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• Born: 23 April 1891
• Birthplace: Sontzovka, Russia
• Died: 5 March 1953 (cerebral hemorrhage)
• Best Known As: Russian composer of Peter and the Wolf

One of the most prolific and celebrated Russian composers of the 20th century, Sergei Prokofiev is perhaps most famous for music he composed for the children's story Peter and the Wolf. He proved his talent as a pianist and composer at a very early age, and in 1904 moved with his mother to St. Petersburg, where he studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. As a young man he travelled to England and Europe on tour, and in 1918 he left Russia for the United States. During the 1920s he toured New York, Chicago, London and Paris, gaining popularity with audiences, if not with critics. In 1927 he returned to perform in the Soviet Union and was greeted as a national hero. In the early 1930s he travelled between Paris and Moscow, finally settling in Moscow in 1936. A few years later, World War II marked the beginning of Prokofiev's rocky relationship with the Soviet government of Joseph Stalin. Although he continued to be a productive composer, in the late 1940s Prokofiev fell out of favor with government officials and spent his last years in failing health and financial insecurity.

His works include the ballets Chout and The Love for Three Oranges, operas such as The Fiery Angel and War and Peace (based on the novel by Leo Tolstoy) and music for the Sergei Eisenstein films Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Ivan the Terrible (1942-46). Modern audiences know Prokofiev's work primarily through the many symphonic suites he composed based on his stage and film work.

His birthdate is sometimes given as 11 April 1891, the date based on the Julian calendar prior to the Soviet Union adopting the Gregorian calendar... Prokofiev died on the same day as Stalin.

• Period: Modern (1870-)
• Country: Russia
• Genres: Orchestral, Keyboard, Concerto, Vocal, Film, Opera, Chamber, Ballet, Symphonic, Choral, Band

Biography

In breathing new life into the symphony, sonata, and concerto, Sergey Prokofiev emerged as one of the truly original musical voices of the twentieth century. Bridging the worlds of pre-revolutionary Russia and the Stalinist Soviet Union, Prokofiev enjoyed a successful worldwide career as composer and pianist. As in the case of most other Soviet-era composers, his creative life and his music came to suffer under the duress of official Party strictures. Still, despite the detrimental personal and professional effects of such outside influences, Prokofiev continued until the end of his career to produce music marked by a singular skill, inventiveness, and élan.

As an only child (his sisters had died in infancy), Prokofiev lived a comfortable, privileged life, which gave him a heightened sense of self-worth and an indifference to criticism, an attitude that would change as he matured. His mother taught him piano, and he began composing around the age of five. He eventually took piano, theory, and composition lessons from Reyngol'd Gliere, then enrolled at the St. Petersburg Conservatory when he was 13. He took theory with Lyadov, orchestration with Rimsky-Korsakov, and became lifelong friends with Nicolai Myaskovsky. After graduating, he began performing in St. Petersburg and in Moscow, then in Western Europe, all the while writing more and more music. Prokofiev's earliest renown, therefore, came as a result of both his formidable pianistic technique and the works he wrote to exploit it. He sprang onto the Russian musical scene with works like the Sarcasms, Op. 17 (1912-1914), and Visions fugitives, Op. 22 (1915-1917), and his first few piano sonatas. He also wrote orchestral works, concertos, and operas, and met with Diaghilev about producing ballets. The years immediately after the Revolution were spent in the U.S., where Prokofiev tried to follow Rachmaninov's lead and make his way as a pianist/composer. His commission for The Love for Three Oranges came from the Chicago Opera in 1919, but overall Prokofiev was disappointed by his American reception, and he returned to Europe in 1922. He married singer Lina Llubera in 1923, and the couple moved to Paris. He continued to compose on commission, meeting with mixed success from both critics and the public. He had maintained contact with the Soviet Union, even toured there in 1927. The Love for Three Oranges was part of the repertory there, and the government commissioned the music for the film Lieutenant Kijé and other pieces from him. In 1936, he decided to return to the Soviet Union with his wife and two sons. Most of his compositions from just after his return, including many for children, were written with the political atmosphere in mind. One work which wasn't, was the 1936 ballet Romeo and Juliet, which became an international success. He attempted another opera in 1939, Semyon Kotko, but was met with hostility from cultural ideologues. During World War II, Prokofiev and other artists were evacuated from Moscow. He spent the time in various places within the U.S.S.R. and produced propaganda music, but also violin sonatas, his "War Sonatas" for piano, the String Quartet No. 2, the opera War and Peace, and the ballet Cinderella. In 1948, with the resolution that criticized almost all Soviet composers, several of Prokofiev's works were banned from performance. His health declined and he became more insecure. The composer's last creative efforts were directed largely toward the production of "patriotic" and "national" works, typified by the cantata Flourish, Mighty Homeland (1947), and yet Prokofiev also continued to produce worthy if lesser-known works like the underrated ballet The Stone Flower (1943). In a rather bitter coincidence, Prokofiev died on March 5, 1953, the same day as Joseph Stalin. ~ AMG, All Music Guide

Discography

The Great Pianists & Composers of Russia Buy this CD

Prokofiev plays Prokofiev Buy this CD

Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 3; Symphony No. 5 Buy this CD

Prokofiev Plays Prokofiev Buy this CD

Prokofiev, Scriabin & other Russian Rarities Buy this CD

• Born: Apr 11, 1891 in Sontzovka, Russia
• Died: Mar 05, 1953
• Active: '30s-2000s
• Major Genres: Dance, Theater
• Career Highlights: Love and Death, Alexander Nevsky, Ivan the Terrible: Part 2
• First Major Screen Credit: Poruchik Kizhe (1934)

Biography

It is somewhat ironic that this composer, who was censured in 1948 along with fellow composers Dimitri Shostakovich and Aram Khachaturian for supposedly "formalist tendencies," should have died on the same day as his oppressor Joseph Stalin. Prokofiev's wide-ranging imagination encompassed the absurd (The Love of Three Oranges, "Lieutenant Kije"), the historically romantic (Alexander Nevesky, Eugene Onegin), the childlike (Peter and the Wolf), and the expansively lyrical (the piano concerti and sonatas, Romeo and Juliet, etc.). His rich orchestrations, modal melodies, and lush harmonies provide a wealth of material for filmmakers to draw upon.

Director Jean-Pierre Brossman's complete 1989 production of The Love of Three Oranges (1989) is an imaginative staging of Prokofiev's original opera (Op. 33, 1921). The libretto is based on the well-known fairy tale of a melancholic young Prince who can only be cured by laughter. Despite a jester's efforts, the Prince only laughs when the witch Fata Morgana accidentally trips in a prat-fall. Her curse causes the Prince to fall in love with three oranges. After many adventures, the oranges are recovered and one of them contains Princess Ninetta whom the Prince marries. The French production has spare staging, designed by Jacques Rapp, and movable walls which conceal and reveal in a very elegant manner. (This opera seems to provide an occasion for designers to let their imaginations run wild -- one sensational live production by Richard Jones at the Opera North in 1988 featured scratch-and-sniff cards with "microfragances" for the audience, à la filmmaker John Waters' outrageous comedy Polyester [1981].)

The gentle but lively cornet theme of Kije's Wedding from Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kije: Symphonic Suite, Op. 60 is heard briefly during the scene of a book signing at "New York's only remaining real book store" in Crossing Delancey (1988). The theme returns later in its longer version as Isabelle (Izzy) Grossman's interfering grandmother Bubbie and a matchmaker try to set her (Amy Irving) up with a local boy (Peter Riegert as the pickle man). Prokofiev wrote his music originally for Fajntsimmer's film Poruchik Kizhe (1933), the satirical tale of a soldier who never existed. Excerpts from the suite are also heard in The Horse's Mouth (1958) and Doc Hollywood (1991).

One of Prokofiev's most popular works has been the charming children's tale Peter and the Wolf with its delightful characterful leitmotifs played by specific instruments around the tale recited by a narrator. Many actors and other personalities (including politicians and non-artist public figures) have been involved in concert and media productions of this modern classic. Among the television and film versions and adaptations have been Art Carney Meets Peter and the Wolf (1959 for TV); the wonderful but not often seen animated Disney film Peter and the Wolf (1946) with Sterling Holloway as the narrator; the imaginative television drama/musical Peter and the Wolf: A Prokofiev Fantasy (1994) with Roy Hudd as Sergei Prokofiev and Sting as the narrator; the television production Peter and the Wolf (1996) with Kirstie Alley, Lloyd Bridges, and Ross Malinger; Make Mine Music (1946); and A Christmas Story (1983).

Approximately 45 other feature-length productions quote music by the composer originally written for other purposes. Prokofiev himself can be seen in The Secret Life of Sergei Eisenstein (1987) which contains archive footage of the composer at a piano with filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein for whom he wrote the score to both parts of the film classic Ivan the Terrible, and the television special Disneyland: The Fourth Anniversary Show (1957) which featured a personal appearance by Prokofiev. ~ "Blue" Gene Tyranny, All Movie Guide

Cinderella: A Dance Fantasy Buy this Movie	War and Peace Buy this Movie	The Stone Flower Buy this Movie	The Love for Three Oranges Buy this Movie
Cinderella (Paris Opera Ballet) Buy this Movie	Mauvais Sang Buy this Movie	The Competition Buy this Movie	Cinderella (Berlin Comic Opera Ballet) Buy this Movie

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(b Sontsovka, 23 April 1891; d Moscow, 5 March 1953). Russian composer. He showed precocious talent as a pianist and composer and had lessons from Glier from 1902. In 1904 he entered the St Petersburg Conservatory, where Rimsky-Korsakov, Lyadov and Tcherepnin were among his teachers; Tcherepnin and Myaskovsky, who gave him valuable support, encouraged his interest in Skryabin, Debussy and Strauss. He had made his début as a pianist in 1908, quickly creating something of a sensation as an enfant terrible, unintelligible and ultra-modern - an image he was happy to cultivate. His intemperateness in his early piano pieces, and later in such works as the extravagantly Romantic Piano Concerto no.1 and the ominous no.2, attracted attention. Then in 1914 he left the conservatory and travelled to London, where he heard Stravinsky's works and gained a commission from Dyagilev: the resulting score was, however, rejected (the music was used to make the Scythian Suite); a second attempt, Chout, was not staged until 1921.

Meanwhile his gifts had exploded in several different directions. In 1917 he finished an opera on Dostoyevsky's Gambler, a violently involved study of obsession far removed from the fantasy of his nearly contemporary Chicago opera The Love for Three Oranges, written in1919 and performed in 1921. Nor does either of these scores have much to do with his ‘Classical’ Symphony, selfconsciously 18th-century in manner, and again quite distinct from his lyrical Violin Concerto no.1, written at the same period and in the same key. There were also piano sonatas based on old notebooks alongside the more adventurous Visions fugitives, all dating from 1915-19.

Towards the end of this rich period, in 1918, he left for the USA; then from 1920 France became his base. His productivity slowed while he worked at his opera The Fiery Angel, an intense, symbolist fable of good and evil (it had no complete performance until after his death, and he used much of its music in Symphony no.3). After this he brought the harsh, heavy and mechanistic elements in his music to a climax in Symphony no.2 and in the ballet Le pas d′acier, while his next ballet, L′enfant prodigue, is in a much gentler style: the barbaric and the lyrical were still alternatives in his music and not fused until the 1930s, when he began a process of reconciliation with the Soviet Union.

The renewed relationship was at first tentative on both sides. Romeo and Juliet, the full-length ballet commissioned for the Bol′shoy, had its première at Brno in 1938, and only later became a staple of the Soviet repertory: its themes of aggression and romantic love provided, as also did the Eisenstein film Alexander Nevsky, a receptacle for Prokofiev's divergent impulses. Meanwhile his own impulse to remain a Westerner was gradually eroded and in 1936 he settled in Moscow, where initially his concern was with the relatively modest genres of song, incidental music, patriotic cantata and children's entertainment (Peter and the Wolf, 1936). He had, indeed, arrived at a peculiarly unfortunate time, when the drive towards socialist realism was at its most intense; and his first work of a more ambitious sort, the opera Semyon Kotko, was not liked.

With the outbreak of war, however, he perhaps found the motivation to respond to the required patriotism: implicitly in a cycle of three piano sonatas (nos. 6-8) and Symphony no.5, more openly in his operatic setting of scenes from Tolstoy's War and Peace, which again offered opportunities for the two extremes of his musical genius to be expressed. He also worked at a new full-length ballet, Cinderella. In 1946 he retired to the country and though he went on composing, the works of his last years have been regarded as a quiet coda to his output. Even his death was outshone by that of Stalin on the same day.

works:
Operas

• The Gambler (1917, perf. 1929)
• The Love for Three Oranges (1921)
• The Fiery Angel (1923, perf. 1954)
• Semyon Kotko (1940)
• War and Peace (1943, perf. concert 1944, 1953)
• The Story of a Real Man (1948, perf. 1960)

Ballets

• Chout (1921)
• Le pas d′acier (1927)
• The Prodigal Son (1929)
• Sur le Borysthène (1932)
• Romeo and Juliet (1938)
• Cinderella (1945)
• The Tale of the Stone Flower (1954)

Film scores

• Lieutenant Kijé (1933)
• Alexander Nevsky, Mez, chorus, orch (1938)
• Ivan the Terrible (1945)

Orchestral music

• Sym. no.1, ‘Classical’, D (1917)
• Sym. no.2, d (1925)
• Sym. no.3, c (1928)
• Sym. no.4, C (1930)
• Sym. no.5, B♭ (1944)
• Sym. no.6, E♭ (1947)
• Sym. no.7, c# (1952)
• Pf Conc. no.1, D♭ (1912)
• Pf Conc. no.2, g (1913)
• Pf Conc. no.3, C (1921)
• Pf Conc. no.4, B♭ (1931)
• Pf Conc. no.5, G (1932)
• Vn Conc. no.1, D (1917)
• Vn Conc. no.2, g (1935)
• Scythian Suite (1915)
• Vc Conc., e (1938), rev. as Sym. Conc. (1952)
• Peter and the Wolf, narrator, orch (1936)
• Vc Concertino, g (1952)

Chamber music

• Qnt, g, ob, cl, vn, va, dbn (1924)
• 2 str qts, b, F (1930, 1941)
• Vn Sonata, f (1946), Fl/Vn Sonata, D (1943)
• Vc Sonata, C (1949)

Piano music

• Sonata no 1, f (1909)
• Sonata no.2, d (1912)
• Sonata no.3, a (1917)
• Sonata no.4, c (1917)
• Sonata no.5, C (1923)
• Sonata no.6, A (1940)
• Sonata no.7, B♭ (1942)
• Sonata no.8, B♭ (1944)
• Sonata no.9, C (1947)
• Sarcasms (1914)
• Visions fugitives (1917)

Vocal music

• cantatas, songs, partsongs, folksong arrs.

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The Russian-Soviet composer Sergei Sergeevich Prokofiev (1891-1953) was a key figure in modern music. He was prolific in all genres and was a master craftsman. His works are probably the most played of 20th-century composers.

The accomplishment of Sergei Prokofiev, together with that of Dmitri Shostakovich, very nearly sums up the contribution of Soviet music in the 20th century. Although Prokofiev was a brilliant pianist and writer for piano, he sought his creative beginnings in opera. Yet very often the end product, through his lifelong habit of rewriting and recasting, was a dazzling orchestral work. His particular idiom remained distinctive although attenuated in later years under the pressure to succeed in terms not his own.

Prokofiev was born in Sontsovka (now Krasnoe) in the Ekaterinoslav Guberniya of the Ukraine, where his father managed the Sontsov family estates. Sergei's mother, a woman of considerable cultural pretension, indulged her only child's precocity. Indeed, young Prokofiev was so musically industrious that it would have been difficult to stop him. By the age of 10 he had written a number of pieces, including an opera, Giant. The young boy was taken to the Moscow Conservatory, and, for the next two summers, Reinhold Glière went to Sontsovka to tutor him.

At the age of 12 Prokofiev entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory. He spent the next 10 years there, and, although he later had very little good to say of the institution, its traditions, or its teachers, he received an impressive technical grounding. More important to him through the conservatory years were contacts with his fellow students Boris Asafiev and Nikolai Miaskovsky, with prominent (and rich) musical figures like Serge Koussevitsky, and with the growing body of internationally minded artists and entrepreneurs in the capital city. Prokofiev traveled to London in 1914, heard Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, and established a liaison with the impresario Serge Diaghilev. Prokofiev was already a successful musician, published and performed, and the Diaghilev contact was the all but final stamp of Russian creative maturity in 1914.

Years Abroad

Prokofiev longed for a sustained stay and impact abroad - the Russian tradition most recently confirmed by Alexander Scriabin, Sergei Rachmaninov, and Stravinsky. But the war, Russia's faltering role therein, and the two revolutions of 1917 caused Prokofiev's Western contacts to pause. The "angels" that had financed others failed to materialize at first, and Diaghilev was not encouraging. In mid-1917 Prokofiev reached an understanding with the Chicago industrialist Cyrus McCormick. By this time Prokofiev had composed a number of piano pieces, the Scythian Suite for orchestra (a recasting of a ballet, Ala and Lolli, commissioned but rejected by Diaghilev), the First (Classical) Symphony, the First Violin Concerto, and the First and Second Piano Concertos, the Third being in the works. With these behind him, McCormick's invitation in his pocket, and the consent of the new Soviet government, the composer left for the United States in 1918.

In 1921 Prokofiev's Love for Three Oranges was premiered in Chicago. The American years were fitful ones financially, not the least because of competition from other Russian émigrés. He began in America the opera Flaming Angel, which, though never performed in his lifetime, was to dominate his thinking for many years. In 1922 he moved to Ettal in the Bavarian Alps. Here he lived with his mother and with his first wife, Caroline Codina, working mostly on the Flaming Angel and on piano and vocal works. Eventually he settled in Paris with his family and made that the center of his activity until 1936.

The Western years were productive ones, and it is well to emphasize the point, since Soviet thinking insists that they were "unproductive years of rootless desperation." He completed (for Diaghilev) the ballets Le Pas d'acier (1925), Prodigal Son (1928), and On the Dnieper (1930); the operas Love for Three Oranges (1919) and Flaming Angel (1927); a number of vocal works; the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Piano Concertos; chamber works, including opus numbers 34, 35, 39, 50 and 56; and many other works. He worked constantly, often on more than one piece at a time, and no small part of his effort was directed toward casting works for other mediums in symphonic form. Much of his work appears in the original version and in an orchestral version or versions. This includes all the ballets, parts of the Piano Sonatas, chamber works, and even his beloved opera Flaming Angel (as the Third Symphony).

Return to Soviet Union

In 1927 Prokofiev visited the Soviet Union and was well received. But on a second visit in 1929 the conservative Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM) dominated the musical press and attacked the reluctant émigré. In late 1932 he was encouraged to visit again: the RAPM had been abolished, and his friends Miaskovsky, Asafiev, and Glière were enthusiastic about creative prospects in the Soviet Union. Prokofiev still hesitated, still visited, and sought and probably got assurances from high party and government sources. He finally moved to Moscow in 1936. He had done well in the West, but he was dissatisfied: as a concert pianist he had stood in Rachmaninov's shadow; and he had failed to capture that creative leadership enjoyed by Arnold Schoenberg and Stravinsky.

Through 1938 Prokofiev continued to tour the West, but the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 brought on a politically anti-international period, and he never went abroad again. He was simultaneously in the throes of separation from his wife, herself an international symbol. For these reasons his autobiographical memoirs, a substantial part of which was written during the pact, are unfortunately inaccurate in discussing the West. In his memoirs he characterized his own style as shaped from four main lines of development: first, the lyric, singing line; second, the classical grounding; third, the urge to seek and innovate; and fourth, a relentless, motoric, toccatalike pulse.

Prokofiev had already begun, in his Soviet period, to write movie scores (Lieutenant Kijé, 1934; Alexander Nevsky, 1938), patriotic works (Cantata for the Twentieth Anniversary of the October Revolution, 1937), and works of lighter genre and direct appeal (Peter and the Wolf, 1936). He held at this time the notion of multiple styles for the contemporary composer. In 1939 he began another opera, Semyon Kotko, based on a story by Valentin Kataev. The opera dealt with Germans as enemies and was difficult to mount during first a pro-German then an anti-German period. In it Prokofiev worked out a usage for those idioms and experiments too advanced for the increasingly conservative official view of art: the depiction of inimical forces. Prokofiev's coworker, the famous director Vsevolod Meyerhold, was arrested and sent to a labor camp (where he died) for creative errors. Prokofiev seemed immune to such reprimands and punishments, which were common in the late 1930s.

During World War II Prokofiev, with his second wife, Myra Mendelson, was evacuated to a series of Eastern centers. He worked on more film scores, including Ivan the Terrible with Sergei Eisenstein, his opera War and Peace, and on the Second (Kabardinian) String Quartet. He completed the Fifth Symphony in 1945. That year he incurred the illness, hypertension, that was finally to prove fatal, and it became clear that he was beginning to draw critical fire from official and semiofficial sources. In 1948 he was a principal target in the party and government criticism and punishment of artists. He did not live to see that criticism rescinded, as Shostakovich did. Prokofiev died on March 5, 1953.

In the works of his last 8 to 10 years Prokofiev added at least two more lines of development to those he had specified earlier. One of these was the unabashed heroic element, first used to any great extent in the Fifth Symphony. This work, with its "heroism, " indicated that he had noted the combinations so successful in Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony. The other line, perhaps involuntarily developed, was that of the ingenuous - the deliberately but sincerely naive. This involved light, vulnerable, singable tunes and harmonies and showed scant trace of the caustic, irreverent treatment he often reserved for such simplicity.

In his final years Prokofiev's performances were officially limited because of his clouded political situation and were generally confined to children's concerts and children's performing groups. His last works, including the Seventh Symphony and the ballet Stone Flower, reflected this. He even spoke of a refreshed awareness of his own childhood. Since his death his more mature works, and especially those of his foreign period, have had increasing influence on younger composers.

Further Reading

The primary source on Prokofiev available in English is the Autobiography, Articles, and Reminiscences (trans. 1958), published by the Foreign Languages Publishing House. The autobiographical part was written in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The official biography is that of Israel Nestyev, published in English translation by Florence Jonas in 1960. This is an enlargement of an earlier book, and a comparison of the two is politically interesting. There are a number of biographies by Westerners, although the late ones in English - Lawrence and Elizabeth Hanson (1964), and Victor Seroff (1968) - are popular rather than accurate items. Malcolm Brown, Symphonies of Prokofiev (in press), should prove authoritative. No book on contemporary music is without its chapter on Prokofiev. A generous treatment is afforded in William Austin, Music in the Twentieth Century (1966); and a chapter with recent information appears in Stanley D. Krebs, Soviet Composers and the Development of Soviet Music (1970).

Additional Sources

Gutman, David, Prokofiev, London; New York: Omnibus Press, 1990.

Prokofiev, Sergey, Prokofiev by Prokofiev: a composer's memoir, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1979.

Prokofiev, Sergey, Soviet diary, 1927, and other writings, Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992.

Robinson, Harlow, Sergei Prokofiev: a biography, New York: Paragon House, 1988, 1987.

Sergei Prokofiev: materials, articles, interviews, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1978.

Seroff, Victor Ilyitch, Sergei Prokofiev: a Soviet tragedy: the case of Sergei Prokofiev, his life& work, his critics, and his executioners, New York: Taplinger Pub. Co., 1979, 1969.

For more information on Sergey Sergeyevich Prokofiev, visit Britannica.com.

Prokofiev, Sergei or Serge Prokofiev (b Sontsovka, Ukraine, 5 May 1891, d Moscow, 5 Mar. 1953). Ukrainian-Soviet composer. He wrote much ballet music, including the full-length Romeo and Juliet (first production 1938, Brno, chor. Psota) and Cinderella (chor. Zahkarov, Bolshoi Ballet, Moscow, 1945), two of the best-known ballet scores in the world. His first ballet, Ala and Lolly, was written in 1914, a commission from Diaghilev, although it was never performed (it had to wait until 1927 when Terpis staged it at the Berlin State Opera). A list of his ballets includes Chout (Ballet Russes de Diaghilev, Paris, 1921, choreography by Slavinsky and Larionov), Trapeze (chor. Romanov, Russian Romantic Ballet, Berlin, 1925), Le Pas d'acier (Ballets Russes de Diaghilev, Paris, 1927, chor. Massine), The Prodigal Son (Ballets Russes de Diaghilev, Paris, 1929, chor. Balanchine), Sur le Borsythène (Paris Opera, 1932, chor. Lifar), and The Stone Flower (Bolshoi Ballet, Moscow, 1954, chor. Lavrovsky). His concert music has also been used by many choreographers; examples include Tudor's Gala Performance (London Ballet, 1938), Bolm's Peter and the Wolf (Ballet Theatre, New York, 1940), MacMillan's Triad (Royal Ballet, 1972), Robbins's Opus 19 (New York City Ballet, 1979), Grigorovich's Ivan the Terrible (Bolshoi Ballet, Moscow, 1975), and Kudelka's The Heart of the Matter (1986) and Désir (1991). He and Stravinsky are the two most important ballet composers of the 20th century.

Prokofiev, Sergei Sergeievitch (1891–1953), Russian composer. Prokofiev studied under Rimsky‐Korsakov and Liadov, both noted for their use of Russian folklore materials. He spent World War I in London, then moved to the United States, but in 1934 was induced by the Soviet government to return permanently to Russia. His Peter and the Wolf (1936), a ‘symphonic fairy tale’ for which he wrote the accompanying text, is designed to teach children the components of an orchestra. Peter (represented by a string quartet) and his friend the Bird (flute) cleverly capture the Wolf (French horns). Beneath its cheery musical surface, the tale weaves a dark pattern of predator–prey relationships; the Cat (clarinet) stalks the Bird, hunters (tympani) stalk the Wolf, and the Wolf devours the Duck (oboe), still mournfully quacking inside him as the piece ends. Prokofiev's ballet Cinderella (1945) also undermines the conventional expectations of the fairy tale. While Cinderella is portrayed as an innocent child of nature, the Prince's court is as corrupt and materialistic as her stepmother's house; she and her Prince will only find their happy ending in a world yet to come. The Stone Flower (1954), based on a Russian tale, is the story of a craftsman who yearns to create a perfect stone vase and follows the Mistress of the Copper Mountain into her underground realm to learn her secrets, whence he is rescued by his peasant sweetheart.

Bibliography

• Prokofiev, Sergei, Autobiography (1960).

— Suzanne Rahn

(1891 - 1953), composer and pianist, one of the most important figures of the early Russian modernism, later of Socialist Realism.

Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev studied at the Petersburg conservatory from 1904 to 1914. By 1915 he was already one of the outstanding figures of modern Russian music. In his early works, Prokofiev employed new modes of expression while audibly referring to the musical language of the late nineteenth century. Prokofiev followed various stylistic courses. He was known as a radical exponent of provocative new music and also distinguished himself through his neoclassical experiments. Later he would be known precisely for his synthesis of the unusual and the familiar, of complexity and simplicity, of constructive rationality and melodious emotionalism.

In 1918, hoping for greater artistic perspectives, Prokofiev left Russia for the United States. After mixed experiences there, he left in 1922 to settle in Paris. Prokofiev was not a "classical" emigrant: He assumed Soviet citizenship in 1924 and often travelled to the Soviet Union to give concerts. Finally, in 1936, the artist returned to Russia with his family. His decision can be attributed to a deep longing for his home country, a diffuse sympathy for the political developments there, a marked interest in the privileged position of an exceptional artist in the Soviet state, and a sense of invulnerability. It was not difficult for Prokofiev to fulfil the ideological standards of "Socialist Realism," given the melodious simplicity of his work. He had long ago given up his futuristic inclinations and instead tried to realize a new rhythmic-motoric, tonally tense, poignant style. Yet in 1948 even Prokofiev was severely criticized by the Soviet government, which perceived "formalistic distortions and anti-democratic tendencies" in the works of leading Soviet composers. Prokofiev criticized himself, and until his death (on the same day as Stalin's) he attempted to reconcile his own stylistic conceptions with the party line.

Bibliography

Jaffé, Daniel. (1998). Sergey Prokofiev. London: Phaidon.

Robinson, Harlow L. (1987). Sergei Prokofiev: A Biography. New York: Viking.

—MATTHIAS STADELMANN

(syĭrgā' syĭrgā'əvĭch prōkôf'ēĕf) , 1891–1953, Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Prokofiev achieved wide popularity with his lively music, in which he achieved a pungent mixture of modern and traditional elements. He was a pupil of Reinhold Glière and of Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. In 1918 he toured through Siberia and Japan to the United States, where he settled for a short time. He lived in Paris from 1922 to 1933, when he returned permanently to the USSR, although he visited Europe and the United States several times until 1938. Among his important works are seven symphonies, especially the First, the Classical Symphony (1916–17), and the Fifth (1944); two violin concertos; five piano concertos; nine sonatas and other piano music; and chamber music. His operas include The Gambler (1915–16; rev. 1927; Brussels, 1929), after Feodor Dostoyevsky; The Love for Three Oranges (1921), after Carlo Gozzi; Betrothal in a Convent (1940; 1946), based on Richard Sheridan's Duenna; and War and Peace (1943; rev. version, 1952), after Leo Tolstoy. Other works are the ballets Chout (The Buffoon, 1921), Le Pas d'acier (1927), and Romeo and Juliet (1935–36; 1940); the symphonic fairy tale Peter and the Wolf (1936); and suites from the scores for the films Lieutenant Kije (1933) and Alexander Nevsky (1938). Prokofiev's early works are often harsh and strident, deliberately avoiding emotionalism. Later he wrote in a more simplified, popular style, although he never lost his individuality. He used sharp and vigorous rhythms, and he was a master of orchestration. His own virtuosity at the piano is reflected in the brilliance of his piano music.

Bibliography

See his autobiography (tr. 1959); selected letters ed. by H. Robinson (1998); his diaries (1907–14, tr. 2006); biographies by I. Nestyev (rev. ed. tr. 1960), V. Seroff (1968), C. Samuel (tr. 1971), and H. Robinson (1987, repr. 2002).