STRAVINSKY – THE AMERICAN YEARS
Stravinsky had arrived in America in late 1939 and had married Vera de Bosset in March 1940. Having fulfilled his engagement at Harvard the couple moved to Beverly Hills and bought a house in Hollywood where they were to live for many years. He would soon build up quickly a new circle of friends. There was plenty of artistic and intellectual activity around particularly ex-pat Brits such as Aldous Huxley and W H Auden with whom he would later collaborate. After the war he would also get to know Dylan Thomas for what was to be a short period. On arrival he was half way through his Symphony in C which was first performed in Chicago. His first American composition was Tango inspired by a trip to Mexico as was “El Salon Mexico” written at much the same time by Aaron Copland, my preferred option. In 1942 Stravinsky would fall foul of American law without even knowing it. He wrote an arrangement of “The Star Spangled Banner” for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. You may well ask what was wrong with that. There just happened to be a federal law forbidding interference with the national anthem and Stravinsky got arrested during the performance. Who knows, if he could have done to the Star Spangled Banner what he could do to Pergolesi and Tchaikovsky, with a few carefully placed wrong notes, it might well have warranted the electric chair. Stravinsky was receiving a number of commissions and in 1942 he produced Danses Concertantes for Balanchine followed by Scenes de Ballet in 1944 and then film music from Hollywood. He certainly had no money troubles and found himself in rude health. Happily remarried he was still in good form and prone to a seven year itch….. but which occurred somewhat more frequently.
Towards the end of the war Stravinsky began writing for jazz and swing bands, composing his Scherzo à la Russe for jazz ensemble in 1944 followed by his Ebony concerto, written for Woody Herman, a clarinettist swing band leader. Frankly I prefer Woody’s own “At the Woodchoppers Ball”. Copland adapted better in writing his clarinet concerto, in his case for Benny Goodman who actually recorded the Ebony concerto with Stravinsky. One does not get the feeling that Stravinsky got the real soul of American music as Dvorak had done fifty years earlier.
1945 saw the end of the war and the return to form of Stravinsky in his neo-classical mould with his symphony in three movements. It is a very listenable work but Stravinsky described it as a war symphony after having watched newsreel films. It does not have the feel of a war symphony like Shostakovitch’s Leningrad symphony or his harrowing eighth but then you didn’t get harrow in Hollywood.
With the end of the war Stravinsky obtained American nationality. The first thing he did was to start revising a number of his works, Firebird, Petrouchka, Symphony of Wind Instruments, The Fairy’s Kiss, Apollo, Persephone, Oedipus Rex, Symphony of Psalms, Pulcinella and others. Sometimes it was just a touching up job, sometimes the addition of a further instrument here or there. He might be said to have been looking for his last word but he was also looking more for royalties which he had not been receiving before. Obtaining American citizenship gave him this particular source of income and who can blame him for that?
This summary cannot deal with each item of Stravinsky’s output but simply to follow his career where he was still pursuing his neo-classicism at this stage . 1947 saw a new ballet, Orpheus, based on Monteverdi who of course wrote his own superb version, the moving opera, Orfeo. Here Stravinsky has returned to the static style which permeated his output when he based it on the culture of Ancient Greece.
Shortly afterwards Stravinsky visited an exhibition in Chicago of to view “The Rakes Progress”, the eight engravings of Hogarth. The series formed in Stravinsky’s mind a subject for an opera but he himself was not sufficiently skilled in English to write a poetic libretto and on the recommendation of, Aldous Huxley, he engaged W H Auden and his partner, Chester Kallman to write it. Auden came out west and the two hit it off despite Auden, according to the Stravinsky’s maid, not using the towel and soap left out for him. He and Kallman, soon would refer to Igor and Vera as the Stravs. The well known story concerns the decline and fall of Tom Rakewell, who deserts Anne Trulove for the delights of London in the company of Nick Shadow, who, in the Auden version, turns out to be the Devil. Shades here also of Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale. It was first performed at La Fenice in Venice in September 1951, with Stravinsky himself conducting. It was his first visit to Europe in twelve years. Many consider The Rake’s Progress as the summit of Stravinsky’s neo-classical period and the pinnacle of Auden’s work as a librettist.
It was in 1948 that Stravinsky met the 25 year old conductor Robert Craft who became his pupil, his promoter, his biographer, his mentor and adviser, his conductor, his propagandist and his minder as well as legal executor, a relationship which lasted the rest of Stravinsky’s life and beyond. Just as Stravinsky was influenced at the outset of his career by Diaghilev, so he was influenced for the final years by Craft. What differed were the types of influences. Diaghilev was a promoter and adviser but with him Stravinsky remained his own man. One could not say that he did not remain his own man with Craft but one is left with the impression that Stravinsky had weakened and the influence more pernicious. Little is known about Craft but he seems to be a cross between a leech and a vulture. He developed his speciality in early music, particularly Monteverdi, perhaps having been involved in some way with Orpheus. He then turned his attention to the Second Viennese School, Schoenberg, Berg and Webern, particularly the last named and became an apostle to St Arnold, St Alban and St Anton, the three A’s. He turned Stravinsky’s attentions to the music of Webern and one cannot doubt that Stravinsky would not have followed that course had it not provoked his interest. He was interested and began experimenting. It was a change of direction, perhaps one much needed. He clearly had a problem as to which way to go forward particularly after thirty years of writing in neo-classical vogue and no longer wishing to excavate old composers and include them in his own recipes. Many composers face the dilemma of advancing years, Beethoven by developing a mature sound which in his late quartets would baffle generations; Brahms by retreating into premature old age; Sibelius, not wishing to repeat himself, by retreating into silence for thirty years.
I do not propose to list all the Stravinsky output which followed. My own lack of sympathy would be unfair to him and to you. It is not simply the serial technique which he sought to adopt as this was by no means any longer novel. Stravinsky had ceased being in the vanguard but following in the steps of others, the leaders of whom were all by then dead. There are still Stravinskyan sounds and the occasional reminder of the voice we had known previously but there seems to me to be a sense of the static we had seen produced in his previous stylistic incarnation. In 1953 he would meet Dylan Thomas and was impressed by him and his exuberance, not to mention his capacity to consume quantities of alcohol. Together they planned to team up to write an opera which was not to be. Thomas died that year and Stravinsky wrote his “In Memoriam Dylan Thomas”. It seems to me they would have been a mismatch. To the extent that Dylan’s poetry is particularly more musical Igor’s music is particularly less poetic. Perhaps someone more immersed in late Stravinsky can better illustrate its qualities than I. Matthew has referred to Stravinsky writing the wrong notes – but the right wrong notes. I prefer to liken his late music to what Eric Morcambe said to André Previn. “They are the right notes – but in the wrong order”. In Memoriam is a dirge with the setting of the poem, “Do not go gentle into that good night” written by Thomas as his memorial to his own father. Stravinsky framed it within a prologue and postlude scored for four trombones and a string quartet. It does not for me possess the musicality of the poetry of Dylan Thomas such as in Fern Hill or the humour of Under Milk Wood. No evidence of any Organ Morgan, Dai Bread, Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard, Butcher Beynon or Lily Smalls. Dan Jones who wrote the music for the original radio production of Under Milk Wood also wrote an “In Memoriam Dylan Thomas”, his symphony no 4, a more memorable and moving tribute given its first performance at a prom I went to in 1954.
Earlier in 1952, Stravinsky had written for the city of Venice the Canticum Sacrum Ad Honorum Santi Marci Nominis, a commission form the International Society of Contemporary Music to be performed at Saint Marco. It is partially serial. Two years later he wrote Threni, a fully serial work to be performed in Venice to which he had become strongly attached.
Better known from this period is his ballet, Agon, which he started writing in his diatonic style and during which he switched to twelve tone style. It was written for the ballet company of Balanchine. Although musically not neo-classical, it is based on French seventeenth century dance forms including sarabande, galliard and bransles. Here Stravinsky demonstrates his adoption of twelve tone music by writing for everything centred on twelve; bars in alternate seven and five meters, dancers in three groups of four and anything which can add up to twelve. Had he written it at nineteen to the dozen he would have doubtless marked it at nineteen to the bar.
Following Agon, Stravinsky undertook a world tour over two years covering five continents and conducting wherever he went. This would have been taxing for any younger man than him. For someone at nearly 80 years of age it is hard to imagine where his energy came from. All of this was against the background that between 1957, aged 75 and 1967 aged 85, he had embarked on recording his complete oeuvres, nowadays spread over 22 CD’s, conducting almost the lot, with Robert Craft the only permitted stand-in for the few the old man could not manage. Robert Craft had become more rather than less the official voice of Stravinsky with critics referring to his writings and recorded performances as the authorised version and the gospel truth. However there remain those of us who learned a much more full blooded Stravinsky from the famous FFRR 78 rpm recordings and the early LP’s by Ansermet and no usurper to the throne will replace him.
In 1962 Stravinsky was a guest of President and Mrs Kennedy at a dinner given in his honour at the White House. Sadly he would little more than a year later be writing “Elegy for JFK” to a poem written by W H Auden. Before that however came a surprise invitation for his 80th birthday. It was from the USSR to come and conduct his music there. Until then he had been persona non exista in the USSR and he himself hated anything to do with them. He did not want to go but did so on the advice of Robert Craft. It was his first visit to his native land in 48 years. He would have hated the very name of Leningrad at which airport he arrived. He was nevertheless t earfully overcome by his return and was greeted in the Kremlin by Nikita Kruschev. He went on over three weeks to make public appearances and give performances and was feted wherever he went.
After his return home he wrote his “Abraham and Isaac” to a Hebrew text from Genesis which was first performed in Israel in 1965. This leads me to make an observation concerning works by Stravinsky with titles either identical to or very similar to those of Benjamin Britten. One gets the feeling that Stravinsky began to feel overtaken by Britten and had a sneaking regard for him. It is certainly very odd that after Britten had written Noye’s Flood Stravinsky too wrote The Flood; odd too that Britten had written five canticles, a term not to my knowledge used by any other composer except subsequently by Stravinsky; strange too that one of Britten’s canticles was called “Abraham and Isaac” based on a Chester miracle play and here now was Stravinsky writing his “Abraham and Isaac”, regrettably in my view not matching up in any way to that of Britten which the latter considered highly enough to reproduce in his own War Requiem.
Stravinsky’s last major work was entitled Requiem Canticles and written in 1966 on a commission from Princeton University. His last public concert was in November 1967 in Toronto where he conducted Pulcinella. His health was beginning to fail and after 28 years living on the West coast he and Vera moved to New York. In 1971 he travelled to Evian to visit his family by his first marriage.
Igor Stravinsky died in New York in 1971 just short of his 89th birthday . His choice, set out in his will, as to where he wanted to be buried was Venice, the city he loved.
He had chosen the position of his grave in San Michele just across the path from that of his old colleague, friend and compatriot in exile, Sergei Diaghilev. The two were together again after a long absence perhaps plotting on what earthquakes and riots they could inflict on others wherever they had gone.
Stravinsky had a long career incredibly linking him from Rimsky-Korsakov to Anton Webern. He was the most individual of composers who rarely could be mistaken for another. Equally incredible were his stylistic changes so different from each other whilst he remained always recognizably the same Stravinsky. It has been said that Stravinsky did not write from the heart but, let’s be honest, nor do most composers. Composing is hard work as Beethoven knew only too well and sounding from the heart is a gift to those composers who have had to contrive to achieve that result. In Stravinsky’s case the lack of apparent heart gives rise to a sense of artificiality. Yet, there is heart but also the words needed to describe him are “shock” and “brilliance”. If I have failed to show understanding for his last period the fault is mine, not that of Stravinsky. Just like many who could not immediately comprehend the late Beethoven quartets in their time, I remain to come to terms with the late Stravinsky in mine. We have done that before with that old war horse, the Rite of Spring, written unbelievably now a hundred years ago. Those late works of his will surely have their day to come.
SERGEI PROKOFIEV (1891 – 1953) – Part 1. The Early Years to 1918
This September Matthew Taylor commences his series of lectures on the works of Prokofiev. This note does not attempt to describe the music which Matthew will illustrate and analyze. It is an attempt to give a little biographical background and it is by no means comprehensive. So E & O E.
To all intents and purposes Sergei Prokofiev was Russian. In point of fact he was born and reared at Sontsovka in the Ukraine. Now to refer to a Ukrainian as Russian is about as accurate as referring to Alex Ferguson as an English football manager. However, in the case of Prokofiev his parents were Russian and had only set up home some ten years earlier in Sontsovka where his father had been appointed as an agricultural engineer and estate manager. Prokofiev was not therefore an indigenous Ukrainian in the same way that Josef Stalin was an indigenous Georgian. Prokofiev would have seen himself as an out and out Russian and it was to Russia for which he had pined and to where he returned in 1936.
His mother, Maria Grigoryevna Prokofieva, was musical and played Beethoven, Chopin and some easier Liszt. However, her great passion was for Tchaikovsky and, even more so, for Anton Rubinstein. Prokofiev was no prodigy à la Mozart so much as a remarkably precocious child whose interest in music was matched by his studies of sciences, maths and especially chess in which he was self taught and played all his life. His mother encouraged his developing interest and he started to learn the piano with her at the age of 5 at which age he wrote his first composition, an Indian Gallop. At the age of 8 he was first taken to St Petersburg and then to Moscow to visit relatives where he had his first operatic encounters with Gounod’s Faust and Borodin’s Prince Igor. The result was his writing his first opera, “the Giant” at the age of 9 and presenting it in a home production in 1901.
Visits to St Petersburg and Moscow became annual events and it had become clear by the time he was ten that Prokofiev was destined for a musical career with the piano at the forefront. Through the agency of a friend at St Petersburg conservatory it was arranged that Rheinhold Glière, best known to-day for his Red Poppy Suite, would come to Sontsovka to teach Prokofiev which he did over two summers. The productive outcome was the opera, a symphony and several small piano pieces which Sergei called his puppies.
By 1904, at the age of 13, Sergei was taken to St Petersburg Conservatory. Its principal was Alexander Glazunov (best known for his ballet, The Seasons, and for finishing the orchestration of Prince Igor). It was he who suggested that Prokofiev take the entrance examination. Prokofiev describes it in his biography as:
“The entrance examination was quite sensational. The examinee before me was a man with a beard who had nothing to show the examiners but a single romance without accompaniment. Then I came in, bending under the weight of two huge folders containing four operas, two sonatas, a symphony and a good many pianoforte pieces. ‘Here is a pupil after my own heart!’ observed Rimsky-Korsakov, who headed the examining board.”
Prokofiev not only gained his entrance but at the age of 13 was the youngest to do so. (My research shows that Taneyev gained entry to Moscow Conservatory aged 9). As far as Maria Grigoryevna was concerned Sergei was old enough to enter the conservatory but she herself would move to St Petersburg to take care of her son notwithstanding the protests and Chekovian threats of suicide by her husband.
The musical scene in Russia during the first decade of the twentieth century was one of flux. It had changed from the Russia of the Mighty Handful, those nationalists who had followed in Glinka’s footsteps and who either had depicted historical Russia or pseudo-orientalism. In total contrast to them had been the Russian Germanics led by the Rubinstein brothers, Nicolai and Anton, whose music was descended down the line of Beethoven and Mendelssohn. Somewhere in between was Tchaikovsky whose leanings were towards the orthodox school but his feet were never quite entrenched in either camp. Now in the twentieth century there was a distinct conservative reaction. Glazunov’s earlier promise as a kind of musical executor to Borodin had yielded to a dull conservatism in comparison with which Brahms’ music, for instance, sounds positively extravagant. Equally reactionary was Taneyev, former pupil of Tchaikovsky, who had immersed himself into counterpoint, Bach and Palestrina in particular. I have one disc of Tanyev’s music in my collection which I reckon should have received a Gramophone Award for uninspirational boredom. In contrast were the modernists exemplified by the emergence of Scriabin who was a kind of Russo-Richard Strauss but more extreme. He seemed to regard himself as a musical Messiah and met his Calvary in 1915. Also prominent in the continuing romantic school were Rachmaninoff and Medtner both of whom were to
emigrate after 1917.
Sergei was to spend the next ten years in study, mostly rebellious. He took up his place with students who were all much older than him but this did not appear to bother him. The names of teachers he had would find their way into most concert programmes, Liadov, Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov, Tcherepnin and Taneyev. Sergei was not overawed by their reputation. He was irritated by Rimsky’s lectures and did not have the same fondness for him as did Stravinsky. As to Liadov who lectured on harmony, Sergei compiled a spreadsheet list of all the harmonic errors Liadov would pick out – 19 of them according to Sergei who kept a record of the mistakes made by all his fellow students. Little wonder they resented the presence of this adolescent know-all.
The next year, 1905, saw the outbreak of an uprising. It could be said to have been a rehearsal for 1917. There was mutiny in the navy, famously recalled in Eisentstein’s film “the Battleship Potemkin”. In the country there was a call for the setting up of the Duma. The unrest was felt at the conservatory at St Petersburg where the students went on strike and several tutors were suspended. Rimsky-Korsakov was dismissed for his support but was later re-instated. Prokofiev may have felt the thrill but he was neither then nor later in life a political person. For him the cancellation of lectures was a nuisance.
When he was 16 Sergei met Myaskovsky who was ten years his senior and had been a professional soldier and was now pursuing his musical studies. The two formed a bond which lasted till Myakovsky’s death in 1949 and they continued to correspond and send each other their scores even during the period of Prokofiev’s residence in America. At the conservatory they would call any work they disparaged as “Rubinstein”, a coded euphemism for merde. So much for Prokofiev’s esteem for his mother’s favourite composer! Mind you, the expression was in wider circulation as Stravinsky recalls Rimsky Korsakov commenting on Scriabin as “c’est du Rubinstein”. Here allow me to record a personal word of protest. My paternal grandmother’s maiden name was also Rubinstein and I recall wedding invitations from relatives of that name whom I did not know. Nevertheless whilst family connection may cause me to join issue, in respect of Scriabin I entirely agree with Rimsky’s sentiments. Scriabin was to start with an inspiring influence on Prokofiev and Miaskovskybut this was to wane. Max Reger, a particular favourite of Matthew Taylor, was also the flavour of the day .
At the same time Sergei was beginning to be known for his pianistic prowess. In 1908 he was attending an informal group “Evenings of Contemporary Music” playing his own music as well as that of certain emerging contemporaries. Anybody who was anybody, composer, performer or critic was to be seen there and Prokofiev’s reputation was spreading amongst the cognoscenti although his participation gave concern to his professors. In 1909 his composing and theory course came to an end with the following comment by Glazunov:
“Technical preparation exceedingly brilliant. Interpretation unique, original, but not always in the best artistic taste.”
Sergei remained enrolled at the Conservatory studying piano under Anna Esipova, renowned international pianist, and conducting under the composer, Nicolai Tcherepnin from 1909 to 1914. In 1912 he published his first piano concerto soon to be followed by his second which received even more scathing reviews than did the first. Prokofiev seemed to thrive on criticism, unlike Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninov who would wilt under the onslaught. For Prokofiev, the greater the criticism, the more provocative would be the next response.
The first concerto is in fact quite short, less than 20 minutes but powerful and muscular. It is in three movements or possibly it could be called one movement in three parts as there are no breaks and it ends full circle with the opening theme. It got a drubbing from the American critics later in the 1920’s. The second piano concerto is even more powerful but less attractive. It was rewritten in 1923, because Prokofiev had left the score behind when he went to America. Apparently the occupants of his flat then found the score and burnt it to cook an omelette. (They sound as if they might have been out of La Bohème). Prokofiev was to rewrite a number of his published compositions for various reasons. Apart from leaving his music behind and the obvious wish on occasion to make improvements it would often be with the intention of presenting the music in a different ambiance to that for which it was originally conceived. The result is not the ditching of an inferior work but the creation of an alternative and adding the suffix “bis” to the original opus number. He also wrote probably more orchestral suites compiled from his operas and ballets than any of his contemporaries to make sure that audiences who had not heard the stage work would still get to know the music. So, even though a production of the stage work might not get mounted, few of us will not have heard the March and Scherzo from the Love of Three Oranges. Added to this was the difficulty Prokofiev could create for himself by the amount of memorable themes he was able to pour out. Hence, the reason for three different suites for Romeo and Juliet alone.
By 1913, the conservatory years were coming to their end after ten years but there remained one further glittering opportunity for Sergei to tackle, the Anton Rubinstein Prize, awarded to the best piano student. Sergei decided to enter but instead of choosing a well known concerto he decided to play his own first piano concerto. What chutzpah but there was nothing in the rules to prevent this and Sergei had to arrange prints of the score for the judges who would not be familiar with the work. Actually, it was a clever entrapment. The judges would have known their Tchaikovsky, Rubinstein, Chopin etc well enough to have picked holes in the player’s technique and to have gone to town in criticising the interpretation. Here they did not know the work, did not like the work but their critical faculties would have been too blunted to be able to make any independent assessment of their own. However they were clearly bowled over by Prokofiev’s pianistic bravura. So, not only did he win a piano competition to enhance his virtuoso reputation, much to the chagrin of Glazunov whose duty it was to announce the judges’ decision, but also it added to what Sergei had set his sights upon, a big splash for his reputation as a composer.
With this triumph behind him Prokofiev set out in June 1914 for bigger and better things. Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes had come to London to perform the ballets which had stunned Paris and it was against this background that Sergei Prokofiev, wanting part of the action, was to come to London to seek out Diaghilev. He brought with him the second piano concerto which he played to Diaghilev who was impressed sufficiently to consider using it as a ballet although he decided against it. Instead, Diaghilev came up with the idea of setting the tale of Ala and Lolli to music for a ballet and was happy to commission the work. It was to be based on the primitive rites of the warlike Scythians who between 900 and 700 BC occupied what is now Anatolia in Turkey. Coming a year after Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring the similarities could not have been co-incidental. Prokofiev was clearly aiming to outdo Stravinsky.
The First World War threatened. The lamps were going down all over Europe and Prokofiev made his way home to St Petersburg just before the outbreak of hostilities between Tsarist Russia with Germany. Sergei’s father had died in 1910 and Prokofiev was exempted military service, being the only son of a widow, In 1915 he travelled to Milan to see Diaghilev and to play to him part of the draft score of Ala and Lolli but Diaghilev then changed his mind and rejected it. Ever resourceful, Prokofiev was not going to waste a year’s effort and immediately decided to rewrite it as an orchestral suite to be called “The Scythian Suite”. There has been some debate as to just why Diaghilev turned it down. Musically Ala and Lolly was not as dissonant as The Rite of Spring. It seems possible that Diaghilev did not want a repeat of The Rite of Spring debacle. It is certain that he had at least some confidence in Prokofiev’s composing ability because as fast as he rejected Ala and Lolly, he commissioned Prokofiev to write another ballet, “Chout”, also known as “The Tale of the Buffoon”. Even then Diaghilev put that one on the back burner which may have been because there was no longer the money to mount the lavish productions of the pre-war years. Besides fashions were fast changing and Diaghilev was a man who always needed to be one step ahead, vogue-wise.
The period to 1917 produced a number of works. The Scythian Suite was awaited with keen anticipation by members of the Evening Contemporary Music Group. It was given its first performance in St Petersburg in January 1916 and received by some but not all with acclaim. Prokofiev appeared to will a repeat of the debacle previously accorded to the Rite of Spring in Paris. “Do you know that the price of rotten eggs and apples has gone up in St. Petersburg? That’s what they’ll throw at me!” Its repute was only to be helped by Glazunov, ever the masochist, walking out.
There then followed work on a new opera, The Gambler, based on the short novel by Dostoevsky. It was cancelled and never to be performed for many years. Firstly it was decried by the singers at the Maryinsky and the events of 1917 put paid to any plans for production.
Never put off, Prokofiev started early work without commission on a new opera, the Love of Three Oranges, based on an eighteenth century Italian play by Carlo Gozzi. It would not be finished until later on after he had left for America.
During this period he was writing extensively also for the solo piano and particularly noteworthy are the Visions Fugitives and the third and fourth piano sonatas. He also made a start on his third piano concerto which would turn out to be the most popular of the five he wrote.
The first revolution of 1917 in March leading to the Kerensky government was particularly disruptive in St Petersburg, now renamed Petrograd. It was there that Prokofiev completed his first symphony, the Classical. It is a fair assumption to say that most people would have first encountered Prokofiev with “Peter and the Wolf”. It is a fairly safe bet to say that the second most popularly known work of his is the Classical Symphony. It has the feel of being a first work but it certainly was not and it comes as a shock that this composition came after the Scythian Suite. Prokofiev wrote “Until this time I had always composed at the piano, but I noticed that thematic material composed without the piano was often better.” Another comment has been made that Prokofiev could only keep in key when writing at the piano and that this was an attempt not to stray out of key. In this regard it must be adjudged a failure, one which has given rise to a spectacular success. There are a number of articles referring to this work as neo-classical. I question that label. Neo-classicism was to dress up old composers in new clothes (à la Stravinsky in Pulcinella) or to write modern music inspired by old forms like the concerti grossi of Martinu in the 1930’s and which do not invoke the past but sound like the 1930’s. The Classical Symphony does not contain quotes by Haydn or by anybody else; it is pastiche but more than that it evokes the spirit of an earlier age rather than its form. In this it is more like the Percy Grainger of Handel in the Strand…. without the twee. For Prokoviev this was a one off visit to the past. He himself was later to describe Stravinsky’s neo-classical music as “Bach with wrong notes.” Stravinsky was kinder in describing Prokofiev as the greatest Russian composer of his day… after himself. The Classical Symphony was followed by the first Violin Concerto, a virtuoso romantic work which deserves to be a concert hall pot boiler.
By September Poland had seized the Ukraine and it was hotting up in Petrograd with threats of German invasion. Prokofiev went to visit his mother in the Caucasus. The next month, the Bolshevik revolution took place. The Kerensky government fell and the Lenin government took power. Prokofiev was cut off in territory held by the Whites until the Reds entered. He now felt the need to travel further afield and in particular to make his mark in the USA. Under the new government he needed to travel to Moscow to obtain a permit. Civil war was taking place in Russia and there was a risk of trains being shelled. Prokofiev was not deterred and made his way. He had no plans for exactly how long he would be away but he envisaged it as months when he requested his exit visa. At this time there was no concept of Socialist realism, no Zdahnov decree, no directive on how Marxism should present the arts save that in a Marxist/Leninist society they would find their own level. However, a composer would now need government permission to publish any work and, with the likes of Glazunov continuing to head the Conservatory, Prokofiev must have seen the red light and looked for the green one. The officials felt that he ought to stay but saw his music as a suitable vehicle to promote the emerging Soviet Union and granted his exit permit. He was not seeking to emigrate nor fleeing but looking for pastures new to promote himself. As David Gutman has written, Prokofiev would not have had Lenin in mind as his guru but Stravinsky. It was not to be a case either of “Go west young man”. The First World War was still raging in central Europe and the Western Front and it was impassable. It became instead a case of “Go east young man.”
