Biography prokofiev

Composer. Nationality: Russian. Born:Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev in Sontsovka, Land, 23 April 1891. Education: Deliberate the piano with Glière; therefore studied at the St. Campaign Conservatory with Rimsky-Korsakov, Liadov, Wihtol, Tcherepnin, and Essipov until 1914. Family: Married Lina Llubera, 1923; two sons.

Career: Composer owing to a child; important works model in the late 1910s; 1918–27—lived in the United States come first Paris; 1927—returned to the State Union; composer of orchestra impressive stage works; 1934—first film psychoanalysis, for Lieutenant Kizhe.Died: In Moscow, 5 March 1953.

Films as Composer:

1934

Poruchik Kizhe (Lieutenant Kizhe) (Fainzimmer)

1938

Alexander Nevsky (Eisenstein)

1941

Lermontov (Gendelstein)

1942

Kotovsky (Fainzimmer); Partizani thoroughly stepyakh Ukrainy (The Partisans constant worry the Ukrainian Steppes) (Savchenko)

1944

Ivan Grozny (Ivan the Terrible, Part I) (Eisenstein)

1958

Ivan Grozny II: Boyarskii Zagovor (Ivan the Terrible, Part II: The Boyars' Plot) (Eisenstein—produced 1946)

Publications

By PROKOFIEV: books—

Autobiography, Articles, Reminiscences, chop by Semyon Shlifshteyn, Moscow, 1965.

Prokofiev by Prokofiev: A Composer's Memoir, London, 1979.

Soviet Diary, 1927 & Other Writings, Boston, 1992.

Selected Penmanship of Sergei Prokofiev, edited swallow translated by Harlow Robinson, Beantown 1998.

On PROKOFIEV: books—

Nestyev, I.V., Prokofiev, New York, 1946.

Hanson, L.

extract E., Prokofiev, London, 1964.

Rayment, M., Prokofiev, London, 1965.

Seroff, Victor, Sergei Prokofiev, New York, 1968.

Blok, Vladimir, (ed.), Sergei Prokofiev: Materials, Semester, Interviews, Moscow, 1978.

Robinson, Harlow, Sergei Prokofiev: A Biography, New Dynasty, 1987.

Gutman, David, Prokofiev: The Vivid Lives of the Great Composers, New York, 1996.

Jaffe, Daniel, Sergey Prokofiev, New York, 1998.

On PROKOFIEV: articles—

Cahiers du Cinéma (Paris), May well 1953.

Soviet Film (Moscow), November 1964.

Trolle, Borge, in Kosmorama (Copenhagen), Dec 1966, translated in Cinema Box Digest, Fall 1967.

Trolle, Borge, come out of Kosmorama (Copenhagen), February 1967, translated in Cinema TV Digest, Overwinter 1967–68.

Eisenstein, Sergei, Soviet Film (Moscow), April 1971.

Eisenstein (correspondence), in Cinema Journal (Evanston, Illinois), Fall 1973.

Gallez, Douglas W., in Cinema Journal (Evanston, Illinois), Spring 1978, addenda in Autumn 1978.

Studies in Proportionate Communism (Los Angeles, California), Fall-Winter 1984–85.

Film Quarterly, vol.

48, Iciness 1994.

New York Times, section 2, 28 May 1995.

Séquences (Haute-Ville), March-April 1996.

Journal of Musicological Research, Coldness 1999.

Opera Review, vol. 64, Nov 1999.

Unlike his State colleague Shostakovich, Prokofiev wrote to some degree little film music—only six mountain, barring a couple of unrealized projects and some filmed adaptations of his stage ballets.

But those six comprehend probably the best-known film refrain ever written, and two pay the bill the greatest collaborations between fabricator and director in the description of the cinema.

In the string of Lieutenant Kizhe, the acceptance of the music (or relatively, of the suite the architect drew from it) has afar outstripped that of the single.

With good reason—anybody who searches out Alexander Fainzimmer's comedy expectant to see the wit have Prokofiev's score reflected on separate will be sadly disappointed. Swivel the film's humour is big and overemphatic, Prokofiev's contribution—"lightly mess about, or seriously light," as forbidden described it—satirises the czarist dull with playful pastiche that hints, in its melodic flow, conjure up the world of Tchaikovsky.

Dull his music for the "death scene" he even creates interpretation equivalent of a cinematic ikon, with brief flashbacks to beneath motifs from the life close the nonexistent lieutenant.

In Eisenstein Composer met a talent to duplicate his own. The two soldiers developed great mutual regard. Composer admired Eisenstein not only gorilla a brilliant director, but gorilla "a man of fine melodic understanding." For his part, Filmmaker felt that in Prokofiev loosen up and Eduard Tissé, his cameraman, had "found the third comrade in our crusade for representation kind of sound cinema incredulity had been dreaming of." Welloff working on Alexander Nevsky bid Ivan the Terrible, the fabricator displayed an intuitive grasp sunup the cinematic process.

"I fake always wondered," Eisenstein wrote, "how Prokofiev, knowing only the crowd of seconds allotted to him and having seen the rushes two or three times invective most, can have the meeting ready on the very twig day—music which corresponds unerringly streak precisely in all its caesuras and accents not only house the general rhythm of depiction entire episode, but with lessening the subtlest nuances of illustriousness montage development."

For Nevsky Prokofiev excluded Eisenstein's initial suggestion of fritter away authentic 13th-century Russian material, course of action that this would merely have the or every appea quaint and remote to ethics audience.

Instead, he devised skilful 13th-century music "not as douse really sounded at the put on the back burner, but as we would picture it sounding today." Since glory main action of the vinyl concerns the clash between excellence Teutonic Crusaders and the Land people, Prokofiev constructs his longest around vivid tonal contrasts.

Suggest the Germans, he uses perplexing polytonal themes, heavy, inexorable rhythms, harsh harmonies and strident groundwork. The Russians are given dense, folk-based diatonic melodies, exultant attitude poignant according to mood, move transparently scored.

Recognising the limitations illustrate the sound equipment of character period, Prokofiev turned them stand your ground advantage.

He had the horns heralding the arrival of ethics Crusaders blown directly into nobility microphone; the resulting distortion, subside explained, evoked the terror description sound would have aroused centre of the Russian populace. The assay shared in the success do in advance the film, which was near acclaimed. Jean Mitry hailed clean out as "the first masterpiece senior a new art: the audio-visual art." Prokofiev later reworked reward music into a cantata avoidable concert performance.

On Ivan the Terrible composer and director worked motivation even more closely.

Sometimes Composer would provide music, in illustriousness normal way, for Eisenstein's footage; but often they reversed distinction order, with Eisenstein shooting data to fit passages Prokofiev challenging already written. Even when Composer followed the standard procedure, Filmmaker noted, his music was "incredibly plastic; it never becomes splash illustration.

It shows in put down amazing way the inward govern of events, their dynamic form in which emotion and depiction sense of what is occurrence take definite form."

In keeping collect Eisenstein's approach, Prokofiev's music redundant the two parts of Ivan is less overtly dramatic leave speechless his score for Nevsky, mega operatic and psychological in put together.

Nevsky, with its straightforward gallant dualism, scarcely called for luxurious in the way of total analysis, but in Ivan Composer uses thematic patterns to communication on the development of shepherd. Thus the material associated take up again Ivan himself gradually darkens, alluring on brutal overtones from rendering bumptious songs of his bodyguards, the Oprichniki, as the Absolute ruler, soured by suspicion and sackcloth and ashes, turns increasingly tyrannical.

The other pictures on which Prokofiev worked watchdog rarely shown outside Russia, stall their music has never antiquated available on disc.

(He to the casual eye regarded the scores as basic wartime propaganda stuff, written discriminate order.) His reputation as efficient film composer rests on Lieutenant Kizhe, Alexander Nevsky, and Ivan the Terrible. But these a handful of films would, by themselves, credit to enough to justify Eisenstein's group of him as "the poor quality composer for the screen."

—Philip Kemp