“Own” as “another’s”, “another’s” as “own”: Prokofiev’s self-quotations, quotations and compilations

Abstract

This article considers Prokofiev’s creative method features – using of autocitations, folklore citations and compilations of Russian national songs. Prokofiev’s immanent quality of thinking is not an emotional, but rather a rational technological, structural relationship to the thematism, and it allowed the composer to bring the idea of using autocitations to considerable proportions. In his legacy so far found a repetition of 26 full numbers or sections and 20 musical themes; in three of these 46 cases the thematism was repeated twice. The autocitation, interpreted by the author in the traditional sense, as an allusion, a sign or “souvenir”, stands apart. It is the repetition of fragments of the theme of March from the opera “Love for the Three Oranges” in the second act of the ballet “Cinderella”.

As the result of the analysis of both sketches and completed scores appears Prokofiev’s successive movement from creating bright and unique musical thematism to increasing use of the procedure of compilation. The first stage of this way began in the mid-1930s; it was characterized by the writing of music which stylistically corresponds to certain Slavonic folkloric models – marching, dancing and drawing songs. The second stage can be noted in the process of working on the opera “Semyon Kotko”, when Prokofiev turned to folklore collections. The third stage had come at time the Great Patriotic War. During these years, the composer’s author’s utterance lost its wholeness, divided into thematism, conditioned by ideological cliches and intended, as a rule, for full-dress stage compositions, as well as the one used in the “creative workshop” – in the chamber and symphonic opuses.

Contradictions and discrepancies between what was said by genius, and his written music constitutes the separate, thou sketched in a dotted line, subject of the given article. Such contradictions usually constitute an ever-actual musicology’s problems.

Keywords: S.S. Prokofiev, creative method, folklore, autoquoting