Prokofiev S.S.: biography of the composer
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In 1918, Sergei Sergeevich Prokofiev got himself an album in which all his friends had to leave notes on the same topic: “What do you think about the sun?” The composer did not accidentally choose it, because the sun is the source of life, and he himself has always, in all his works, been the singer of life.
About what Prokofiev was a composer, we know from his works, but about what kind of person he was, what he loved, what he aspired to, we can best learn from his Autobiography.
“The propensity to record was characteristic of me from childhood, and it was encouraged by my parents,” Sergei Prokofiev reports on the first pages of Autobiography. “At the age of six, I was already writing music. At seven, having learned to play chess, he started a notebook and began to write down the games; the first of them is the "shepherd's" mate I received in three moves. At the age of nine, the stories of combat tin soldiers were written, taking into account losses and diagrams of movements. At twelve I spied my music professor writing a diary. It seemed absolutely wonderful, and I began to conduct my own, under a terrible secret from everyone.
Childhood
Prokofiev was born and spent his childhood in the estate of Sontsovka (in the present Donetsk region), where his father, a learned agronomist, was a manager. Already a mature man, Prokofiev recalled with pleasure the Sontsovo steppe freedom, games in the garden with friends - village children, the beginning of music lessons under the guidance of his mother, Maria Grigorievna.
Still not knowing the notes, according to rumor, the boy tried to play something of his own on the piano. And he learned the notes, mainly in order to record this “his own”. And at the age of nine, after a trip to Moscow and under the impression of the first opera he heard (it was Gounod's Faust), Seryozha decided to compose his own opera, the plot of which he also invented himself. It was the opera "The Giant" in three acts with adventures, fights and more.
Prokofiev's parents were educated people and they themselves took up the boy's primary education in all school subjects. But they, of course, could not teach the rules of composing music. Therefore, taking her son on one of her usual winter trips to Moscow, Maria Grigorievna brought him to the well-known composer and teacher Sergei Ivanovich Taneyev, who advised to invite the young composer Reinhold Moritsevich Gliere to Sontsovka for classes with Serezha for the summer.
Glière spent two summers in a row in Sontsovka, hanging out with Seryozha, and also playing chess and croquet with him - no longer in the role of a teacher, but of an older comrade. And when, in the fall of 1904, thirteen-year-old Sergei Prokofiev came to St. Petersburg to take an exam at the conservatory, he brought with him an unusually solid baggage of compositions. In a thick folder were two operas, a sonata, a symphony and many small piano pieces - "Songs" - written under the direction of Gliere. Some "Songs" were so original and sharp in sound that one of Serezha's friends advised calling them not "Songs", but "Dogs", because they "bite".
Years of study at the conservatory
At the conservatory, Serezha was the youngest among classmates. And, of course, it was difficult for him to make friends with them, especially since, out of mischief, he sometimes counted the number of errors in the musical tasks of each of the students, deduced the average figure for a certain period - and the results for many were disappointing ...
But then another student appeared at the conservatory, in the uniform of a lieutenant of a sapper battalion, always very restrained, strict, smart. It was Nikolai Yakovlevich Myaskovsky, a well-known composer in the future, who in Soviet times became the head of the Moscow composer school. Despite the age difference (Myaskovsky was twenty-five, and Prokofiev was fifteen), a lifelong friendship began between them. They always showed each other their compositions, discussed them - personally and in letters.
In the classes of the theory of composition and free composition, Prokofiev, in general, fell out of favor - his peculiar talent was too disrespectful to the conservative tradition. Prokofiev did not even dare to show the most daring compositions to teachers, knowing that this would cause bewilderment or irritation. The attitude of the teachers was expressed in very average grades in Prokofiev's composing diploma. But the young musician had one more specialty in reserve - piano - in which he once again graduated from the conservatory in the spring of 1914.
“If I was indifferent to the poor quality of the composer’s diploma,” Prokofiev later recalled, “this time I was seized by ambition, and I decided to finish the piano first.”
Prokofiev took a risk: instead of the classical piano concerto, he decided to play his own First Concerto, just published, handing over the notes to the examiners in advance. The jubilant music of the concert, full of young enthusiasm, captivated the audience, Prokofiev's performance was a triumph, and he received a diploma with honors and the Anton Rubinstein Prize.
Results of creative activity
The creative energy of the young composer Prokofiev was truly volcanic. He worked quickly, boldly, tirelessly, striving to cover a wide variety of genres and forms. The first piano concerto was followed by the second, followed by the first violin concerto, opera, ballet, romances.
One of the works of S.S. Prokofiev is especially characteristic of the early period. This is the "Scythian Suite", created on the basis of the music of the failed ballet. Worship of the pagan gods, the frantic "Dance of Evil", the quiet and mysterious picture of the sleeping Scythian steppe and, finally, the dazzling finale - "Sunrise" - all this is conveyed in stunningly bright orchestral colors, spontaneous increases in sonority, energetic rhythms. The inspirational optimism of the suite, penetrating its light, is all the more remarkable because it was created during the difficult years of the First World War.
Sergei Prokofiev very quickly entered the first row of composers known not only at home but also abroad, although his music has always caused controversy, and some works, especially stage ones, have been waiting for years to be performed. But it was the scene that especially attracted the composer. I was attracted by the opportunity, following the path of Mussorgsky, to express the most subtle, secret shades of feelings in musical intonations, to create living human characters.
True, he did this in chamber music as well, for example, in the vocal fairy tale "The Ugly Duckling" (according to Andersen). Each of the inhabitants of the poultry yard is endowed with its own unique character: a sedate mother duck, little enthusiastic ducklings and the main character himself, unfortunate and despised by everyone before turning into a beautiful swan. Hearing this tale by Prokofiev, A. M. Gorky exclaimed: “But he wrote it about himself, about himself!”
The compositions of the young Prokofiev are surprisingly varied, and sometimes sharply contrasted. In 1918, his "Classical Symphony" was first performed - an elegant work sparkling with fun and subtle humor. Its title, as if emphasizing deliberate stylization - an imitation of the manner of Haydn and Mozart - is now perceived by us without quotes: this is a true classic of the music of the Soviet period. In the composer's work, the symphony began a bright and clear line, which is drawn right up to his later works - the ballet Cinderella, the Seventh Symphony.
And almost simultaneously with the Classical Symphony, the grandiose vocal and symphonic work The Seven of Them arose, again, like the Scythian Suite, reviving images of the deepest antiquity, but at the same time connected with some complex and obscure associations with the revolutionary events that shook the 1917 Russia and the whole world. The "strange turn" of creative thought subsequently surprised Prokofiev himself.
Abroad
An even stranger turn took place in the composer's biography itself. In the spring of 1918, having received a foreign passport, he left for America, not listening to the advice of friends who warned him: "When you return, they will not understand you." Indeed, a long stay abroad (until 1933) had a negative impact on the composer's contact with the audience, especially since its composition has changed and expanded over the years.
But the years spent abroad did not mean a complete separation from their homeland. Three concert trips to the Soviet Union were an occasion to communicate with old friends and new audiences. In 1926, the opera Love for Three Oranges was staged in Leningrad, which was conceived at home, but written abroad. The year before, Prokofiev had written the ballet "Steel Hop" - a series of paintings from the life of the young Soviet republic. Variegated everyday sketches and musical and choreographic portraits of the Commissar, Orator, Worker, Sailor side by side with industrial paintings ("Factory", "Hammers").
This work found life only on the concert stage in the form of a symphonic suite. In 1933, Prokofiev finally returned to his homeland, leaving it only for a short time. The years upon his return turned out to be perhaps the most fruitful in his life and, in general, very productive. Works are created one after another, and each of them marks a new, high stage in a particular genre. The opera "Semyon Kotko", the ballet "Romeo and Juliet", the music for the film "Alexander Nevsky", on the basis of which the composer created an oratorio - all this entered the golden fund of the music of the Soviet period.
To convey the plot of Shakespeare's tragedy by means of dance and dance music - such a task seemed to many impossible and even unnatural. Prokofiev approached her as if there were no ballet conventions.
In particular, he refused to build the ballet as a series of completed numbers, in the pauses between which the dancers bow and thank the audience for the applause. Prokofiev's music and choreographic action develop continuously, following the laws of drama. This ballet, staged for the first time in Leningrad, turned out to be an outstanding artistic event, especially since Galina Ulanova became the unsurpassed Juliet.
And a completely unprecedented task was solved by the composer in "Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of October". The music is based on a documentary text: articles, speeches and letters of K. Marx and V. I. Lenin are used in it. The work was so unheard of new that the cantata had to wait 20 years for its performance...
Different stories, different genres...
Works of the mature period
But, taking a general look at the works of the mature period and comparing them with the early ones, one can clearly see the general trend: the irrepressible boiling of creative thought is replaced by wise poise, interest in the incredible, fabulous, legendary is replaced by interest in real human destinies ("Semyon Kotko" - an opera about a young soldier), to the heroic past of his native country (“Alexander Nevsky”, the opera “War and Peace”), to the eternal theme of love and death (“Romeo and Juliet”).
At the same time, the humor always characteristic of Prokofiev did not disappear. In the tale (for a reader and a symphony orchestra), addressed to the youngest listeners, a lot of interesting information is given in a joking manner. Each character is characterized by some tool. It turned out to be a kind of guide to the orchestra and at the same time cheerful, funny music. - one of the works in which the composer achieved a "new simplicity", as he himself called it, that is, a manner of presenting thoughts that easily reaches the listener, without reducing or impoverishing the thought itself.
The pinnacle of Prokofiev's work is his opera War and Peace. The plot of the great work of L. Tolstoy, recreating the heroic pages of Russian history, was perceived during the years of the Patriotic War (namely, when the opera was created) unusually sharp and modern.
This work combined the best, most typical features of his work. Here Prokofiev is both a master of a characteristic intonational portrait, and a muralist who freely composes mass folk scenes, and, finally, a lyricist who created an unusually poetic and feminine image of Natasha.
Once Prokofiev compared creativity with shooting at moving targets: "Only taking aim forward, into tomorrow, you will not be left behind, at the level of yesterday's requirements."
And all his life he took “aim forward”, and, probably, precisely because of this, all his works - both written during the years of his creative upsurge and during the years of his last serious illness - remained with us and continue to bring joy to the listeners.
Main compositions:
Operas:
"Player" (1916)
"The Love for Three Oranges" (1919).
"Fiery Angel" (1927),
"Semyon Kotko" (1939)
"Betrothal in a Monastery" (1940)
"War and Peace" (1943)
"The Tale of a Real Man" (1948)Ballets:
"The Tale of the Jester Who Outwitted Seven Jesters" (1915)
"Steel lope" (1925)
"Prodigal Son" (1928)
Romeo and Juliet (1936)
"Cinderella" (1944)
"The Tale of the Stone Flower" (1950)For orchestra:
7 symphonies (1917, 1924, 1928, 1930, 1944, 1947, 1952)
For piano and orchestra:
5 concerts
For violin and orchestra:
2 concerts
A large number of chamber, piano (including 9 sonatas), vocal works.