SYMPHONIES

“Classical Symphony in D major, Opus 25”

“If we wished to establish Prokofieff’s genealogy as a composer, we would probably have to betake ourselves to the eighteenth century, to Scarlatti and other composers of the good old times, who have inner simplicity and naivete of creative art in common with him. Prokofieff is a classicist, not a romantic, and his appearance must be considered a belated relapse of classicism in Russia.”

So wrote Leonid Sabaneyeff, and it was the “Classical Symphony” more than any other composition of Prokofieff that inspired his words, as it has the pronouncements of others who have used this early symphony as an index of the composer’s predilections. Yet it is dangerous to so classify Prokofieff, except insofar as he remained loyal to a discipline of compression and a tradition of craftsmanship that seemed the very antithesis of the romantic approach to music. Nor was Prokofieff interested in imitating Mozart or Haydn in his “Classical Symphony.” Whatever has been written about his implied or assumed intentions, he made his aim quite explicit. What he set out to do was to compose the sort of symphony that Mozart might have written had Mozart been a contemporary of Prokofieff’s; not, it is clear, the other way around—that is, to compose the sort of symphony he might have written had he, instead, been a contemporary of Mozart’s.

The symphony was begun in 1916, finished the following year, and first performed in Leningrad on April 21, 1918. Prokofieff conducted the work himself when he appeared in Carnegie Hall, New York, at a concert of the Russian Symphony Society on December 11, 1918. The occasion was its American premiere, 23 and the “Classical Symphony” speedily became a favorite of the concert-going public. And no wonder! It is music that commends itself at once through a limpid style, an endearing precision of stroke, an unfailing wit of melody, and a general salon-like atmosphere of courtly gallantry.

I. Allegro, D major, 2/2. The first violins give out the sprightly first theme, the flutes following with a subsidiary theme in a passage that leads to a development section. The first violins now chant a second theme, friskier than the first in its wide leaps and mimicked by a supporting bassoon. Both major themes supply material for the main development section. There is a general review in C major, leading to the return of the second theme in D major, the key of the movement.

II. Larghetto, A major, 3/4. The chief melody of this movement is again entrusted to the first violins after a brief preface of four measures. “Only a certain rigidity in the harmonic changes and a slight exaggeration in the melodic line betray a non-‘classical’ feeling,” wrote one annotator. “The middle section is built on a running pizzicato passage. After rising to a climax, the interest shifts to the woodwinds, and a surprise modulation brings back the first subject, which, after a slight interruption by a recall of the middle section, picks up an oboe counterpoint in triplets. At the end the accompaniment keeps marching on until it disappears in the distance.”

III. Gavotte: Non troppo allegro, D major, 4/4. This replaces the usual minuet in the classical scheme of things. One senses a scherzo without glimpsing its shape. The strings and the woodwinds announce the graceful dance theme in the first part, which is only twelve measures long in a symphony which lasts, in all, as many minutes. In the G major Trio that follows, flutes and clarinets join in sustaining a theme over a pastoral-like organ-point in the cellos and double-basses. 24 A counter-theme is heard in the oboe. The first part returns, and the movement is over in a flash.

The Gavotte was a widely used dance form in the music of the eighteenth century. It was said to stem from the Gavots, the people of the Pays de Gap. Originally a “danse grave”, it differed from others of its kind in one respect. The dancers neither walked nor shuffled, but raised their feet. The gavotte was supposedly introduced to the French court in the sixteenth century as part of the entertainment enacted by natives in provincial costumes.

IV. Finale: Molto vivace, D major, 2/2. A bright little theme, chattered by the strings after an emphatic chord, serves as principal subject of this movement. A bridge-passage leads to a two-part second subject, in A major, the first part taken up by the woodwinds in a twittering melody (later passed to the strings), the second a counter-theme for solo oboe. The material is briefly and lucidly developed, and a recapitulation brings back the first section, with the woodwinds assuming the theme over a web of string pizzicati. A miniature coda follows, and there is a sudden halt to the music, as if at the precise, split-second moment that its logic and breath have run out.

Symphony No. 5, Op. 100

Of Prokofieff’s subsequent symphonies it is only the Fifth thus far that has established itself with any promise of endurance in the concert repertory. The First, composed in 1908 and not included in the catalogue of Prokofieff’s works, may be dismissed as a student experiment. The Second, following sixteen years later, proved a stylistic misfit of noisy primitivism and even noisier factory-like mechanism. The Third, an impassioned and dramatic fantasy, dating from 1928, drew on material from an unproduced opera, “The Flaming Angel.” Prokofieff also tells us 25 that the stormy scherzo movement derived in part from Chopin’s B-flat minor Sonata. The symphony was first performed in Paris on May 17, 1929, and carries a dedication to his life-long friend and colleague, the composer Miaskovsky. “I feel that in this symphony I have succeeded in deepening my musical language,” Prokofieff wrote after his return to Russia and when the work had received its initial performances there. “I should not want the Soviet listener to judge me solely by the March from ‘The Love of Three Oranges’ and the Gavotte from the ‘Classical Symphony.’” According to Israel Nestyev, Prokofieff’s Soviet biographer, the Third Symphony was “something of an echo of the past, being made up chiefly of materials relating to 1918 and 1919.”

With the Fourth Symphony we come to what might be termed Prokofieff’s “American” Symphony. This was composed in 1929 for the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Boston Symphony. Much of the music harks back to the suave and courtly style of the “Classical” Symphony, without its uniform elegance of idiom, however. It was certainly a change from an explosion like the “Scythian” Suite, that had fairly rocked the sedate and cultivated subscribers of Symphony Hall out of their seats.

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It is the Fifth that constitutes Prokofieff’s most ambitious contribution to symphonic literature. It is a complex and infinitely variegated score, yet its composition took a solitary month. Another month was given over to orchestrating the work, and somewhere in between Prokofieff managed to begin and complete one of his most enduring film scores, that to Eisenstein’s “Ivan the Terrible.” The fact is that Prokofieff had been jotting down themes for this symphony in a special notebook for several years. “I always work that way,” he explained, “and that is probably why I write so fast.”

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Composed during the summer of 1944, the Fifth Symphony was performed in America on November 9, 1945, at a concert of the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Serge Koussevitzky. Five days later, under the same auspices, it was introduced to New York at Carnegie Hall. Prokofieff had himself directed the world premiere in Moscow in January of that year. At that time Prokofieff, asked about the program or content of the symphony would only admit that it was a symphony “about the spirit of man.” The symphony was composed and performed in Moscow at a time of mounting Soviet victories over the German invaders. It seemed inevitable that a mood of exultation would find its way into this music. To Nestyev the symphony captured the listeners “with its healthy mood of affirmation.” Continuing, this Soviet analyst declared that “in the heroic, manly images of the first movement, in the holiday jubilation of the finale, the listeners sensed a living transmutation of that popular emotional surge ... which we felt in those days of victories over Nazi Germany.”

In four movements, the Fifth Symphony is of basic traditional structure, despite its daring lapses from orthodoxy. The predominant mood is heroic and affirmative, at times tragic in its fervid intensity, sombre recurringly, but essentially an assertion of joyous strength, with momentary bursts of sidelong gaiety reserved for the last movement. A terse and searching analysis of the Fifth Symphony was made by John N. Burk for the program-book of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. It reads:

“I. Andante. The opening movement is built on two full-voiced melodic themes, the first in triple, the second in duple beat. Contrast is found in the alternate rhythm as both are fully developed. There is an impressive coda.

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“II. Allegro marcato. The second movement has earmarks of the classical scherzo. Under the theme there is a steady reiteration of a staccato accompaniment, 4/4. The melody, passed by the clarinet to the other woodwinds and by them variously treated, plays over the marked and unremitting beat. A bridge passage for a substantial wind choir ushers in (and is to usher out) the Trio-like middle section, which is in 3/4 time and also rhythmically accented, the clarinet first bearing the burden of the melody. The first section, returning, is freshly treated. At the close the rhythm becomes more incisive and intense.

“III. Adagio. 3/4. The slow movement has, like the scherzo, a persistent accompaniment figure. It opens with a melody set forth espressivo by the woodwinds, carried by the strings into their high register. The movement is tragic in mood, rich in episodic melody. It carries the symphony to its deepest point of tragic tension, as descending scales give a weird effect of outcries. But this tension suddenly passes, and the reprise is serene.

“IV. Allegro giocoso. The finale opens Allegro giocoso, and after a brief tranquil passage for the divided cellos and basses, gives its light, rondo-like theme. There is a quasi-gaiety in the development, but, as throughout the symphony, something ominous seems always to lurk around the corner. The awareness of brutal warfare broods over it and comes forth in sharp dissonance—at the end.”

The Sixth Symphony, in E-flat minor, Opus 111

In a letter to his American publishers dated September 6, 1946, Prokofieff announced that he was working on two major compositions—a sonata for violin and piano and a Sixth Symphony. “The symphony will be in three movements,” he wrote. “Two of them were sketched last summer and at present I am working on the third. I am planning to orchestrate the whole symphony in the autumn.”

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The various emotional states or moods of the symphony Prokofieff described as follows:—“The first movement is agitated in character, lyrical in places, and austere in others. The second movement, andante, is lighter and more songful. The finale, lighter and major in its character, would be like the finale of my Fifth Symphony but for the austere reminiscences of the first movement.”

How active and productive a worker Prokofieff was may be gathered from other disclosures in the same letter. Besides the Symphony and Sonata, he was applying the finishing touches to a “Symphonic Suite of Waltzes,” drawn from his ballet, “Cinderella”, his opera, “War and Peace” (based on Tolstoy’s historical novel), and his score for the film biography of the Russian poet Lermontov. Earlier that summer he had completed three separate suites from “Cinderella” and a “big new scene” for “War and Peace”. No idler he!

The first performance of Prokofieff’s Sixth Symphony occurred in Moscow on October 10, 1947. Four months later, on February 11, 1948, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union issued its resolution denouncing Prokofieff and six other Soviet composers for their failure to “permeate themselves with a consciousness of the high demands made of musical creation by the Soviet people.” The seven composers were charged with “formalist distortions and anti-democratic tendencies in music” in several of their more recent symphonic and operatic works. It has been assumed that the Sixth Symphony was among the offending scores which the Central Committee had in mind. While it was not placed under the official ban, it did not figure subsequently in the active repertory. To Leopold Stokowski, who conducted its American premiere with the New York Philharmonic on November 24, 1949, in Carnegie 29 Hall, we owe the perceptive analysis of the Sixth Symphony that follows:—

I. “The first part has two themes—the first in a rather fast dance rhythm, the second a slower songlike melody, a little modal in character, recalling the old Russian and Byzantine scales. Later this music becomes gradually more animated as the themes are developed, and after a climax of the development there is a slower transition to the second part.”

II. “I think this second part will need several hearings to be fully understood. The harmonies and texture of the music are extremely complex. Later there is a theme for horns which is simpler and sounds like voices singing. This leads to a warm cantilena of the violins and a slower transition to the third part.”

III. “This is rhythmic and full of humor, verging on the satirical. The rhythms are clear-cut, and while the thematic lines are simple, they are accompanied by most original harmonic sequences, alert and rapid. Near the end a remembrance sounds like an echo of the pensive melancholy of the first part of the symphony, followed by a rushing, tumultuous end.”

Mr. Stokowski has also stated that the Sixth Symphony represents a natural development of Prokofieff’s extraordinary gifts as an original creative artist. “I knew Prokofieff well in Paris and in Russia,” he writes, “and I feel that this symphony is an eloquent expression of the full range of his personality. It is the creation of a master artist, serene in the use and control of his medium.”

The Seventh Symphony, Opus 131

At this writing the Seventh Symphony has yet to be heard in New York. Its American premiere by the Philadelphia Orchestra has been announced for April 10, to be followed by its first performance in Carnegie Hall, by the same orchestra, on April 21, with Eugene Ormandy to conduct on both occasions. 30 The work was composed in 1952 and performed for the first time in Moscow on October 11, 1952, under the direction of Samuel Samosud. It is a comparatively short symphony as the symphonies of our time go, lasting no more than thirty minutes. For Prokofieff the orchestration is relatively modest and the division of the symphony is in the four traditional movements:—

I. Moderato

II. Allegretto

III. Andante espressivo

IV. Vivace

From first note to last it is a transparent score, lyrical, melodic, and easily grasped and assimilated. Recurring themes are readily identified. “The harmonic structure could hardly be called modern in this anno domini 1953,” writes Donald Engle, “and the scoring is generally open and concise, at times even spare and lean.”

The overall impression is that the music has two inevitable points of being, its beginning and its end, and that the symphony is the shortest possible distance between them. Such, in a sense, has been the classical ideal, and thus we find Prokofieff completing the symphonic cycle of his career by returning once more, whether by inner compulsion or outer necessity, to a classical symphony.