands. Although success had deluded him up to this point, in 1934 he moved back to Russia permanently but found government officials demanded that artists had to follow rules concerning what kind of music was acceptable. By turning to composing music for children (Three Songs for Children, Peter and the Wolf, and others), he avoided some problems. But in 1941 he suffered the first of several heart attacks and a gradual decline in health. His relationship with the 25-year-old Mira Mendelson finally led to his separation from his wife Lina, although they remained married for the next seven years. When in 1948 Lina was arrested for "espionage" - for trying to send money to her mother in Spain via an embassy - she was sentenced to 20 years but was eventually released after Stalin's death. That same year, Prokofiev married Mira.
Works
Prokofiev produced eight complete operas (including War and Peace), eight ballets (including Romeo and Juliet and Cinderella), seven symphonies, eight film scores, nine concertos, 23 suites, 12 vocal-symphonic compositions, 15 overtures and poems (including Peter and the Wolf), 15 pieces for instrumental ensembles, 15 pieces for voice and piano, 11 piano sonatas, 24 other piano works, and a sonata for solo violin.
In 1948, although he had thus far been honored, he was officially censured for "excessive formalism" and cacophonous harmony. He promised more lyricism, but his opera Tale of a Real Man (1948) was again censured. He regained favor with his Symphony No. 7 (1952; Stalin Prize).
A complete listing of his works is found at a Prokofievwebsite.
Religious Views
Of the prolific composers works, none was religious, according to Dan Barker:
- Prokofiev gave up on the idea of religion at an early age. Biographer Harlow Robinson writes: “Neither of Prokofiev’s parents was particularly religious. This was more surprising in his mother’s case, since she came from a very devout peasant family, and her sisters were faithful churchgoers. His father came from the less religiously inclined merchant class, and his education at the university - oriented toward science and technology - did nothing to strengthen his faith in Russian Orthodoxy. Maria Grigorevna’s natural skepticism and cynicism, strengthened by the harsh reality of Russian provincial life and her own family’s struggles, led her eventually to openly question and even mock church dogma, rather than to embrace it. Prokofiev inherited these skeptical sentiments from her. One should remember, too, that atheistic attitudes were almost universal among the progressive intelligentsia in Russia in the years leading up to the Revolution.”
- “Generally speaking,” Prokofiev said, “I was reserved in dealing with questions of the heart, and that trait showed up here, too; I waged the battle for religion internally, without sharing it or discussing it with anyone.” After attending religious services with one of his aunts in a crowded, stuffy church smelling of incense, he fainted and had to be taken outside. “My fainting spell frightened me and cooled my desire for the church,” he reported. “At home we didn’t talk about religion. So, gradually the question faded away by itself and disappeared from the agenda. When I was nineteen, my father died; my response to his death was atheistic. The same was true when . . . I lost a close friend. . . . I took this ‘farewell’ very bitterly, the farewell of a human consciousness that had departed finally and forever.”
- “The love of rationality, mathematical organization and logic characteristic of Prokofiev’s personality and working methods,” Robinson writes of the chess-playing composer, “stems in part, at least, from his rejection of emotional, irrational and religious explanations for the way the world works. Fuzzy promises of happiness in the world hereafter were alien to his uncompromisingly rational, disciplined, here-and-now attitude. . . . Unlike so many Russian composers before him, Prokofiev never wrote a single explicitly religious setting - no requiems, vespers, choruses or pieces of the Russian Orthodox liturgy. The opera The Fiery Angel revolves around religious-spiritual issues, but it is fictional and uncomplimentary in its treatment of institutionalized religion.”
- “The history and ritual of religion, if not its emotional appeal, had always fascinated Prokofiev; he found the elaborate Vatican ceremony of a papal reception intriguing. No doubt it supplied him with appropriate atmosphere for The Fiery Angel,” Robinson noted.
- Like so many other composers, Prokofiev died thinking about his music, making arrangements for the copying of a revision of the Fifth Piano Sonata and his last ballet, The Stone Flower. Knowing his life was ending, he also put his papers in order. His final recorded words were a touching apology to his wife for his sickness having caused her such trouble.
Final Days
Memorial Stone at His House in Sontsovka]]
Prokofev died from a cerebral hemorrhage on the same day that Stalin died. His passing, eclipsed by Stalin’s, was noted at a small civil funeral accompanied by the music of his F Minor Sonata for Violin and Piano.
Lina outlived her husband for many years and lived modestly on royalties from her late husband's royalties.
