number 25 may 2013

published by the serge prokofiev foundation

25

ORANGESthree

J O U R N A L

Prokofiev’s Cousins: A Tragedy

ISSN 1472-9946Bi-annual journal (January and July) published by The Serge Prokofiev Foundation.

Copyright: All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the permission of the publishers or the authors concerned. Applications for permission to reproduce for educational purpose are welcome.

Back issues and extra copies are available on demand.

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Number 25 May 2013

Editorial

summary

Feature:

Prokofiev’s Cousins: A Tragedy

Every Happy Family… (Natalia Savkina. Translated by Simon Morrison) 3

Articles

Prokofiev’s Mass Songs (Laurel E. Fay) 22

Sergey Prokofiev and William Primrose:An Unrealized Collaboration(Vladimir V. Perkhin. Translated by Simon Morrison) 30

Review

Gavriil Popov. 1941-1945: Wartime Music (Kevin Bartig) 34

Contributors 36

©JOA

NNE

SAVI

O

The feature piece in this issue is by the distinguished Moscow-based musicologist Natalia Savkina, who has spent years compiling the biographies of Prokofiev’s maternal aunt and cousins. She tells an inescapably tragic story, a chronicle of systematic repression that was all too typical of the fates of aristocratic Russian families in the years following the Revolution. The letters Savkina has unearthed at the State Archive of the Russian Federation, the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, and the Serge Prokofiev Archive at Goldsmiths attest to Prokofiev’s familial devotion—his efforts to keep his relatives fed and clothed during their imprisonment and exile, and to help their children get by in their absence. The chronicle is alternately chilling and poignant, especially as it concerns the fates of Prokofiev’s beloved Aunt Katya and Cousin Shurik.

There follows a much-needed account of the mass songs that Prokofiev composed in the 1930s for various Soviet contests and competitions. To date, the origins of these songs, and the sources for their texts, has been more a matter of guesswork than scholarship. But in her painstakingly researched article, Laurel Fay fully explores these lesser-known works, whose sources range from a propagandistic collection of fake-lore edited by Maxim Gorky to the pages of the Soviet newspaper Light Industry.

By way of a sequel to the feature article from the last issue, on Prokofiev and the violinist Robert Soëtens, this issue of Three Oranges also includes a short piece by the St. Petersburg-based literary historian Vladimir Perkhin, who explores the violist William Primrose’s attempt to commission a Concerto for Viola from Prokofiev. The conductor Serge Koussevitzky expressed interest in conducting the premiere, and correspondence flowed back and forth between New York and Moscow through the VOKS cultural exchange organization. But postwar politics and bad timing (so often the case with Prokofiev) ensured that the commission went unrealized. Perkhin makes use of documents unearthed at the State Archive of the Russian Federation, which contains a trove of hitherto unstudied material about Prokofiev’s contacts with Soviet officials before and after his relocation to Moscow in 1936.

The issue is rounded out Kevin Bartig’s review of two recent recordings of music by Gavriil Popov, a composer whom Prokofiev greatly admired, to the point of recommending him to the filmmaker Sergey Eisenstein for the completion of the soundtrack of Ivan the Terrible, following the stroke that Prokofiev suffered in 1945.

Simon Morrison

Beginning with the next issue of the journal,the publication schedule will shift

fromNovember and May

toJanuary and July.

Aleksandr Rayevsky, Artillery Officer,February 1915.

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This issue of the journal hap-pily marks the 30th anniversary of the Serge Prokofiev Founda-tion, established on May 6, 1983, by Lina Prokofiev (née Codina), the composer’s Spanish-born first wife. Serge and Lina met in New York, lived together in France and Germany, then relocated to the Soviet Union in 1936. Lina was incarcerated in 1948, spen-ding eight years in the Gulag sys-tem. Prokofiev died in 1953, three years before her release. As the Foundation website notes, upon leaving the Soviet Union for the West in 1974, Lina “devoted her formidable energy to promoting her husband’s legacy and in the process, set up the Foun-dation with the object of furthering the knowledge and appreciation of Prokofiev’s life and works. After her death in 1989, the Foundation made the deci-sion to create and support a resource with the aim of gathering, organizing and making available a huge variety of materials related to the composer and his times. The outcome was the setting up of the Serge Prokofiev Archive at Goldsmiths College, University of London.”

Lina’s selfless labor on behalf of her husband introduced un-k nown compositions to the pu-blic while also rescuing Proko-fiev’s manuscripts from oblivion. Preservation became a priority, likewise preventing illegally ac-quired materials from being sold at auction. Lina’s activities were continued by Noëlle Mann, who heroically ran the archive and the journal out of Goldsmiths for over a decade. In 2003 she also orga-nized a massive conference in Manchester to recognize the fif-

tieth anniversary of Prokofiev’s death.To further the mission of the Foundation, and

live up to Lina’s own noble legacy, the Serge Proko-fiev Archive is soon to move to a bigger, brighter, and more secure location on the campus of Colum-bia University in New York City. Lina was living in New York at the time she met Prokofiev, and her uncle Charles Wherley (Verlé) is believed to have been an adjunct language instructor at Columbia. So the relocation is a homecoming of sorts. This page, and the Foundation website, will provide de-tails about the move as soon as possible.

Simon Morrison

The Serge Prokofiev FoundationThen and Now

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Natalia Savkina

Translated by Simon Morrison

Dedicated to the blessed memory of my grandparents,

Ivan Vikentyevich and Mariya Semyonovna Ostroukh,

and to the memory of their pre-teen daughter,

who died in the Gulag,

and to the millions of other families who were mutilated

and slaughtered during the Bolshevik repressions.

Every Happy Family…1

Feature:

Prokofiev’s Cousins: A Tragedy

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The first time the subject of this article was broached was during my conversation with Svyatoslav Sergeyevich Prokofiev in 1990.2 Later on, Prokofiev’s older son wrote an article about his relatives, the Rayevsky family, for Three Oranges.3 David Nice devoted considerable attention to the vicissitudes in their lives in his substantive Prokofiev bio-graphy.4 My immersion in the documents of the London ar-chive5 revealed the subject to be one of the most tragic in Prokofiev’s legacy.

In 1917 the prosperous life of one of Russia’s most res-pected families was suddenly disrupted. In the off-quoted words of Mikhaíl Bulgakov, “history intruded, suddenly and me-nacingly.” Prokofiev’s relatives, like his friends, were forced to react in the years that followed. The archives, though, contain few traces of their experiences.

The new life had a different setting and routine. People were driven by other concerns. Of course they remem-bered the Italian word for “window” and chatted in French as easily and enjoyably as before, but the pleasure had to be kept in check. French served as the code of communication between those of “former” times. Its use was not to be ad-vertised.

It was difficult to detect the transformation in the outward manners of the people in question. But sometimes when they spoke, reacted to something, or simply glanced around, the surface veneer was broken. Memories were stirred up in this fashion, in strong contrasts of light and dark.

Life was not merciful to these people. They lost their wealth and social status, suffering an array of misfortunes, repres-sions, and humiliations. They were scattered around Russia and the world. They nonetheless endured the hardships with uncommon dignity, expressing neither anger nor bitterness, continuing to care for each other in difficult, sometimes un-bearable conditions. The notion of the family remained for them as sacrosanct as before.

Prokofiev’s parents created their own wealth, with their own hands. He was not spoiled in his childhood and appre-ciated the cost of things. Once he became independent, af-ter a period of financial hardship, and once he began to care for a family of his own, Prokofiev began to keep fastidious fi-nancial records, carefully writing down in neat grids (boxes) all of his receipts and expenses in granary books.6 His diary and correspondence with the Rayevsky family reveal ano-ther aspect of his money management. In the middle of the 1920s he began without fail and without needing reminders to support his relatives.

Family ties, like the friendships of his youth, were dear to the composer.

In his contacts with relatives and friends in the USSR, we see Prokofiev opening his wallet, writing checks, arranging for money transfers, delving into the details of customs circu-lars and the regulations governing international mail, maste-ring illicit means of getting items of clothing and medicine across the border. Many medicines, like many foods, were unavailable in the USSR, but to ship or transport them was not permitted.

With the revival at the Bolshoi Theater of his opera Love for Three Oranges7 he tried to arrange regular payments to the Raye-vsky family girls, including cousin Katya8 in the town of Kadni-kov. The cumbersome finance department of the Bol shoi often failed to send money to Kadnikov, generally working slowly and often making mistakes. The composer repeatedly had to send urgent messages to the theater: “It seems that Moscow and Kad-nikov are once again sitting without money. Apparently, Boris Gusman,9 upon resigning, didn’t heed my instructions. So I scribbled letters to the Bol shoi Theater.”10

Going to the Bolshoi to collect Prokofiev’s honoraria be-came the responsibility of Anna Petrovna Uvarova.11

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The composer keep close track of her.

5, rue Valentin Haüy Paris XV, France

November 11, 1930A.P. Uvarova, Moscow

Most esteemed Anna Petrovna,A week ago I received a letter from the director of

the finance office of the Bolshoi Theater to the effect that, in agreement with my request, he transferred 400 rubles to you on October 26. Since I have not received confirmation from you about this, I am concerned that you did not receive my letter in which I asked you to send 200 rubles of this amount to Katya Ignatyeva, and that she is left without any money whatsoever.

I send you heartfelt greetings, likewise Katyusha12 and the children.

Respectfully yours.13

He constantly wrote letters like this. The transfer of mo-ney seems to have involved everyone: Lev Tseytlin,14 Niko lay Myaskovsky, Vladimir Derzhanovsky,15 Konstantin Sarad -zhev,16 and several other people who happened to be in touch with Prokofiev and Myaskovsky: “Might MODPiK17 be able to send 150 rubles to my aunt straightaway? If not, could some of my new fees from Muzsektor18 be extracted?” His thoughts about the Rayevsky family in his diaries and let-ters, written in his calm, business-like manner, bear one and the same leitmotif: reminders about sending funds. Repea -ted again and again, it lends the composer’s personal docu-ments a special character, a powerful semantic ostinato. Amid all of the expressions of gratitude addressed to Sergey Sergeyevich, the words of Tanya Rayevskaya linger in the memory: “You, kind Seryozha, will be rewarded by the Lord God for the help you have provided to everyone!”19

The Rayevsky family:

Yekaterina Grigoryevna Rayevskaya (née Zhitkova) Prokofiev’s auntAleksandr Dmitriyevich Rayevsky, Yekaterina’shusband, Prokofiev’s uncle-in-lawYekaterina Aleksandrovna Rayevskaya (Ignatyeva), Prokofiev’s cousin

Andrey Aleksandrovich Rayevsky, Prokofiev’s cousinTatyana Aleksandrovna Rayevskaya (née Katenina), Andrey’s wife, Prokofiev’s cousin-in-lawAleksandr Andreyevich Rayevsky, son of Andrey and Tatyana, Prokofiev’s nephew

Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Rayevsky, Prokofiev’s cousin, whom he called “Shurik”Nadezhda Feofilovna Rayevskaya (née Meyendorf), Shurik’s wife, Prokofiev’s cousin-in-lawYelena Aleksandrovna Rayevskaya, daughter of Aleksandr and Nadezhda, Prokofiev’s nieceYekaterinav Aleksandrovna Rayevskaya, daughter of Aleksandr and Nadezhda, Prokofiev’s nieceSofiya Aleksandrovna Rayevskaya, daughter of Aleksandr and Nadezhda, Prokofiev’s niece

Serge Prokofiev, 1935

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Aunt Katya

After his departure from Soviet Russia, travelling from Japan to America, France, and Germany (Ettal), Prokofiev al-most lost touch with the relatives he had left behind. When contact by mail was resumed, the most important of his fa-mily contacts became the sister of his mother, Yekaterina Gri goryevna Rayevskaya, née Zhitkova (1857–October 22, 1929).

There are a few signs, some rare details, regarding her once-comfortable life in the autobiography of his childhood. The Rayevsky family home was the epitome of a welcoming, hospitable St. Petersburg household, where the most impor-tant thing was not wealth but kindness, education, culture, and fear of God.

Each Sunday the entire family gathered at the Rayevsky family home for lunch. The New Year was met each year with the same ritual: At the tolling of the midnight hour everyone knelt and prayed, after which Yekaterina Grigoryevna and Aleksandr Dmitriyevich20 went to the kitchen to congratu-late the servants.

After the Revolution Yekaterina Grigoryevna re-expe-rienced the extreme poverty of her childhood. The Zhit-kova sisters grew up in need, a childhood drama about their dresses getting ruined in a railway station was etched even into Prokofiev’s memory. He recalled it in his autobiogra-phy, likewise the suicide of one of the sisters “owing to the hardships of poverty.”21

The return of deprivation was aggravated by loss and humiliation. Yekaterina Grigoryevna lost her husband two years before the Revolution, in 1915. Each of their children experienced tragedy. Yekaterina Grigoryevna was herself partly paralyzed by a stroke.

In the mid-1920s she lived with her daughter in Penza, where in 1924 she wrote a brief memoir about Prokofiev’s parents and his childhood.22 It reveals that both sisters were drawn to music, playing four-hand piano arrangements when they saw each other. Yekaterina Grigoryevna regularly re-ported the latest goings-on in the music world. The rem-nants of an incident involving Glazunov are preserved in a 1925 postcard: “When they were playing your concerto or symphony, or perhaps something else—I can’t say that Gla-zunov defiantly stood up from his chair, put on his hat, and walked away. Two old men sitting in the first row unfolded their newspapers. But the young people in attendance ap-plauded and were on your side.”23

One day she told Prokofiev that she had been approached by Olga Aleksandrovna Satina, her “former co-worker at Pea-sant House, where I was in charge of refreshments and she the cooking. She’s quite gentle, deserving full respect as a woman from good society.” Olga Aleksandrovna asked Pro-kofiev to find out from Rachmaninoff the whereabouts of her grandfather Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Satin (her hus-band’s uncle). “On one occasion either this uncle or Rachma-ninoff had sent her some money. In her lamentable state she desperately needed it. She had four children to look after, and was literally breathing her last. She had second-stage tuberculosis and had recently contracted pleurisy, and with a temperature of 40 degrees went to work serving refresh-ments in the theater, since if she didn’t she risked losing her job, and her children would be left without a crust a bread. She earned a mere 15 rubles a month and would be most grateful if her uncle could send her an equivalent amount each month. Talk to Rachmaninoff about her, my dear. You’ll be doing her a good turn.”24 Prokofiev replied from Samoreau: “I’m sending you the letter that I received from Rachma-ninoff’s wife—she regrets that she wasn’t able to achieve better results.”25

Aleksandr Dmitriyevich and Yekaterina Grigoryevna Rayevsky.

Yekaterina Grigoryevna Rayevskaya with her children,beginning of the 1890s.

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One day she and her nephew entered into a discus-sion about religious concerns. Prokofiev sent her the book Science and Health,26 the founding text of Christian Science, which did not receive an enthusiastic response from Yekate-rina Grigoryevna, an Orthodox believer. She backed her ne-gative opinion of the book with reference to the assessment of P. de Kuleven, to which Prokofiev replied: “The response to Science and Health that you cite by Kuleven is very super-ficial. The author has no comprehension of the depth and si-gnificance of one of the greatest scientists of our time [Mary Baker Eddy, the author of Science and Health]. I ask you, dear aunt, to read the book from start to finish, and when we see each other we’ll speak in detail about it and I’ll tell you some marvelous things.”27

The habits and desires that remained from happier times were abandoned, of necessity, one at a time. “Yesterday was the name-day of Nadya and Sonnichka,28 and we had up-wards of sixty people over,” Yekaterina Grigoryevna wrote. “I was pleased to see how much they love Nadya and how much attention they paid to her. They brought Sonya candy, fruit, flowers, biscuits, and even wine and cheese. Nadya had an-nounced just the day before that she didn’t have a cent to her name and so wouldn’t be buying anything special for the occasion because she simply couldn’t. Soup and salad were our only lunch that day. And now she’s been brought so much, enough to make a gorgeous feast and even today a lot of good food is still left over. There were a lot of children and I loved how they gently played together.”29

The rare joys of the past were replaced by the tighte-ning restrictions of the present. Health concerns were first and foremost—the doctor, medicine, and care for Nadya’s and Tanya’s children. A needle was needed for the sewing machine, and a gift still had to be found for Katya’s name-day celebration (something inexpensive, like a string of fake pearls).

Yekaterina Grigoryevna’s very distant nephew and his growing success ornamented her life.

Dear Aunt Katya,Please forgive me for so seldom writing to you

and in such brief detail. You can’t imagine the kind of commotion here during the staging of my ballet and how many things piled up after seeing it. The ballet, which is called Le Pas d’Acier, was a big success and made an impression in Paris.30 The director of the Grand Opera proposed that I write an opera on one of [Edmond] Rostand’s dramas,31 but for now I need to finish two older ones—The Fiery Angel and The Gambler.

Upon receipt of the postcards from you and Nadya I sent a letter special delivery to Lev Moíseyevich Tseytlin, asking to transfer those funds to you or Nadya that he still had upon his departure from Moscow. The fact is, I didn’t want to take the currency abroad, since it is more difficult to exchange it here than in the USSR. For this reason, on the way to the station I left it with Tseytlin, asking him in that instance to transfer it to Paris. Since he still hadn’t done so, I asked him to pass it along to you or Nadya. Honestly, though, I don’t recall the amount in question (we left in a hurry), but it seems like it was a hundred rubles. In any case Tseytlin is a very nice and decent person, and he will pay you the exact amount. If he happens to be away, let me know and I’ll immediately arrange the transfer through other means.

We’re currently wrapping up our affairs in Paris and will soon be travelling to the dacha in Saint Palais near Royans, itself not far from Bordeaux. We’ll probably come back on the 28th of June,32 so for now write to

Aleksandr Aleksandrovich and Nadezhda Feofilovna Rayevsky’s young daughters: (from left to right) Sof’ya, Yekaterina, Yelena. Circa 1928.

Lina Prokofiev with her sons Oleg (left) and Svyatoslav (right).

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us at the address at the top of the page. Our dacha literally stands on the ocean shore, separate from the neighbors, and I can’t wait until we finally get out of Paris.

Very big kisses to all three of you. Loving you.33

Another disaster in her life came with the arrest of Katya in Penza. In addition to this misfortune, Yekaterina Grigorye-vna was left without the means to get by.

The health of my Katetchka is no better than before. You can easily imagine my mother’s state of mind! If I weren’t stricken with paralysis I would go to Penza to be closer to her, but jne has to patiently bear the cross and submit to the will of God.

As soon as the situation improves or worsens, I’ll let you know immediately. Besides Katya’s and Shurik’s illnesses I’m very concerned about my financial situation.

Nadya’s financial affairs are likewise precarious and I don’t want to be a burden to her. I should try to get myself into an almshouse, though I don’t know if any such exist anymore.34

She mobilized herself to travel to live permanently with the convicted Katya. Prokofiev advised her to stay in Mos-cow among close friends and offered to pay for a summer vacation for her.

My dear, perhaps you are right that I should not leave Moscow for the sake of my loved ones. But who is closer to me than my own daughter, who’s always shown me so much love and affection. And I will support and comfort her morally and Dashenka,35 who wants to go with me there, will be a great help in everything, washing and cooking for us, and if the Lord helps Katechka to find work, she’ll have more time for it, and if she has to leave the house I won’t be alone.

The fact that even before36 receiving my letter with its request to help Katya, you sent her 50 rubles, deeply moved me as well as Nadya. It’s so valuable that I’m unable to find the words to thank you, my dearest, dearest one.37

Like everyone in the USSR, Yekaterina Grigoryevna added

Aesopian double-speak to the languages she had learned in her childhood. Huge icebergs were carefully concealed behind coded phrases. Kseniya Erdeli consulted with a spe-cialist on the subject of her (Katya’s) illness. The specialist in question might in fact be the lawyer on whom Yekaterina Grigoryevna pinned an illusory hope of saving Katya. Did Shurik actually have an operation in prison or were they re-ferring to something else? Some of her secrets are lost to history.

After Yekaterina Grigoryevna had left Moscow for good, she was able to see her imprisoned son. She subsequently wrote that “Shurik came to the station to say goodbye.”38 It might well be that she was alluding to being taken by close friends to Shurik’s prison, and seeing him there.

Prokofiev was right to advise her not to go to Katya. Ye-katerina Grigoryevna lasted little more than a year in the poetic Russian north.

Sometimes Fate weaves its inscrutable threads in tight knots. Events are pressed together in strange combinations lacking cause-and-effect relationships. But seen from the

Three of the Meyendorf sisters: (from left to right) Aleksandra (Sandra), Fekla (married name Lopukhina), Nadezhda (married name Rayevskaya). End of the 1920s.

Aleksandra Meyendorf, by an unknown artist.

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future, at a great distance, they look different, the nature of their coupling, random and chaotic, assumes a character of interdependence and immutability.

Such came together in the fall of 1929. And in retrospect it seems that the cause of this chain of tragic events was a little screw that a careless mechanic had not properly faste-ned to the front wheel of Prokofiev’s Ballot automobile.

The letter from his aunt came to Prokofiev on October 13. Ten days later Prokofiev wrote about a car accident that he and his family had been involved in on October 11. Then came a telegram from Katya informing him that on October 22 Yekaterina Grigoryevna had died. By telegram in res-ponse, Prokofiev offered his condolences: “I’m deeply sad-dened by the death of my dear aunt. I’ll come to Moscow on the 30th. I’ll pay all of the costs immediately. Prokofiev.”39 Upon arrival he learned of Nadya’s arrest.

Prokofiev wrote the following to his cousin Sonya Bri-shan: “Aunt Katya died from edema of the lungs. She passed away in remarkable fashion, in full consciousness, having said goodbye to everyone, as Katya was reading a prayer.”40 Katya also wrote about her death. “She’s indeed left me. Her passing was wondrous. God willing everyone should die like that.”41

Мariya Grigoryevna

An indistinct shadow dulls the silhouette of Prokofiev’s mother Mariya Grigoryeva, who was always in the back-ground of unfolding events. The blurring of the distinction between this world and the other one was abetted by a white lie here, a selfish deceit there, the blindness of blissful ignorance, and a misunderstanding of events of a macabre character.

She was ill. Prokofiev was forced to put her in a German hospital, relying on the agency of his St. Petersburg writer friend Boris Bashkirov.42 Boris Nikolayevich’s mission on be-half of Mariya Grigoryevna was not to be realized. Ill-fortune plagued the money sent by Prokofiev for this purpose: It was cruelly stolen, wrongly claimed by greedy landlords and doctors, and seldom reached her. Bashkirov’s love of the roulette table, which Prokofiev disrespected him for, soon became obvious and, as reflected in the pages of the com-poser’s diary, they became estranged, their relationship ten-sion-filled. The enthusiastic, uniformly structured sonnets that Boris Nikolayevich, a graphomaniac, began to send to Prokofiev did not interest the composer and did not stem the deterioration in their relationship.

The moment she died is merely noted in the diary, but finds reflection in the composer’s letters in the form of dark confusion. Boris Romanov43, with whom Prokofiev correspon-ded about his ballet Trapeze, opened an envelope that had come to him from Prokofiev to find a piece of paper concer-ning the funeral arrangements. In the turmoil, Romanov misdated the agitated letter he sent back to the composer, putting down December 2 rather than the correct date of January 2, 1925.

Cousin Katya

The photograph of a great beauty in Prokofiev’s auto-biography leaves a strong impression.

Yekaterina Aleksandrovna Rayevskaya, married name Ignatyeva (1881-1943), was a deep-thinking, subtle indivi-dual. She graduated from the Smolnïy Institute, and was a good singer. Besides teaching Prokofiev the social graces (he had come to St. Petersburg from the provinces), she familia-rized him with Aleksey Apukhtin’s poetry.

Maria Grigorievna Prokofiev, 1924

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After a complication with typhoid fever that affected her ears, she began to lose her hearing, an irreversible process. She and Yekaterina Aleksandrovna lived a difficult life in Pen-za. The dampness in Katya’s room caused the ceiling to col-lapse. She ran a school for deaf children in Mertovshchina, a village far from the city. She herself had founded the school in 1919. Her work consumed everything; she practically lived in the school. The poetic upbringing of a St. Petersburg girl of the Silver Age gave Katya a deep religious sense and a mystical outlook.

In her letters to Prokofiev one can hear the echoes of previous disagreements. In 1927, however, she was excitedly awaiting the arrival of her cousin:

Seryozha, Seryozha! I can’t believe that I’ll soon be seeing you and Linette. . . Some sort of cheerful wave has come over me at the thought of you being back home, and I’ll once again be gushing with pride—my beloved cousin, with all of the enthusiasms which make up the whole of you, and with such brilliant talent. I can still see your dear, clear eyes, full of thought, and hear your characteristic mocking, the irony that distinguishes you and your musical creativity. Your sarcasm is so strongly expressed—it has such dominant force and so much charm and charisma. I understand why Linette chose you and you chose her, why you found her distinctive. This is manifest even from your photographs, which have allowed me to imagine for myself her specific personality, and I am so happy for you that she is your life partner. Not for nothing did you study the heavenly bodies. Linette’s soul is reflected in you, giving you that which you otherwise lacked. This is clearly evident by your last letter. And I was so desperately unhappy that I hadn’t heard from you! And I have likewise not heard Linette sing. But I will ask her to sing something into my ear here at home.

“Well, how shall we meet?”—I’m spontaneously recalling Apukhtin’s poetry.44 Yes, but I’m not the same as I once was, not at all. Grey hair and six years of difficult, constant work, sometimes in appalling conditions, have left me unrecognizable. What’s to be done! But I’m good in spirit, happy as a child, and still love life and expect from it much bright joy.

Perhaps it’s all intended to make me overcome obstacles? Perhaps it’s because I overcame death. After all I was dying here in Penza while continuing to live. Two crises—a nightmare . . . And any second your Katechka will have been done for. But I cheated death and stayed alive, in order to have more and more happiness, seeing the evolution of the entire world and everything that exists.

And so, greetings to you, “Sergey Prokofiev,” and your dear wife! How I would like to be the first to meet you at the border or in Moscow, but I don’t know when I’ll arrive. I embrace and kiss you.

Yours, heartfelt, Ye. Ignatyeva.

Thank you, my dear, for the invitation and your concern for our finances. Ye. I.45

She was arrested in late January or early February 1928. The specific reasons are unknown, though in the Rayevsky family it was believed that it concerned her contacts with foreigners. It is possible that the freedom she allowed her-self in conversation was a cause. When later in 1931 she was hoping to be assigned to a sanatorium for the deaf, she wrote to Prokofiev to the effect that she “did not want to go

In the St. Petersburg home of the Rayevskys. On the left side, Sergey Sergeyevich and Mariya Grigoryevna Prokofiev; at the head of the table, Yekaterina Aleksandrovna Rayevskaya (married name Ignatyeva).

Yekaterina Aleksandrovna Ignatyeva (née Rayevskaya), February 1926.

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there, where they resent me, but to the Crimea.”46 The men-tion of resentment suggests that her arrest in 1928 might have stemmed from a denunciation. In the sphere of the So-viets denunciations were effective means of self-regulating the rosters of employees and even structuring the popula-tion.

Yekaterina Aleksandrovna was exiled to the North, to the city of Kadnikov near Vologda. Something incredible hap-pened following her arrest. On the way from Penza to Kad-nikov she ended up in Butïrskaya prison, where she “acci-dentally” met Shurik, who was serving his sentence there. The episode has all the features of a successful adventure tale, especially if one imagines the endless crossing paths, vaulted ceilings, and all of the might of the Butïrskaya faci-lity, a true Russian version of the Château d’If. Of course she looked for and found her brother, and their meeting was by no means accidental.

Yekaterina Aleksandrovna suffered her unemployment, and the feeling of uselessness depressed her. On one oc-casion she decided to breed chickens, and turned for as-sistance to a specialist: Sergey Prokofiev. She was entirely correct in thinking that her cousin could send her the latest scientific thinking in the West about poultry cultivation. He himself had gone through a brief but intense period of fascination with chickens, trying to raise them in Ettal. The chicks did not hatch well, as Prokofiev documented statisti-cally. He made a table with different rubrics concerning their breeding. The entry labeled “retired” makes a particular-ly terrible impression, especially taking into account its inad-vertent Soviet associations. A man who was arrested, exiled, and shot was said to have been “retired,” and about this no questions could be asked. In OGPU [Obyedinyonnoye Gosu-darstvennoye Politicheskoye Upravleniye, or Joint State Po-litical Directorate—Ed.] parlance the word “retired” is found everywhere.

Prokofiev’s venture nonetheless served as inspiration for Yekaterina Aleksandrovna.

Dear Cousin,I’m sending you several photographs from the

summer. Besides a camera we’ve just bought a small home movie-maker, named a Pathé-Baby, and when friends or acquaintances visited us at the dacha we involved them in detective stories, which turned out quite funny. We likewise filmed the children as they were gobbling up candy and other such vignettes. In the evenings we’ve been showing our films. From the footage one can choose the best moments and then enlarge them, the result being a collection of living snapshots. I’ll send these to you at some point.

Tomorrow we’re moving back to the city, and I’ll immediately look for journals and brochures for you about chicken breeding. I used to be very fond of it and in Bavaria bred chickens and ducklings in an electric incubator, so I am in simpatico with your poultry cultivation plans. Thanks very much for your name-day congratulations. We’ll both be thinking of you on the anniversary of dear aunt’s death.47

My October trip to Moscow48 will apparently have to be put off until January, since the Paris Grand Opera has commissioned a ballet from me, on which I’m now working. I’ll have the score sitting with me through the autumn.49 The Bolshoi Theater in Moscow informed me that Love for Three Oranges will be revived next season, l which will facilitate getting funds to you as well as to Shurik’s children. In any case in two weeks I’ll either ask for you to be sent 200 rubles or will ask Anna Petrovna

One of the central streets of Kadnikov.

Sergey Sergeyevich Prokofiev, 1930.

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to stop by the theater to collect the funds for you and the children and send your share to you. I received a letter from Tanya a month ago: she’s in difficult straights having lost her job, which was deemed redundant. I tried to help her a little.

Many kisses to you, from Ptashka as well. Write to us in Paris.

Your loving cousin51

Katya’s poultry initiative met with little success.Yekaterina Aleksandrovna died in complete loneliness,

various illnesses closing in on her at the same time. The tomb of her mother was the center of her empty life. “Write an elegy for her,”52 she asked Prokofiev. And at the end of the request, “for piano.”53 Her cousin was the one bright spot in her life.

I now recognize that everyone has died, and that

you and I, close cousins, are the only ones left—a special feeling, something to be valued most of all . . .

You have a family, and I grieve terribly in my complete loneliness... I walked to the gravesite, tired, wet, and returned home to your postcard.54

You have a golden heart, Seryozhik, and I don’t know how, by what means, and when I’ll be able to thank you for all of your brotherly, almost fatherly care and love. This orphaned heart will never forget it. My eternal, deepest thanks to you.55

In those places where people were exiled, food was of extremely poor quality. Money from the Bolshoi Theater was often late in arriving, and what could actually be bought in Kadnikov during the time of collectivization?

Dear Cousin,Finally I’ve received a letter from you. Poor thing,

how you’ve been brought low! I’d assumed that things were not going well, since you’ve been silent for so long.

My first concern upon receiving your letter was to send you a food parcel. I began with what I could learn from Soviet sources, which items and how many were allowed, on which of them duties are charged and from which places parcels are most likely to arrive. They told me Revel, so I went there and asked that you be sent 3 kilos of rice, 1 ½ kilos of semolina, tapioca, sugar, 1 kilo each of chocolate and butter, 250 grams of tea and condensed milk. The customs on this will be about 30-35 rubles, but given that you received money from the Bolshoi Theater at the end of January, you’ll be able to pay the fee with that, at which time please write to me to let me know for how long you’ll be able to get by, since your illness and the customs will both of course exhaust your budget. Besides, if your sentence is up at the end of March, then perhaps you’ll need money for moving. Write to me about all of this in detail, likewise about whether the food that’s being sent to you is of good quality. I ask you to judge this sternly and to tell me honestly, since next time, if Revel isn’t top quality, I’ll be able to send you a parcel directly from Paris. Parcels can be made up of this or that, and I’m often hampered by not knowing what’s most needed.

I’ll happily subscribe to the doctor’s journal, though you’ve neither given me his address nor his name, and to put your name on it would be impractical, since from the natural point of view of the censors, medical journals should go to people in the medical profession.56

Postcard of February 15, 1935, sent from Bologna by Sergey Sergeyevich Prokofiev to Yekaterina Aleksandrovna Ignatyeva (Rayevskaya).

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After London I have a break for a month and a half from concertizing, which I’ll use to complete the score of my new ballet. The ballet master will then begin working on the staging, with the premiere in the Grand Opera occurring in April or May.57

Earlier I finished a quartet which had been commissioned from me by one of the largest libraries in America, the Library of Congress in Washington, which will be preserving the manuscript. It will be officially unveiled there on April 24.58

Everything’s good at home, I’ll fill you in on all the details next time. For now I hope you get better in a new, dry room. Both of us send you lots of kisses.

Yours.59

Katya wrote that, with Prokofiev’s help, she had convales-ced to the point that “I can recognize my own face.”60

Her receptiveness to the process of Bolshevik reeduca-tion was never more effective: Her letters were ideologically impeccable. If she forgot to write something “political,” she would make additional notes at the end of the letter or in the margins. The censors were disappointed: She did not provide them with manifest evidence of criminal intent.

I receive many letters from friends, but you haven’t for a long time sent me a letter with photographs of you, Linette, the children, and the divine Jacques Sadoul [French Communist journalist for the newspaper Pravda—Ed.]. Here I happily purchase Ts. I. K. Izvestiya [the Central Executive Committee edition of the newspaper Izvestiya—Ed.] and read his articles.61

On one occasion, catching herself, she adds a note at the very top of the page about the murder of Kirov: 62 “Thus the ranks of the Party need to be increased and the defense of our great Union increased all the more!”63

In March of 1935: “Tomorrow afternoon is an especially joyous day for me... On March 8th the new Soviet woman is celebrated! There’s a pile of newspapers and journals on my table. In two hours I’ll be running off to a celebratory gathe-ring in the club of railroad workers named after Lenin.” 64

Oh, immortal internal censor! For people of Yekaterina Aleksandrovna’s generation it arose from the acquisition of tragic life experience. For those born later it was practically innate. For me and those dear to my from my generation this internal censor was an integral part of our mindset.

The fact that Soviet power was the best and most fair system for world order was to be considered indisputable no matter what. The truth of the tenets of communism was unshakeable; it was the sacred establishment of our child-hood and adolescence, our Creed. Its postulates were espe-cially immutable to those families affected by repression. Having lived in fear their entire lives, parents instilled the correct ideology in children with particular zeal. My parents told my brother and me about the repression of our relatives in 1931 only in the years of perestroika, and by no means immediately.

It is unknown when Yekaterina Aleksandrovna finally left Kadnikov. Misfortune and illnesses left their imprint on her. Svyatoslav Prokofiev commented that “her overall situation was quite difficult, she had to move from place to place, living in poverty. In the last years of her life [she] suffered amnesia and died in 1943 in a mental hospital.”65 Prokofiev’s older son did not mention that she had been repressed when I interviewed him in 1990, nor did he include this de-tail in an article about his relatives for the inaugural issue of Three Oranges.66 He was unaware of Kadnikov when I told him about it. This is quite natural: It was safest for children

The old churchyard in Kadnikov where Yekaterina Grigoryeva is presumed buried.

A. E. Strakhov-Braslavskiy, “Liberated Woman—Builder of Socialism!” (1926)

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not to know about their repressed relatives.But then Svyatoslav Sergeyevich remembered Yekate-

rina Aleksandrovna “tossing” him and his younger brother Oleg into the air in their childhoods. His aunt was “cheerful, active, and extremely caring,”67 even “optimistic.” This last word was so surprising to me that I did not commit it to the transcript of my interview with him: How could one remain optimistic, having lived such a life?

Perhaps Yekaterina Aleksandrovna found support in her religion, and perhaps “tossing” the boys brought her a huge, albeit rare joy. She certainly made them happy.

Andrey and Tatyana

For the marriage in 1906 of the oldest son of the Raye-vsky family, Andrey,68 a gorgeous wedding was arranged in the family house. He married Tatyana,69 the daughter of the court chamberlain and censorship committee member Aleksandr Katenin.

In 1903 Andrew graduated from the Imperial Lyceum, and while working there was drafted into the army and sta-tioned with his unit in Luga.70 After the Revolution he and his pregnant wife and 12-year-old son Sasha ended up in Novo-rossiysk. The family wanted to leave, but Andrey contracted typhus, dying at the age of 38 on January 14, 1920.

The fate of Tatyana was no less tragic, albeit different, than that of her sister-in-law Katya.

Her younger son Mitya was born after Andrey’s death. She and her two boys emigrated to Germany, where she found life unbearable.

She worked as a masseuse in a sanatorium, but in 1930 was laid off, leaving her in a desperate state. Yekaterina Gri-goryevna asked Prokofiev in 1927 to send Tatyana those things that had once belonged to someone or another’s maid. Of course Prokofiev came to her aid.

In 1929 Sasha entered the service. Aunt Katya reported to Prokofiev that he was involved in sound film, running a complex system, and that he hoped to combine his service with university studies.

Here too Prokofiev became involved. As he wrote to Tatyana in Potsdam, “it seems that Sasha will succeed in get-ting a scholarship.” 71 The composer sought to procure the scholarship through the conductor Serge Koussevitzky, but it did not work out.

Tatyana grieved being in Germany and ached for her fa-mily, dreaming “to visit my homeland, if only in my old age, and to be at Andryusha’s grave.”72

She was perhaps the only person to whom Prokofiev could write openly about the “Soviet” Rayevsky family. His letters to Tatyana occasionally reveal that which he hid in his other letters to the family. “I cannot get over Katechka’s ar-rest in Penza.”73 For a time the news concerning his relatives seemed to improve.

Dear Tanya,I returned from the USSR only a week ago, but

not directly, through Italy, where I had several concerts.74 I spent most of my time in Moscow, going three times from there to Leningrad. I saw Zhenya,75 but unfortunately only briefly. He came by at an inopportune time, three hours before my concert, after which I had to leave for the night train to Moscow, packing for a repeat of the program. I nonetheless managed to talk with him about you, give him a suit, and hear his news. He looks well, no different than before, and his family is happy. He earns more than he

Andrey Aleksandrovich Rayevsky

Center bottom row: Andrey Aleksandrovich Rayevsky. Upper row: Emperor Nikolay II and Crown Prince Aleksey. Portion of a group photo. Mogilev, Headquarters of the Supreme Command.

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did in the spring, but he still can’t find an apartment with the marsh expert.76 He was very happy about the suit, something that’s getting harder and harder to find in the USSR. He gave me his address, so I’ll be able to alert him in advance of my return in the spring (before entering the USSR) and spend more time with him.

Shurik had a good summer in the Urals, in beautiful surroundings eating lots of berries, mushrooms, crabs and fish. He’s especially pleased that Sonya, hitherto frail, flourished in the mountain air. Their second daughter, Katerina, joined her parents on vacation. Shurik now has a new job, as an accountant at a large mill, and thus could not immediately get away to see me in Moscow, though I paid for his trip. Nadya came instead of him, spending an entire month in Moscow. From Kadnikov, Katya Ignatyeva also came, and I advised her to move at least to Tver, since she doesn’t have to remain in Kadnikov and she’s not allowed to live in Moscow. Her sister Nadya is in Tver, and it is only a few hours to Moscow, so she could come in from time to time. Katya did go to Tver but she didn’t like it and returned to Kadnikov. The more her deafness separates her from the outside world the more difficult it is for her to get along with Shurik’s family. Her stay in Moscow had its frictions. She implored you to write to her: Northern Region, city of Kadnikov, Sovetskaya 34. The situation in the USSR has improved since my last trip: Moscow and Leningrad are better lit, the roadways are paved, cafes have opened, and there are food shops “for all citizens,” albeit at a higher price.

How is your health? And how are things? I’m in Paris for a short while. For the entire month of January I’ll be concertizing in Italy, the Czech Republic, England, etc.77 Big kisses to you from my wife and me.

Yours.78

Shurik and Nadya

On one occasion in New York—February 4, 1926—Pro-kofiev received an unexpected letter from a cousin who had for almost a year been sitting in prison! The letter was dated April 1924, however, at which time Shurik was still a free man. The contents of the letter thus served to provide context for his situation.

Dear Seryozha!You’re probably very surprised that I’m writing to

you. The fact is, I don’t write very often, since I don’t enjoy it and have no time. But I’ve heard about you from mama. I’m busy, doing my service, and in the evenings to earn some money I play bass in a theater orchestra. I took to this instrument and even studied it for a couple of years in the Moscow Conservatoire. I have a lot of musician friends and one of them, Sergey Leontyevich Pogrebnichko,79 is going to America. If he finds you and passes along this letter, please help him to find a position in an orchestra. He’s a wonderful French horn player, a soloist for 9 years in the Bolshoi Theater, very musical, with refined tone and a wealth of experience. He’s also a wonderful person. He and I worked together in a theater for one season. No doubt you have great musical connections. I rejoice in your success. Sometimes I hear about it. They say you’re married. Congratulations.

Don’t write to me, it’s not worth it.I kiss you. Shurik.80

Tatyana Aleksandrovna Rayevskaya (née Katenina), St. Petersburg.

Aleksandr Rayevsky (Shurik).

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“Don’t write...” In the Soviet Union before perestroika there was no need to explain the meaning of this phrase.

The cousin that Prokofiev called Shurik81 entered the Im-perial Lyceum, formerly Tsarskoye Selo, in 1900, completing his course of studies in 1906. Before the Revolution he wor-ked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. During the First World War he was an artillery officer, later finding employment as a legal advisor in the State Bank. He also played bass in the Vakhtangov Theater, a position that he might have gotten through his wife’s nephew, Nikolay Petrovich Sheremetyev.82

Shurik happily married baroness Nadezhda Feofilovna (Bogdanovna) Meyendorf (1889-1950), a descendant of a noble German-Russian family. In the Rayevsky family it was said that Nadezhda never studied in an education institu-tion, having been taught at home in the family of Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich83 as the friend and companion of his daughter Tatyana.84 Everyone noted her great suc-cesses. She wrote poetry and was talented at drawing.85 Young Nadya is occasionally mentioned in the diary of K. R. [Konstantin Romanov—Ed.]. For example: “We were sum-moned to the children of our guests: the Pavlovichs, Leykh-ten bergskys (Stana’s children), the two Meyendorf boys and the girl Nadya, the Frederiks children, Peshkov’s, and Po-retsky’s. 17 in all, they ran, played, and romped around in the white hall, a pleasure to watch.” 86

The entry is dated March 2, 1897, when Nadya was 8.The young couple had three daughters: Yelena (1913-82),

Yekaterina (1915-2001), and Sofya (1923-2011).The loss to the Rayevsky family is noted in Prokofiev’s

diary on April 20, 1925. He received a letter from his cousin Katya in Penza, in which she wrote that Shurik was chroni-cally ill. In letters from Soviet Russia those who were arrested were described as being sick.

Svyatoslav Sergeyevich said that Shurik Rayevsky was repressed for being a graduate of a privileged educational institution: the Lyceum. Certain events suggest that to be a Lyceum alumnus had particular significance, connected, I think, with the so-called “Lyceum affair.” For a time, former students of the Lyceum met in secret to mark Lyceum Day, October 19. They arranged memorials for deceased stu-dents—those who had died in the Revolution and First World War. On the night of February 15, 1925, OGPU agents arrested more than 150 people. Almost all of those who were convicted in the Lyceum affair were shot or later peri-shed in prison camps.

Prokofiev’s second cousin Sergey Sebryakov explained to him that Shurik “fell in with this crowd, and didn’t do himself any good by refusing to name the names of those people he recalled” being involved in illegal political mee-tings.87 Aleksandr Aleksandrovich’s Rayevsky’s name does not appear in the arrest lists for the Lyceum affair. But Se-bryakov’s words indicate the nature of the charges against him. Having been arrested just after the mass detention of Lyceum alumni, Shurik was perhaps questioned about the unfolding case. The 1926 Criminal Code includes an article about “failing to report.” Such was Shurik’s crime. In a note sent to the OGPU in 1929, Prokofiev mentions that Shurik was in the prison division affiliated with Counter-Revolutio-nary Organizations. In the eyes of the new authorities secret meetings of Lyseum alumni were regarded as activities of a counter-revolutionary monarchist organization.

Another unwitting culprit was the younger sister of Na-dezhda Feofilovna, Aleksandra, known in the Rayevsky fa mi ly as Sandra.88 She was the secretary of S. Elliott, a representa-tive of the American businessman W. Averill Harriman, who had signed a 20-year agreement with the Soviet govern-ment for manganese production in the Caucasus.

In the evenings the Rayevsky family often went to the

Aleksandr and Nadezhda Rayevsky.

Aleksandr Rayevsky, Artillery Officer, February 1915.

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theater and concerts. Sandra brought her American friends to Shurik’s apartment for some dancing. Contacts with foreigners in the USSR remained unsafe up to perestroika. Shurik was sentenced to 10 years.

Anna Petrovna Uvarova wrote the following to Prokofiev:

Shurik’s illness has become grave. Before the spring he was in the hospital, but the doctors determined that he needs prolonged treatment (five years) in a sanatorium, in the North, in a cold climate. The same place where our brother has also been receiving treatment, for the second year.89

Thanks to the efforts of E. P. Peshkova,90 Shurik managed to serve his sentence, which had been reduced by a third, in Moscow in Butïrskaya prison.

From the account of Mariya Tarasevich (Suchova):

He was a piano player for film showings for the administration of the prison, and thus had a relaxed regime: He not only had weekly (Sunday) visiting rights, but also had the opportunity to entertain his guests in the prison canteen. Yekaterina Aleksandrovna, his daughter, recalled eating “good-tasting” pies there. One more thing: The room for the meetings was divided by a partition, prisoners and visitors on opposite sides. They brought Aleksandr Aleksandrovich out first to see his visitors. He took a seat at the far end of the room, where the divider did not quite reach the wall, and so he was able to take little Sonya on his knees and hug his older daughters.91

He also mended shoes, for which he earned 15 rubles a month.

After the birth of their three daughters Nadezhda Feo-filovna became both a wife and a mother, but she was also obliged, after the arrest of her husband, to earn a living. She earned a modest amount as a typist, one of her employers being Mikhaíl Bulgakov. She also made a bit of money de-signing and selling lamp fixtures.

My gentle Seryozha!I feel ashamed in contacting you with what is

perhaps an indiscreet request, but I would not have done so were it not for my children.

I’m having a hard time financially, and if you could help to support me for a little while as I look for work, as you did last winter, I would be endlessly grateful to you, as would Shurik, who is tortured by our situation but of course can’t do anything about it. God only knows how long he’ll be in prison, but he’s been sentenced for six years, his guilt being his Lyceum education. Thank God they didn’t send him to Solovki. I see him on Sundays for half an hour, and rejoice even in that. Shurik remains cheerful, and has not despaired, to the contrary keeping my spirits up with his positive outlook. My children are getting bigger and while they’re still growing, giving me encouragement and comfort, the poor things have been through a lot.

Forgive me for my request, but it’s gotten to the point that I had to ask.

I kiss you, your wife, and your little one.May the Lord protect you all.Yours, Nadya.92

Butïrskaya Prison, Matvey Kazakov, architect.

Nadezhda Rayevskaya, 1929.

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Of course, Prokofiev made an effort to free his second cousin as soon as he arrived in the USSR. He spoke with Peshkova, talked about the arrest to the influential director Vsevolod Meyerhold and to hasten the matter made contact with Nadezhda Bogdanovna.93 Meyerhold promised to “put a word in the ear” of his acquaintance in the OGPU. The situa-tion did not change for the better, however. Upon returning to the USSR on October 30, 1929, the composer heard the news from Myaskovsky that he summarized in two words in his diary: “Worse: Nadya.”94

As Anna Petrovna Uvarova explained in a letter to the composer:

Most esteemed Sergey Sergeyevich,On the 26th [of October, 1929] Nadya returned from

the funeral of aunt Katya in Kadnikov and wanted to write to you about everything, but on that same night she had to leave to see Shurik. She left her children with my daughter Katyusha and me.

Leaving, Nadya asked me to send you the last request of our dying aunt—not to abandon her Katya.

Nadya spent three days with her. Kadnikov is nothing more than a large village, where earnings are nothing to think about, and so Katya’s financial situation will be difficult.

Of the last days of our aunt’s life Katya herself wanted to write to you. She died peacefully, without much suffering, in full consciousness until her final moment. Her face was calm, beautiful. For all of us our aunt was such a dear, beloved person. It’s difficult to come to grips with the thought that she’s no longer with us.

Please accept our sincere and heartfelt greetings, and good wishes, both to you and Lina Ivanovna.

A.P. 95

Anna Petrovna took in the three Rayevsky girls.In the Rayevsky family it was assumed that the convic-

tion was for a standard reason: contact with foreigners. Na-dezhda Feofilovna’s mother and many of her sisters and bro-thers lived outside of the country; it was difficult to imagine that she had no contact with them whatsoever. Additional factors in the conviction might have been the family history of the baroness and her husband, who was imprisoned un-der the treason statute of the USSR.

They sent her to Povenets, a small village in Karelia. The Soviets needed cheap labor for grand state construction projects. Work begins at a frenzied “shock worker” pace in Povenets on the White Sea – Baltic Canal, conceived as the next victorious war on one of the chief enemies of the So-viets: Mother Nature.

Tatyana Aleksandrovna Rayevskaya wrote to Prokofiev from Germany: “Poor Shurik, the joy of his last goodbye to Nadya and his children taken away from him. They are in truth holy martyrs!”96

In November 1929, Meyerhold brought the composer to the head of a secret division of the OGPU, Yakov Agranov, one of the top functionaries of state security and the organizer of political repressions in the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s. The date of their meeting, November 15, is given on a note that the composer scribbled as a reminder to himself on a ran-dom piece of paper, evidently “on his knee” and in a hurry. The first part concerns Nadezhda Feofilovna, insofar as the date indicated corresponds to that of her arrest. “From Oc-tober 26 to 27, behind97 a secret department in Butïrskaya prison. During the search her letters to her husband and re-latives were confiscated, even though they were perfectly

Anna Petrovna Uvarova, in a photograph made shortly after the end of World War II.

Information about Shurik and Nadya, given by Prokofiev to Agranov on November 15, 1929.

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legal.” Below, about Shurik:

Butïrskaya. Prison unit for C. R. O.98

1925 in prison for 4 years 8 months As a Lyceum student 2 more years Filed for amnesty.

On the side the following attribution: “Filed with Ye-nukidze.”99 And beneath: “Testimonials and information gi-ven to comrade Agranov.”100

Occasionally in the life of the orphaned girls there was some joy: The day after Prokofiev’s conversation with Agra-nov the second premiere of Love for Three Oranges took place in the Bolshoi Theater. Anna Petrovna Uvarova was in one of the loges “with two little Rayevskys.”101 B. Asafyev,102 B. Gusman, P. Kerzhentsev,103 I. Rabinovich,104 and the com-poser of the opera were seated in the parterre on added chairs.

Shurik’s sentence was reduced by a third from ten years to six years and eight months. His return home is preserved in the Rayevsky family memory: “Yekaterina Aleksandrovna105 said that during this time she and her sister Sonya, her pater-nal cousin Anna Petrovna Uvarova, and the latter’s daughter Katyusha were living together in a basement apartment on Bolshoi Afanasyevsky side-street.” She recalled that “in the morning, when we were still sleeping, someone knocked on the basement window. It was papa. I greeted him in my nightgown. Right then and there I gave him my ticket. I was supposed to go to see mama in Povenets, but he went in-stead of me. So I didn’t get to be with her.”106

In the spring of 1933 the Rayevsky family moved to Miass, near Chelyabinsk, but some time thereafter returned to Moscow.

After the start of the Great Patriotic War, Aleksandr Alek-sandrovich was arrested again. He was sent to the Kansk prison camp in the center of the Gulag system in the Kras-noyarsk region. The huge camp specialized in forest exploi-tation. There were those, of course, who died of hunger and disease. But the most common form of death in the camps was under a log. Sawn timber was carried by two prisoners at a time to the mill. The deadliest moment came when they tried to tear a log out of the ground and lift it onto their shoulders. The weakest prisoners fell, the heavy burden dri-ving the emaciated victims into the ground.

How did Shurik die? Perhaps under a log, having col-lapsed in the young grass, or stepping out of line in a mo-ment of weakness, or in a wretched barracks on a pile of in-describable rags, trying to keep in his fading consciousness the faces of his family. To find out what actually happened is prohibited.

Aleksandr Aleksandrovich died in the Kansk prison camp on June 6, 1942. Nadezhda Feofilovna died in 1950.

My heartfelt thanks to those who helped me with this project: Sergey Svyatoslavovich Prokofieff, the staff of the London Prokofiev Archive, and the descendants of the Rayevsky family, Mariya Vladimirovna Daragan-

Sushchova, Mariya Petrovna Tarasevich (Suchova), Yekaterina Aleksandrovna Rayevskaya, and

Dmitriy Dmitriyevich Maksutov. Additional thanks to my valued colleagues Varvara Petrovna Pavlinova

and Grigoriy Anatolyevich Moíseyev.

The Rayevsky family, reunited at last. The image dates from 1934 or after.

Nadezhda and Aleksandr Rayevsky, 1934 or after.

The last photograph of Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Rayevsky.

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1 The opening words of Lev Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina, slightly altered. 2 Svyatoslav Sergeyevich Prokof’yev, “O moikh roditelyakh: Beseda sïna kompozitora s Nataliyey Savkinoy,” in Sergey Prokof’yev 1891-1991: Dnevnik, pis’ma, besedï, vospominaniya, ed. M. E. Tarakanov (Moscow: Sovetskiy kompozitor, 1991), 212-32. 3 Sviatoslav Prokofiev, “Little-Known Facts about People Close to Prokofiev,” Three Oranges Journal, vol. 1 (January 2001): 20-21. 4 David Nice, Prokofiev: From Russia to the West, 1891-1935 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003). 5 The Serge Prokofiev Archive of Goldsmiths College, University of London—henceforth SPA. 6 These were used on old Russian farms and probably kept by Prokofiev’s father, an agronomist, in Sontsovka, Ukraine. 7 On November 13, 1929. There was hope of a commission for Le Pas d’Acier, but activists in the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians ensured that the ballet did not reach the Bolshoi Theater stage. 8 Yekaterina Aleksandrovna Ignatyeva, née Rayevskaya—Prokofiev’s cousin. 9 Boris Yevseyevich Gusman (1892-1944) was a Soviet musical official. For two years, 1929-1930, he ran the repertoire office of the Bolshoi Theater and served as assistant director. 10 Sergey Prokof’yev, Dnevnik 1907-1933, ed. Svyatoslav Prokof’yev, 2 vols. (Paris: sprkfv, 2002), 2: 762-63 (entry of March 16, 1930). 11 Countess Anna Petrovna Uvarova (1869-1951)—cousin of the Rayevskys.12 Anna Petrovna’s daughter. 13 November 11, 1930, letter from Prokofiev to A. P. Uvarova, SPA XXIV 283. 14 Lev Moíseyevich Tseytlin (1881-1952)—violinist, educator, and founder of the conductor-less orchestral ensemble Persimfans. 15 Vladimir Vladimirovich Derzhanovsky (1881-1942)—musicologist, critic, founder of the Association of Contemporary Music, editor and publisher of the journal Muzïka. 16 Konstantin Solomonovich Saradzhev (1877-1954)—conductor. 17 Russian acronym of the Moscow Society of Dramatic Writers and Composers, which existed from 1904-1930. 18 Letter of March 7, 1929, from Prokofiev to Myaskovsky, in S. S. Prokof’yev i N. Ya. Myaskovskiy: Perepiska, ed. M. G. Kozlova and N. Ya. Yatsenko (Moscow: Sovetskiy kompozitor, 1977), 301. 19 May 4, 1930, letter from T. A. Rayevskaya to Prokofiev, SPA XXIV 104-107. 20 Aleksandr Dmitriyevich Rayevsky (1850-1914), the husband of Yekaterina Grigoryevna, was a State Councilor. 21 Sergey Prokof’yev, Avtobiografiya, ed. M. G. Kozlova (Moscow: Sovetskiy kompozitor, 1982), 11- 12. 22 Rossiyskiy gosudarstvennïy arkhiv literaturï i iskusstva, f. 1929, op. 2, yed. khr. 605. 23 July 12, 1925, postcard from Ye. G. Rayevskaya to Prokofiev, SPA VIII 187. 24 April 7, 1926, letter from Ye. G. Rayevskaya to Prokofiev, SPA X 223-226. 25 The letter from N. A. Rakhmaninova is apparently lost. Olga Aleksandrovna Satina was the wife of Mikhaíl Ivanovich Satin, the nephew of Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Satin—the father of Rakhmaninov’s wife. A. A. Satin died in 1926. I am grateful for this information to Aleksey Aleksandrovich Naumov, resident scholar at the N. S. Golovanov Apartment Museum in Moscow.

26 Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, the foundational text of Christian Science, was first published in 1875. The specific book by P. de Kuleven (1853-1927) to which Yekaterina Grigoryevna refers is unknown.27 From a letter of December 7/9, 1926, SPA XIII 164. 28 The wife and daughter of Yekaterina Grigoryevna’s son Aleksandr, who served time in prison. 29 From a letter of March 10, 1928, from Ye. G. Rayevskaya to Prokofiev, SPA XVI 81. 30 The Ballets Russes premiered Le Pas d’Acier on June 7, 1927. 31 The director of the Grand Opera from 1915-39 was Jacques Rouché. From 1940-45 he continued to direct the theater in tandem with Philippe Gauber from 1940-42 and Marcel Samuel-Rousseau from 1942-45. He approached Prokofiev about writing an opera to a text by Edmund Rostand on May 29, 1927, at the home of Princesse Edmond de Polignac during the general rehearsal (to piano) of Stravinsky’s opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex. 32 The family arrived at the dacha on June 27. 33 Letter of June 22, 1927, from Prokofiev to Ye. G. Rayevskaya, SPA XVII 172.34 From a letter of March 22, 1928, from Ye. G. Rayevskaya to Prokofiev, SPA XVII 243-246. 35 The former nursemaid of Nadya and Shurik’s three daughters. 36 Highlighted in the original. 37 From a letter of May 24, 1928, from Ye. G. Rayevskaya to Prokofiev, SPA XVIII 56-59. 38 From a letter of August 9, 1928, from Ye. G. Rayevskaya to Prokofiev, SPA XVIII 265d. 39 Telegram of October 24, 1929, from Prokofiev to Ye. A. Ignatyeva, SPA XXII 204. 40 From a letter of December 2, 1929, from Prokofiev to S. Brishan, SPA XXII 364. 41 Letter of October 29, 1929, from Ye. A. Ignatyeva to Prokofiev, SPA XXII 234-235. 42 Boris Nikolayevich Bashkirov (1891-?)—poet who wrote under the pseudonym Boris Verin. 43 Boris Geyorgiyevich Romanov (1891-1957)—choreographer and founder of the Russian Romantic Ballet. 44 “Well, how shall we meet?”—the first line of Aleksey Apukhtin’s popular lyric “With the Express Train.” 45 Letter of January 14, 1927, from Ye. A. Ignatyeva to Prokofiev, SPA XIV 34-37. 46 From a letter of June 19, 1931, from Ye. A. Ignatyeva to Prokofiev, SPA XXVII 139. 47 October 22. 48 The composer was unable to travel to the USSR in 1930 and 1931. He did not return until November 1932. 49 Prokofiev’s fourth ballet Sur le Borysthène / On the Dniepr. 50 The production was revived on November 13, 1929. 51 Letter of October 8, 1930, from Prokofiev to Ye. A. Ignatyeva, SPA XXV 166.52 From a letter of November 29, 1929, from Ye. A. Ignatyeva to Prokofiev, SPA XXII 343-348. 53 Ibid. 54 Letter of April 14, 1931, from Ye. A. Ignatyeva to Prokofiev SPA XXVI 424-425. 55 Letter of January 21, 1931, from Ye. A. Ignatyeva to Prokofiev, SPA XXVI 77-82. 56 In March Prokofiev took out a subscription to a medical journal

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published in Berlin by a doctor known to Katya (Dr. N. A. Burlow). 57 The premiere of the ballet Sur le Borysthène / On the Dniepr occured on December 16, 1932. 58 The premiere of Prokofiev’s String Quartet No. 1 in B Minor was postponed a day to April 25, 1931. 59 Letter of February 2, 1931, from Prokofiev to Ye. A. Ignatyeva, SPA XXVI 148. 60 From a letter of February 12, 1931 (received February 19), from Ye. A. Ignatyeva to Prokofiev, SPA XXVI 181-184. 61 From a letter of October 13, 1934, from Ye. A. Ignatyeva to Prokofiev, SPA XXXVIII 139-142. 62 Sergey Mironovich Kirov was murdered at the Smolnïy Institute of Leningrad on December 1, 1934. 63 From a letter of December 5, 1934, from Ye. A. Ignatyeva to Prokofiev, SPA XXXVIII 322. 64 From a letter of March 7, 1935, from Ye. A. Ignatyeva to Prokofiev, SPA XXXIX 239-242. 65 Svyatoslav Prokof’yev, “O moikh roditelyakh,” 213-14. 66 “Little-Known Facts about People Close to Prokofiev.” 67 Svyatoslav Prokof’yev, “O moikh roditelyakh,” 213. 68 Andrey Aleksandrovich Rayevsky (1882-1920). 69 Tatyana Aleksandrovna Rayevskaya (née Katenina, 1883-1957). 70 My thanks to the staff of the research division of the Tsarskoye Selo Lyseum for this information. 71 From a letter of January 14, 1930, from Prokofiev to T. A. Rayevskaya, SPA XXIII 28. 72 From a letter of July 1, 1933, from T. A. Rayevskaya to Prokofiev, SPA XXXIV 160-161. 73 From a letter of April 5, 1928, from Prokofiev to T. A. Rayevskaya, SPA XVII 280. 74 The chief novelty in Prokofiev’s Italian concerts that autumn was his just-completed Third Symphony. 75 Tanya’s brother. 76 Prokofiev’s nickname for Zhenya’s wife, a scientist who studied marshes and swamps. 77 Early in 1934 Prokofiev performed in Rome, Turin, Fiume (Rijeka, from 1945-91 a part of Yugoslavia, now part of Croatia), and other cities. At the end of March he left for the Czech Republic and Poland (concerts on April 5 and 6 in Warsaw). 78 Letter of December 20, 1933, from Prokofiev to T. A. Rayevskaya, SPA XXXV 324. 79 There is no information about S. L. Pogrebnichko in the catalog of the Bolshoi Theater Museum. 80 Letter of April 21, 1924, from A. A. Rayevsky to Prokofiev, SPA V 159-160. 81 Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Rayevsky (1885–June 6, 1942). 82 N. P. Sheremetyev (1903-1944)—theatrical musician and composer, a descendant of Duke N. P. Sheremetyev and Praskova Zhemchugova. He did not leave Russia in the years following the Revolution because his wife Tsetsiliya Mansurova was a leadactress in the Vakhtangov Theater. 83 Konstantin Konstantinovich Romanov (1858-1915)—member of the Russian Imperial House, adjutant general, translator, and poet who wrote under the pseudonym “K. R.” 84 In 1946 Tatyana Konstantinovna Romanova (1890-1979), a Princess of Tsarist lineage, became a Superior of the Eleonsky Monastery in Jerusalem. 85 Other members of the Meyendorf family had artistic interests. Her brother Feofil, who ended up in France, was a painter who

specialized in miniatures. In the 1930s he painted Prokofiev’s wife Lina. Friends and family called him Bada, and Prokofiev refers to him as such in his diary. 86 Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich Romanov, “Dnevnik,” Gosudarstvennïy arkhiv Rossiyskoy Federatsii, f. 660, op. 1, d. 44, l. 21. My thanks to G. A. Moíseyev for his assistance in locating this source. Nadya had twelve siblings, including the boys Pavel (1882-1944), Feofil (Bada, 1886-1971), Andrey (1891-1909), and Georgiy (1894-?). 87 Prokof’yev, Dnevnik 1907-1933, 2: 480. 88 Aleksandra Feofilovna Rayevskaya (1894-?). 89 Letter of December 19, 1925, from A. P. Uvarova to Prokofiev, SPA X 53. Anna Petrovna had a brother named Dmitriy, who died in 1942 in the blockade of Leningrad. From a letter of 1926 it emerges that he had been imprisoned at Solovki, an infamous prison camp system located on the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea. In the Rayevsky family it was feared that Shurik would be sent to Solovki. 90 Yekaterina Pavlovna Peshkova, founder and director of the Moscow Committee of the Political Red Cross. A petition organized by the committee led to a reduction of A. A. Rayevsky’s sentence by a third. 91 From a letter of M. P. Tarasevich (Suchova) to the present author. 92 Letter of August 12, 1926, from N. F. Rayevskaya to Prokofiev, SPA XII 38-41. 93 He erroneously reports doing so twice in his diary: on March 6 and 20, 1927. It is possible that this error is not Prokofiev’s but his assistant Geyorgiy Gorchakov’s. The latter deciphered Prokofiev’s Soviet diary of 1927 from the composer’s shorthand. 94 Prokof’yev, Dnevnik 1907-1933, 2: 726. 95 From a letter of October 28, 1929, from A. P. Uvarova to Prokofiev, SPA XXII 224-226. 96 From a letter of May 4, 1930, from T. A. Rayevskaya to Prokofiev, SPA XXIV 104-107. 97 A rare grammatical mistake by Prokofiev. 98 C. R. O. —Counter-Revolutionary Organizations. 99 Avel Safonivich Enukidze (1877-1937)—revolutionary, state and political official, member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). 100 SPA XXI 224. 101 Prokof’yev, Dnevnik 1907-1933, 2: 734. 102 Boris Vladimirovich Asafyev (1884-1949)—musicologist, composer, professor at the Leningrad Conservatoire. 103 Platon Mikhaílovich Kerzhentsev (1881-1940)—economist by training, Chairman of the All-Union Committee on Artistic Affairs of the USSR. 104 Isaak Moíseyevich Rabinovich (1894-1961)—artist and dramaturge of the Bolshoi Theater. 105 The middle daughter of the Rayevsky family, sixteen years old in 1931. 106 From a letter by M. P. Tarasevich (Suchova).

22

Prokofiev’s Mass SongsLaurel E. FAY

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On first examination of the autobiographical state-ment Prokofiev penned for the Committee on Arts Affairs in October 1938 (updated in December 1939)—published in the previous issue of this journal—what took me by surprise was the information that four of his Soviet songs had been “awarded first and second prizes in competitions sponsored by Pravda and the Union of Composers and by Light Indus-try.”1 Between 1935 and 1939, Prokofiev wrote no fewer than 21 mass songs, grouping them under three opus numbers: 66, 76 and 79. That he had won a second prize for one of them in a Pravda song competition in 1935 was widely known. That he had competed in more than one contest—and how successfully—was not. Prokofiev’s mass songs are unloved stepchildren in his artistic biography. They do not rate inde-pendent study; they barely rate passing mention in the lit-erature about the composer, and then it is usually with con-descension or embarrassment.

None of these songs were popular “hits.” The claim that undiscovered masterpieces lie buried here would be a hard one to support. But in the biography of a creative genius of Prokofiev’s stature, nothing is too trivial. Even a cursory examination of the background and sources of these songs, and the composer’s competitive ventures with them, reveals much that is fascinating, and previously unknown, about the composer. Prokofiev’s move back to the USSR took place at a time when Soviet composers were actively grappling with the issue of how to compose music for the masses. Proko-fiev’s approach was not theoretical. He didn’t debate; he staked out a clear position and wrote songs that exemplified it. The endorsements won by at least six of his songs in a variety of song contests over a four-year period must have encouraged him to believe he was on the right track.

What follows here is a preliminary investigation of the lit-erary sources, “back stories,” and competitive fortunes of a number of the mass songs Prokofiev wrote between 1935 and 1939. Like all Soviet composers, Prokofiev also wrote songs during the war years, and he competed in the greatest song competition of them all—Stalin’s campaign for a new national anthem in 1943—but those must wait for a separate study.

The 1935 Pravda Contest and Beyond

Announced in June 1935 as a response to the urgent de-mand for outstanding mass songs, the contest sponsored by the editorial board of Pravda, the Union of Soviet Writers, and the Union of Soviet Composers was a high profile event. With separate awards for the best lyrics and for best music, it was open to all Soviet poets and composers. Although re-stricted to the Russian language, submitted songs could be of any type or genre—from lyrical or satiric to heroic, from love songs to lullabies, sports or student songs—as long as they were “melodic, combining imagery of high emotional-ity and artistic excellence with simplicity and accessibility of form.”2 The publication of nearly two-dozen song texts between August and November 1935 in Pravda under the rubric “Contest for the Best Song” kept the ongoing compe-tition in the public eye.

For Prokofiev, trying to burnish his credentials as a Sovi-et composer as he inched closer to establishing Moscow as his home base, the appeal of entering this competition was both natural and strategic. In his programmatic declaration, “The Paths of Soviet Music,” published in November 1934, Prokofiev had proclaimed:

I believe the type of music needed is what one might call “light-serious” or “serious-light” music. It is by no means easy to find the right idiom for such music. It should be primarily melodious, and the melody would be clear

and simple without, however, becoming repetitive and trivial. Many composers find it difficult enough to compose any sort of melody, let alone a melody having some definite function to perform. The same applies to the technique, the form—it too must be clear and simple, but not stereotyped. It is not the old simplicity that is needed but a new kind of simplicity. And this can be achieved only after the composer has mastered the art of composing serious, significant music, thereby acquiring the technique of expressing himself in simple, yet original terms.3

The provisions of the Pravda contest furnished Proko-fiev—competitive by nature—the opportunity to demon-strate both the applicability of his ideas to songwriting for the masses and the sincerity of his commitment to the cause. He submitted multiple entries.

The timing of the competition, however, proved inauspi-cious. The original deadline of October 15, 1935, came and went. The announcement that the contest had concluded appeared on December 23, when the date by which the jury would conclude its deliberations was set for January 15, 1936.4 That date came and went. Ultimately, the results of the contest were published only on March 29, 1936. In the interim, the Soviet arts world underwent traumatic upheav-al as the direct consequence of two other publications in Pravda, the notorious editorial “Muddle instead of Music,” which condemned Shostakovich’s opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, and another a week later censuring his ballet, The Limpid Stream.5

Prokofiev left Moscow on a concert tour through Europe two days before the “Muddle” editorial appeared. Writing to him a month later, Myaskovsky said that rumors were circu-lating in Moscow that Prokofiev’s songs for the Pravda com-petition had been judged “splendid” and maybe even won something, but there had been no official announcement. He speculated that the uproar that had erupted on account of the Shostakovich editorials had alarmed the organizers.6 Prokofiev already knew something was afoot. While in Prague in late February he visited with the conductor Nikolai Malko and his wife, Berthe. Comments Berthe recorded in her journal reveal that the results of the Pravda song compe-tition had become known privately before the composer left Moscow. They also reveal Prokofiev’s consternation at the developments:

So now everyone was terrified, Shostakovich’s works were being removed from concert halls. Before Prokofiev left, there had been a popular song contest. Prokofiev submitted five works. One of them was chosen for a prize and S.S. left Moscow satisfied. At that moment, however, the Shostakovich scandal erupted and the organisers of the competition panicked: “What if Prokofiev ends up among the ‘unreliables’? Perhaps it’s dangerous to give anyone a first prize.” So when Prokofiev’s wife left Moscow, she learned that no one would be receiving a first prize, and that a second prize would be divided between Prokofiev and someone else. There would be an announcement. To date there hadn’t been an announcement anywhere and Prokofiev concluded that the organisers were still too frightened and waiting for some directive as to what to do. As a result Prokofiev didn’t know where he stood: Would he be considered a legitimate composer or not?7

When the competition results were finally made pub-lic, Lina’s information proved accurate. No first prizes were

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awarded. According to their explanation, the jury members found that none of the 4,289 literary texts or the 2,186 pieces of music submitted had been deserving of highest honors. A conspicuous complaint was that too many march-like songs had been submitted, too few lyrical ones. Second prizes were awarded to two poets and four composers, the latter including Prokofiev for “Anyutka” (subsequently published as op. 66, no. 2). In addition, another Prokofiev song, “The Country is Growing” (op. 66, no. 3), on a text by Alexander Afinogenov, was singled out for honorable mention.8

In his wrap-up of the competition, one of its judges, the music critic Georgiy Polyanovsky, lauded Prokofiev’s “Anyut-ka” as a valuable contribution to the extremely meager rep-ertory of entertaining comic songs.9 Where Prokofiev found the text of “Anyutka” remains unknown. It was identified in the score as derived from a chastushka, a popular type of folk rhyme with a humorous, ironic or satirical bent. In 1934, Prokofiev had contracted with the All-Union Radio Commit-tee to compose a series of collective-farm [kolkhoz] songs and a folk singer sent him sample song texts for his con-sideration.10 While the cycle never materialized, the earnest exhortations to the peasant girl, Anyutka—not to be lazy, to seize instead the opportunity afforded her by the October Revolution to study and better herself—in Prokofiev’s “seri-ous-light” setting, suggest that the impulse behind this song, if not the song itself, may have originated with the ear-lier project.11

Prokofiev’s source for the text of one of his other contest entries is clear. On August 24, 1935, “Partisan Zheleznyak,” a poem by Mikhaíl Golodnïy, was published in Pravda under the contest rubric.12 By the time the contest ended, it had received 389 musical settings, more than any other text sub-mitted. Though none of the songs was singled out by the jury, the poem garnered one of the two literary second priz-es. Even without the imprimatur of a prize, one musical set-ting would quickly emerge as a sure-fire hit, helping propel its composer, Matvey Blanter, into the front ranks of popular songwriters. Later in his life, Blanter would frequently remi-nisce about the genesis of this song. He and Golodnïy had collaborated one-on-one in the creation of a contest entry—his tune even preceding Golodnïy’s words—so Blanter was taken aback when the text of “his” song was published in the newspaper with the implicit invitation to other composers to set it for the contest:

Frankly, all this didn’t bother me up until the point when I found out from Evening Moscow that at the opening of the Folk Arts Theater “Sergey Prokofiev’s popular song, ‘Partisan Zheleznyak,’ will be performed for the first time.” That’s when I went ahead and “released” my song.13

Recently returned to Moscow from his European con-

cert tour, on March 18, 1936, Prokofiev was at the piano to accompany the massed choirs of the Moscow trade unions (“drivers, machinists, greasers, agronomists”14) singing his song “Partisan Zhelesnyak” in the highly-publicized inaugu-ral program of the All-Union Folk Arts Theater, a grandiose enterprise that had been conceived to showcase the talent of amateur performers. Covering the dress rehearsal for this show, the reporter for Evening Moscow did indeed make the statement that Prokofiev’s song had already become popular, though where he got that impression is a mystery.15 It wasn’t true. Prokofiev’s own assessment of the occasion was pub-lished two days later:

I have been in all the major theaters of Europe and America and can affirm that the first program of the

Folk Arts Theater produced an altogether exceptional impression.It is the duty of composers to constantly improve the quality of the music performed by amateurs. At the same time, the composer must act with great tact so that music fosters the tastes of the masses and gives them pleasure.16

It was Blanter’s version of “Partisan Zheleznyak,” rather than Prokofiev’s, which took root in the repertory of both amateur and professional musicians. Blanter suggested that even Prokofiev had acknowledged the superior appeal of his song: “I respected Prokofiev unutterably. Truth be told, I idolized him. And how very proud and happy I was when, upon spotting me Prokofiev remarked in a friendly manner: ‘You and I wrote almost the same thing—our rhythm is identical. But it is your song one feels like singing.’”17 Mean-while, the fictional protagonist of Golodnïy’s poem—a sailor who perished leading a successful assault in Ukraine during the civil war—took on a life of his own. Redolent of the Lieu-tenant Kizhe of Alexander Fayntsimmer’s 1933 film, the he-roic partisan Zheleznyak acquired a real family and an actual gravesite.18 For his part, the poet soon saw his poem en-shrined as folklore when it was published on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Revolution in the collection Folk Arts of the USSR—stripped of any authorship.19

In an annotation to op. 66 that appears on one of his worklists, Prokofiev indicated that his “songs on texts by A. Afinogenov were written for one of Afinogenov’s plays, but not used in it.”20 The play in question could have been The Lie, written by Afinogenov in 1932-33 during the period when the composer and playwright were actively exploring possible collaboration on a stage work.21 Deeply in love with an old Bolshevik who is “neither young nor handsome,” the heroine of The Lie sings a song over the telephone at the end of the play “about the youthfulness that remains in the heart, despite graying hair.”22 The text of her telephone song was “The Country is Growing,” whose setting by Prokofiev won him an honorable mention in the 1935 Pravda competition.23

In stark contrast to Afinogenov’s previous play—the hugely successful Fear—The Lie met a grim fate. In the spring of 1933, both Maxim Gorky and Stalin faulted the play-wright’s first draft. Stalin received Afinogenov in his Kremlin office to discuss it.24 After substantial revisions, in the fall of 1933 The Lie was produced in Kharkov and went into rehears-als at the Moscow Art Theater. That is when Stalin read the revised script of The Lie and pronounced it “unsuccessful,” resulting in its immediate withdrawal.

That the gamble in resurrecting material from a play that had—to all intents and purposes—been personally banned by Stalin was not perceived as suicidal can be deduced from the fact that a little more than a year later, Afinogenov recy-cled “The Country is Growing” in Distant Point [Dalyokoye], a play that was produced successfully by the Vakhtangov Theater in Moscow in November 1935 and published the same month.25 Even before it was unveiled in this produc-tion, Afinogenov entered the poem in the Pravda competi-tion. Under the title “Song about Youthfulness,” it was one of the entries published in the newspaper under the rubric “Contest for the Best Song.”26 Poet and composer evidently sub-mitted their versions independent of one another. Afinog-enov’s poem was published only after the official contest deadline had passed and Prokofiev did not use Afinogenov’s title. (“The Country is Growing” is a translation of the first two words of the poem.) Also, the ending of the last stanza in Prokofiev’s setting corresponds to the text of the play, which is slightly different from the variant Afinogenov pub-lished in Pravda. There it reads:

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My friend, comrades,We are still very young,We are still very happy,Even with graying temples!27

In Distant Point and Prokofiev:

My friends, comrades,We are still very young,We will be happy yet,Even with graying temples.28

What remains uncertain is for which play—The Lie or Dis-tant Point—Prokofiev made his settings of the two poems by Afinogenov. For their inclusion in op. 66, Prokofiev dated both settings “1935.”29 But while the text of “The Country is Growing” appeared in both plays, “Through Snow and Fog” appeared in neither, nor is it found elsewhere in the major collection of Afinogenov’s works.30

The timing of the publication of Afinogenov’s poem in Pravda was not accidental. It appeared in the newspaper the day after a report had been published about the recent re-union—their first meeting in some time—between 77-year-old Yekaterina (“Keke”) Dzhugashvili and her famous son, Joseph Stalin. His mother was quoted describing her first impression: “Unexpectedly somehow, I noticed silver strands in my son’s hair. I even asked him: ‘What’s this, son, you’ve grown gray, have you?’ And he answered: ‘Don’t worry, mother, gray hair doesn’t matter. I feel just fine, don’t you doubt it.’”31

Even when a competition was not in progress, poetry featured regularly in the pages of Pravda. Topicality, not lit-erary quality, was the overriding criterion. Poems typically appeared in response to, or by way of commentary on cur-rent events, commemorating the deaths of leading figures, milestones and celebrations on the Soviet Socialist calendar, remarkable feats of courage or heroism and—as in the case of Afinogenov’s “Song about Youthfulness”—in homage to the Great Leader.

“Brother for Brother,” the poem by Vasiliy Lebedev-Ku-mach set by Prokofiev and included in his cycle, Songs of Our Days, op. 76, was published in Pravda on September 6, 1937, the day after a dispatch from the paper’s correspondent in Odessa had been published under the same title.32 The dispatch reported the death of Pyotr Shtepenko, senior helmsman on the Soviet cargo ship Blagoyev, in its sinking at the hands of “fascist pirates” in the Aegean Sea, as well as the news that his younger brother had volunteered to be taken on board one of the country’s vessels to replace him. Lebedev-Kumach’s poem, and by extension Prokofiev’s song, is an artistic exegesis of a story “ripped from the headlines.”33 Similarly, Samuíl Marshak acknowledged that “The Twenty-Year-Old”—a ballad about the search for the unknown youth who had heroically rescued a girl from a burning building—published in Pravda on October 9, 1937, and subsequently set by Prokofiev in Songs of Our Days—was based on a newspa-per report.34

“Brother for Brother,” and “Lullaby,” also a setting of a poem published in Pravda by Lebedev-Kumach included by Prokofiev in Songs of Our Days—in which a mother invokes the image of a benevolent Stalin in the Kremlin to lull her child to sleep—were the songs with which Prokofiev gar-nered first and second prize in the song competition spon-sored by the Moscow Union of Composers in honor of the 20th anniversary of the Revolution.35 No third prize was awarded, so Prokofiev pocketed all the prize money. This was a competition for professionals; of the 85 songs received, five others—all by devoted songwriters—were given honorable

mentions. One can only imagine the surprise and envy occa-sioned by Prokofiev’s emphatic triumph.

“The other big piece that I have just completed is a Suite for chorus, soloists and orchestra which I’m thinking of call-ing ‘Songs of Our Days’,” Prokofiev reported in Pravda at the close of 1937, “This piece is written on texts by Lebedev-Ku-mach, Marshak and on translated texts from Ukrainian and Belorussian folklore that were published in Pravda.”36 Proko-fiev made no secret of the fact that he raided the nation’s leading newspaper for song texts. It was convenient, vetted at the highest level and—though even the writers published in its pages were not immune to purges—it was a compara-tively “safe” source. Six of the eight poems Prokofiev set for his op. 76, were culled from Pravda between September 6, and October 9, 1937. Settings of three more poems that appeared in the newspaper during the same period found their ways into op. 66 and op. 79 (see the accompanying chart to this article). The “folk” texts were all drawn from two issues of the paper (September 9 and October 1) in which a generous se-lection of poems plugging the forthcoming volume, Folk Arts of the USSR, was published.”37

The two poems in Songs of Our Days that did not appear in Pravda were by Anton Prishelets (“Over the Little Bridge,” and “Girls”). Prishelets was a journalist from a peasant back-ground who turned to writing patriotic poems, but he be-came best known as a song lyricist, a career move he cre-dited to Prokofiev:

During those years I became seriously run down, fell ill, landed in the hospital, and emerged from it disab led. Poetry remained my sole occupation. I began to write songs much later. S. S. Prokofiev helped in this. He phoned me one day and said that he had cut out two of my poems from somewhere and set them to music. He asked me to send him all my new poems that might be suitable as song texts. But just then the war broke out and I didn’t return to songs until 1946.38

By that time, Prokofiev was no longer devoting himself actively to the composition of mass songs. The two never collaborated.

Light Industry

Unlike in Pravda, the publication of poetry—not to men-tion musical scores—was rare in the trade newspaper, Light Industry. So the publication of “Song about Textiles,” com-posed by two students from the Leningrad Textile Institute, in Light Industry early in 1939 drew the attention of profes-sional composers and poets, as well as industry stalwarts.39 The members of the choral circle at the Moscow silk plant, “Red Rose”—who said they had set about learning the song with enthusiasm—complained that railway, water-transport, and heavy industry workers all had their own songs to sing, but not textile workers. On behalf of the six thousand work-ers in their factory, they appealed to a long list of composers and poets to compose songs for them. Blanter was on their list of composers; Prokofiev was not.40 Two weeks later, the newspaper announced a contest “for the best song about textile workers,” with a jury to include high-ranking repre-sentatives from the cotton, wool, silk, and linen industries and the newspaper’s editorial board, among others. When the results of the contest were announced on June 4, Proko-fiev’s “The Stakhanovite Girl” [Stakhanovka] on a text by Alex-ander Blagov, was awarded first prize. The song was pub-lished in the newspaper the following day.41

Blagov (1883-1961) was a professional poet with a back-ground as a weaver. His poetry often dealt with the life and

26

toil of textile workers, so to the community of Light Industry readers he was an “in-house” poet. How Prokofiev came to select his verse for a contest entry is explained in a wrap-up article published after the conclusion of the contest by two jury members, the poet Sergey Gorodetsky and the com-poser Vano Muradeli. The vast majority of the poems sub-mitted had come from amateur poets, enthusiasts. Blagov—regarded as both a worker and a professional poet—was an exception; he submitted ten poems, of which six were sent to “one of our leading composers, S. Prokofiev. The compo-ser chose the text for his musical setting himself and creat-ed a beautiful, easily remembered song.”42 Reinforcing as it did his own arguments for a “new simplicity” made back in 1934, Prokofiev must have been extremely gratified to read the jury’s appraisal of the 32 musical works submitted to the competition:

The composers can be reproached with being too accustomed to follow the beaten path. Often their music reminds one of stereotypical marches and cloying foxtrots.S. Prokofiev stands out conspicuously for having sent an original song. It is written—as they say—without any concessions to the level of understanding of a mass au-dience. The considerable technique of a genuine master makes itself felt in it. And, at the same time, it is readily accessible and simple.43

How enthusiastically the choral circle at the “Red Rose” silk factory welcomed and learned Prokofiev’s song is an un-answered question. “The Stakhanovite Girl,” at any rate, did not establish itself as a trade-union anthem.

The 1939 Composers’ Union Contest

Prokofiev was a victor in at least one more song compe-tition in 1939. Since the winners of this competition were not ranked, this success went unreported in the update to his 1938-1939 autobiography; Prokofiev’s tally of mass song awards there only included those for which he had taken a first or second prize.

In association with the surge of patriotic fervor said to have been felt by creative artists resulting from the “victo-rious advance of Soviet troops into Western Belorussia and Western Ukraine,” in late September 1939, a TASS release re-ported a meeting that had taken place between poets and composers hosted by the Union of Composers in Moscow.44 Among the poets identified—all of Ukrainian or Belorussian descent—as having read their verses during this session was the Belorussian Pimen Panchenko (1917-95), a poet then serving as a special correspondent for army newspapers who had been with the Soviet forces when they invaded Po-land. Among the composers who attended and selected verses to set to music, Prokofiev’s choice of a poem by Panchenko (“A Cossack Went Strolling”) was mentioned spe-cifically. What also transpired at this meeting is that the Mos-cow Composers’ Union launched a five-day competition for a defense song, with the winning entries to be published in a special collection for mass circulation.45

But when the results of the contest were announced, it was not Prokofiev’s setting of the Panchenko poem he had handpicked at the session that took the honors. Nor was it his setting of Mira Mendelson’s “Bravely, Forward!” which alludes directly to the events in question.46 (Whether Prokofiev submitted Mira’s song to the competition is not known, but it is intriguing to consider the possibility that he may have indulged the author of the text—his young in-amorata and future bride—by doing so.) No, the Prokofiev

song selected as one of fourteen winning entries in the 1939 competition for a defense song was the more generic Red Army song, “Hey, Along the Road,” [Gey, po doroge], another of the anonymous texts from Folk Arts of the USSR he had extracted from the pages of Pravda two years earlier, where it had gone under the title “The Power of the Soviets; a Rus-sian Song.”47 Although already designated as “op. 79, no. 7,” Prokofiev’s “Hey, Along the Road,” was first published to-gether with the thirteen other winning contest entries (plus five other recommended songs) in the collection, New De-fense Songs48, in February 1940, four months before the pub-lication of his own collection, Seven Songs, op. 79.

Other Songs, Other Contests

Only the winning contestants in competitions like those discussed here are identified in the public record. Losing contestants—in all cases the vast majority of entrants—are spared humiliation. As successful as he was in at least four song contests, the odds that Prokofiev emerged victori-ous from every competition he entered are extremely long, raising the possibility that more of his mass songs from this period originated—or saw double duty—in a competitive context. There was no downside. Scarcely a month went by without the announcement of some contest or other. The proceeds from a win, place or show—financial and in public exposure—were not negligible. Is it merely a coinci-dence that one of Prokofiev’s op. 79 songs, “Over the Polar Sea” (verse by Mikhaíl Svetlov), was composed around the same time that a song contest for polar explorers was an-nounced?49 Speculation does not stop there.

Questions of competitions aside, the role of mass songs in Prokofiev’s output is a topic that needs to be revisited, for biographical reasons, if not necessarily for aesthetic ones. In the long term, none of the songs Prokofiev wrote for mass consumption acquired a popular following. They became a footnote to his creative legacy. But the short-term perspec-tive is quite different. The judges of the Light Industry contest would surely have taken issue with the verdict of a later bi-ographer that “Most of the songs written in 1939, included in Op. 79, suffered from the same shortcomings as Songs of Our Days—dull, and colorless melodic material. The composer was manifestly unsuccessful in expressing a contemporary theme in the simple and accessible forms of the mass song.”50 The amateur chorus of drivers, machinists, greasers, and agronomists who sang “Partisan Zheleznyak” at the open-ing of the Folk Arts Theater in 1936 might well have objected to the contention that Prokofiev wrote his songs “for mass listening and not for mass performance.”51 At a time when so many of Prokofiev’s larger and more significant endeavors—Romeo and Juliet, the Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the Revolution, Semyon Kotko—were being subjected to inordi-nate meddling (and worse) behind the scenes, what was on public view was a composer actively and successfully en-gaged in creating new repertory for the Soviet masses.

1 “For the questionnaire on the Committee on Arts Affairs, 26 October 1938,” Three Oranges No. 24 (2012), 32.2 “Konkurs na luchshuyu sovetskuyu pesnyu,” Pravda, June 19, 1935, 6.3 “Puti sovetskoy muzïki,” Izvestiya, November 16, 1934; quoted in S. Shlifstein, ed., S. Prokofiev: Autobiography, Articles, Reminiscences, trans. Rose Prokofieva (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, c1956), 99-100.4 “Konkurs na massovuyu pesnyu,” Pravda, December 23, 1935, 6.5 “Sumbur vmesto muzïki; ob opere ‘Ledi Makbet Mtsenskogo

27

28

uyezda’,” Pravda, January 28, 1936, 3; “Baletnaya fal’sh’,” Pravda, February 6, 1936, 3.6 Letter from Myaskovsky to Prokofiev dated February 20, 1936, in S. S. Prokof’yev i N. Ya. Myaskovskiy: perepiska, ed. D. B. Kabalevskiy (Moscow: Sovetskiy kompozitor, 1977), 446.7 Berthe Malko, “Memories of a Friendship: from the journals of Berthe Malko,” translated and edited by George Malko, Three Oranges No. 16 (November 2008), 7. Lina Prokofiev joined herhusband in Paris in mid-February. How many songs Prokofiev entered in the competition is unclear. Most Soviet sources give the number as four, corresponding to the number of songs dated 1935 included in op. 66. According to the published score, “Beyond the Hill,” op. 66, no. 5 and “Song about Voroshilov,” op. 66, no. 6, were composed, respectively, in 1937 and 1938. See S.Prokof’yev, Chetïre pesni dlya golosa (ili odnogolosnogo khora) s f-p. (Moscow-Leningrad: Iskusstvo, 1939), 12, 16.8 “Itogi konkursa na luchshuyu pesnyu,” Pravda, March 29, 1936, 4; also published in Sovetskaya muzyka, No. 4 (April 1936), 3-4.9 Georgiy Polyanovskiy, “Luchshiye pesni; itogi konkursa ‘Pravdï’,” Sovetskoye iskusstvo, April 5, 1936, 3.10 I. Nest’yev, Zhizn’ Sergeya Prokof’yeva, 2nd ed. (Moscow: Sovetskiy kompozitor, 1973), 364-65.11 Izraíl Nestyev, Prokofiev’s Soviet biographer, identifies one of the texts supplied to Prokofiev for the kolkhoz project as the chastushka, “Don’t be lazy” [Ne lenis’], a conspicuous phrase in the refrain of “Anyutka.” Ibid., 365. In addition to its inclusion in op. 66, Prokofiev later recycled the tune with a new text as Kukushkin’s song in Act II of The Story of a Real Man.12 Mikhaíl Golodnïy, “Partizan Zheleznyak, Pravda, August 24, 1935, 4. Golodnïy was the pen nameof Mikhaíl Epshteyn (1903-1949).13 M. Yakovlev, ed., Gordost’ sovetskoy muzïki; muzïkantï—Geroi Sotsialisticheskogo Truda i laureatï Leninskoy premii (Moscow: Sovetskiy kompozitor, 1987), 60.14 E. Gabrilovich, “Pervaya tïsyacha,” Vechernyaya Moskva (March 19, 1936), 1.15 Yakov Grinval’d, “Na general’nom repetitsii,” Vechernyaya Moskva (March 17, 1936), 3. Contrary to Blanter’s recollection, the author did not state that Prokofiev’s song was being performed for the first time.16 S. Prokof’yev, “Nevidannoye zrelishche,” Literaturnaya gazeta, March 20, 1936; quoted in Prokof’yev o Prokof’yeve: stat’i i interv’yu, ed. V. P. Varunts (Moscow: Sovetskiy kompozitor, 1991), 137.17 V. Zak, Matvey Blanter (Moscow: Sovetskiy kompozitor, 1971), 21.18 Ibid., 21-2.19 Tvorchestvo narodov SSSR. XX let Velikoy Oktyabr’skoy sotsialisticheskoy revolyutsii v SSSR, 1917-1937, ed. A. M. Gor’kiy and L. Z. Mekhlis (Moscow: Izd. Redaktsii “Pravdï,” 1937), 255-56.20 RGALI f. 1929, op. 3, yed. khr. 21, l. 29. My thanks to Simon Morrison for supplying this information.21 For more about the proposed collaboration between Prokofiev and Afinogenov, see Simon Morrison, The People’s Artist: Prokofiev’s Soviet Years (New York; Oxford University Press, 2009), 15-16; Sergey Prokofiev: Diaries 1924-1933, Prodigal Son (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), 993, 1003-04, 1007, 1016, 1021-22.22 Il’ya Venyavkin, “’Nebogatoye oformleniye’: ‘Lozh’’ Aleksandra Afinogenova i stalinskaya kul’turnaya politika 1930-kh godov,” Novoye literaturnoye obozreniye No. 108 (2011); http://magazines.russ.ru/nlo/2011/108/ve13.html , accessed March 28, 2013.23 In an e-mail communication dated June 17, 2012, the playwright’s daughter, Alexandra Afinogenova, confirmed that the text of “The Country is Growing” appears in her father’s manuscript of The Lie, but that the other poem set by Prokofiev, “Through Snow and Fog,” does not. She did not recognize it.24 Venyavkin, op. cit.25 A. Afinogenov, “’Dalyokoye’, drama v 3 aktakh,” Krasnaya nov’ No. 11 (November 1935), 3-25. Accompanying himself on guitar,

a telegraph operator at a remote railway turnout in Siberia performs the song at the end of Act I.26 A. Afinogenov, “Pesnya o molodosti,” Pravda, October 28, 1935, 4.27 Druzya moi, tovarishchi,/Yeshchyo mï ochen’ molodï,/Yeshchyo mï ochen’ schastlivï/Khot’ i visok… sedoy!28 Druzya moi, tovarishchi,/Yeshchyo mï ochen’ molodï,/Yeshchyo mï budem schastlivï,/Khot’ visok sedoy.29 Sergey Prokof’yev, Chetïre pesni dlya golosa (ili odnogolosnogo khora) s f-p, 3, 8.30 Aleksandr Afinogenov, Izbrannoye v dvukh tomakh (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1977).31 “Beseda s mater’yu tovarishcha Stalina,” Pravda, October 27, 1935, 3.32 Vas. Lebedev-Kumach, “Brat za brata,” Pravda, September 6, 1937, 3; T. Gorbunov, “Brat za brata (po telefonu ot odesskogo korrespondenta ‘Pravdï’),” Pravda, September 5, 1937, 3.33 In an incident connected with the Spanish Civil War, the Blagoyev was sunk by the Italian submarine Luigi Settembrini off the coast of Skyros on September 1, 1937.34 Samuíl Marshak, “Dvadtsatiletniy; sovremennaya ballada,” Pravda, October 9, 1937, 4; Sobraniye sochinenii v vos’mi tomakh, t. 1, ed. Zhirmunskiy, et al. (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaya literatura, 1968), 533. Sometime after its initial publication Marshak renamed his poem “Ballad about an Unknown Hero.”35 “V Moskovskom soyuze sovetskikh kompozitorov,” Sovetskaya muzïka, No. 8 (1938), 86.36 Sergey Prokof’yev, “Rassvet iskusstva,” Pravda, December 31, 1937, 3.37 Tvorchestvo narodov SSSR (see footnote 19) was released for publication on November 3, 1937. For the identity of the uncredited author of one of the so-called folk texts set by Prokofiev, “From Border to Border,” included in this source, see Morrison, The People’s Artist, 68-69.38 Anton Prishelets, “O sebe i o svoikh stikhakh,” in Stikhotvoreniya i pesni (Moscow: Gos. izd. khud. lit., 1963), 10. Prishelets was the pseudonym of Anton Khodakov (1893-1972). The source from which Prokofiev “cut out” the two poems remains a mystery; neither is included in this or a later collection from 1971.39 A. Turgel’ and Yu. Aralov, “Pesnya o tkani,” Lyogkaya industriya, February 6, 1939, 4.40 “Razuchivayem ‘Pesnyu o tkani’,” Lyogkaya industriya, February 10, 1939, 4.41 Sergey Prokof’yev, “Stakhanovka,” Lyogkaya industriya, June 5, 1939, 4. This was its first publication, preceding its inclusion as no. 2 of Seven Songs, op. 79.42 Sergey Gorodetskiy and Vano Muradeli, “O Pesnyakh tekstil’shchikov,” Lyogkaya industriya, June 8, 1939, 4. This is the same Gorodetsky (1884-1967), to whom Prokofiev had turned in 1914 on the advice of Diaghilev as librettist for the ballet Ala and Lolli.43 Ibid.44 “Sodruzhestvo poetov i kompozitorov,” Sovetskoye iskusstvo, September 24, 1939, 3. On September 17, 1939, sixteen days after Germany invaded Poland from the West, Soviet forces invadedit from the East, in accordance with the “secret protocol” of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The Soviet invasion ended on October 6, 1939, with the annexation of Western Ukraine and Belorus bythe USSR.45 “Vstrecha kompozitorov s poetami,” Literaturnaya gazeta, September 26, 1939, 6.46 The Mendelson setting became Prokofiev’s op. 79, no. 5; the Panchenko setting, op. 79, no. 6.47 “Vlast’ sovetov; russkaya pesnya,” Pravda, September 9, 1937, 3. What Prokofiev and many others did not realize was that this was actually a text authored by Alexander Marinov, popularizedduring the Civil War and first published in a musical setting by Dmitriy Vasiliyev-Buglay in 1924. See Yu. Biryukov, “Gey, po doroge; biografiya pesnya,” Krugozor No. 11 (1979), 12; Pesni

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Prokofiev Mass Songs, 1935-1939

Six Songs, Op. 66 (1935-38)

Two Mass Songs for voice and piano1. Partisan Zheleznyak [Mikhaíl Golodnïy] (1935)2. Anyutka [from a chastushka] (1935)

Four Songs for voice (or unison choir) and piano3. The Country is Growing [Alexander Afinogenov] (1935)4. Through Snow and Fog [Alexander Afinogenov] (1935)5. Beyond the Hill [Belorussian folk text] (1937)6. Song about Voroshilov [Tatyana Sikorskaya] (1938)

Songs of Our Days for soloists, mixed chorus and orchestra, Op. 76 (1937)

[The full score was not published during Prokofiev’s lifetime. The numbering here follows that of the first publication, an edition for voice and piano (Moscow-Leningrad: Gos. Muz. Izd., 1939)]

1. Over the Little Bridge; cavalry song [Anton Prishelets]2. Be of Good Health [translated from the Belorussian]3. Golden Ukraine [dictated by U. Barabash at the Red Ploughman collective farm]4. Brother for Brother [Vasiliy Lebedev-Kumach]5. Girls [Anton Prishelets]6. The Twenty-Year-Old [Samuíl Marshak]7. Lullaby [Vasiliy Lebedev-Kumach]8. From Border to Border [text taken down in Penza]

Seven Songs for voice and piano, Op. 79 (1939)

1. Song about the Motherland [Alexander Prokofiev]2. The Stakhanovite Girl [Alexander Blagov]3. Over the Polar Sea [Mikhaíl Svetlov]4. Send-Off [translated from the Belorussian]5. Bravely, Forward! [Mira Mendelson]6. A Cossack Went Strolling [Pimen Panchenko]7. Hey, Along the Road [verses from the September 9, 1937 issue of Pravda, printed without indication of author]

Mass song texts set by Prokofiev in Pravda, 1935-1937

August 24, 1935, p. 4, under the rubric “Contest for the Best Song”:

Partisan Zheleznyak (Мikhaíl Golodnïy) [op. 66, no. 1]

September 6, 1937, p. 3:Brother for Brother (Vasiliy Lebedev-Kumach) [op. 76, no.4]

September 9, 1937, p. 1, subtitled “Russian song”:From Border to Border (text taken down from the workers’ chorus of the Frunze factory in the city of Penza) [op. 76, no. 8]

September 9, 1937, p. 1, translated from Belorussian: Be of Good Health! (dictated by Adam Rusak at the Red Plowman collective farm in the Kapïl District, Belorussian SSR) [op. 76, no. 2]

September 9, 1937, p. 2, translated from Belorussian:Send-off (taken down from Danil Letashkov in the Communard collective farm, Buda-Koshelevo District, Belorussian SSR) [op. 79, no. 4; op. 85]

September 9, 1937, p. 3, subtitled “Russian Song”:The Power of the Soviets [“Hey, Along the Road”] [op. 79, no. 7]

September 23, 1937, p. 3:Lullaby (Vasiliy Lebedev-Kumach) [op. 76, no. 7]

October 1, 1937, p. 3, subtitled “Ukrainian Song”:Golden Ukraine; Ukrainian Song (dictated by U. Barabash at the Red Plowman collective farm in Vinnits’ka Oblast) [op. 76, no. 3]

October 1, 1937, p. 3, translated from Belorussian:Beyond the Hill, At the Well... [Beyond the Hill] (taken down in the Lyuban District, Belorussian SSR)[op. 66, no. 5]

October 9, 1937, p. 4, subtitled “A Contemporary Ballad”:The Twenty-Year-Old (Samuíl Marshak) [op. 76, no. 6]

krasnoy armii (26 pesen), ed. L. Shul’gin (Moscow-Petrograd: Gosud. Izd. Muz. Sektor, 1924), 8. My thanks to Galina Kopïtova for alerting me to these sources.48 Novïye oboronnïye pesni (Moscow-Leningrad: Muzgiz, 1940), 35-7.49 “Konkurs na pesnyu dlya polyarnikov,” Sovetskoye iskusstvo, April 6, 1939, 1. In the 1957 edition of his Prokofiev biography, Nestyev indicated that this song was a commission for a collection of songs for workers in the water transport industry but gave no further details. Then again, he also maintained that “The Stakhanovite Girl” was written on commission from

the Commissariat of Light Industry; he made no mention of Prokofiev’s participation in the Light Industry competition orin the September 1939 competition for defense songs. See I. Nest’yev, Prokof’yev (Moscow: Gos. muz. izd., 1957), 326. In his revised edition, the author supplied even less information. There he said that “Over the Polar Sea” and “The Stakhanovite Girl” were both created “on commission from various organizations.” See I. Nest’yev, Zhizn’ Sergeya Prokof’eva, 435.50 Ibid.51 V. Vasina-Grossman, Mastera sovetskogo romansa, 2nd ed. (Moscow: Muzïka, 1980), 87.

1 2

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31

SergeyProkofievandWilliamPrimrose:

An UnrealizedCollaboration

During the Second World War the United States and USSR were allied in their opposition to Hitler. The political al-legiance found broad support among the artistic intelligent-sia. The American-Soviet Music Society was founded in 1945 by musicians in New York City; a year later the organization had 350 members.

The organization aimed to achieve the following: es-tablishment of closer contact and mutual understanding between American and Soviet musicians; exchanges of art-ists, musical productions, publications, and information; the popularization of American music and American musi-cians in the Soviet Union and Soviet musicians in the USA. The Chairman of the Society was Serge Koussevitzky; the Vice-Chairmen included Elie Siegmeister (1909-1991) and the better-known musicians Aaron Copland, and Leonard Bernstein. The daily affairs of the organization fell to the act-ing secretary Betty Randolph Bean.1

On March 5, 1946 Winston Churchill spoke to students at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri to expose the “ex-pansionist tendencies” of the Soviet Union and the estab-lishment of puppet Communist governments in the nations of Eastern Europe. He asserted that an “iron curtain” had descended on the European continent. At this same time Joseph Stalin and the Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Andrey Zhdanov, began to revive those anti-Western tendencies within a Soviet Union that had been weakened by the war. The former allies became rivals for supremacy over Euro-pean and world affairs.

Artistic figures had not counted on this political about face. The American-Soviet Music Society remained in opera-tion: On May 9, 1946, the Ukrainian-French pianist Alexander Brailowsky (1896-1976) performed a concert of Russian and recent Soviet music in New York Town Hall; there followed a concert of American and Soviet music for members of the Society, also in New York Town Hall, on May 27; a reception in honor of the Soviet writer and journalist Ilya Erenburg (1891-1967) and the music press; and a concert featuring the

Vladimir V. PERKHIN

Translated by Simon MORRISON

Serge Prokofiev. Drawing by Oleg Prokofiev, 1948.

32

tion of the Central Committee, who acted upon the decree curtailing cultural ties with the United States. They were in-tentionally slow to respond to Bean’s letter. A month later Koussevitzky resolved to urge them on, continuing to be-lieve that improving American-Soviet cultural relations was “a mission of utmost importance.”

July 1, 1947

Mr. Yakov M. LomakinConsul General of the U.S.S.R.7 East 61st StreetNew York

Dear Mr. Lomakin,The recent season of the American-Soviet Music

Society has come to a close with several important decisions and recommendations. The most immediate and urgent of which is sending a representative of the Society to the U.S.S.R. as soon as possible. The need for this is felt in order to implement the exchange of ideas and information which is so important not only to the musical life of this country, but so basic a factor in the cultural understanding of our two countries.

Despite the fact that the Society has accomplished much in its program of interchange, it is felt that the fulfi llment of its aims can only be carried forward successfully if our Executive Secretary can go to Moscow and consult with the leading Soviet composers, musical authorities and offi cials of VOKS.

It is the opinion of the Board of Directors and myself as Chairman, that it is urgent and essential at this time that this visit be made, in order that the Society may continue in the development of its activities.

With this in mind, I am writing to recommend that you consider the possibility of such a visit, and hope that Miss Bean, who has been responsible for the work of the Society and guided its activities since its inception, will be granted a visa and an invitation from VOKS.

I feel this mission of utmost importance to the continuing existence of the Society, since without fi rsthand contact it is extremely diffi cult to formulate and carry on a program of interchange. The signifi cance of such consultation will be instrumental in the success of the Society.

Miss Bean will communicate with you within the next few days to discuss this in greater detail, and I shall look forward to hearing from you in the very near future. Since the summer is already advanced, all possible speed is necessary to accomplish this work, which is vital before the start of another season.

My warm greetings to you and Mrs. Lomakin. I look forward to the pleasure of seeing you soon again.

Most sincerеly,Serge Koussevitzky8

As we see, the Chairman of the Society sent his letter not to Moscow, but to the General Consul of the USSR in New York, Yakov Lomakin, who had long worked in the United States and could be counted upon to support American-So-viet cultural exchange. He endorsed Koussevitzky’s propos-als, redirecting the letter to “Comrade Fedosimov” on July 7.9

Before sending the letter to VOKS, P. I. Fedosimov pre-pared a report on the American-Soviet Music Society, affi rm-

Ukrainian artists Ivan Patorzhinsky and Zoya Gayday (1902-65). December witnessed the beginning of a project invol-ving an exchange of folksongs between the USA and USSR and the creation of works by American composers based on motifs of Russian folksongs (the documents fi nd Quincy Por-ter, 1897-1966, taking special interest in this project).

From December of 1946 the Society began publishing the quarterly journal American-Soviet Musical Review, which was intended for readers on both sides of the ideological di-vide. The fi rst issue included an article by the Soviet musico-logist Izraíl Nestyev on Prokofi ev’s latest compositions. At the same time the fi rst edition of Nestyev’s book on the com-poser was published in New York; reviews appeared short-ly thereafter.2 It was perhaps this activity that prompted the eminent Scottish violinist William Primrose (1904-1982), who was touring at the time in the United States, to approach Prokofi ev about composing something personally for him. Earlier Primrose had commissioned a Concerto for Viola and Orchestra from the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók, but Bartók died in New York in 1945 without completing the task. Primrose told Koussevitzky about his “dream” of com-missioning a comparable piece for viola from Prokofiev; Koussevitzky subsequently directed Bean to contact the composer in Moscow.

June 1, 1947 Mr. Serge Prokofi eff ,Union of Soviet ComposersMoscow, USSR

Dear Mr. Prokofi eff ,I have recently talked at great length with William

Primrose who as you know is one of the greatest concert violists. Several weeks ago he wrote to Dr. Koussevitzky: “... for some years past it has been a dream of mine that one day I could get Prokofi ev to write a viola work for me. My admiration for him is profound... will you be so very kind as to help me in this, attaining what has so long been a fantasy and advise me what to do?” He is very much interested at the possibility of your writing a concerto for viola and orchestra. He mentioned that you might never have heard of him or his work. Therefore, at my suggestion we are sending recordings which he has made and which I am sure will be of interest to you, both the William Walton Concerto,3 and two other contemporary works, Arthur Benjamin’s Elegy, Waltz, and Toccata,4 and Roy Harris’s Soliloquy and Dance.5 These will give you some idea of the scope of his work and I know that he will look forward to hearing from you on this as soon as possible.

I am enclosing an advertisement which appeared in MUSICAL AMERICA which lists precisely Primrose’s recent accomplishments.6

Most sincerely,

Betty Randolph BeanExecutive Secretary7

Bean sent the letter to Prokofi ev through the Organizing Committee of the Union of Soviet Composers, who sent it in turn to the All-Union Society of Cultural Exchanges Abroad, known by the Russian acronym VOKS. Offi cials in this organi-zation heeded the directives of the Propaganda Administra-

33

ing that “the Chairman of the Society is the Russian conduc-tor Sergey Koussevitzky, about 70 years old, sympathetically relating to the Soviet Union and a big fan of Russian mu-sic. Many Soviet works received their first performances in America by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the di-rection of Koussevitzky. Koussevitzky has established a mu-sic school in the small provincial town of Tanglewood, not far from Boston, which presents a series of concerts each year. These concerts have been very successful and have broadly attracted the attention of the media and press.”10

Bean, moreover, was characterized as a “great lover of mu -sic, an energetic and capable organizer.”11 This assessment found confirmation in the list of activities of the Society be-tween January and June of 1947:

January 24: Presentation by Norman Corwin12 on music in the Soviet Union.

February 15: Chamber music concert in Times Hall.March 3: Meeting of Society members.March 7: Screening of the film Ivan the Terrible13 for

members of the Society.March 16: Concert of choral and folk music of the USA

and USSR in Town Hall.May 12: Concert of theater music of the USA and USSR in

Town Hall.May 16: Assistance to the General Consul in booking

performers of Shostakovich’s 3rd String Quartet for a concert at the Consulate.

May 18: Broadcast of the 3rd Quartet by American mass-market radio stations.

June 13: Annual meeting of Society members.June 29: Concert in a private home for a select group of

Society members.14

Fedosimov also notes one of the manifestations of the Cold War: “During the visit to the USA by the Ukrainian art-ists Patorzhinsky and Gayday the latter was asked to register [with the State Department] as a [Soviet] agent involved in propaganda. The Society protested the matter to the State Department and was assured that if the artists were coming on a professional visit, registration requirements would be suspended.”15 The author did not ascribe particular impor-tance to this detail, perhaps considering it an innocent bu-reaucratic mistake.

Finally Fedosimov referenced the complaints of the Ame-ri can-Soviet Music Society about VOKS, noting the “slow response to their requests and proposals, the invitations [to America] of Oistrakh and Gilels, for example.”16 VOKS re-mained silent for several months, leading to the follow-up complaint that “with such bad communication the Society cannot make any serious plans for the future.”17 It seems evi-dent that the Soviet diplomat sided with those American officials who still wanted to foster cultural cooperation with Moscow.

Koussevitzky’s letter and Fedosimov’s petition were greet-ed with irritation at VOKS. The resolution issued in response to the petition includes the following line in red pencil: “We need to inform Fedosimov about our abilities to respond to such requests, so that he doesn’t simply cede to Koussevit-zky’s point of view.”18 But by the summer of 1947 such “abili-ties to respond” no longer existed. From 1946 the political leadership of the Soviet Union began to interpret interest in anything Western as “worshiping bourgeois culture.”19 Whereas in 1944 the French singer Lily Pons had been invi-ted to perform in Moscow,20 by the spring of 1946 the mere act of listening to recordings of her performances, or for that matter those of the American singer Marion Anderson, was seen as evidence of political untrustworthiness.21

Given the increasingly fraught circumstances, Koussevit-zky’s request to provide Bean with “a visa and an invitation from VOKS” for a trip to Moscow, not to mention a meet-ing with Prokofiev with the aim of soliciting a composition from him for Primose, could not be sanctioned. VOKS issued a template response, sending best wishes to the Ameri-can-Soviet Music Society for “success in the development of friendship and cultural connections between our peoples.”22 It was signed on behalf of the music division of VOKS by the composer and Chairman of the Organizing Committee of the Union of Soviet Composers B. A. Belïy.

Sergey Prokofiev neither learned about William Prim-rose’s “dream” nor about the actions on his behalf by his as-sociates Betty Bean and Serge Koussevitzky. In December of 1947, he met the young Mstislav Rostropovich, which even-tually resulted in the Symphony-Concerto for Cello. VOKS ensured that he never made contact with Primrose, and nev-er thought to compose a Concerto for Viola and Orchestra.

1 Betty Randolph Bean (1918-2002), violinist, Vice President of the New York office of Boosey & Hawkes and Director of Press and Public Relations for the New York Philharmonic. 2 See p. 13 of the December, 10, 1946 issue of Musical America.3 William Walton (1902-1983), English composer.4 Arthur Benjamin (1893-1960), Australian composer and pianist.5 Roy Harris (1898-1979), American composer. In the 1930s the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Serge Koussevitzky performed his First Symphony (1933) and When Johnny Comes Marching Home—An American Overture (1934). In 1942 Harris dedicated his Fifth Symphony to the “Heroic Soviet People.” 6 From 1937 to 1942 Primrose was the concertmaster of the NBC Radio Orchestra in New York under the direction of Arturo Toscanini. The journal Musical America regularly reported on Primrose’s tours (see, for example, the advertisements on p. 79 of the February 1946 issue and p. 38 of the February 1947 issue).7 Gosudarstvennïy arkhiv Rossiyskoy Federatsii (GARF) f. 5283, op. 14, yed. khr. 41, l. 25 (copy of typescript).8 Ibid., ll. 28-29 (typed and signed on letterhead of the American-Soviet Music Society).9 Ibid., l. 28.10 Ibid., l. 30.11 Ibid., l. 31.12 Norman Corwin (1910-2011), American journalist, producer, and composer.13 The reference is to Sergey Eisenstein’s two-part film (1942-46).14 GARF f. 5283, op. 14, yed. khr. 41, l. 32.15 Ibid.16 David Fyodorovich Oistrakh (1908-1974), Soviet violinist; Emil Grigoryevich Gilels (1916-1985), Soviet pianist.17 GARF f. 5283, op. 14, yed. khr. 41, l. 33.18 Ibid.19 “Doklad tov. Zhdanova o zhurnalakh ‘Zvezda’ i ‘Leningrad,’” in M. M. Miringof, ed., Sovetskiy teatr i sovremennost’. Sbornik materialov i statey (Moscow: Vserossiyskoye teatral’noye obshchestvo, 1947), 51. 20 See V. V. Perkhin, ed., Deyateli sovetskogo iskusstva i M. B. Khrapchenko, predsedatel’ Vsesoyuznogo komiteta po delam iskusstv (aprel’ 1939—yanvar’ 1948). Svod pisem (Moscow: Nauka, 2007), 99.21 See D. G. Nadzhafov, ed., Stalin i kosmopolitizm. Dokumentï Agitpropa TsK KPSS. 1945-1953 (Moscow: Materik, 2005), 41. 22 GARF f. 5283, op. 14, yed. khr. 41, l. 34.

34

REVIEWS

1941-1945: Wartime Music (Muzïka voyennoy porï), Vol. 4Saint Petersburg: Northern Flowers, 2010, NF/PMA 9972Gavriil PopovSymphony No. 2 “Motherland”, op. 39Music for the fi lm The Turning Point, op. 44Red Cavalry Campaign

Saint Petersburg State Academic Symphony OrchestraSmolny Cathedral Chamber Choir Alexander Titov, conductor

1941-1945: Wartime Music (Muzïka voyennoy porï), Vol. 8Saint Petersburg: Northern Flowers, 2009, NF/PMA 9977Gavriil PopovSymphony No. 3, “The Heroic”, for large string orchestra, op. 45Symphonic Aria for cello and string orchestra, op. 43

Saint Petersburg State Academic Symphony OrchestraAlexander Titov, conductorDmitriy Khrïchev, cello

During his 1927 tour of the USSR, Prokofi ev met Gavriil Popov (1904-72), a young Soviet composer whose music made a favorable impression, displaying “fl ashes” of inspiration, as Prokofi ev wryly noted in his journal. Prokofi ev soon after encouraged Serge Diaghilev to commission a ballet from Popov, striking evidence of his admiration. Following the impresario’s untimely death a little over a year later, Prokofi ev tried to arrange a French concert tour for Popov, but logistical diffi culties thwarted his plans. Nevertheless, the two composers became friends, exchanging letters and—after Prokofi ev’s repatriation—meeting frequently to discuss their work.

Popov’s fortunes at home in the USSR were variable. He was still enjoying praise for his score for the 1934 fi lm Chapayev when he learned that his aggressively dissonant First Symphony (1935) had been banned for “bourgeois” tendencies (an ominous portent of the 1936 Lady Macbeth aff air). Prokofi ev recorded no reaction to this development—if he was aware of it at all—but it was of consequence to his own Soviet career: When Mosfi lm’s skittish director temporarily barred Popov from the studio, the director Sergey Eisenstein chose Prokofi ev to compose music for his new fi lm Rus’, soon to be renamed Alexander Nevsky. Popov’s loss was Prokofi ev’s gain, as the fi lm score netted his fi rst major success since relocating to Moscow. His younger colleague returned to composing after the fl ap died down, and, like Prokofi ev, proved to be impressively prolifi c during the war years. Indeed, in a sad testament to Popov’s rise in the 1940s, he was named alongside Prokofi ev and Shostakovich in the notorious 1948 Central Committee resolution on music. Popov never regained his full stature as a composer; even after

the resolution was reversed in 1958, performances of his works remained rare.

Popov’s music was almost entirely unknown outside of Russia, at least until 2004, when Leon Botstein and the London Symphony Orchestra recorded the once-banned First Symphony (Telarc 80642), sparking a renewed interest in the composer’s works. Two recent discs, part of the sixteen-volume “Wartime Music” series issued by the Saint Petersburg fi rm “Northern Flowers,” feature the composer’s more conservative work from the 1940s. They also demonstrate a particular feature of Popov’s oeuvre, namely the interweaving of his fi lm and concert music, areas in which Popov was equally prolifi c.

For example, Popov derived his Third Symphony (begun in 1939, before the Second, but not completed until 1944) from his score for Eshir Shub’s 1939 documentary Spain, a chronicle of the Spanish Civil War. If his friend Prokofi ev was a relentless recycler of musical themes, Popov reused entire sections of music, in this case expansive numbers for string orchestra. In the fi lm, these fi ll long, picturesque stretches without dialogue. In the Symphony, they are cobbled together into a fi ve-movement structure that Popov called a “concerto grosso,” likely because the texture alternates between large and small groups of strings. The Symphony is folk-like in character, with lyrical symphonic passages punctuated by dance-like interludes. Shub had used such music to forge a cinematic identity for the Spanish people, yet the generic folk character of Popov’s tunefulness allowed the same music to stand apart from the fi lm under the war-inspired subtitle “The Heroic.” Part of the work’s charm comes from Popov’s skillful treatment of texture: The strings regularly

35

REVIEWS

fragment into densely layered divisi groups, yielding a luminous sonority that recalls Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov’s most inspired passages. Director Alexander Titov off ers an inspired performance with the Saint Petersburg State Academic Symphony Orchestra, though intonation problems in the upper strings frequently detract from the work’s overall impact.

The Symphonic Aria for cello and string orchestra, op. 43—featured on volume eight alongside the Third Symphony—was Popov’s elegy for the Soviet author Aleksey Tolstoy, who passed away in 1945, just months shy of war’s end. Again the symphony began as fi lm music, this time the score Popov penned for Eisenstein’s Bezhin Meadow (1936). The fi lm dramatized the purportedly true tale of Pavlik Morozov, a boy who denounced his anti-Soviet father in 1932. Morozov’s supposed murder at the hands of his revenge-seeking family transformed him into a political martyr, celebrated in songs, plays, and Eisenstein’s fi lm. Yet Popov’s score went unused when the Politburo censored Eisenstein’s fi lm for being “anti-artistic and politically groundless” (the fi lm itself was subsequently destroyed). The Aria seems to be derived from the fi lm’s central musical number, an emotional lament, and so gives some sense of a highly charged moment in Eisenstein’s lost fi lm. The piece is performed admirably by cellist Dmitriy Khrïchev, who has no trouble sustaining Popov’s unusually long phrases as they hover above an understated orchestral accompaniment.

Although the major work featured on volume four, the 1943 Second Symphony, features largely original material, it owes its inspiration to the derailed Alexander Nevsky commission. Eisenstein gave Popov a copy of the fi lm’s screenplay and

his permission to use it as the basis of an opera, which the composer worked on in 1939 and 1940. By the time of the Nazi invasion, a large part of the fi rst act was on paper, but wartime disruptions (including Popov’s evacuation to Central Asia) interrupted and eventually halted the composer’s progress. Nevertheless, Popov’s sketches and plans for the opera proved useful when he began the Second Symphony, a work that, in the composer’s conception, contrasts peace and war. On the basis of the Nevsky material, he quickly turned out a heroic-sounding (sometimes ponderously so) four movement symphony with textbook-like fi delity to traditional form. The fi rst two movements (peace) are largely upbeat and cheerful, while the fi nal two movements (war) plunge the listener into a long, minor-key lament followed by a raucous and rhythmically unrelenting march. Popov crowns the symphony with a fi nal statement of the fi rst movement’s main theme, optimistically foretelling a return of peace.

Contrasting the weighty Second Symphony are seven fl eeting musical numbers from Popov’s score for The Turning Point, a 1945 dramatization of the Battle of Stalingrad directed by Fridrikh Ermler. Unlike almost all of Popov’s other fi lm music, these numbers never appeared in a later suite or symphonic work. Several Russian scholars have speculated that Popov refrained from recycling the music due to its sharp (but purely surface-level) dissonances, which were eff ective in Ermler’s fi lm but perhaps too edgy for concert performance during the post-War anti-formalist campaign. Iosif Rayskin, the author of the disc’s otherwise excellent liner notes, retells the canard that Popov and his colleagues intentionally hid their most avant-garde music in their fi lm work, where visual images could justify stylistic choices that might otherwise smack of formalism. More likely is that Popov would have found it diffi cult to produce a coherent concert work from the fi lm score; with the exception of “Russian Off ensive,” the numbers lack clear melodies, assembled as they are from short motives delivered over insistent ostinatos.

An ebullient march, Red Cavalry Campaign, completes Titov’s program. Popov dashed off the work immediately following the Nazi invasion, setting a traditional folk text for male chorus that culminates in the exhortation “strike down, smash the enemy!” Although Popov’s haste shows when the work builds to a clichéd, almost circus-like romp (and Titov also seems to have been in a hurry, as numerous fl ubbed entrances mar the recording), the work nevertheless rounds out a picture of a long-neglected composer’s wartime eff orts.

Kevin Bartig

36

Simon Morrison is Professor of Music at Princeton University. He is the author of Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement (2002) and The People’s Artist: Prokofiev’s Soviet Years (2008), and the editor of Prokofiev and His World (2008). In 2005, he produced a staging of Prokofiev’s ballet Le Pas d’Acier at Princeton University, and in 2008, he restored the original version of Romeo and Juliet for the Mark Morris Dance Group.

Nelly Kravetz is Assistant Professor of music at Tel Aviv University. Besides Three Oranges, she has published articles in Journal of Musicology, MuzÏkal’naya akademiya and several collections. Her book Ryadom s velikimi: L. T. Atovm'yan i yego vremya (Alongside the Greats: L. T. Atovm'yan and His Times) has just been published.

Kevin Bartig is Assistant Professor of Music at Michigan State University. The recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, he has just completed a book on Prokofiev’s film music for Oxford University Press.

Serge Prokofieff Jr. is the webmaster of the Serge Prokofiev Foundation website (www.sprkfv.net). He is in charge of page setting and design for Three Oranges.

Fiona Noble is Archivist of the Serge Prokofiev Archive in London. Her postgraduate research focused on Prokofiev’s reconnection with the Soviet Union in the late 1920s.

editorial team

contributorsLaurel E. Fay is an independent scholar of Soviet music, with specific emphasis on the career of Dmitriy Shostakovich. She received the Otto Kindeldey Award of the American Musicological Society for Shostakovich: A Life (2000). She is the editor of Shostakovich and His World, published in tandem with the 2004 Bard Music Festival. Besides Shostakovich, she specializes in the compositions of Sofia Gubaidulina. Vladimir V. Perkhin is a historian and professor of journalism at St. Petersburg State University. He is the author of several books, including Literaturnaya kritika Andreya Platonova (Andrey Platonov’s Literary Criticism, 1994), Russkaya literaturnaya kritika 1930-x godov: Kritika i obshestvennoye soznaniye epokhi (Russian Literary Criticism

in the 1930s: Criticism and the Social Consciousness of the Epoch, 1997), Russkiye literatorï v pis’makh (1905-1985): Issledovaniya i materialï (Russian Litterateurs in Letters [1905-1985]: Research and Materials), and, central to Prokofiev studies, Deyateli russkogo iskusstva i M. B. Khrapchenko, predsedatel’ Vsesoyuznogo komiteta po delam iskusstv (1939-1948): Svod pisem (Russian Arts Officials and M. B. Khrapchenko, Chairman of the All-Union Committee on Arts Affairs [1939-1948]: A Collection of Letters, 2007).

Natalia Savkina lectures in the Department of Music History and Theory at the Moscow Conservatory. She has written extensively on Prokofiev and is the author of a monograph about him which has been translated into various languages.

Simon MorrisonEditor

Nelly KravetzAssociate Editor

Kevin BartigReviews Editor

Serge ProkofieffDesigner

Fiona NobleEditorial Assistant

©JOA

NNE

SAVI

O

Noëlle Mann, Founding Editor

NOTES FOR CONTRIBUTORS

Three Oranges is the journal of the Serge Prokofiev Foundation. It appears in January and July of each year. The Editor invites contributions on any aspect of artistic and social life in the first half of the Twentieth Century, providing it is related to the circles and places in which Prokofiev operated.Copyright of the articles published in Three Oranges will be jointly owned by the contributors and the Foundation. Permission for republication will be given at the Editor’s discretion.Detailed Notes for Contributors are downloadable from: www.sprkfv.net/journal/journalnotesfc.html

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