Ron Chaplin wrote:

>Question: Was Prokofiev considered a Soviet composer? What I mean by
>"Soviet composer" is someone who composed music that was acceptable to the
>leadership.  I vaguely recall that he was, but I'm not sure.  It doesn't
>really matter to me if he was or wasn't.  I like the music.  I'm just
>curious.

Now there's an interesting thread.  My answer to your first question
could be:  who cares if he was or wasn't, except perhaps the historians
amongst us.  To me, it only matters inasmuch his music can be more fully
appreciated with an answer on this one.  If you ask me, his best works (a
rough estimate:  5th symphony, some of the later sonatas for piano, the
violin- and piano concertos, Romeo and Juliet) bear small marks of the
Soviet situation in which they were composed.  An exception perhaps is
the 6th symphony, which is, although fully Prokofiev in material, quite
Shostakovitch in spirit.  And about the "weaker" works, like some of
the cantatas to celebrate birthday number so-and-so of Party Official
so=and=so, or the filmscores, who cares.  Just let them lie where they lie.
They're better than John Williams or Jerry Goldsmith in any case, but let's
concentrate on the worthwhile.

In my opinion, his return to Russia and the consequent stamping "Soviet
Composer" is quite tragic....  The key might lie in his attitude towards
opera.  As far as I understand, Prokofiev had an ideal of renewing the
great Russian opera tradition (think of Rimsky Korsakov, Tsjaikovski
and Moussorgsky) he was cultivating already in the twenties when he was
still in the west.  Just look at the enormous workefforts he put into
his dramatic scorings.  Now when "the call" came to return to Russia,
Prokofiev had had his share of disillusions with this.  Added perhaps the
homesickness and his perhaps somewhat egocentric, idle nature he decide
that Russia itself would offer bigger opportunities.  Remember that the
communists were by then just beginning to establish their "hold" on the
cultural world, ending a period of relatively free allowed experimenting
and avant-garde.  What would you do in Prokofiev's place, a wonder-child
who always had had the world at his feet in his native country and was no
longer en-vogue abroad.  He never realised what the Stalin gang was up to.
Call it naive, but there it is.  Having said that, Prokofiev, still more
than Shostakovitch, felt forced to "lie low" and hold his tongue in public.
But like Shostakovitch who kept a sort of secret diary in some of his
chamber music, for those who have ears, there are likewise instances in
Prokofiev's works.

How pleased Prokofiev would have been if the operas "War and Peace" and
"the Fiery Angel" would have had the success they deserve.  But alas, it's
just "Peter and the Wolf".......

greetings, jos
[log in to unmask]