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Simon Morrison is Professor of Music at Princeton University. He is the author of The People’s Artist: Prokofiev’s Soviet Years and the editor of Prokofiev and His World. He restored the original, uncensored version of Romeo and Juliet for the Mark Morris Dance Group, which enjoyed its world premier in 2008. Morrison previously blogged for us about the 1938 premier of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. In this article, Morrison looks at Prokofiev’s relationship to another Soviet musician/composer: Mstislav Rostropovich.

There exist several histories of Soviet music, but they are all hobbled by an absence of primary source documentation about crucial events: the circumstances surrounding the denunciation of Dmitriy Shostakovich in 1936, for example, or the anti-modernist resolution of 1948. The gaps have been filled by anecdotes, memoirs, generalizations, and ideological axe-grinding. Every eyewitness to the Stalinist period—the worst of all times in terms of thought control—seems to have a sorrowful tale to tell of censorship and deprivation, sometimes supplemented with fanciful accounts of defiance. Granted the system was monstrous, but it did have its perks, as evidenced by the career of the eminent cellist and (later) conductor Mstislav Rostropovich. In his early 20s, Rostropovich received the privilege of showcasing his talent at foreign competitions and the opportunity to serve as a cultural diplomat. Not bad for a kid from Baku. An official document from the Russian State Archive of Social-Political History lists the places he visited in 1949 and 1950: Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Germany, and Czechoslovakia again. Concerts in Western nations followed, as did material benefits and access to the greatest Soviet composers, who composed sonatas and concertos for him.

Rostropovich lived a long time (much of it outside of Russia), and recounted his amazing career to numerous biographers. His conversations with the musicologist and cellist Elizabeth Wilson, one of his students at the Moscow Conservatory, inspired a quasi-hagiographic narrative of a selfless servant to his art. The book in question, Rostropovich: The Musical Life of the Great Cellist, Teacher and Legend, claims that Rostropovich “was no less talented as a composer than a cellist” who could “tackle the virtuoso piano repertoire with ease.” In the late 1950s, moreover, he reputedly “used his artistry to conquer every continent of the globe.”

The exultations are exaggerated, to be sure, but it would be petty to dwell on them: no one doubts that Rostropovich was a brilliant musician. The bigger question concerns his role in the composition of such works as Prokofiev’s Sinfonia Concertante and Seventh Symphony. Rostropovich claimed that Prokofiev solicited his aid in assembling these and other scores. “If you would be willing to help me I’d be most grateful,” he recalled Prokofiev saying to him in 1948. “To hear such words,” he told Wilson, “sent me into total delirium.”

The Sinfonia Concertante had a tortured compositional history—it reuses material from Prokofiev’s Second Cello Concerto, which in turn reuses material from his First Cello Concerto—and Rostropovich certainly had a role in its creation. But so too did another cellist: Gregor Pyatigorsky. Prokofiev conceived the work in 1933 for Pyatigorsky while in Paris, but he did not complete it until 1938, after his relocation to Moscow. Pyatigorsky performed it in Boston on March 8, 1940. The reviews were poor, prompting Pyatigorsky to send Prokofiev a list of proposed changes.

In 1951, Rostropovich assisted Prokofiev in transforming the First Cello Concerto into the Second Cello Concerto and then further into the Sinfonia Concertante, but the level of Rostropovich’s involvement is unclear. The assumption that the two of them worked side by side on the score stems from a single newspaper report and a photograph (shown below). It is complicated by the primary source evidence, which reveals that Prokofiev composed the solo and accompanimental parts in relative solitude. Once the material was drafted, he gave the sketchbooks to Rostropovich for technical correction and refinement, who in turn forwarded them to Prokofiev’s assistant, Levon Atovmyan, for orchestration. Atovmyan was a skilled arranger and orchestrator as well as an instrumentalist. In fact, he played the cello.

Likewise problematic is the following anecdote Rostropovich offered about the final movement of the Second Cello Concerto:

Prokofiev incorporated a theme that was similar to a popular song by Vladimir Zakharov, an apparatchik who mercilessly vilified all “formalists.” After the work was played at the Composers’ Union, Zakharov stood up and said indignantly that he would write to the papers complaining that his own wonderful tune had been totally distorted. When I related this to Prokofiev he wrote a replacement tune (a waltz, which I never played), and said that once everything had settled down we could quietly revert to the original tune.

This is a great story, but it is inaccurate. Zakharov did arrange a song that shares points with Prokofiev’s, but a much better rhythmic and melodic match comes from the Minsk composer Isaak Lyuban. Zakharov’s duple-meter tune, titled “Be of Good Health” (Bud’te zdorovї), dates from 1937; Lyuban’s triple-meter “Our Toast” (Nash tost) was written in 1942. Both songs became popular during the war, and both tended to be performed in concert in different variations, a practice good-humoredly reprised by Prokofiev in his score. Here is Rostropovich performing the passage in question in 1970 in Monte Carlo (view from 3:17):

Finally, there is the account of the creation of Prokofiev’s Seventh Symphony in 1952, which Rostropovich characterizes as a lighthearted composition intended for children, not, as its critics allege, a lackluster product of political pressure. Rostropovich recalled teaming up with the pianist Anatoly Vedernikov to perform a reduction of the score for the Soviet Radio Committee bureaucrats who had commissioned it. They loved it and, in Wilson’s words,

A delighted Rostropovich hurried away to buy a cake and bottle of champagne to celebrate with Prokofiev. The composer had not attended the audition because of ill health, but as soon as he heard of the successful outcome, he rubbed out the title “Children’s Symphony” from the score. Rostropovich asked him what he was doing, to which Prokofiev replied: “Since the adults seem to like it so much, let’s just call the work the seventh symphony.”

I have looked at the manuscript of the Seventh Symphony in question—looked hard at it, in fact—and seen no evidence that Prokofiev changed its title. Prokofiev, for his part, confirmed in a journal that he sought counsel from Rostropovich while composing the symphony, but that in one instance he regretted doing so. “Because the cellists complained that the coda of the second movement is difficult for them to play, I consulted with Rostropovich about simplifying their parts before sending the Symphony to the publisher. Now that it has been published, the cellists can’t seem to play it at all. Either [the conductor] has sped it up, or Rostropovich gave me bad advice.” Perhaps we, like Prokofiev, should not give our trust so freely.

Simon Morrison is Professor of Music at Princeton University. He is the author of The People’s Artist: Prokofiev’s Soviet Years and the editor of Prokofiev and His World. He restored the original, uncensored version of Romeo and Juliet for the Mark Morris Dance Group, which enjoyed its world premier in 2008. Morrison previously blogged for us about the 1938 premier of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. In this article, Morrison looks at Prokofiev’s relationship to another Soviet musician/composer: Mstislav Rostropovich.

There exist several histories of Soviet music, but they are all hobbled by an absence of primary source documentation about crucial events: the circumstances surrounding the denunciation of Dmitriy Shostakovich in 1936, for example, or the anti-modernist resolution of 1948. The gaps have been filled by anecdotes, memoirs, generalizations, and ideological axe-grinding. Every eyewitness to the Stalinist period—the worst of all times in terms of thought control—seems to have a sorrowful tale to tell of censorship and deprivation, sometimes supplemented with fanciful accounts of defiance. Granted the system was monstrous, but it did have its perks, as evidenced by the career of the eminent cellist and (later) conductor Mstislav Rostropovich. In his early 20s, Rostropovich received the privilege of showcasing his talent at foreign competitions and the opportunity to serve as a cultural diplomat. Not bad for a kid from Baku. An official document from the Russian State Archive of Social-Political History lists the places he visited in 1949 and 1950: Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Germany, and Czechoslovakia again. Concerts in Western nations followed, as did material benefits and access to the greatest Soviet composers, who composed sonatas and concertos for him.

Rostropovich lived a long time (much of it outside of Russia), and recounted his amazing career to numerous biographers. His conversations with the musicologist and cellist Elizabeth Wilson, one of his students at the Moscow Conservatory, inspired a quasi-hagiographic narrative of a selfless servant to his art. The book in question, Rostropovich: The Musical Life of the Great Cellist, Teacher and Legend, claims that Rostropovich “was no less talented as a composer than a cellist” who could “tackle the virtuoso piano repertoire with ease.” In the late 1950s, moreover, he reputedly “used his artistry to conquer every continent of the globe.”

The exultations are exaggerated, to be sure, but it would be petty to dwell on them: no one doubts that Rostropovich was a brilliant musician. The bigger question concerns his role in the composition of such works as Prokofiev’s Sinfonia Concertante and Seventh Symphony. Rostropovich claimed that Prokofiev solicited his aid in assembling these and other scores. “If you would be willing to help me I’d be most grateful,” he recalled Prokofiev saying to him in 1948. “To hear such words,” he told Wilson, “sent me into total delirium.”

The Sinfonia Concertante had a tortured compositional history—it reuses material from Prokofiev’s Second Cello Concerto, which in turn reuses material from his First Cello Concerto—and Rostropovich certainly had a role in its creation. But so too did another cellist: Gregor Pyatigorsky. Prokofiev conceived the work in 1933 for Pyatigorsky while in Paris, but he did not complete it until 1938, after his relocation to Moscow. Pyatigorsky performed it in Boston on March 8, 1940. The reviews were poor, prompting Pyatigorsky to send Prokofiev a list of proposed changes.

In 1951, Rostropovich assisted Prokofiev in transforming the First Cello Concerto into the Second Cello Concerto and then further into the Sinfonia Concertante, but the level of Rostropovich’s involvement is unclear. The assumption that the two of them worked side by side on the score stems from a single newspaper report and a photograph (shown below). It is complicated by the primary source evidence, which reveals that Prokofiev composed the solo and accompanimental parts in relative solitude. Once the material was drafted, he gave the sketchbooks to Rostropovich for technical correction and refinement, who in turn forwarded them to Prokofiev’s assistant, Levon Atovmyan, for orchestration. Atovmyan was a skilled arranger and orchestrator as well as an instrumentalist. In fact, he played the cello.

Likewise problematic is the following anecdote Rostropovich offered about the final movement of the Second Cello Concerto:

Prokofiev incorporated a theme that was similar to a popular song by Vladimir Zakharov, an apparatchik who mercilessly vilified all “formalists.” After the work was played at the Composers’ Union, Zakharov stood up and said indignantly that he would write to the papers complaining that his own wonderful tune had been totally distorted. When I related this to Prokofiev he wrote a replacement tune (a waltz, which I never played), and said that once everything had settled down we could quietly revert to the original tune.

This is a great story, but it is inaccurate. Zakharov did arrange a song that shares points with Prokofiev’s, but a much better rhythmic and melodic match comes from the Minsk composer Isaak Lyuban. Zakharov’s duple-meter tune, titled “Be of Good Health” (Bud’te zdorovї), dates from 1937; Lyuban’s triple-meter “Our Toast” (Nash tost) was written in 1942. Both songs became popular during the war, and both tended to be performed in concert in different variations, a practice good-humoredly reprised by Prokofiev in his score. Here is Rostropovich performing the passage in question in 1970 in Monte Carlo (view from 3:17):

Finally, there is the account of the creation of Prokofiev’s Seventh Symphony in 1952, which Rostropovich characterizes as a lighthearted composition intended for children, not, as its critics allege, a lackluster product of political pressure. Rostropovich recalled teaming up with the pianist Anatoly Vedernikov to perform a reduction of the score for the Soviet Radio Committee bureaucrats who had commissioned it. They loved it and, in Wilson’s words,

A delighted Rostropovich hurried away to buy a cake and bottle of champagne to celebrate with Prokofiev. The composer had not attended the audition because of ill health, but as soon as he heard of the successful outcome, he rubbed out the title “Children’s Symphony” from the score. Rostropovich asked him what he was doing, to which Prokofiev replied: “Since the adults seem to like it so much, let’s just call the work the seventh symphony.”

I have looked at the manuscript of the Seventh Symphony in question—looked hard at it, in fact—and seen no evidence that Prokofiev changed its title. Prokofiev, for his part, confirmed in a journal that he sought counsel from Rostropovich while composing the symphony, but that in one instance he regretted doing so. “Because the cellists complained that the coda of the second movement is difficult for them to play, I consulted with Rostropovich about simplifying their parts before sending the Symphony to the publisher. Now that it has been published, the cellists can’t seem to play it at all. Either [the conductor] has sped it up, or Rostropovich gave me bad advice.” Perhaps we, like Prokofiev, should not give our trust so freely.

by Cassie, Publicity Assistant

Simon Morrison is Professor of Music at Princeton University. He is the author of The People’s Artist: Prokofiev’s Soviet Years and the editor of Prokofiev and His World. He restored the original, uncensored version of Romeo and Juliet for the Mark Morris Dance Group, which enjoys its world premier in 2008. In this article, Morrison looks at the mysteries surrounding the 1938 premier of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, sharing what he’s learned from the woman who played Juliet, Zora Šemberová.

This May the Mark Morris Dance Group will be performing Romeo and Juliet, on Motifs of Shakespeare at Lincoln Center. This is the original, 1935 version of Sergey Prokofiev’s illustrious ballet, which I restored for the company last year, and which features, remarkably, a happy ending. (The tragic ending was tacked on to the score after protest from Soviet Shakespeare purists; had Prokofiev not complied with their demands, Romeo and Juliet might not have been performed during his lifetime.) I unearthed this version of the score while conducting research in Moscow for The People’s Artist: Prokofiev’s Soviet Years, and I devoted about twenty pages of the book to the peculiar history of the ballet. That history continues to be written, as I learned last spring, when Alan Brissenden, Reader in English at the University of Adelaide, informed me that the Czech ballerina who danced the part of Juliet in the 1938 premiere of the ballet was thriving at age 94. Her name is Zora Šemberová, and she has just published her memoirs, which are titled, appropriately enough, Na št’astné planetě, or On a Happy Planet.

The premiere occurred in the Provincial Theater in Brno, Czechoslovakia, on December 30, 1938. It was choreographed by Ivo Váña-Psota, who took the part of Romeo. Prokofiev wanted to attend the performance, but by the end of 1938 he was no longer allowed to travel outside of the Soviet Union. The Commissariat of Foreign Affairs declined to issue him a passport, with various reasons being invented to explain the official change in his status from vїyezdnoy (allowed to travel) to nevїyezdnoy (disallowed).

It remains unclear what, exactly, was performed at the theater in Brno. Most chroniclers of the ballet assume that the premiere was partial, involving highlights of the score taken primarily from the first and second orchestral suites, but the reviews are vague and the source materials presumably destroyed during the war. The date of the premiere leaves it uncertain as to whether or not the ballet included the happy or tragic ending, and whether or not the other dramaturgical oddities of the original scenario remained.

The oddities in the original ballet include episodes in which the drama between the Montague and Capulet factions is interrupted by processions of merry-makers intended to block the audience’s view of the action. (Imagine a square in Renaissance Verona masked by footage of a Soviet May Day parade.) Later, to alleviate the gloom of the scene in which Juliet drinks the “death” potion prepared for her by Friar Laurence, Prokofiev composed three exotic dances. These dances represent the nuptial gifts that Paris, convinced that he will succeed in marrying Juliet, has brought to her bedchamber. The entertainment fails to rouse Juliet from her toxin-induced slumber.

There follows the happy ending. Juliet lies in her bedchamber. Romeo enters, but he is unable, like Paris before him, to rouse Juliet; Romeo concludes that she has died and, grief-stricken, resolves to commit suicide. The arrival of Friar Laurence prevents him from pulling out his dagger, and the two of them engage in a brief struggle during a break in the music. Juliet begins to awaken; Romeo carries her away as the townspeople gather in celebration of the miracle. There follow two final dances, which, in the Mark Morris Dance Group production, take place in the stars.

None of this made it past the Soviet censors. The first Soviet production of the ballet in 1940 stripped the score of lightness and freshness and, to Prokofiev’s unhappiness, monumentalized the storyline. In her memoirs, Šemberová is vague about the staging in Brno, but she confirms that the ballet was shortened and that the choreography, out of respect for the modernist leanness of the 1935 score, avoided group dances and clichéd gestures. Šemberová did not dance on pointe, which afforded her greater dramatic flexibility. Two remarkable photographs sent to me by Alan offer a distant glimpse of her effort:

Along with these images, Alan also supplied a copy of the Brno program, which raises as many questions as it answers about the premiere and the six performances that followed it (Romeo and Juliet closed on May 5, 1939, a victim of the Nazi German occupation of Czechoslovakia). For one thing, the premiere featured a choral prologue and epilogue, even though Prokofiev composed no choral music. The singers evidently recited stanzas from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet play, framing and perhaps interrupting the dancing with meditations on love and fate. Here is Vera Tancibudek’s translation of the final lines of the scenario:

Desolate Romeo, convinced that Juliet is indeed dead, finishes his suffering by drinking poison. Juliet awakes, sees her beloved, and leaves the world that had begrudged them their love. Did their love have to die in order that the hatred between the Montagues and Capulets would also expire?

So the tragic ending is there, but abstracted, turned into a mournful question directed at Friar Laurence, who had mistakenly assumed that the marriage of Romeo and Juliet would transform the hostilities between the Montagues and Capulets into something approaching celestial harmony.

Beyond the chorus, the program also includes mention of the exotic dances. These dances were excised from the first Soviet production of the ballet, and from all productions since (excluding that by Mark Morris). The bizarre appearance in Act III of Middle Eastern maidens bearing emeralds, Moors with carpets, and pirates (!) with contraband goods could only have interrupted the dramatic flow. The music, however, is fabulous:

The exotic dances have nothing to do with the happy or tragic ending of the ballet. They sound like a visitation from another work. They are also, however, a throwback to nineteenth-century ballet, which tended to feature oriental divertissements. In Prokofiev’s iconoclastic conception, what was old was new again.

Simon Morrison

Kirsty said, on 1/15/2009 2:58:00 AM

Rab Houston, author of Scotland: A Very Short Introduction, wonders whether Scots really need kilts.

Charles Hodgson said, on 1/15/2009 7:16:00 AM

The podictionary word of the week is "oxymoron".

EDonegan said, on 1/15/2009 10:35:00 AM

A glimpse into Gérard Prunier's newest book on Congo and the Rwandan Genocide.

Rebecca said, on 1/15/2009 11:50:00 AM

Ammon Shea looks at who wrote the first American dictionary.

Cassie said, on 1/16/2009 7:07:00 AM

by Cassie, Publicity Assistant

Hey everyone, happy Friday! Becca let me do link love this week so I’d stop bugging her with all the fun stuff I’ve been finding. Hopefully these will help you get through the rest of the day. Enjoy the weekend!

I knew I loved Tetris for a reason.

The most blurbed authors. Can I be David Sedaris?

See the OUPblog twitter for the correct usage of Twitter. Otherwise, see this.

A new watch phone. Do you hold it up to your wrist and talk into it?

Baen Books is offering some of their titles for free!

And in the same vein, one dollar ebooks from Orbit.

How to make an awesome Kindle cake.

Pretty products that are probably not very functional.

Are you prepared for the zombie invasion?

We had launch this week. This might have been helpful for a few people.

Rebecca said, on 1/16/2009 11:29:00 AM

A look at A. Leon Higginbotham Jr.

Rebecca said, on 1/19/2009 7:38:00 AM

The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limits of Working Memory by Torkel Klingberg, looks at the limits and possibilities of the brain.  Can our Stone Age brains handle being bombarded by emails, phone calls, advertisements, text messages, blogs etc…?  Klingberg suggests that if we find a balance between the demand of everyday activities and our limited brain capacity, we can maximally develop our working memory-improving our brains and ourselves.  In the excerpt below we see an example of what happens when we tax our brains too much.

If we do not focus our attention on something, we will not remember it.  Absentmindedness is one of the most common causes of forgetfulness-or, as memory research and author Daniel Schacter puts it, one of the “seven sins of memory.”  A dramatic illustration of this is the story of the missing Stradivarius.  A string quartet has just performed a concert in Los Angeles, one of the violinists having played on a particularly valuable violin, a priceless seventeenth-century Stradivarius.  After the concert, the quartet gets ready to drive back to their hotel.  The violinist, no doubt tired after the performance and perhaps with his mind on how well they have played and the morning’s reviews, absentmindedly places the violin on the roof the car as he climbs in.  The car drives off, and when they arrive, he realizes that his violin is missing-a mystery that remains unresolved for twenty-seven years until it is identified in a workshop, where it has been handed in for repair.  This demonstrates how attention is essential, albeit insufficient at times, to our ability to store information in our memories.  If your attention is directed elsewhere when you put your glasses down, it will be difficult for you to remember later where you left them. The information never made it through the portal.

When we direct our attention toward a place or an object, we become better and more efficient at interpreting its information content and are more able to detect slight changes in its appearance.  If Linda [our test subject] is on her way home late at night and thinks she spies someone lurking in a doorway, she will stop and focus all her attention on that spot.  She will not ignore another figure appearing in a neighboring doorway, but she will be better at detecting subtle shifts in the shadows surrounding the doorway on which she has focused her attention. Her attention will not only improve her ability to perceive changes but also speed up her reaction time should a menacing silhouette emerge from out of the gloom.

Rebecca said, on 1/20/2009 7:19:00 AM

A look at how Islamic culture views the Nobel Prize.

Rebecca said, on 1/20/2009 11:43:00 AM

Today the world turned its eyes to Washington, DC where the United States inaugurated its 44th President, Barack Hussein Obama. And while most of our executives have been sworn in here on the banks of the Potomac, our first head of state actually took office a stone’s throw from another river: the Hudson. On April 30, 1789, George Washington took his oath of office in front of a crowd assembled on Wall Street in lower Manhattan. After a long trip from his home in Virginia, he was rowed to New York and walked to Federal Hall, the site of his inauguration and the birthplace of American government. At the time, the city’s inhabitants numbered roughly 30,000, and its homes and businesses did not extend much further than the modern location of Canal Street. Just ten years later, the population of the country’s first capital had swelled to more than 60,000 residents.

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Ben Keene is the editor of Oxford Atlas of the World. Check out some of his previous places of the week.

Cassie said, on 1/20/2009 4:05:00 PM

by Cassie, Publicity Assistant Simon Morrison is Professor of Music at Princeton University. He is the author of The People’s Artist: Prokofiev’s Soviet Years and the editor of Prokofiev and His World. He restored the original, uncensored version of Romeo and Juliet for the Mark Morris Dance Group, which enjoys its world premier in 2008. In [...]