exiles from revolution prokofiev and machine music · 2021. 1. 13. · honegger [s pacific 231...

Exiles from Revolution Prokofiev and machine music

© 2020 Terry Metheringham [email protected] +44 7528 835 422

This term we are exploring how Soviet music reacted to Russian composers living abroad. This session centres on a rather odd exile. In 1918 Prokofiev negotiated leave of absence from revolutionary turmoil, returning permanently in 1936. We will focus on Prokofiev’s machine music; music which appears to mimic industrial processes.

This session starts with a steam engine which clearly inspired Prokofiev Honegger’s Pacific 231 (1924)

Moves on to Prokofiev’s Second Symphony (1925) and his ‘Bolshevik ballet” Le Pas d’Acier (1927)

From the USSR we will hear Mosolov’s Zavod / Iron Foundry (1927)

And we’ll end with Prokofiev’s wartime revival of machine music Fifth Symphony (1944)

Soviet Music: Exiles from Revolution Session 2: Prokofiev and Machine Music 2


Prokofiev background Sergei Prokofiev is a curious émigré from Soviet Russia. In 1927 he returned for a triumphant nine week tour of the Soviet Union. By this time he was widely seen as the great modern Russian composer, displacing Skryabin. There were several more trips to the Soviet Union before he permanently returned in 1936. Prokofiev had left Soviet Russia in 1918 by travelling east

Vladivostok to Japan (where he spent three months), on to Hawaii, entering the USA in San Francisco. Life in the US proved difficult – so from 1920 Prokofiev based himself in Paris. The standard quote about Prokofiev’s emigration comes from his Soviet-era autobiography:

Prokofiev Autobiography, Articles, Reminiscences, first published 1957. Prokofiev explains how he obtained his exit permit directly from People's Commissar for Education, Anatoly Lunacharsky, who told him:

You are a revolutionary in music, we are revolutionaries in life. We ought to work together. But if you want to go to America I shall not stand in your way.

In 2002 Prokofiev’s Diaries from 1907 to 1933 were made available for the first time. The Diaries record that same 1918 encounter with Lunacharsky slightly diferently:

What I recognise in you, at a time when everyone else is concerned with destruction, is that you are building. [Prokofiev Diaries (10 April 1918) vol 2 p 272]



Honegger Pacific 231 Let’s move on to the main topic today; machine music. It’s 1924. Prokofiev is in Paris, rubbing shoulders with Diaghilev, Stravinsky, the bright young composers of France…

when he encounters an orchestral steam engine. LISTENING NOTES: Honegger Pacific 231 Arthur Honegger (1892-1955) was a Swiss national, born Le Havre. He spent most of his life in Paris. He was a member of Les Six – a disparate group of young composers. Pacific 231 is Honegger’s best known work. The original title was Mouvement Symphonique. The piece grew from an exercise giving the impression of a mathematical acceleration of rhythm,

while the tempo actually slowed. In his autobiography, I am a composer, Honegger apparently wrote:

A rather romantic idea crossed my mind, and when the work was finished, I wrote the title, Pacific 231, which indicates a locomotive for heavy loads and high speed.

Honegger is also frequently quoted as saying:

I have always loved locomotives passionately. For me they are living creatures and I love them as others love women or horses.



Pacific 231 was first performed in Paris, on 8 May 1924, conducted by Serge Koussevitzky. That concert also included Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto,

an interesting companion piece, since it too includes driving mechanical music. Here’s a fascinating Soviet film of Pacific 231 from 1931 made by Mikhail Tsekhanovsky (1889 – 1965).

The cinematography makes up for the antique sound quality. The imagery here is amazing. Focus shifts constantly between the musicians and a railway engine. Images of the orchestra visually echo machine parts: bows echo pistons, French horns echo wheels…

Pacific 231 is one of Tsekhanovsky’s earliest films. He went on to be one of USSR’s greatest animators.

He made a couple of films with Shostakovich. In 1933 they started an animated opera The Tale of the Priest and of His Workman Balda based on a Pushkin story. This was an ill-fated collaboration; first the project was paralysed by the Lady Macbeth affair,

and then most of film was destroyed in the siege of Leningrad. They had better luck with Tale of a Silly Little Mouse in 1940.

LINK 1 (7 mins)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iI6iy5mScPM Pasifik 231 1931 Russian short film by Mikhail Tsekhanovsky The conductor in this film is Aleksandr Gauk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iI6iy5mScPM



Prokofiev Second Symphony Prokofiev heard Honegger’s Pacific 231 at its first performance.

He was also on the programme that night, performing his own Second Piano Concerto. At first he was somewhat dismissive of Pacific 231:

… a marvellously orchestrated piece, and a prime example of how something interesting can be made without any actual music… either what musical material there is has simply passed me by, or there is actually none, but its absence is concealed by inventive use of orchestration and sonority.

[Prokofiev Diaries vol 3 p 50-1] But two days later (10 May) he writes:

Thought more about Pacific… Evidently Pacific does have something in it that I overlooked, and that something is a head of steam, the very power that drives the locomotive on with such impetuosity.

[Prokofiev Diaries vol 3 p 52]

Within a month, Prokofiev decided to write his Second Symphony. The opening and closing music of Second Symphony is savage machine music. The savage element relates to some of Prokofiev’s earlier music, which was being performed at this time; the apocalyptic cantata Seven, They are Seven, and Scythian Suite.

But the new industrial element appears to come from Honegger’s Pacific 231. At the centre of Second Symphony is a bucolic fantasy world. A similar stark contrast can be found in other twentieth century Russian symphonic music, including:

Myaskovsky’s Sixth Symphony and Popov’s First Symphony.



Prokofiev modelled the structure of Second Symphony on Beethoven op 111 – the final piano sonata. There are two movements: the first is strict sonata form, the second a theme and variations. Koussevitzky conducted the first performance in Paris. At first Prokofiev was upbeat about his new work, receiving good reviews from other musicians. But within a week this mood was punctured by Koussevitzky:

after an obligatory preamble about how much he loves my music and will always tell me the truth, confessed *… I should not+ hesitate to revise [Second Symphony] radically by composing completely new material for the second subject [of the first movement] [Prokofiev Diaries vol 3 p 176]

A few weeks later Prokofiev wrote to his old friend Myaskovsky:

Everyone who heard the symphony greeted it with blank incomprehension. So complicated was it that even I, listening to the performance, was not able to see through to the heart of it… It will be a long time before I embark on another thing of such intricacy and complexity.

[Prokofiev Diaries Introduction vol 3 p xiv]



LISTENING NOTES Prokofiev Symphony No 2 in D minor, op 40

First performance: Paris, 6 June 1925, conducted by Koussevitzky (the dedicatee) First Soviet performance: Leningrad 31 October 1928, conducted Dranishnikov

First movement Allegro ben articolato

Loud machine-like ostinato movement. In strict sonata form, but this is obscured by the fragmentary thematic material. Individual parts are mostly diatonic, but dense polyphony creates many acidic dissonances. Prokofiev described this music simply as “Angry”, in a letter to Myaskovsky.

Second movement Theme and six variations

The theme was originally written in January 1919, for a piece called Fairy Tale. Variations I to IV are in a fantasy mood, but variations V and VI return to the mechanical turmoil of the first movement.

Tema: Andante The oboe plays the theme, a typical long-breathed diatonic Prokofiev melody, with a gently rocking accompaniment.

Variation I: Lintesso tempo – tempo stays same as Tema The mood turns wintry and desolate.



Variation II: Allegro non troppo – a little faster than Variation I Nature sounds – insects and birdsong – give way to swinging music which becomes increasingly aggressive; a precursor to the calisthenics in his next ballet, Le Pas d'Acier.

Variation III: Allegro – a little faster than Variation II The rhythms are sometimes reminiscent of swiftly moving horses, and the accompaniment includes snorting woodwind and jingling percussion.

Variation IV: Larghetto A pastoral reflective variation, sometimes dark and gloomy.

Variation V: Allegro con brio A return to the dissonant mechanical mood of the first movement.

Variation VI: Allegro moderato and Tema Andante molto After a brief pause, growling woodwind start this variation. Thematic material from the first movement is introduced. Chords hammer out a shuddering climax, then the opening Tema returns. The final bars are disquieting string harmonics against deep clarinet chords.

LINK 2 (33 mins)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=88ZMwdB0J3c Prokofiev Symphony No 2 performed by RSNO conducted by Neeme Järvi

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88ZMwdB0J3c



Le Pas d’Acier A couple of weeks after the first performance of Second Symphony, Prokofiev had a new commission from Diaghilev. Here’s how Prokofiev recorded the conversation:

“What we need from you, Seryozha, is a contemporary Russian ballet.” “A Bolshevik ballet?” “Yes.” I must confess that this was a long way from what I had had in mind, although I could immediately see that something might be done with it. [Prokofiev Diaries (22 June 1925) vol 3 p 185]

Bolshevik chic had infected Paris in 1925. The Soviet pavilion at the Paris International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts

had presented the theme “Industrialization”. It included Constructivist theatrical sets by Georgi Yakulov.

Diaghilev engaged Yakulov to design his “Bolshevik Ballet”. Le Pas d’Yakulov Yakulov’s initially conceived a radical shape-shifting stage which combined three locations:

a Moscow market place, a small NEP factory and an exhibition hall. As Yakulov and Prokofiev developed the scenario this was simplified into two acts.



Prokofiev’s Diary on the original scenario Act 1

Set on a railway platform, a symbol of Russia transitioning. Several stock characters from contemporary USSR are encountered. There is no development until a sailor engages a girl worker. They dance an out-of-sync pas de deux. This is a parody of Petrushka. The pair dance round each other, but do not touch.

Act 2 The scene is transformed into a factory. The sailor swaps his uniform for a leather apron, and there is a reunion with the girl worker.

Prokofiev’s description of the Act 2 scenario he agreed with Yakulov: We are in a factory working at full stretch, machinery revolves, hammers hammer. After a while a separate episode unfolds on the forestage:

an orator castigates the regime and departs with his suitcases to go abroad, to the satirical accompaniment of the young female worker and the sailor.

Work carries on in the factory. But suddenly the managing director enters and announces that because of shortage of raw materials and funds the factory will have to close. Account books are produced, but the workers indignantly chase the managing director away. Facts, nevertheless are facts; they cannot be so easily ignored, and the factory ceases work. An unhappy meeting of the hands discusses what to do. At this moment, to the noisy accompaniment of side-drums and capering somersaults, a children’s procession passes by… joined by the young female worker and the sailor. The procession passes on, but the sailor stays to persuade the workers that instead of yielding to despair they should engage in gymnastic exercises, because the health of the body is the most valuable asset of all. The ballet ends with vigorous PT. [Prokofiev Diaries(29 July 1925) vol 3 p 214-5]



Prokofiev comments in his diary: I was happy with the ambiguity … no one would be able to say whether it was pro- or anti-Bolshevik, and in that sense it was exactly what was required. Yakulov agreed, although he still had some reservations that Moscow might find it offensive, and after all it was to Moscow that he himself would be returning. [Prokofiev Diaries(29 July 1925) vol 3 p 215]

Having agreed a scenario, Prokofiev writes the music. He keeps it simpler than Second Symphony; diatonic

and often using short repetitive phrases derived from chastushka – the folk verse discussed in session 1.

From the beginning there are examples of industrial music, which is pervasive in Act 2. I think it is significant that this industrial music is positive… joyful.

Le Pas de Massine Once the music was ready Diaghilev brought a choreographer onto the team; Léonide Massine. Massine had made his reputation with Satie’s Parade in 1917.

Parade was so boundary-shifting that Guillaume Apollinaire was moved to describe it as “une sorte de surréalisme” (coining the term which André Breton adopted in 1924).



For this “Bolshevik Ballet” Massine decided to modify the scenario.

He added some traditional stock Russian characters: Baba Yaga struggling with a crocodile

Three devils to interact with the sailor A cat duet

He pushed Act 1 back in time,

to the immediate aftermath of the revolution, when there was rural destitution.

The main events at the beginning of Massine’s scenario are: Starving countesses sell rags to an itinerant food smuggler for a bag of flour. They make love to a beggar. Drunken sailors enter. Homeless children move from group to group like a pack of wild rodents. [Norton p 113-4]

Yakulov was horrified.

Diaghilev and Massine fought… but they were having serious relationship issues anyway; Diaghilev felt Massine had betrayed him by marrying Vera Savina.

Prokofiev remained placid. His main concern – to make sure Massine’s ideas weren’t “actively conflicting with my music”.

[Prokofiev Diaries(9 April 1927) vol 3 p 579]



LISTENING NOTES Prokofiev Le Pas d’Acier, op 41

First performance: Paris, Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt, 7 June 1927. Design Yakulov. Choreography Massine (who also danced male lead)

This is where I would usually outline a ballet’s scenario. Accounts of what was presented by Ballets Russes differ (wildly… see above) so this guide is tentative.

This is a ballet about contemporary USSR in two acts. Act 1 is a typical street scene – possibly in a railway station – portraying people in the new society. Towards the end of Act 1 (at 11’44) there is a pas de deux between the leading sailor and a worker girl. This is a parody of Stravinsky’s Petrushka. Act 2 is a factory scene. (Act 2 starts at 15’02.) The score suggests that the factory is being constructed before our eyes. The Yakulov / Prokofiev scenario includes here:

emigration of a malcontent, financial failure of the factory, a children’s parade, the sailor-now-worker persuading his new workmates to engage in calisthenics.



Here’s an orchestral performance of the full score of Le Pas d’Acier. LINK 3 (30 mins)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNMV6TKf8O0&t=20s Prokofiev Le Pas d’Acier performed by USSR Ministry of Culture SO conducted by Gennady Rozhdestvensky

In 2005 a performance at Princeton attempted to “restore” the original Yakulov / Prokofiev concept

(or, in view of Prokofiev’s diary entries, perhaps this is what Yakulov reported back to Moscow?) The Princeton project leadership included Prokofiev scholar Simon Morrison. The choreography (by Millicent Hodson) appears to be based on Meyerhold’s Biomechanics. LINK 4 (7 mins)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2dTpPfGF84 Excerpts from Pas d'Acier – Princeton University Orchestra

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNMV6TKf8O0&t=20s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2dTpPfGF84



Le Pas d’Acier reception Reception of Le Pas d’Acier was excellent in the West. Within weeks of the Paris premiere it was taken to London. There was some nervousness about performing Bolshevik chic in Britain so soon after the General Strike. According to dancer Sergei Lifar, Diaghilev anticipated trouble in the theatre,

so he took a loaded revolver with him… merely to fire into the air if necessary. [Norton p 114] The Daily Mail reviewed the 1927 London performance:

Men and women … toiled and moiled, shifted heavy weights about, rained steam hammer blows on huge bars of imaginary steel, tried to look like pistons, connecting rods, cams and differentials, grew hot, and never smiled. It was all done in a way that only the mind of a Massine could imagine; and came off hugely, grimly. [Morrison p 9]

What’s in a name? Diaghilev’s “Bolshevik Ballet” was only named Le Pas d’Acier three months before its first performance. Massine suggested this new name.

Prokofiev was immediately enthusiastic. Diaghilev needed some persuasion; it reminded him of Puce d’Acier – Leskov’s steel flea.

The corresponding Russian name was Стальной скок – which has a sense of gallop or leap about it.



Ursignol A “working title” for the ballet – Ursignol – had been devised two years earlier in July 1925 by Yakulov. This appealed to Prokofiev’s sense of humour:

suggesting half-jokingly but without giving offense both a little bear and a punning caricature of Stravinsky’s Rossignol. [Prokofiev Diaries (29 July 1925) vol 3 p 214-5]

The pun here is linking

ROSSignol with Russia (ROSSIYA) and

URSignol with URSS (the French form of USSR).

I suspect Yakulov may have been making a deeper political point. Wasn’t he contrasting progressive Prokofiev against reactionary Stravinsky?

Prokofiev’s “Bolshevik Ballet” embraces technology and the new Soviet Union.

Stravinsky’s Rossignol / Nightingale? This opera, first performed in 1914, is based on a Hans Christian Andersen story.

A Chinese emperor alienates his real court nightingale by adopting a mechanical one. The story progresses as a variant of fisher king or handless maiden archetypes;

the mechanical nightingale breaks down, the emperor’s health declines, Death comes for the emperor, the real nightingale intervenes and persuades Death to give the emperor a new lease of life.

Stravinsky’s Rossignol, doesn’t embrace technology… it rejects technology.

Technology wheezes, splutters, fails, and damages relationships.



Constructivism There’s a striking phrase in Yakulov’s initial conception of Le Pas d’Acier:

“the drama would concern not politics but kinetics: the kinship between the workings of the human body and those of machines”

[Morrison p 8] We might pass over these words as artistic hyperbole.

But they reflect an important element of 1920s Soviet avant garde art. Futurism, and its Soviet derivative – Constructivism – loved machines and technology.

Mass production was a huge inspiration. Henry Ford’s production lines were acclaimed,

and the supporting “scientific management” concepts of Frederick Winslow Taylor took root (in the work-place, and in every sphere of life).



Yevgeny Zamyatin Zamyatin’s novel We

(written 1920-1 – first published 1924 (in English) – not published USSR until 1988)

describes a dystopian new world where:

every element of life is visible in a glass-built society every element of life is timetabled people are numbered, rather than named and the society is so confident of its vision that it is building a spacecraft to take civilization to other worlds.

Zamyatin was parodying ideas current in the Soviet avant garde. But these are not simply artistic flights of fancy, they are part of utopian political discourse. The Kronstadt mutineers in 1921 argued that the Bolsheviks were moving in the wrong direction.

Having let production fall into disarray under "workers' control," the Bolsheviks carried out nationalization of the plants and factories. From a slave of the capitalist, the worker became a slave of the bureaucratic institutions. Even that became too little. They planned to bring in the Taylor sweat shop system.

[Kronstadt Izvestia 16 March 1921 from Marxists Internet Archive]



Aleksei Gastev Gastev is a fascinating character who was both

a utopian poet, and a leading practical exponent of scientific management.

Before the Revolution he worked in France,

implementing quality assurance for car manufacturer Clément-Bayard, and introducing Ford production techniques for Citroën.

Returning to revolutionary Russia, Gastev led a popular movement for the scientific organization of labour, and in 1920 was put in charge of the Central Institute of Labour with Lenin’s enthusiastic support. The Institute’s main work was to adapt people to serve technology. Adapting people really was the emphasis… making the person fit the machine. One German visitor to a CIL training centre reported:

a hundred identical grey benches, with a hundred men and women trainees in identical costumes obeying instructions conveyed by electronic beeps… Their hammer teacher was a machine to which their arms were strapped until they were able to work independently. [Ernst Toller cited in Stites, p 154]

Here’s an example of Aleksei Gastev’s verse, from 1914. Perhaps it helps contextualise Yakulov’s words in the initial conception of Le Pas d’Acier:

“the kinship between the workings of the human body and those of machines”.



WE GROW FROM IRON Look! - I stand among them: machines, hammers, furnaces and forges and among hundreds of comrades. Above us a wrought-iron expanse. On the sides run beams and braces. They rise up ten lengths. Bending right and left. They connect the rafters to the cupolas and, like the shoulders of a giant, hold up the entire iron construction. They are swift, they are sweeping, they are strong. They demand yet more strength. I look at them and straighten myself. New iron blood pours into my veins. I begin to grow. I grow steel shoulders and immensely strong arms. I merge with the iron of the building. I rise up. I push the rafters, the upper beams, to the roof with my shoulders. My feet stay on the ground, but my head rises higher than the building. Still choking from this superhuman effort, I am already shouting out: “A word please, comrades, a word!” An iron echo carried my words, the whole building trembles with impatience. And I climb even higher, accompanied by trumpets. And there’s no story, no speech, just my iron shout, I shout out: "We will win!"

Gastev 1914



МЫ РАСТЕМ ИЗ ЖЕЛЕЗА Смотрите! - Я стою среди них: станков, молотков, вагранок и горн и среди сотни товарищей. Вверху железный кованный простор. По сторонам идут балки и угольники. Они поднимаются на десять сажен. Загибаются справа и слева. Соединяются стропилами в куполах и, как плечи великана, держат всю железную постройку. Они стремительны, они размашисты, они сильны. Они требуют еще большей силы. Гляжу на них и выпрямляюсь. В жилы льется новая железная кровь. Я вырос еще. У меня самого вырастают стальные плечи и безмерно сильные руки. Я слился с железом постройки. Поднялся. Выпираю плечами стропила, верхние балки, крышу. Ноги мои еще на земле, но голова выше здания. Я еще задыхаюсь от этих нечеловеческих усилий, а уже кричу: “Слова прошу, товарищи, слова!” Железное эхо покрыло мои слова, вся постройка дрожит нетерпением. А я поднялся еще выше, я уже наравне с трубами. И не рассказ, не речь, а только одно, мое железное, я прокричу: “Победим мы!”

Gastev 1914



Mosolov Zavod: machine music / Завод: музыка машин Let’s turn to a home-grown piece of Soviet machine music. Mosolov’s short piece Zavod (factory, mill, works…) usually given the English title Iron Foundry,

is frequently cited as the embodiment of Soviet avant garde music. Stylistically, it was out of favour in the USSR almost as soon as it was written, so had few performances. Alexander Vasilyevich Mosolov (1900-73) was born in Kiev. His initial musical training came from his mother, who had sung with Bolshoi. The family moved to Moscow in 1904. The following year Mosolov’s father (a lawyer) died. His step father was a successful artist and teacher. 1918-21 Mosolov fought in the civil war in Red Army First Cavalry Regiment. A decorated hero (he was awarded the highest military honour – the Order of the Red Banner – twice)

he was medically discharged, and enrolled at Moscow Conservatoire. His teachers were Myaskovsky and Glière. After graduating, in 1925, he became a leading proletarian avant gardist.

In the USSR he was active in the Association of Contemporary Musicians, and abroad with the International Society of Contemporary Music.

His works featured at ISCM concerts in Frankfurt (1927) and Liège (1930).



LISTENING NOTES: Mosolov Zavod: machine music / Завод: музыка машин

First performance: Moscow, 4 December 1927 conducted by Konstantin Saradzhev (An ACM concert celebrating the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, which included the first Moscow performance of Shostakovich’s Second Symphony)

Zavod is the only surviving part of ballet suite Steel op 19, written 1926-7.

(The three other numbers from the suite: The Prison, The Ball, The Square went missing when a suitcase was lost in 1929.)

Zavod is modernist orchestral music with a clear proletarian subject matter, reflecting Constructivist fascination with the process of industrial production. Leading contemporary critic, Semyon Korev, wrote:

The composer does not limit his task to mere creation of a simple ‘naturalistic’ image. He goes further and deeper… drawing forth the line of gradual intensifications, in the culmination point he abandons the borders of the picturesque, and his powerful rhythms begin to sound like a grandiose hymn to machines in work. [Hakobian p 45]



Zavod has become the paradigm for machine music. Luciano Camargo gives an excellent breakdown of this paradigm in The Zavod Topic (2013):

1. overlap of ostinato motions in polyrhythm 2. linear construction of atonal or chromatic material, avoiding chords (except pedal clusters) 3. continuous pedal sounds in percussion instruments 4. abrupt events, like hoots, bangs and clashes, played sforzato by brass or percussion 5. melodic figurations combined in rhythmic antinomy 6. distorted tones: frullatti in wind section, sul ponticello in the strings, and use of mutes in both brass

or strings 7. repetition of dynamic patterns within sequences of figurations 8. proportional relations between simultaneous ostinato movements imitating the proportional

relations of gears LINK 5 (4 mins)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LG6IoomJBhE Mosolov Zavod played by the Royal Concertgebouw, conducted Riccardo Chailly

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LG6IoomJBhE



Mosolov’s decline Ironically, even as Mosolov was gaining his reputation as a proletarian avant garde composer,

his style was falling from favour. In August 1927, Myaskovsky mentioned him in a letter to Prokofiev

Mosolov is very talented – though our censorship cannot bear him. [letter 10/8/27 in Hakobian p 43]

The state publisher, Muzgiz, printed Zavod once, and then banned further printing. When Universal Edition [a western publisher] persisted in requests for the score and parts,

Muzgiz threatened to destroy the engraved plates. The proletarian zealot campaign against Mosolov became so intense that he wrote to Stalin in 1932

asking that RAPM should be told to desist, and failing that requesting to be allowed to emigrate. [Soviet Music 1989 no 7 quoted MFW MSP p 320]

In the 1930s Mosolov, along with many other composers,

was instructed to help with the development of music in “junior” republics. He was assigned to Uzbekistan. In his avant garde phase, Mosolov had already shown an interest in music from this region,

but his earlier mix of avant garde plus folk themes did not conform to new aesthetic expectations.



Mosolov’s fall Mosolov fell from grace during the Great Terror. In 1936 he was temporarily expelled from the Union of Soviet Composers,

for drunken brawls in restaurants and mistreatment of waiters. In 1937 Mosolov faced catastrophe.

On 18 September he was denounced by the Tur “brothers” in Izvestia in an article titled Deviations of a Genius.

He was arrested on 4 November, tried for “counter revolutionary propaganda”, and sentenced to 8 years forced labour.

Myaskovsky and Glière (his old teachers) bravely intervened, petitioning President Kalinin. In summer 1938 Mosolov was released;

his punishment commuted to a ban from residency in large towns until 1942. Mosolov’s later works are well-constructed, but entirely conventional. No audible connection to the firebrand modernist, who remained unperformed until the 1980s. Zavod was acknowledged in Soviet musicology, but the verdict was severe:

“a grossly formalistic perversion of a contemporary topic”. [Schwarz p 85 quoting vol 1 of ИРСМ (pub 1956-63). ИРСМ = История Русской Советской Музыки+



Prokofiev comes home We saw earlier that Prokofiev was granted an exit permit from Soviet Russia in 1918 by Lunacharsky. In 1925 Lunacharsky started a campaign to attract artists back to Soviet Russia. Prokofiev responded positively, and soon he had a formal letter:

The Government agrees to your return to Russia… to grant you amnesty for all prior offences, if any such have occurred. It stands to reason that it cannot grant such an amnesty for counter-revolutionary activities in the future. It likewise guarantees complete freedom of travel into and out of the RSFSR as you desire. I am certain the entire musical world of our union will sincerely welcome your return. [Morrison p6-7]

A nine week tour was arranged, starting January 1927. Prokofiev was treated as a huge celebrity. One of the first celebrations was a soirée with Lunacharsky, with a transparent agenda of flattery:

[Lunacharsky] had some pleasant news for me: next spring an international competition has been proposed in Paris between theatre companies of different lands. Four countries have already signed up, including the USSR, and their secret weapon could be [my ] Love of Three Oranges . The choice has not yet been finally decided, but the wheels are in motion… Lunacharsky then invited one of the pianists present to play the finale from my Second Sonata, which he, Lunacharsky declared was his favourite piece of music… He then proceeded to read with considerable skill and passion Mayakovsky’s letter in verse addressed to Gorky. This is certainly not lacking in bite, and has some turns of phrase which are truly choice. The message is: why Alexy Maximovich, are you still living in Italy when there is so much to be done in Russia? The application to myself could hardly be clearer, and when Lunacharsky finished the reading he laughingly recommended me to take the poem to heart. [Prokofiev Diaries vol 3 p 425-6]

For several years Prokofiev continued to live in the west, occasionally visiting the USSR. Increasingly his commissions seemed to come from the USSR. From 1936 he was permanently based in Moscow.



Prokofiev Fifth Symphony Prokofiev settled back into Soviet life as the musical aesthetic swung in a new direction: Socialist Realism. Prokofiev seemed well-suited to the new style. Without the prompting of Party hacks he had been simplifying his music, making it more accessible. He was a master of melody. But there are moments in some of his later music when he is clearly returning to an “industrial” sound. Prominent examples include:

“symphony” –penultimate movement of Cantata for the Twentieth Anniversary of the October Revolution. This movement illustrates a hive of industry after the civil war

The midnight clock scene in Cinderella.

In my opinion, the war-time Fifth Symphony includes some striking machine music. I’ve always assumed this was intended as sounds of military equipment: tanks, and katyusha rockets. The second and third movements reuse material originally intended for other projects.

The abandoned “happy ending” for Romeo and Juliet interleafed with a waltz theme from Cinderella in the second movement.

Liza’s theme from a film score for Pushkin’s Queen of Spades (directed by Romm, but never released) is the waltz theme for the third movement.



Prokofiev Fifth Symphony - recognition The premiere was dramatic. That day Soviet forces had crossed the Vistula – a major milestone in the advance on Berlin. Just before the symphony was performed there was a heavy-gun salute in Moscow. Sviatoslav Richter wrote:

The Great Hall was illuminated, no doubt, the same way it always was, but when Prokofiev stood up, the light seemed to pour straight down on him from somewhere up above. He stood like a monument on a pedestal. And then, when Prokofiev had taken his place on the podium and silence reigned in the hall, artillery salvos suddenly thundered forth. His baton was raised. He waited, and began only after the cannons had stopped. There was something very significant in this, something symbolic. It was as if all of us — including Prokofiev — had reached some kind of shared turning point.

[Quote from Richard Stites (ed) – Culture & Entertainment in Wartime Russia – 1995]

Like other Soviet war symphonies there is a clear narrative:

current struggle, memories of happier times, and anticipation of the coming victory.

Coupled with the Eighth Piano Sonata, this symphony was awarded a Stalin Prize – first class. The Prize Committee treated it as a natural winner, requiring minimal discussion:

Gliere The value of these works is incontrovertible Goldenweiser The Music Section considers these to be the most outstanding works of Prokofiev Mikhoels The symphony is wonderful [MFW Stalin prize p 76]



LISTENING NOTES: Prokofiev Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major, Op 100

First performance: Moscow, 13 January 1945, USSR State Symphony Orchestra conducted Prokofiev Prokofiev wrote, in an article My Works during the War:

The Fifth Symphony is for me the completion of a long period of creative life. I conceived it as a symphony of the greatness of the human spirit.

I. Andante

This is an epic sonata form movement, which begins without preliminary introduction. A calm long-breathed first theme is contrasted against a soaring second theme. As the movement progresses bucolic thematic materials are given an ugly military make-over. The coda is dramatic; Israel Nestyev (Prokofiev’s Soviet biographer) described this as:

the most impressive episode of the entire symphony for it embodies with the greatest clarity the work’s highest purpose – glorification of the strength and beauty of the human spirit.

II. Allegro marcato

A toccata style scherzo, with moments of whimsy, but there is a mechanical menacing edge which ratchets up tension.

III. Adagio

A brooding nostalgic waltz is interrupted by a lament which builds to a bombastic climax.



IV. Allegro giocoso A slow introduction recalls the first movement’s first theme. The finale proper is a rondo, with the main giocoso theme introduced each time by clarinet. The final section is a frenzied celebration of life, machine music which is both exhilarating and disturbing, resolved with a B-flat major chord.

The “machine music” near the end of the finale (rehearsal mark 107) comprehensively fulfils Camargo’s eight point Zavod paradigm. (Discussed above on page 24.)

Here’s a clip from the end of the symphony illustrating the “machine music”…

LINK 6 (2 mins) https://youtu.be/hoUyXXBnE_I?t=2485

Prokofiev Symphony No 5 Berlin Philharmonic conducted Karajan

And here’s the whole symphony conducted by Mravinsky…

LINK 7 (41 mins)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPG7OsQQPUs Prokofiev Symphony No 5 Leningrad Phil conducted Mravinsky

https://youtu.be/hoUyXXBnE_I?t=2485

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPG7OsQQPUs



Bibliography

Luciano Camargo The Zavod Topic 2013 Marina Frolova-Walker Music and Soviet Power 1917-32 2012 & Jonathan Walker Marina Frolova-Walker Stalin’s Musical Prize 2016 Levon Hakobian Music of the Soviet Era (2nd Edition) 2017 Simon Morrison The People’s Artist: Prokofiev’s Soviet Years 2009 Leslie Norton Leonide Massine and the 20th Century Ballet 2004 Sergei Prokofiev Diaries 1907-1914: Prodigious Youth 2006

(trans Anthony Phillips) Diaries 1915-1923: Behind the Mask 2008 Diaries 1924-1933: Prodigal Son 2012 Boris Schwarz Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia 1917-1970 1972 Richard Stites Revolutionary Dreams 1989

exiles from revolution prokofiev and machine music · 2021. 1. 13. · honegger [s pacific 231...

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