The People's Artist: Prokofiev's Soviet Years

Synopsis

Sergey Prokofiev was one of the twentieth century's greatest composers—and one of its greatest mysteries. Until now. In The People's Artist, Simon Morrison draws on groundbreaking research to illuminate the life of this major composer, deftly analyzing Prokofiev's music in light of new archival discoveries. Indeed, Morrison was the first scholar to gain access to the composer's sealed files in the Russian State Archives, where he uncovered a wealth of previously unknown scores, writings, correspondence, and unopened journals and diaries. The story he found in these documents is one of lofty hopes and disillusionment, of personal and creative upheavals. Morrison shows that Prokofiev seemed to thrive on uncertainty during his Paris years, stashing scores in suitcases, and ultimately stunning his fellow emigrés by returning to Stalin's Russia. At first, Stalin's regime treated him as a celebrity, but Morrison details how the bureaucratic machine ground him down with corrections and censorship (forcing rewrites of such major works as Romeo and Juliet), until it finally censured him in 1948, ending his career and breaking his health.

Timothy J. McGee - Library Journal

The first scholar to gain access to Prokofiev's sealed files in the Russian state archives, Morrison (music, Princeton Univ.; Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement) reveals new and captivating information about a period of Prokofiev's life that has been little known. Concentrating on the years between 1936, when Prokofiev returned to Russia from his exile in Paris, and his death in 1953, the book explores the issues of what he composed, why he returned, the kind of reception he received, and how his genius both suffered and profited under Soviet control. The composer's artistic life, as seen through his letters, diaries, speeches, and a thorough analysis of his compositions, is an absorbing story of idealism, deception, and clashing values, as Prokofiev strove to reconcile his creative genius and his deep Christian Science beliefs with the crushing godless dictates of Stalin's Soviet Union. Enthusiastically recommended for public and academic libraries.