Serge Prokofiev was born in Sontzovka, Russia, on April 23, 1891. He was
extraordinarily precocious in music. After receiving some training at
the piano from his mother, he completed the writing of an opera by the
time he was ten. Preliminary music study took place with Glière. In his
thirteenth year he entered the Moscow Conservatory where he was a pupil
of Rimsky-Korsakov and Liadov among others and from which he was
graduated with the Rubinstein Prize for his first piano concerto. His
advanced musical thinking was already evident in his first major work
for orchestra, _The Scythian Suite_, introduced in St. Petersburg in
1916. He continued to develop his own personality, formulating his
highly individual style and creative idiosyncrasies in works like the
ballet _Chout_, the first violin concerto, and the _Classical Symphony_,
all written during the era of World War I. In 1918 he toured the United
States, making his American debut with a New York piano recital on
November 20. While in the United States he was commissioned to write the
opera _The Love for Three Oranges_ for the Chicago Opera. From 1919 to
1933 Prokofiev made his home in Paris, but in 1933 he returned to his
native land to stay there for the rest of his life. Though he was
honored in the Soviet Union as one of its great creative figures—and was
the recipient of the Stalin Prize for his monumental Seventh Piano
Sonata inspired by World War II—he did not escape censure in 1948 when
the Central Committee of the Communist Party denounced Soviet composers
for their partiality towards experimentation, modernism and cerebralism,
in their musical works. Nevertheless, Prokofiev soon recovered his high
estate in Soviet music; in 1951 he received the Stalin Prize again, this
time for his oratorio _On Guard for Peace_ and the symphonic suite,
_Winter Bonfire_. His sixtieth birthday, that year, was celebrated
throughout the country with concerts and broadcasts. Prokofiev died of a
cerebral hemorrhage in Moscow on March 5, 1953.
Prokofiev was one of the giants of 20th-century music. His seven
symphonies, five piano concertos, nine piano sonatas, the opera _War and
Peace_, ballets, chamber music, piano compositions and various shorter
orchestral works are among the most significant contributions made in
our time to music. The highly personal way of writing melodies, his
unusual progressions, his harmonic vocabulary are all present in the few
lighter and simpler works with which he made a significant contribution
to the contemporary repertory of semi-classics.
The _March_ so familiar to radio listeners throughout the United States
as the theme music for the program “The F.B.I. in Peace and War” comes
from the opera _The Love for Three Oranges_ (1921). The libretto by the
composer based on a tale of Carlo Gozzi is a charming fantasy in which a
prince saves himself from death through gloom by means of laughter, and
who then goes at once to rescue a princess from her prison in an orange.
The march occurs in the second act where an effort is being made to get
the Prince to laugh, for which purpose a festival is being arranged. The
march music is played as the court jester drags the reluctant Prince to
these festivities. The quixotic skips in the melody, the grotesquerie of
the musical style, and the pert discords are all typical of Prokofiev’s
creative manner.
_Peter and the Wolf_, a “symphonic fairy tale” for narrator and
orchestra op. 67 (1936) was intended by the composer to teach children
the instruments of the orchestra. But the music is so consistently
delightful for its sprightly lyricism and wit that it has proved a
favorite at symphony and semi-classical concerts. The story here being
told is about a lad named Peter who turns a deaf ear to his
grandfather’s warning and goes out into the meadow. There a wolf has
frightened, in turn, a cat, bird, and duck. But Peter is not afraid of
him. He captures the wolf, ties him up with a rope and takes him to the
zoo.
The composition opens with the following explanation by the narrator:
“Each character in the tale is represented by a different instrument in
the orchestra: the bird by a flute; the duck by an oboe; the cat by a
clarinet in the low register; grandpapa by the bassoon; the wolf by
three French horns; Peter by the string quartet; and the hunter’s rifle
shots by the kettledrums and bass drums.” Then, as the story of Peter
and the wolf unfolds, little melodies appear and reappear, each
identifying some character in the story. Peter’s theme is a lyrical folk
song with a puckish personality for strings. Vivid and realistic little
tunes represent the cat, bird, and duck, each tune providing an amusing
insight into the personality of each of these animals.
_Summer Day_, opp. 65a and 65b (1935) is another of the composer’s
compositions for children which makes for delightful listening. It
started out as a suite of twelve easy piano pieces for children called
_Music for Children_. Later on the composer orchestrated seven of these
sections and called the new work _Summer Day_. In the first movement,
“Morning,” a whimsical little tune is heard in first flute against a
contrapuntal background by other woodwinds, strings, and bass drum.
Midway a secondary melody is given by bassoons, horns and cellos. “Tag,”
the familiar child’s game, is represented in a tripping melody for
violins and flutes; the music grows increasingly rhythmic in the
intermediary section. In the “Waltz,” a saucy waltz tune with an unusual
syncopated construction is presented by the violins, interrupted by
exclamations from the woodwind with typical Prokofiev octave leaps.
“Regrets” opens with a tender melody for cellos, but is soon taken over
by oboes, and then the violins. This melody is then varied by violins
and clarinets. “March” offers the main march melody in clarinets and
oboes. “Evening” highlights a gentle song by solo flute, soon joined by
the clarinet. As the violins take over the melody the pensive mood is
maintained. The concluding movement, “Moonlit Meadows” is dominated by a
melody for solo flute.