# Prokofiev cantatas



## Calipso (May 10, 2020)

Outstandings works. What is your favourite cantata by Prokofiev?


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

On Guard for Peace. Prokofieff would have made a great composer for blockbuster fantasy movies.

Alexander Nevsky is right up there, too. Battle on the Ice is just spectacular.


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## Georgieva (7 mo ago)

I really like most of them, but this one is one of my favorite: 

The Cleveland Orchestra, Riccardo Chailly – Alexander Nevsky, Op.78


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## Calipso (May 10, 2020)

mbhaub said:


> On Guard for Peace. Prokofieff would have made a great composer for blockbuster fantasy movies.
> 
> Alexander Nevsky is right up there, too. Battle on the Ice is just spectacular.


Do you like "Seven, they are seven"?


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Calipso said:


> Do you like "Seven, they are seven"?


SUre, just not as much. Prokofiev was a better choral composer than he gets credit for and understandably the language is a barrier. I do not like Nevsky sung in English.


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## Calipso (May 10, 2020)

mbhaub said:


> SUre, just not as much. Prokofiev was a better choral composer than he gets credit for and understandably the language is a barrier. I do not like Nevsky sung in English.


Agree, but there is one more thing. It is "ideological content". Octobar cantata and Zdravitsa, for example. Fabuulous pieces with ""controversial words.


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## Xenophiliu (Jan 2, 2022)

Ivan the Terrible, realizing it wasn't assembled into a cantata/oratorio by Prokofiev. No spoken part for me, though.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

Alexander Nevsky by far no 1 but Ivan the Terrible is also very god.


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## RobertJTh (Sep 19, 2021)

Calipso said:


> Agree, but there is one more thing. It is "ideological content". Octobar cantata and Zdravitsa, for example. Fabuulous pieces with ""controversial words.


Hurwitz has an enthusiast review of the October cantata on his Youtube channel.
So, as long as we all agree that we're allowed to have fun with music that glorifies murderous regimes and ideologies, I'm off listening to my recording of Franz Schmidt's Nazi-cantata "Deutsche Auferstehung". Oh wait, there is none.


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## relm1 (29 d ago)

Is there a bad one? I haven't heard it. But standouts for me are:

Seven, They are Seven
Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution
Alexander Nevsky


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

RobertJTh said:


> I'm off listening to my recording of Franz Schmidt's Nazi-cantata "Deutsche Auferstehung". Oh wait, there is none.


5

Well, not yet there isn't - and likely never will be, which is probably a good thing. Certainly that final, incomplete work did nothing for his post-war reputation. However...I have a copy of the score as far as Schmidt got. Stanford University had a microfiche copy and some 30 years ago I was able to photocopy it (not sure where it is right now). I played through it on piano, and like all Schmidt it's highly chromatic, lush and beautiful, but of course the subject matter and words are pretty rough. I once had grandiose thoughts of making an orchestral suite of just the music but a Jewish friend and fellow musician convinced me not to proceed. Maybe I need to dig it out and and least put some of it on Finale so people can hear the music. Schmidt wasn't the only one to write things that we find abhorrent.


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## RobertJTh (Sep 19, 2021)

mbhaub said:


> Well, not yet there isn't - and likely never will be, which is probably a good thing. Certainly that final, incomplete work did nothing for his post-war reputation. However...I have a copy of the score as far as Schmidt got. Stanford University had a microfiche copy and some 30 years ago I was able to photocopy it (not sure where it is right now). I played through it on piano, and like all Schmidt it's highly chromatic, lush and beautiful, but of course the subject matter and words are pretty rough. I once had grandiose thoughts of making an orchestral suite of just the music but a Jewish friend and fellow musician convinced me not to proceed. Maybe I need to dig it out and and least put some of it on Finale so people can hear the music.


So you have a copy of the original manuscript (complete in short score, but only orchestrated partly by Schmidt) or the 1940 first edition of the score (UE), completed by Robert Wagner? That's pretty amazing.

One cannot but feel conflicted about a piece like this. On the one hand, the text and subject are abhorrent and will prevent any performance from taking place, on the other hand, the subject of "Nazi music" is uncharted territory, and with primary sources like Schmidt's score being unavailable to historians, it's hard to get a good overview of what musical life and composition was like in those years. I'd love to be able to study the cantata, not out of morbid curiosity or any unhealthy interest but because I love Schmidt's particular blend of romantic and modern styles, and I'd like to know what kind of concessions he had to make to the regime, if any? How does the style of the music compare to "Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln"?

The idea of separating the music from the text is a very good one, but apart from moral objections (which I don't necessarily share) there's also copyright issues. The creator of the text, Oscar Dietrich lived to the grand old age of 90, kicking the bucket in 1978, meaning that the text won't in the public domain till the year 2049, at least in Europe.
Stripping the music of its text would make it PD worldwide (Schmidt died in 1939), but perhaps still not in the US. Problem is that the orchestration was completed by Robert Wagner who had an even longer life (1915-2008), which means that the published score won't be PD till the year 2079! So the only thing anyone can work with is Schmidt's manuscript, without the additions by Wagner.



> Schmidt wasn't the only one to write things that we find abhorrent.


That was my point. Soviet propaganda music is well-documented, there's no ban on agitprop works and provided they're written by Shostakovich or Prokofiev they're still being performed. Somehow we don't take offense to a symphony ending with a chorus shouting "Lenin" but a cantata ending with "Sieg Heil" is a bridge too far. Maybe rightly so - but I wouldn't want to participate in a discussion about which regime or ideology was worse or which leader was the bigger mass murderer...

One thing I feel just sad about is how this cursed work tarnished Schmidt's reputation, to the point that a Viennese critic recently reviewing Paavo Jarvi's set of Schmidt's symphonies, devoted half of the review to depict and defile the composer as an abject Nazi. Which is just rude, uninformed and undeserved.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Yes, it is the 1940 UE edition. The case of Franz Schmidt is really sad; in a world where the symphonies of Mahler and Bruckner are so popular, so often played and recorded, you'd think it natural that people would take to Schmidt's glorious works, but alas, that stain of Nazism is hard to shake. He did join the party. That's undeniable. In Vienna there's a Music Walk of Fame with stars and the names of great/famous musicians. No Schmidt; when I was really heavy into my Schmidt research I met with the director of the Franz Schmidt Gesellschaft and asked why there wasn't a star for Schmidt and it was like ice all of the sudden: you don't talk about things like that! It was all political and a really touchy subject. Anyway, the Deutche Aufersterhen does exist and can be seen, but boy, it's a sensitive topic.

I will add this (and I know we're way off topic): in my travels to hear Schmidt performed live, be it the 2nd in London at the Proms, the 4th in Dallas, San Francisco, Minneapolis, etc or Das Buch in Cleveland, at the pre-concert lectures to introduce and discuss the music the presenters always had to get around to the Nazi topic and try to explain the time, place and circumstances of Schmidt's life, especially his last few years. They all eventually come to the same thing: Schmidt was a victim of his declining health and political events he had neither an interest in or knowledge of. He was quite naive when it came those things. There were many Jewish musicians who supported him and never held a grudge. So Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Khachaturian, Miaskovsky all wrote music in support of the Stalinist government, yet they somehow get a pass. The number of communist composers outside of the USSR is legion, and they get a pass.


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## Problembär (4 h ago)

mbhaub said:


> On Guard for Peace. Prokofieff would have made a great composer for blockbuster fantasy movies.
> 
> Alexander Nevsky is right up there, too. Battle on the Ice is just spectacular.


A really underrated masterwork. It's strange to think that despite all the "cooks in the kitchen" that were involved in its creation, it still somehow sounds very distinctive, even defiant. (Ditto the work that helped inspire it, Shostakovich's _Song of the Forests_, which is also better and more important in its composer's development than typically given credit for.) It would be nice to have the old Samosud recording given a proper transfer, but the Rozhdestvensky recording (last available on Olympia) might be the best of all.


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## Problembär (4 h ago)

mbhaub said:


> 5
> 
> Well, not yet there isn't - and likely never will be, which is probably a good thing. Certainly that final, incomplete work did nothing for his post-war reputation. However...I have a copy of the score as far as Schmidt got. Stanford University had a microfiche copy and some 30 years ago I was able to photocopy it (not sure where it is right now). I played through it on piano, and like all Schmidt it's highly chromatic, lush and beautiful, but of course the subject matter and words are pretty rough. I once had grandiose thoughts of making an orchestral suite of just the music but a Jewish friend and fellow musician convinced me not to proceed. Maybe I need to dig it out and and least put some of it on Finale so people can hear the music. Schmidt wasn't the only one to write things that we find abhorrent.


Wasn't a broadcast recording made of the Schmidt? I seem to recall seeing it issued on Preiser a long time ago. Never heard it nor read the score.


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