The People's Artist: Prokofiev's Soviet Years

Simon Morrison

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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.

Book Details

Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publish Date: Oct 25th, 2010
Pages: 512
Language: English
Edition: undefined - undefined
Dimensions: 9.06in - 6.14in - 1.33in - 1.68lb
EAN: 9780199753482
Categories: • Music• History & Criticism - General• Genres & Styles - Classical

About the Author

Simon Morrison is Professor of Music at Princeton University. He restored the original, uncensored version of Romeo and Juliet for the Mark Morris Dance Group, who performed its world premier in 2008.

Praise for this book

"Provides a much enlarged picture of [Prokofiev's] later life and work...Professor Morrison has adopted a calm and measured approach, with fluently descriptive and comprehensive accounts of his varied output...Much new cultural and ideological context is lucidly provided." --The Musical Times

"In his new book Morrison greatly illuminates episodes, hitherto barely known, in the life of the composer after his return to the USSR. The small facts and biographical details in the 400 pages are arranged, as if by themselves, into a picture of the tragedy of Prokofiev as a person and an artist."--Gazeta "Kul'tura" (Moscow)

"A phenomenal study."--El Pais

"Morrison reveals new and captivating information about a period of Prokofiev's life that has been little known. Enthusiastically recommended for public and academic libraries."--Library Journal

"Morrison has filled so many gaps that The People's Artist is a book all Prokofiev's admirers will need. He gives us a wholly convincing picture of the elusive mix of aesthetic bureaucracy and terror that informed Soviet music life. As is should be, the tale is also an affecting one."--Gramophone

"Morrison's long-awaited book fills a gaping hole in the literature on Russian music. It significantly increases understanding of Prokofiev's decision to return to Soviet Russia, gives a detailed and thoroughly convincing picture of what his life there was like, and sheds welcome light on his creative output from those years, and on the esthetics and achievement of Soviet music generally. Tragedy is indeed its genre: Prokofiev's life, and the lives of his wife and children, were wrecked in consequence of his character flaws, and this message comes through with heartrending force. This is one of the most affecting books of its kind."--Richard Taruskin, author of The Oxford History of Western Music

"Morrison's book explores the most mis-understood and often mis-reported period of my grandfather's life--his return to Russia. It is very carefully researched, academically sound and objective in its approach; yet very readable, clear and concise. The People's Artist reveals many details of his life that were previously unclear, and the extent of the censorship and difficulties he faced as a Soviet composer."--Gabriel Prokofiev

"[A] groundbreaking study do[es] much to aid our understanding of the composer and his return to the Soviet Union."--Bookforum

"Overdue homage to a composer of whom British critic Robert Layton rightly said, "He never lost his power to fascinate.""--The American Conservative

"Morrison has done a tremendous amount of work in the various Prokofiev archives and is able to give a detailed account of the process whereby each individual work was commissioned, composed, accepted for production or performance, orchestrated, revised (often many times) and reworked in response to criticism or the requirements of directors."--The London Review of Books

"[An] excellent book."--The New York Review of Books

"Morrison has also made thorough use of the very substantial body of archival materials concerning the Soviet administration of the arts that Russian scholars began publishing in the 1990s."--Times Literary Supplement

"Simon Morrison has now produced the most definitive study of Prokofiev the Soviet composer in any language, drawing on a wealth of archival material hitherto unavailable...Indispensable to anyone even casually interested in this field."--Music and Letters

"Unequivocally is and will remain the definitive study of Prokofiev's alter years. It leaves the reader with an enhanced respect for Prokofiev as a brillant composer as well as a man who continued to persevere artistically despite inhuman pressures. It brillantly recalls the horrors of Staliism withour devolving into an ideological screed. Music scholars and lay people alike will enjoy and benifit from reading it." --Opera News