In Harold C. Schonberg's Lives of the Great Composers, he quotes Prokofiev's old friend Vernon Duke (Vladimir Dukelsky): "I asked Sergei (Prokofiev) a difficult question then uppermost in my mind. I wanted to know how he could live and work in the atmosphere of Soviet totalitarianism. Sergei was quiet for a moment and then said quietly and seriously: 'Here is how I feel about it: I care nothing for politics--I'm a composer first and last. Any government that lets me write my music in peace, publishes everything I compose before the ink is dry, and performs every note that comes from my pen is all right with me.'". Proko went on to say that he had a comfortable flat in Moscow, a dacha in the country, and a new car, and that his sons went to an English school in Moscow. This he related to Duke on P's last trip abroad.

Later we know that Proko ran into problems with the Soviet state, and had to "recant" errors periodically, with his fingers undoubtedly crossed behind his back. But his amazing egomania and his compulsion to compose music seem to have mostly innoculated him against experiencing and internalizing the sort of dark malaise that we associate with Shostakovich's psychological profile. Prokofiev's own internalizing the need for a "new simplicity" in the music of a dutiful Soviet composer may also have served him well in the long run, as it perhaps curbed too far a wandering into the dreaded "formalism" that was the bugbear of the Soviet musical establishment, and resulted in such accessable and popular works as Romeo and Juliet, the Kije and Alexander Nevsky soundtracks, the 5th and 7th symphonies, the SQ #2, Peter and the Wolf, and so much more. Great music over the decades from a deeply flawed man.

 

... Great music over the decades from a deeply flawed man.

I'm just wanting more about this. What made him a "deeply flawed man" (Prokofiev)?

 

Many books about Soviet art and music indicate composers were freed from some artistic imprisonment during World War II, a time when the shackles placed on people in USSR and its satellite nations were loosened because of the war. This was a brief time, however, and the late 1940s and 1950s placed similar restrictions on artists that were in place during Stalin's era of "Soviet realism" in the 1930s. In any event, the Soviet Union never produced a 12-tone composer of any note; when this music was becoming popular worldwide in the 1930s, Stalin was imposing a steel grip on the nation and its satellites. It was only in Czechoslovakia's "Prague spring" of 1968 did Soviet satellite composers from that nation feel free to use experimentation in music. The Soviets crushed that movement in middle 1968, however.

 

Back in the 60s and 70s, the only biography of Prokofiev was the "official" (i.e. doctrinaire) one by Nesteyev. It's amusing and fascinating reading.

 

I can and have recommended Claude Samuel's slender biography, Prokofiev, first published in 1960 in its original French. It was published in English in 1971 and again in 2000. A perceptive look at an idiosyncratic, prolific genius.

 

It prompted me to wonder whether or not living and working under the oppressive and downright dangerous soviet regime had any positive effect on the work of those musicians affected. … It's a curious thing that the Russian composers, in spite of their precarious situation, wrote some awfully brilliant stuff.

It likely depends on what one considers a positive effect. One certain effect, however, is that Soviet composers were obliged to conceive their major works in light of Socialist Realist aesthetics. According to this "occult" doctrine, all acceptable music had meaning and expressed ideology of a positive and optimistic sort. That which did not was condemned as formalist. Consequently, composers had to consider content and meaning at every stage of the compositional process, and to possess a working knowledge of how it is inscribed in musical structure - or, at least, an understanding of how Socialist Realist critics conceived the relation of meaning and musical structure. Since the only well-formed guidance on this subject was criticism in the Beethovenian heroic tradition as expounded by writers like Adolf Bernhard Marx, Aléxandre Oulibicheff, and Wilhelm von Lenz, supplemented by Tchaikovksy's programmatic accounts of his own works based on their writing, the result was to perpetuate the heroic Beethovenian tradition well into the 20th century. If you like dramatic instrumental music unified by an overriding narrative conception, the 20thc Russians wrote enormous quantities of it for your listening pleasure long after this vein was played out in the rest of Europe. The results range from works of genius to works of cringe-worthy bombast.

For anyone interested in this subject, Richard Taruskin's "Public Lies and Unspeakable Truth: Interpreting Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony" (in Shostakovich Studies, ed. David Fanning, Cambridge University Press, 1995) is essential reading. Taruskin demonstrates how critics applied the principles of Socialist Realist criticism in arguing for and against Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony after its premier.

 

It likely depends on what one considers a positive effect. One certain effect, however, is that Soviet composers were obliged to conceive their major works in light of Socialist Realist aesthetics. According to this "occult" doctrine, all acceptable music had meaning and expressed ideology of a positive and optimistic sort. That which did not was condemned as formalist. Consequently, composers had to consider content and meaning at every stage of the compositional process, and to possess a working knowledge of how it is inscribed in musical structure - or, at least, an understanding of how Socialist Realist critics conceived the relation of meaning and musical structure. Since the only well-formed guidance on this subject was criticism in the Beethovenian heroic tradition as expounded by writers like Adolf Bernhard Marx, Aléxandre Oulibicheff, and Wilhelm von Lenz, supplemented by Tchaikovksy's programmatic accounts of his own works based on their writing, the result was to perpetuate the heroic Beethovenian tradition well into the 20th century. If you likes dramatic instrumental music unified by an overriding narrative conception, the 20thc Russians wrote enormous quantities of it for you listening pleasure long after this vein was played out in the rest of Europe. The results range from works of genius to works of cringe-worthy bombast.

For anyone interested in this subject, Richard Taruskin's "Public Lies and Unspeakable Truth: Interpreting Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony" (in Shostakovich Studies, ed. David Fanning, Cambridge University Press, 1995) is essential reading. Taruskin demonstrates how critics applied the principles of Socialist Realist criticism in arguing for and against Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony after its premier.

I've always been impressed how the Shostakovich Fifth could at one and the same time be both a parody of the kind of music a megalomaniac like Stalin could love, and exactly the kind of music a megalomaniac like Stalin could love.

 

It's interesting that of the two totalitarian systems, the Soviets produced greater music than the Nazis. Presumably because the good German composers could leave and the Soviet composers couldn't.

 

Hindemith, Orff, Pfitzner, Strauss pop into my mind as Germans in Germany 1933-1945. Pretty much kept a low profile, as some were part Jewish or married to perhaps "suspect" people, or just saw clearly that to stick up one's head too high was to get it chopped off. At least Stalin didn't cast over his composers as sinister a shadow as did Hitler over his, maybe because his anti-semitism and anti-"formalism" was only a small component of his blunderbuss overall brutality. Also, he enlisted his composers in efforts to glorify the motherland and energize its population. Not sure Hitler ever had that idea.

 

This is a fascinating thread, especially about Proko.

It often seems like great art is produced where there is a lot of cash (eg Renaissance Italy). Despite the controls over what they wrote, did the Soviets provide better education and living standards for composers and musicians than was available in the west?

 

Also keep in mind Prokofiev's religious beliefs, which he converted to with Lina in the 1920s. Read up on some of that below. That was partially why they went to the USSR willingly despite rumors of oppression.

https://spectator.org/55393_hammer-sickle-and-christian-scientist/

 

Thank you so much for this link! Excellent documentation and insight into the strange person who was Sergei Prokofiev.

 

Indeed they wrote some marvellous stuff but getting it published was another matter! I really feel for Shostakovich, an artist living in a stifling environment.

 

I really feel for Shostakovich, an artist living in a stifling environment.

and which environment was not 'stifling' back then?

 

Fascinating stuff on Prokofiev! Many thanks for linking to the article.

 

Despite the fact that Shostakovich borrowed much from Prokofiev (especially in Shostakovich's more youthful works), the two were poles apart in several ways. Prokofiev, to my ears, adheres to a classical ideal (Haydn and Mozart; hence the wonderful "Classical Symphony"); one that is abstract, objective, emotionally clear, and musical. Underneath the Early Modernism, Shostakovich is a Romantic; emotionally conflicted and subjective; like Beethoven, Tchaikovsky or Mahler, projecting his own secret war with himself into the music. Indeed, there is an undercurrent of sadness, despair, anxiety and anger in Shostakovich.

Prokofiev was a talented chess player, a problem solver, his music fits together like a beautiful combination or endgame. Along this line, I suspect that Prokofiev's adherence to Christian Science was mostly pragmatic, useful as a means to positive thinking as opposed to a deeply felt spiritual belief. Shostakovich, on the other hand, leaves us forever trying to figure out what he means to say.

For me, Prokofiev is almost always accessible. I can listen to Prokofiev almost anytime. For Shostakovich, I have to be in the mood for it.

 

living and working under the oppressive and downright dangerous soviet regime

it was neither oppressive or dangerous, get your facts right.

 

Yes, if one was not among the hundreds of thousands dying in the camps, the millions dying in famines from failed five-year plans, or those lucky artists being stabbed through the eyes or shot in the back of the head.

 

Rapid decay of an interesting thread .

 

Why did Proko prefer east to west?

 

I did.

But did Strange Magic?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Dovlatov

Sergei Dovlatov told about the difference between East and West: In the East life was difficult, but as an author he was in direct contact with many readers. In the West life was easy, but alas, no contact at all with any reader. I guess, that composers encountered the same experience.

 

Sergei Dovlatov told about the difference between East and West: In the East life was difficult, but as an author he was in direct contact with many readers. In the West life was easy, but alas, no contact at all with any reader. I guess, that composers encountered the same experience.

Another and similar quote: "In the west, anything is possible but nothing matters. In Russia, nothing is possible but everything matters." Can't remember where I read that.

 

"Dovlatov wrote prose fiction but his numerous attempts to get published in the Soviet Union were in vain. Unable to publish in the Soviet Union, Dovlatov circulated his writings through samizdat and by having them smuggled into Western Europe for publication in foreign journals; an activity that caused his expulsion from the Union of Soviet Journalists in 1976."

Above quote from that Wikipedia link.

 

"Dovlatov wrote prose fiction but his numerous attempts to get published in the Soviet Union were in vain. Unable to publish in the Soviet Union, Dovlatov circulated his writings through samizdat and by having them smuggled into Western Europe for publication in foreign journals; an activity that caused his expulsion from the Union of Soviet Journalists in 1976."

there's something wrong with that story and Dovlatov himself, otherwise how authors like Rasputin did get published in CCCP at all?

 

There is always "something wrong" with stories of Stalin and Stalinist brutality that emerge over the decades. In Russia today, it must be difficult to both be appalled by his history of cynicism and ruthlessness, yet compelled to--since he was Russian (was he, really?)--count him as a Great Leader rather than a gangster on a vast scale. Here's bit of history on Stalin's purges of the late 1930s that involved the military and swept up Shostakovich's Marshal Tukhachevsky, head of the Red Army:

"Out of 80 members of the 1934 Military Soviet only 5 were left in September 1938. All 11 Deputy Commissars for Defense were eliminated. Every commander of a military district (including replacements of the first "casualties") had been executed by the summer of of 1938. 13 out of 15 army commanders, 57 out of 85 corps commanders, 110 out of 195 divisional commanders, 220 out of 406 brigade commanders, were executed. But the greatest numerical loss was borne in the Soviet officer corps from the rank of colonel downward and extending to company commander level."

Alan Clark, Barbarossa

 

Stalin's purges of the late 1930s that involved the military and swept up Shostakovich's Marshal Tukhachevsky,

as if Tukhachevsky or anyone there at the moment was angel's. Tukhachevsky is remembered only for his crushing of peasants rebellion and the failed Polish campaign, when as a result hundreds thousand Red Army soldiers perished at the hands of the Poles... he maybe a hero in Western propaganda anti-Russian textbooks, for some unclear reason, but in fact he is not. Stalin was right to get rid of those who sabotaged the drive of CCCP to glory and prosperity.

 

Lets have some Schnittke:

Favorite Lesser known soviet composers?

This album is also very interesting - recordings on the ANS synthesizer by soviet composers and musicians:

 

Hey wheres my post guys...

 

About Rasputin, from the quoted Wikipedia article:

"Some critics accused Rasputin of idealizing village life and slipping into anti-modern polemics. The journal Voprosy literatury published an ongoing debate on the question, "Is the Village Prose of Valentin Rasputin Anti-Modern?" Controversy intensified in the 1980s, as Rasputin became associated with the nationalist organization Pamyat (Память: "Memory"). Originally formed to preserve monuments and examples of traditional Russian architecture, Pamyat became increasingly known for a reactionary, antisemitic form of Russian nationalism. Rasputin has been criticized for his involvement with organizations like that. Rasputin himself argues that his alleged antisemitic statements have been exaggerated and taken out of context.

Since the beginning of Perestroika, Rasputin adopted a line critical of the reforms. His repetition (at the 1st Russian Congress of People's Deputies) of Stolypin's statement "You need great upheavals. We need a great country" («Вам нужны великие потрясения. Нам нужна великая страна») made it a phrase commonly used by the antiliberal opposition. In July, 1991, Rasputin signed the open letter "A Word to the People", other signatories of which were mostly Soviet functionaries opposed to Gorbachev's reforms. In 1992, Valentin Rasputin joined the National Salvation Front (a coalition of radical opposition forces), nominally belonging to its leadership. He later supported the CPRF and its leader, Gennady Zyuganov."

 

Russia is such a vast country it can be hold together only with an iron fist...Sad but true...Also some nations have inclinations toward dictatorships, more than others...Russia, Serbia, which is pretty much ''small russia'' without the great population and resources though...

 

So far, so true. Russia has also been cursed with some of the worst luck in the world--when one considers the utter ineptitude of the last tsar Nicholas, and combines that with the tragedy of WWI, to stifle the real prospects for economic growth and emerging democratic government in pre-revolutionary Russia--one is struck by a sense of tragedy and doom. It is a wonder that despite its snake-bitten history, so much beauty, art, music, talent have emerged from Mother Russia.

 

Im probably ''rara avis in terra'' in my country which is ''enchanted'' by russians...I highly respect their culture and music, i even hold russian composers to be the most soothing to my ear, but when it comes to politics and economy hmm...Im part catholic and part orthodox and i know what other eastern and western slavic catholics suffered under soviet and russian rule so i can be objective...It was always gloomy there but i think such conditions in combinations with fertile and creative slavic spirit breed the literature and musical pieces that move boundaries of human experience!

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Zhdanov

Interesting, nyet? Whither Zhdanov?

 

"...the Kolkhozes introduced by Stalin put an end to famines..."

A UN statement on 10 November 2003, signed by 25 countries including Russia and Ukraine:

“In the former Soviet Union millions of men, women and children fell victims to the cruel actions and policies of the totalitarian regime. The Great Famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine (Holodomor), took from 7 million to 10 million innocent lives and became a national tragedy for the Ukrainian people. In this regard, we note activities in observance of the seventieth anniversary of this Famine, in particular organized by the Government of Ukraine.”

“Honouring the seventieth anniversary of the Ukrainian tragedy, we also commemorate the memory of millions of Russians, Kazakhs and representatives of other nationalities who died of starvation in the Volga River region, Northern Caucasus, Kazakhstan and in other parts of the former Soviet Union, as a result of civil war and forced collectivisation, leaving deep scars in the consciousness of future generations.”

 

Strangely, in the matter of Soviet economic history, I find myself siding with Zhdanov.

 

Having read three books on the Russian Revolution (one by a Russian), all of which naturally discuss Nicholas II, and two books dealing specifically with Nicholas II--I noted their unanimity on the subject of his utterly pedestrian mind, almost to the point of subnormal intelligence. Nicholas was mediocrity enthroned: incurious, obsessed by the minutiae of ritual and protocol, by the wearing of proper uniform, by the "need" to keep his autocracy intact, and otherwise oblivious to the world around him outside of the daily tedium of a suffocating court. Only within his family life did he display any positive qualities. Ineptitude in matters requiring leadership, statecraft, knowledge of the world therefore is perhaps too generous a term for this inert being.

I am unaware, as is the rest of the known world, that Imperial Russia won WWI. Why was I (or were we) not informed?

 

Are you saying that Zhdanov has some kind of mental incapacity (because you disagree with him)?