Sergei Prokofiev

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FROM: AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE 890 Broadway New York, New York 10003 (212) 477-3030 SERGEI PROKOFIEV Romeo and Juliet - Composer Sergei Prokofiev was born in Sontsovka, named Krasnoye, in the government of Ekaterinslav in 1891, and died in Moscow in 1953. He was a pupil of Liadov, Rimsky-Korsakov, and others at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. He became widely known as a brilliant pianist and applied his knowledge of the piano in his compositions, at twenty-three winning the Rubinstein prize with his First Piano Concerto. His appearances were usually as the interpreter oF his own compositions. For some years he lived in exile, travelling on a League of Nations passport. He visited Russia in 1927, 1929, and again in 1932. He finally settled in Moscow with his family in 1934. His style may be described as the antithesis oF that oF Scriabin. He aimed at the realization oF primitive emotions, and playfulness and satire are also characteristics. His sympathies and taste inclined towards the classical but his manner was independent. Among his works are the Scythian Suite, for orchestra, the ballets, Chout (or The Buffoon), The Prodigal Son, Romeo and Juliet, and Cinderella, eleven operas, including The Love for Three Oranges (libretto after Gozzi), War and Peace, The Flaming Angel, et al., a fairy tale for children, Peter and the Wolf (a monologue with spoken voice with orchestral accompaniment, 1936), five piano concertos, violin concertos, symphonies, the brief piano pieces Sarcasms, nine piano sonatas, songs, etc. In 1948 Prokofiev, along with other leading musicians, came under censure by the Soviet authorities for the alleged “formalistic distortions and anti-democratic tendencies of his music” and he promised to begin “a search for a clearer and more meaningful language.” (more) PROKOFIEV - Page 2 He died on the same day as Joseph Stalin, and in 1957 his Seventh Symphony was posthumously awarded a Lenin Prize. -30- 2012/2013 FROM: The Oxford Companion to Music, Tenth Edition .

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Tolstoy's War and Peace
Tolstoy’s War and Peace Soap opera, epic masterpiece, neither, or both? Course # 21FTOY Format: Seminar Moderators: Nancy Coiner Kendra Dahlquist Date and Time: Monday, 9:30-11:30 AM 10 weeks, starting 9/27/2021 Format: Online Maximum number of participants: 18 Auditors accepted: Yes, up to 2 Purpose : We will read War and Peace together, with plenty of background presentations and discussion to make it come alive as a work of art and life. Description: According to Isaac Babel, “If life could write by itself, it would write like Tolstoy.” War and Peace is a huge, sweeping narrative, part history and part fiction, which describes Napoleon's attempt to conquer Russia. Centered on the lives of four aristocratic families between 1805 and 1812, it includes complex characters based on Tolstoy’s parents and grandparents, who spoke French and wore French fashions but passionately resisted Napoleon’s attack. Yes, it’s long, with a cast of hundreds. But almost all readers find that, after the opening chapters, the story and characters carry them along irresistibly. We witness the burning of Moscow, young people making life- altering mistakes, the glory and horror of war. Yet (as Woolf notes) "there is always at the centre of all the brilliant and flashing petals . this scorpion, ‘Why live?’" It’s a brilliant, unsettling mix. Background presentations and lively discussions will help us enter this exhilarating work of historical and philosophical fiction. Role of participants: Participants will read approximately 150 pages of War and Peace a session. They will have the choice of giving a presentation (on Tolstoy, Russian Orthodoxy, Napoleon's career, the battle of Austerlitz, etc.) or leading a discussion.
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The Musical Partnership of Sergei Prokofiev And
THE MUSICAL PARTNERSHIP OF SERGEI PROKOFIEV AND MSTISLAV ROSTROPOVICH A CREATIVE PROJECT SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT FOR THE DEGREE MASTER OF MUSIC IN PERFORMANCE BY JIHYE KIM DR. PETER OPIE - ADVISOR BALL STATE UNIVERSITY MUNCIE, INDIANA DECEMBER 2011 Among twentieth-century composers, Sergei Prokofiev is widely considered to be one of the most popular and important figures. He wrote in a variety of genres, including opera, ballet, symphonies, concertos, solo piano, and chamber music. In his cello works, of which three are the most important, his partnership with the great Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich was crucial. To understand their partnership, it is necessary to know their background information, including biographies, and to understand the political environment in which they lived. Sergei Prokofiev was born in Sontovka, (Ukraine) on April 23, 1891, and grew up in comfortable conditions. His father organized his general education in the natural sciences, and his mother gave him his early education in the arts. When he was four years old, his mother provided his first piano lessons and he began composition study as well. He studied theory, composition, instrumentation, and piano with Reinhold Glière, who was also a composer and pianist. Glière asked Prokofiev to compose short pieces made into the structure of a series.1 According to Glière’s suggestion, Prokofiev wrote a lot of short piano pieces, including five series each of 12 pieces (1902-1906). He also composed a symphony in G major for Glière. When he was twelve years old, he met Glazunov, who was a professor at the St.
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Sample Pages
About This Volume Brett Cooke We continue to be surprised by how the extremely rewarding world WKDW/HR7ROVWR\FUHDWHGLVDG\QDPLFVWLOOJURZLQJRQH:KHQWKH Russian writer sat down in 1863 to begin what became War and PeaceKHXWLOL]HGSRUWUDLWVRIfamily members, as well as images RIKLPVHOILQZKDWDW¿UVWFRQVWLWXWHGDOLJKWO\¿FWLRQDOL]HGfamily chronicle; he evidently used the exercise to consider how he and the SUHVHQWVWDWHRIKLVFRXQWU\FDPHWREH7KLVLQYROYHGDUHWKLQNLQJRI KRZKLVSDUHQWV¶JHQHUDWLRQZLWKVWRRGWKH)UHQFKLQYDVLRQRI slightly more than a half century prior, both militarily and culturally. Of course, one thinks about many things in the course of six highly FUHDWLYH \HDUV DQG KLV WH[W UHÀHFWV PDQ\ RI WKHVH LQWHUHVWV +LV words are over determined in that a single scene or even image typically serves several themes as he simultaneously pondered the Napoleonic Era, the present day in Russia, his family, and himself, DVZHOODVPXFKHOVH6HOIGHYHORSPHQWEHLQJWKH¿UVWRUGHUIRUDQ\ VHULRXVDUWLVWZHVHHDQWLFLSDWLRQVRIWKHSURWHDQFKDOOHQJHV7ROVWR\ posed to the contemporary world decades after War and Peace in terms of religion, political systems, and, especially, moral behavior. In other words, he grew in stature. As the initial reception of the QRYHO VKRZV 7ROVWR\ UHVSRQGHG WR WKH FRQVWHUQDWLRQ RI LWV ¿UVW readers by increasing the dynamism of its form and considerably DXJPHQWLQJLWVLQWHOOHFWXDODPELWLRQV,QKLVKDQGV¿FWLRQEHFDPH emboldened to question the structure of our universe and expand our sense of our own nature. We are all much the richer spiritually for his achievement. One of the happy accidents of literary history is that War and Peace and Fyodor 'RVWRHYVN\¶VCrime and PunishmentZHUH¿UVW published in the same literary periodical, The Russian Messenger. )XUWKHUPRUHDV-DQHW7XFNHUH[SODLQVERWKQRYHOVH[SUHVVFRQFHUQ whether Russia should continue to conform its culture to West (XURSHDQ PRGHOV VLPXOWDQHRXVO\ VHL]LQJ RQ WKH VDPH ¿JXUH vii Napoleon Bonaparte, in one case leading a literal invasion of the country, in the other inspiring a premeditated murder.
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MUSICAL CENSORSHIP and REPRESSION in the UNION of SOVIET COMPOSERS: KHRENNIKOV PERIOD Zehra Ezgi KARA1, Jülide GÜNDÜZ
SAYI 17 BAHAR 2018 MUSICAL CENSORSHIP AND REPRESSION IN THE UNION OF SOVIET COMPOSERS: KHRENNIKOV PERIOD Zehra Ezgi KARA1, Jülide GÜNDÜZ Abstract In the beginning of 1930s, institutions like Association for Contemporary Music and the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians were closed down with the aim of gathering every study of music under one center, and under the control of the Communist Party. As a result, all the studies were realized within the two organizations of the Composers’ Union in Moscow and Leningrad in 1932, which later merged to form the Union of Soviet Composers in 1948. In 1948, composer Tikhon Khrennikov (1913-2007) was appointed as the frst president of the Union of Soviet Composers by Andrei Zhdanov and continued this post until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Being one of the most controversial fgures in the history of Soviet music, Khrennikov became the third authority after Stalin and Zhdanov in deciding whether a composer or an artwork should be censored or supported by the state. Khrennikov’s main job was to ensure the application of socialist realism, the only accepted doctrine by the state, on the feld of music, and to eliminate all composers and works that fell out of this context. According to the doctrine of socialist realism, music should formalize the Soviet nationalist values and serve the ideals of the Communist Party. Soviet composers should write works with folk music elements which would easily be appreciated by the public, prefer classical orchestration, and avoid atonality, complex rhythmic and harmonic structures. In this period, composers, performers or works that lacked socialist realist values were regarded as formalist.
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Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra 2016-2017 Gala Concert September 17, 2016 MANFRED HONECK, CONDUCTOR GIL SHAHAM, VIOLIN DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH Festive Overture, Opus 96 SERGEI PROKOFIEV “Masks” from Romeo and Juliet, Opus 64a CLAUDE DEBUSSY Clair de Lune Orch. Arthur Luck FELIX MENDELSSOHN Scherzo from the Incidental Music to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Opus 61 RICHARD STAUSS “Moonlight Scene” from Capriccio, Opus 85 EDVARD GREIG “In the Hall of the Mountain King” from Peer Gynt ARAM KHACHATURIAN Suite from Masquerade I. Waltz IV. Romance V. Galop FRITZ KREISLER Praeludium and Allegro Orch. Clark McAlister FRITZ KREISLER Liebesleid Orch. André Kostelanetz FRITZ KREISLER Schön Rosmarin Orch. André Kostelanetz PABLO DE SARASATE Fantasy on Bizet’s Carmen for Violin and Orchestra, Opus 25 Mr. Shaham Sept. 17, 2016, page 1 PROGRAM NOTES BY DR. RICHARD E. RODDA DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-1975) Festive Overture, Opus 96 (1954) Among the grand symphonies, concertos, operas and chamber works that Dmitri Shostakovich produced are also many occasional pieces: film scores, tone poems, jingoistic anthems, brief instrumental compositions. Though most of these works are unfamiliar in the West, one — the Festive Overture — has been a favorite since it was written in the autumn of 1954. Shostakovich composed it for a concert on November 7, 1954 commemorating the 37th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, but its jubilant nature suggests it may also have been conceived as an outpouring of relief at the death of Joseph Stalin one year earlier. One critic suggested that the Overture was “a gay picture of streets and squares packed with a young and happy throng.” As its title suggests, the Festive Overture is a brilliant affair, full of fanfare and bursting spirits.
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Teacher Notes on Russian Music and Composers Prokofiev Gave up His Popularity and Wrote Music to Please Stalin. He Wrote Music
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University of Oklahoma Graduate College A
UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE A PEDAGOGICAL AND PERFORMANCE GUIDE TO PROKOFIEV’S FOUR PIECES, OP. 32 A DOCUMENT SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF MUSICAL ARTS By IVAN D. HURD III Norman, Oklahoma 2017 A PEDAGOGICAL AND PERFORMANCE GUIDE TO PROKOFIEV’S FOUR PIECES, OP. 32 A DOCUMENT APPROVED FOR THE SCHOOL OF MUSIC BY ______________________________ Dr. Jane Magrath, Chair ______________________________ Dr. Barbara Fast ______________________________ Dr. Jeongwon Ham ______________________________ Dr. Paula Conlon ______________________________ Dr. Caleb Fulton Dr. Click here to enter text. © Copyright by IVAN D. HURD III 2017 All Rights Reserved. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The number of people that deserve recognition for their role in completing not only this document, but all of my formal music training and education, are innumerable. Thank you to the faculty members, past and present, who have served on my doctoral committee: Dr. Jane Magrath (chair), Dr. Barbara Fast, Dr. Jeongwon Ham, Dr. Paula Conlon, Dr. Rachel Lumsden, and Dr. Caleb Fulton. Dr. Magrath, thank you for inspiring me, by your example, to find the absolute best possible version of myself as a pianist, educator, collaborator, writer, and scholar. I am incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to study with you on a weekly basis in lessons, to develop and hone my teaching skills through your guidance in pedagogy classes and observed lessons, and for your encouragement throughout every aspect of the degree. Dr. Fast, I especially appreciate long conversations about group teaching, your inspiration to try new things and be creative in the classroom, and for your practical career advice.
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THE USE of the FRENCH LANGUAGE in LEO TOLSTOY's NOVEL, WAR and PEACE by OLGA HENRY MICHAEL D. PICONE, COMMITTEE CHAIR ANDREW
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Boston Symphony Orchestra Concert Programs, Season 68, 1948-1949
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Paris Modern the Swedish Ballet 1920-1925
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Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Prokofiev Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev (/prɵˈkɒfiɛv/; Russian: Сергей Сергеевич Прокофьев, tr. Sergej Sergeevič Prokof'ev; April 27, 1891 [O.S. 15 April];– March 5, 1953) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor. As the creator of acknowledged masterpieces across numerous musical genres, he is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century. His works include such widely heard works as the March from The Love for Three Oranges, the suite Lieutenant Kijé, the ballet Romeo and Juliet – from which "Dance of the Knights" is taken – and Peter and the Wolf. Of the established forms and genres in which he worked, he created – excluding juvenilia – seven completed operas, seven symphonies, eight ballets, five piano concertos, two violin concertos, a cello concerto, and nine completed piano sonatas. A graduate of the St Petersburg Conservatory, Prokofiev initially made his name as an iconoclastic composer-pianist, achieving notoriety with a series of ferociously dissonant and virtuosic works for his instrument, including his first two piano concertos. In 1915 Prokofiev made a decisive break from the standard composer-pianist category with his orchestral Scythian Suite, compiled from music originally composed for a ballet commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev of the Ballets Russes. Diaghilev commissioned three further ballets from Prokofiev – Chout, Le pas d'acier and The Prodigal Son – which at the time of their original production all caused a sensation among both critics and colleagues. Prokofiev's greatest interest, however, was opera, and he composed several works in that genre, including The Gambler and The Fiery Angel. Prokofiev's one operatic success during his lifetime was The Love for Three Oranges, composed for the Chicago Opera and subsequently performed over the following decade in Europe and Russia.
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The Rite of Spring: a Failure and a Triumph
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