composers-from-russia

"I regard the people as a great being, inspired by a single idea. This is my problem. I strove to solve it in this opera."

"In poetry there are two giants, rough Homer and fine Shakespere. In music likewise we have two giants, Beethoven, the thinker, and the superthinker Berlioz."

"My music must be an artistic reproduction of human speech in all its finest shades. That is, the sounds of human speech, as the external manifestations of thought and feeling must, without exaggeration or violence, become true, accurate music."

"Mussorgsky you very rightly call a hopeless case. In talent he is perhaps superior to all the [other members of The Five], but his nature is narrow-minded, devoid of any urge towards self-perfection, blindly believing in the ridiculous theories of his circle and in his own genius. In addition, he has a certain base side to his nature which likes coarseness, uncouthness, roughness. He flaunts his illiteracy, takes pride in his ignorance, mucks along anyhow, blindly believing in the infallibility of his genius. Yet he has flashes of talent which are, moreover, not devoid of originality."

"Many pianists got interested in his music only after they heard the composer’s performance—such as Borovsky, Horowitz, Gieseking, Rubinstein and many others."

"What struck me about Prokofiev’s playing was its remarkable simplicity. Not a single superfluous gesture, not a single exaggerated expression of emotion, no striving for effect. The composer seemed to be saying, “I refuse to embellish my music in any way. Here it is. You may take it or leave it.” There was a sort of inner purity of purpose behind the whole performance that made an unforgettable impression. He played his Toccata with great inner force (while outwardly appearing perfectly calm and unmoved).... The tempestuous, defiant Prokofiev at [lyrical] moments became as touching as a child. The fact that Prokofiev could be poetic and moving came as a surprise to many."

"Energy, confidence, indomitable will, steel rhythm, powerful tone (some times even hard to bear in a small room), a peculiar “epic quality” that scrupulously avoided any suggestion of over-refinement or intimacy (there is none in his music either), yet withal a remarkable ability to convey true lyricism, poetry, sadness, reflection, an extraordinary human warmth, and feeling for nature... were... the principal traits of his pianism. His technique was truly phenomenal, impeccable.... He played quite differently at home than on the concert stage; it was as though he stepped on to the stage clothed not only physically but emotionally in formal dress.... Notwithstanding his outspoken contempt for what is known as “temperamental” performances, he had enough temperament to prevent his playing from sounding dry or emasculated. True, at times he played with such reserve that his performance amounted to a mere exposition; here is my material, he seemed to be saying, understand it and feel it as you please.... The ease (the result of confidence!) with which he tackled some of the most breathtaking passages was truly amazing; he did indeed seem to be “playing” in the literal, almost “sporty” sense of the word (no wonder his enemies called him the “football pianist”). The remarkable clarity and preciseness of the entire musical texture was based on supreme mastery of all the necessary technical media...."

"We encountered a pianist who played not only with the incredible will and rhythmic energy, but also with warmth, poetical finesse, and the ability to carry a melodic line flexibly and gently.... Those who think, according to an obscure tradition, that Prokofiev played in an angular, dry way, with incessant accents thrown around here and there, are mistaken. No! His playing was poetic, childishly innocent, astonishingly pure and modest."

"[Prokofiev] played the piano with great ease and confidence, although his technique left much to be desired. He played carelessly and he did not hold his hands properly on the keyboard. His long fingers seemed very clumsy. Sometimes he managed rather diªcult passages with... facility but at other times he could not play a simple scale or an ordinary arpeggio.... Seryozha’s chief trouble was the incorrect hand position. Technically his playing was careless and inaccurate, his phrasing was poor and he paid little attention to detail.... I must say that he was rather obstinate."

"Melodic line is an important structural element. It determines the direction and character of the musical motion and gives... musical shape to the rhythmically organized texture. Because of this, Prokofiev’s playing has a beautiful singing quality, without ever being sweet. Because of this, each piece in his performance has an uncommon finish and complete ness. From the beginning till the end, it is perceived as a purposeful un folding of the material and as a dynamically intensive development of musical ideas."

"Prokofiev plays simply, clearly, and sensibly. Calmly, but without coldness of an over-confident virtuoso, brilliantly, but without showing off his marvelous technique...."

"What is striking in Prokofiev’s playing is the outstandingly convincing expression and uncommon rhythmic plasticity.... One should especially note a very original use of accents. There is an endless range of them: from hardly audible and scarcely noticeable pushes to pricks and passing by stresses to temperamental and powerful strokes. The accent in Prokof iev’s performance becomes the most valuable shaping element, bringing sharpness, capriciousness, and a special dry spark to his playing. Regular metric stresses disappear behind rhythmically refined and dynamically rich accents. This makes the phrasing especially clear and intensely vital. . . . [Prokofiev’s] reserve does not imply dryness or indifference: Prokofiev knows how to control his emotions, but does not shy away from the touch ing, gentle lyricism. He is not interested in pompous pathos. He found something better: simplicity and naturalness...."

"Within the vast, virtually limitless piano repertoire, the piano sonatas of Sergei Prokofiev occupy a special place. Apart from Alexander Scriabin early in the century, Prokofiev was the only major twentieth-century composer to pay such consistent attention to the form, … They are a constant presence in concert programs and are considered an indispensable part of the repertoire by almost every serious concert pianist."

"Mr. Prokofiev's pieces have been contributions not to the art of music, but to national pathology and pharmacopoeia. We do not refer particularly to the pianoforte solos composed and played by Mr. Prokofiev, for they, we are sure, invite their own damnation, because there is nothing in them to hold attention.They pursue no aesthetic purpose, strive for no recognizable ideal, proclaim no means for increasing the expressive potency of music. They are simply perverse. They die the death of abortions."

"In my view, the composer, just as the poet, the sculptor or the painter, is in duty bound to serve Man, the people. He must beautify human life and defend it. He must be a citizen first and foremost, so that his art might consciously extol human life and lead man to a radiant future. Such is the immutable code of art as I see it."

"The time is past when music was written for a handful of aesthetes. Today vast crowds of people have come face to face with serious music and are waiting with eager impatience. Composers, take heed of this…But this does not mean that you must pander to this audience. Pandering always has an element of insincerity about it and nothing good ever came of that."

"It seemed to me that had Haydn lived to our day he would have retained his own style while accepting something of the new at the same time. That was the kind of symphony I wanted to write: a symphony in the classical style. And when I saw that my idea was beginning to work, I called it the Classical Symphony."

"The first was the classical line, which could be traced back to my early childhood and the Beethoven sonatas I heard my mother play. This line takes sometimes a neo-classical form (sonatas, concertos), sometimes imitates the 18th century classics (gavottes, the Classical symphony, partly the Sinfonietta). The second line, the modern trend, begins with that meeting with Taneyev when he reproached me for the “crudeness” of my harmonies. At first this took the form of a search for my own harmonic language, developing later into a search for a language in which to express powerful emotions (The Phantom, Despair, Diabolical Suggestion, Sarcasms, Scythian Suite, a few of the songs, op. 23, The Gambler, Seven, They Were Seven, the Quintet and the Second Symphony). Although this line covers harmonic language mainly, it also includes new departures in melody, orchestration and drama. The third line is toccata or the “motor” line traceable perhaps to Schumann’s Toccata which made such a powerful impression on me when I first heard it (Etudes, op. 2, Toccata, op. 11, Scherzo, op. 12, the Scherzo of the Second Concerto, the Toccata in the Fifth Concerto, and also the repetitive intensity of the melodic figures in the Scythian Suite, Pas d’acier[The Age of Steel], or passages in the Third Concerto). This line is perhaps the least important. The fourth line is lyrical; it appears first as a thoughtful and meditative mood, not always associated with the melody, or, at any rate, with the long melody (The Fairy-tale, op. 3, Dreams, Autumnal Sketch[Osenneye], Songs, op. 9, The Legend, op. 12), sometimes partly contained in the long melody (choruses on Balmont texts, beginning of the First Violin Concerto, songs to Akhmatova’s poems, Old Granny’s Tales[Tales of an Old Grandmother]). This line was not noticed until much later. For a long time I was given no credit for any lyrical gift whatsoever, and for want of encouragement it developed slowly. But as time went on I gave more and more attention to this aspect of my work. I should like to limit myself to these four “lines,” and to regard the fifth, “grotesque” line which some wish to ascribe to me, as simply a deviation from the other lines. In any case I strenuously object to the very word “grotesque” which has become hackneyed to the point of nausea. As a matter of fact the use of the French word “grotesque” in this sense is a distortion of the meaning. I would prefer my music to be described as “Scherzo-ish” in quality, or else by three words describing the various degrees of the Scherzo—whimsicality, laughter, mockery."

"My chief virtue (or if you like, defect) has been a tireless lifelong search for an original, individual musical idiom. I detest imitation, I detest hackneyed devices."

"This is my best work, but only because The Flaming Angel is my greatest."

"Formalism is music that people don’t understand at first hearing."

"I remember being struck by his way of playing virtually without any pedal. And his manner was so polished."

"He is thinner, taller, younger – more boyish-looking – than expected, but he is also the shyest and most nervous human being I have ever seen. He chews not merely his nails but his fingers, twitches his pouty mouth and chin, chain-smokes, wiggles his nose in constant adjustment of his spectacles, looks querulous one moment and ready to cry the next. His hands tremble, he stutters, his whole frame wobbles when he shakes hands…There is no betrayal of the thoughts behind those frightened, very intelligent eyes."

"I live in the USSR, work actively and count naturally on the worker and peasant spectator. If I am not comprehensible to them I should be deported."

"There can be no music without ideology. The old composers, whether they knew it or not, were upholding a political theory. Most of them, of course, were bolstering the rule of the upper classes. Only Beethoven was a forerunner of the revolutionary movement. If you read his letters, you will see how often he wrote to his friends that he wished to give new ideas to the public and rouse it to revolt against its masters."

"What can be considered human emotions? Surely not only lyricism, sadness, tragedy? Doesn't laughter also have a claim to that lofty title? I want to fight for the legitimate right of laughter in "serious" music."

"If they cut off both hands, I will compose music anyway holding the pen in my teeth."

"I always try to make myself as widely understood as possible, and if I don't succeed I consider it's my own fault."

"A great piece of music is beautiful regardless of how it is performed. Any prelude or fugue of Bach can be played at any tempo, with or without rhythmic nuances, and it will still be great music. That's how music should be written, so that no-one, no matter how philistine, can ruin it."

"A creative artist works on his next composition because he is not satisfied with his previous one. When he loses a critical attitude toward his own work, he ceases to be an artist."

"I don't think that either self-deprecation or self-aggrandizement is among the defining qualities of an artist…Beethoven could have been forgiven if his symphonies had gone to his head. Gretchaninoff could also be forgiven if his Dobrinya Nikititch went to his head. But neither one could be forgiven for writing a piece that was amoral, servile, the work of a flunky."

"Music is a means capable of expressing dark dramatism and pure rapture, suffering and ecstasy, fiery and cold fury, melancholy and wild merriment – and the subtlest nuances and interplay of these feelings which words are powerless to express and which are unattainable in painting and sculpture."

"Real music is always revolutionary, for it cements the ranks of the people; it arouses them and leads them onward."

"The real geniuses know where their writing has to be good and where they can get away with some mediocrity."

"You ask if I would have been different without "Party guidance"? Yes, almost certainly. No doubt the line I was pursuing when I wrote the Fourth Symphony would have been stronger and sharper in my work. I would have displayed more brilliance, used more sarcasm, I could have revealed my ideas openly instead of having to resort to camouflage."

"What do you think of Puccini? [ Britten: "I think his operas are dreadful." ] No, Ben, you are wrong. He wrote marvellous operas, but dreadful music."

"The most uninteresting part of the biography of a composer is his childhood. All those preludes are the same and the reader hurries on to the fugue."

"It's about the people, who have stopped believing because the cup of evil has run over."

"The withering away of illusions is a long and dreary process, like a toothache. But you can pull out a tooth. Illusions, dead, continue to rot within us. And stink. And you can't escape them. I carry all of mine around with me."

"For some reason, people think that music must tell us only about the pinnacles of the human spirit, or at least about highly romantic villains. Most people are average, neither black nor white. They're gray. A dirty shade of gray. And it's in that vague gray middle ground that the fundamental conflicts of our age take place."

"The Allies enjoyed my music, as though trying to say: Look how we like Shostakovich's symphonies, and you still want something more from us, a second front or something."

"I feel eternal pain for those who were killed by Hitler, but I feel no less pain for those killed on Stalin's orders. I suffer for everyone who was tortured, shot, or starved to death."

"The majority of my symphonies are tombstones."

"Jewish folk music has made a most powerful impression on me. I never tire of delighting in it, it's multifaceted, it can appear to be happy while it is tragic. It's almost always laughter through tears. This quality of Jewish folk music is close to my ideas of what music should be. There should always be two layers in music. Jews were tormented for so long that they learned to hide their despair. They express despair in dance music."

"People knew about Babi Yar before Yevtushenko's poem, but they were silent. And when they read the poem, the silence was broken. Art destroys silence."

"When a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something."

"I think it is clear to everyone what happens in the Fifth. The rejoicing is forced, created under threat, as in Boris Godunov. It's as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, "Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing," and you rise, shaky, and go marching off, muttering, "Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing.""

"I write music, it's performed. It can be heard, and whoever wants to hear it will. After all, my music says it all. It doesn't need historical and hysterical commentaries. In the long run, any words about music are less important than the music."

"What you have in your head, put down on paper. The head is a fragile vessel."

"Here is music turned deliberately inside out in order that nothing will be reminiscent of classical opera, or have anything in common with symphonic music or with simple and popular musical language accessible to all...Here we have "leftist" confusion instead of natural human music. The power of good music to infect the masses has been sacrificed to a petty-bourgeois, "formalist" attempt to create originality through cheap clowning. It is a game of clever ingenuity that may end very badly."