Twentieth Century Topics: Young Prokofiev

Sergei Prokofiev’s contributions to twentieth century music are many, including symphonies, concertos, and, of course, Peter and the Wolf. His early years are well documented and that is my subject.

It was through his mother's playing that Prokofiev was exposed very early to piano music, primarily Beethoven sonatas, the works of Chopin, and an occasional piece by Liszt.

Eventually, as a result of listening to music and improvising at the keyboard, he began to pick out tunes.

One day in the summer of 1896 (when he was 5 years old) he came to his mother with a sheet of paper covered with notes and declared, “I have composed Liszt's Rhapsody.'" She had to explain that one couldn't compose a Liszt rhapsody because it was a piece of music that Liszt himself had composed. Furthermore, young Sergei didn’t have a very clear concept of musical notation, so his mother wrote down his first composition, also at age five. The is the piece he composed:

And here's what Prokofiev said about the piece in his memoirs: "It is hard to imagine a more absurd title than the one I gave this composition: Indian Galop. As it happened, there was a famine in India in those days and the adults read about it in the newspapers and discussed it while I listened."

So it was that Prokofiev's compositional career began at age five. Prokofiev wrote a large number of piano compositions and, at age 9, an opera called The Giant. Between the ages of 11 and 13, he was tutored by the composer Gliere. Then, in 1904, at the age of 13, he was admitted to the St. Petersburg Conservatory, which boasted among its teachers the great Rimsky-Korsakov.

Of course, all of his classmates were older, some past thirty. This sometimes made for trouble. During his first year at the conservatory, Prokofiev decided to keep track of how many and what kind of mistakes were made by the students in his harmony class. At one class, a student who had just been torn apart by the professor noticed him writing in his notebook and asked him what he had been writing. Said Prokofiev, "I'm keeping statistics on mistakes." Needless to say, this was not well received.

Prokofiev’s first public exposure as a composer took place in December 1908, as part of a concert series called Evenings of Contemporary Music. The 17-year-old played seven of his own piano pieces, including one titled “Diabolic Suggestion.” Here’s a 1935 recording by Prokofiev:

One of the promoters of the concert series wrote a friendly review, published under a pseudonym. He wrote that “Prokofiev’s short piano pieces were most original.”

He said that the “oddities” of the music were evidence of “a big and indisputable talent.”

A less friendly reviewer also used the word “oddities,” saying that the “many oddities and contrived effects in his harmonies go beyond the bounds of the beautiful.” Another critic was much more direct. He suggested that the piece “Diabolic Suggestion” be given a more specific name, such as “Wild Sabbath of Dirty-Faced Devils Dancing in Hell” or “Violent Brawl of Two Enraged Gorillas.”

It comes as no surprise that at this point in his life Prokofiev felt no great attachment to the traditional repertoire. He didn’t care for Mozart, in whose music there were no “new and spicy harmonies.” But Prokofiev’s anti-Classical attitude changed very quickly when he took a conducting class. The teacher carefully directed his attention to the wonders of scores by Haydn and Mozart. Five or six years later, when Prokofiev wrote his first symphony, he turned to the 18th century for his model. In his own words, he wanted to write the kind of symphony Haydn might have written had he lived into the 20th century.