Louis Leopold Biancolli

“ The solo violin chants a gentle theme against which the strings and clarinet weave in equally gentle background. There is a spirited change of mood as the melody is followed by rhythmic passage-work sustained over a marked bass. The first theme returns as the movement draws to a close, more deliberate now. The flute takes it up as the violin embroiders richly around it. ”

“ The Introduction is the kernel, the quintessence, the chief thought of the whole symphony. This is Fate, the fatal power which hinders one in the pursuit of happiness from gaining the goal, which jealously provides that peace and comfort do not prevail, that the sky is not free from clouds—a might that swings, like the sword of Damocles, constantly over the head, that poisons continually the soul. This might is overpowering and invincible. There is nothing to do but to submit and vainly to complain. ”

“ It is given to few composers to become classics in their lifetime. Of these few Serge Prokofieff was a notable example. At his death in Moscow on March 4, 1953, he was a recognized international figure of long standing, a favorite of concert-goers the world over, and in almost every musical form, whether opera, symphony, concerto, suite, or sonata, a securely established creator. Only two contemporaries could seriously dispute Prokofieff’s dominant position in world music—his own countryman Dimitri Shostakovich and the Finnish Jean Sibelius. ”

“ Such is the program, in substance, of the first movement.
“The second movement shows another phase of sadness. Here is that melancholy feeling which enwraps one when he sits at night alone in the house exhausted by work; the book which he had taken to read has slipped from his hand; a swarm of reminiscences has arisen. How sad it is that so much has already been and gone! And yet it is a pleasure to think of the early years. One mourns the past and has neither the courage nor the will to begin a new life. One is rather tired of life. ”

“ Brodsky martyrized his hearers as well as himself.
“The Adagio, with its tender national melody, almost conciliates, almost wins us. But it breaks off abruptly to make way for a finale that puts us in the midst of the brutal and wretched jollity of a Russian kermess. We see wild and vulgar faces, we hear curses, we smell bad brandy.
“Friedrich Vischer once asserted in reference to lascivious paintings that there are pictures which ‘stink in the eye.’ Tschaikowsky’s violin concerto brings to us for the first time the horrid idea that there may be music that stinks in the ear.” ”

“ The pungent note of modernism is readily heard in this music, though compared with the more dissonant writing of Prokofieff’s piano and violin concertos, it is a kind of modified modernism, diverting in its sophisticated discourse on the child’s world of fairyland wonder. If, as Nestyev says, the work is “a subtle parody of the old romantic opera with its false pathos and sham fantasy,” it is primarily what it purports to be—a fairy tale, as gay and sparkling and wondrous as any in the whole realm of opera. ”

“ Prokofieff’s return to Russia opened a new and active chapter of his career. Almost overnight he began to identify himself with the ideals of Soviet musical organizations insofar as they were concerned with education and the fostering of a community feeling of cultural solidarity. The attraction of the theatre was stronger than ever, and soon he was composing operas, ballet scores, incidental music for plays, and music for films. Indeed, the composition that virtually reintroduced him to the Russian public was the striking score for the film “Lieutenant Kije.” ”

“ The awesome scene, with its haunting, driving winds, desolate moans, and dread terror, is repeated at the end. In the middle occurs a section featuring a clarinet in a plaintive and tender melody heard against string pizzicati. This instantly evokes the image of Francesca telling her tragic tale, which mounts in fervor and reaches its shattering crisis, before the wailing winds of Dante’s netherworld close in again. ”

“ In pleading guilty to the charge of formalism, Prokofieff attempted to explain how it had found its way into his music:—
“The resolution is all the more important because it has demonstrated that the formalist trend is alien to the Soviet people, that it leads to the impoverishment and decline of music, and has pointed out with definitive clarity the aims which we must strive to achieve as the best way to serve the Soviet people. Speaking of myself, the elements of formalism were peculiar to my music as long as fifteen or twenty years ago. ”

“ All this causes a deep dissatisfaction with myself.
“It is possible that I have, as people say, written myself out, and that nothing remains but for me to repeat and imitate myself. Yesterday evening I glanced over the Fourth Symphony, our symphony. How superior to this one, how much better it is! Yes, this is a very, very sad fact.” A composer who was still to write the Hamlet overture-fantasy, the Sleeping Beauty and Nutcracker ballets, the opera Pique Dame, and the Pathetic symphony, was anything but “written out,” as Tschaikowsky feared! ”

“ Critical reaction to both Suites has varied, some reviewers finding the music dry and insipid for such a romantic theme; others hailing its pungency and color. Prokofieff’s classicism was compared with his romanticism. If we are prepared to accept the “Classical” Symphony as truly classical, said one critic, then we must accept the “Romeo and Juliet” music as truly romantic. The cold, cheerless, dreary music “is certainly not love music,” read one verdict. ”

“ The mood is now gay, now mournful. One thinks about nothing; one gives the fancy loose rein, and there is pleasure in drawings of marvellous lines. Suddenly rush into the imagination the picture of a drunken peasant and a gutter-song. Military music is heard passing by in the distance. These are disconnected pictures which come and go in the brain of the sleeper. They have nothing to do with reality; they are unintelligible, bizarre, out-at-elbows.
“Fourth movement. If you had no pleasure in yourself, look about you. Go to the people. ”

“ The second is innovation, whose inception I trace to my meeting with Taneieff, when he taunted me for my rather “elementary harmony.” At first, this innovation consisted in the search for an individual harmonic language, but later was transformed into a desire to find a medium for the expression of strong emotions, as in Sarcasms, Scythian Suite, the opera The Gambler, They are Seven, the Second Symphony, etc. This innovating strain has affected not only the harmonic idiom, but also the melodic inflection, orchestration, and stage technique. ”

“ Russian wasted time weighing the advantages and disadvantages of marriage, a Spanish baritone named Padilla came along, made violent love to Mlle. Artôt, and hurried her off to the altar before she could catch her breath and notify her Russian suitor. We nevertheless owe the fickle French lady a debt of gratitude. Without the emotional disturbance Tschaikowsky might not have been moved to write the Romeo and Juliet overture-fantasy. His first serious rebuff in love had at any rate paid dividends in art. ”

“ A large proportion of his music became markedly topical and “national” in theme and orientation. Yet for all the strictures levelled at his music, and Khrennikoff was to scold him yet once more for “bourgeois formalism”, Prokofieff, in most essentials, followed the unhampered bent of his genius. Ballet music, piano and cello sonatas continued to show that preoccupation with living and exciting form that 20 in the best art can be dictated only by the exigencies of the material. ”

“ Its music is generally regarded as superior to that of the Swan Lake ballet and inferior to that of the Nutcracker suite. Few ballet scores are so suitable in mood and style for the action they accompany. The music is truly melodious in Tschaikowsky’s lighter vein. The fantasy is conveyed in bright, glittering colors, and, as Mrs. Newmarch pointed out, the music “never descends to the commonplace level of the ordinary ballet music.” There are thirty numbers in all, many of them, especially the waltz, endearing in their lilting and haunting grace. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When Warlamoff laughingly ridiculed “these abominations which remind one of death,” Tschaikowsky agreed jovially. “There is plenty of time before we have to reckon with this snub-nosed horror. It will not come to snatch us off just yet! I feel that I shall live a long time!” Five days later, Peter Ilyitch Tschaikowsky, generally regarded as Russia’s greatest composer, was dead, one of the many victims of the fearful cholera epidemic then raging in St. Petersburg.
If Tschaikowsky followed a definite emotional or philosophical program in the Pathetic symphony, the key to it died with him. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ A frank sincerity and warmheartedness well from his music. The best of his melodies linger hauntingly in the mind and heart. So long as sincere feeling expressed in sincere artistic form can move the hearts of men, Tschaikowsky’s music will continue to hold a high place in the concert hall and opera house.
Only Beethoven and Mozart can rival Tschaikowsky in the number of compositions in various musical forms that stand out as repertory favorites. Tschaikowsky’s violin concerto is as much a “request” item as Beethoven’s. ”

“ One of these early efforts was submitted to the composer Taneieff, who advised the family to send their son to Reinhold Gliere for further study. This early attraction for the theatre was later to culminate not only in several operas of marked originality but in numerous scores for ballet and the screen. To the end Prokofieff never quite lost his childhood passion for the stage. One has only to hear his music for the “Romeo and Juliet” ballet and the opera, “The Love of Three Oranges” to realize how enduring a hold the theatre had on him. ”

“ The Pathetic symphony ranks with the three or four enduring favorites of the repertory. Tschaikowsky’s Nutcracker ballet is probably the most popular suite of its kind in music. The opera, Eugene Onegin, a masterpiece worthy to stand beside some of the best Italian and German operas, is widely loved even outside Russia. Tschaikowsky’s Piano Concerto, or, at any rate, the big opening theme, is doubtless known to more people than all other piano concertos put together. ”

“ Listen to the keyboard antics of an unholy organism which is one-third virtuoso, one-third athlete, and one-third wayward poet, armed with gloved finger-fins and you will have an idea of the playing of a Serge Prokofieff, pianist. ”

“ Mme. von Meck resigned herself to an advisory role of patroness-friend, and played it nobly. The world reveres her for it. “Our symphony,” Tschaikowsky wrote to her, communicating his intention to dedicate the Fourth to her. “I believe you will find in it echoes of your deepest thoughts and feelings.”
What Tschaikowsky meant, of course, was “my deepest thoughts and feelings.” The plural possessive, “ours,” is gallant rather than collaborative. Even so, he could with more truth than courtesy have written to another woman, Antonina Ivanovna Miliukov, in similar style. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Later Tschaikowsky, reading reports of how Americans were acclaiming his concerto, wrote: “Think what healthy appetites these Americans must have! Each time Bülow was obliged to repeat the whole finale of my concerto! Nothing like this happens in our own country.”
The concerto opens with a striking theme, Allegro non troppo e molto maestoso, in D-flat major, 3-4, familiar to music-lovers of all tastes the world over. The strings take it up after some brief preluding, and it is then repeated, with rhythmic modification, by the solo piano. ”

“ Peter and 19 the Wolf is loved by children and unspoiled adults the world over. His music for the film Alexander Nevsky and the cantata he later fashioned from it have been enormously popular. His suite Lieutenant Kijé, originally composed for another motion picture, charmed audiences as soon as it was heard, in 1934. On the contrary, among contemporary masters Prokofieff is precisely one whom we can salute as being close to the people, able to write music that is equally appealing to connoisseurs and less demanding listeners, a man who understands the musical character of simple human beings. ”