# Prokofiev's "The Tale of the Stone Flower"



## monscarmeli (Apr 17, 2014)

Hello,
I'm simply wondering if anyone out there knows some background on Prokofiev's musical inspirations for his ballet "The Tale of the Stone Flower", which is one of the last works (or maybe the last) he completed. The reason I'm wondering is that much of his mature work was in a much more serious and modern vein (thinking of, for example, Symphony no. 3, the piano concertos, etc -- and maybe I just don't know enough of his music), but this ballet is almost purely late Romantic Russian music - it's breathtakingly gorgeous in many places, and as I listen I am frequently reminded of Stravinsky's Firebird or Petrushka in the orchestration and harmonic material, etc.

So, wondering what he may have been thinking when writing this - had he tired of writing more "progressive" music, or was it just "fun" for him, or was this just what was fitting for his subject matter? I'd love to hear from anyone who has insight into this, Thanks!!

monscarmeli


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

For whatever reason, and I don't know why, the music he wrote at the very end of his life was fairly simple and (no offense) not very inspired. his seventh symphony was similarly lacking in the astringency that characterizes most of output. Call it fatigue, just going through the motions, trying to please the Soviet authorities (who had had it out with both him and Shostakovich), or just waning inspiration while awaiting death . . . I just don't know.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

I experience Prokofiev's latest compositions as very inspired and deeply lyrical. He was exploring this lyrical direction with great joy until his last breath. The talk about 'pleasing the Soviet authorities' I perceive as Cold War humbug. These greyish paintings against a grey background do not justice to the enormous joy that people in Russia (and in Leningrad in particular) felt after the war. Prokofiev's music is recording & reflecting this unbounded happiness. Why this association with 'fatigue', 'waning inspiration'? The real challenge for a composer is the writing of unburdened music with pure shining light.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

TxllxT said:


> I experience Prokofiev's latest compositions as very inspired and deeply lyrical. He was exploring this lyrical direction with great joy until his last breath. The talk about 'pleasing the Soviet authorities' I perceive as Cold War humbug. These greyish paintings against a grey background do not justice to the enormous joy that people in Russia (and in Leningrad in particular) felt after the war. Prokofiev's music is recording & reflecting this unbounded happiness. Why this association with 'fatigue', 'waning inspiration'? The real challenge for a composer is the writing of unburdened music with pure shining light.


Okay, it may just be me, but those last works have never spoken to me the way so much of his other music has. To each his own.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

The ballet is based on a folk story (Ural) and is in Russian story ballet tradition.

I have no idea how it came about, thought 'just writing a full ballet' usually does not happen unless there is a commission for it, or a collaboration wherein its creators have good reason to speculate it will earn them money, or perhaps under the Soviet plan, allow them to keep their jobs / stipends.

I do know that Prokofiev kept sketchbooks, and that basic melodies occurred to him constantly. He would often look into these, evidently a substantial collection of yet to be used material, when he had such a task in front of him. The fact the ballet is a folk tale and in that old story-ballet tradition more than likely had him choosing those melodies, inventing others, and keeping the vocabulary in a simpler and 'more direct' harmonic realm as are folk tunes, or as in his ballet "Cinderella."

Some people's favorite Prokofiev is exactly that vein of straightforward melodic writing with his (usually, then) also more straight-ahead and conventional use of harmony.


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## monscarmeli (Apr 17, 2014)

Thanks for all the input, friends, you've been very helpful. Some confirmations of suspicions I had, but also new ideas I hadn't thought of. 

Perhaps the next best step would simply be to study more about Prokofiev's life and work of the time - any suggestions for good biographical data other than the NewGrove Dictionary, etc.??

Thanks again!


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

Well, the "official" (I.e. doctrinaire) Soviet biography is by Nesteyev, and is pretty much what you would expect (everything he wrote in the West is formalist and awful). There are more recent ones, but I haven't read them.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

I think this particular work was Prokofiev's attempt to return to less controversial Peter & The Wolf-style territory in order to keep the Culture Commissars off his back - on at least two occasions Prokofiev tried too hard to conform to Socialist Realism (the opera Semyon Kotko and the Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution) and he ended up in trouble as a result. 

It's probably no coincidence that Prokofiev started work on Tale of The Stone Flower in 1948, the year when the 'Zhdanov Decree' hung over Soviet music like a poisonous cloud, the fallout of which eroded his physical health and shattered his self-confidence. Perhaps also he was increasingly aware of his own mortality in the five years left to him and was nostalgically reflecting on happier times - the story is set in the Ural Mountains which he visited when younger.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Long ago , before CDs existed , I bought the Melodiya/CBS set of the complete Stone Flower ballet
with Rozhdestvensky & the Bolshoi orchestra , and became very fond of the music .
It may be relatively simple and folk like , but there's nothing wrong with that .
I don't know if this set has been reissued on CD , but it should be . The late Silvio Varviso,
better known for conducting Italian opera , also recorded excerpts for Decca with the Suiise Romande
orchestra , and this has been reiissued with some other excellent Decca Prokofiev recordings .
More recently , Gianandrea Noseda also recprded thew whole score with his former orchestram Manchester's BBC Philharmonic,
and I've heard it . By all means get this iif you can find it. It's on Chandos .


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## Avey (Mar 5, 2013)

(Move to ballet forum). (Needs more threads).


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Avey said:


> (Move to ballet forum). (Needs more threads).


Vehemently disagree: this thread is very much about the score, not dance.


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## monscarmeli (Apr 17, 2014)

PetrB said:


> Vehemently disagree: this thread is very much about the score, not dance.


Very true, thanks for the distinction...

And, to superhorn, I have that very recording by the BBC Phil, it is superb!

It goes without saying, of course, that none of us is entirely certain just what may have been Prokofiev's motivation, and since he himself apparently didn't leave us any direct indications, we can only surmise from history and from our wits.

I myself, after hearing the various opinions aired so far, and also as a middle-aged composer and father of children, would lean toward the idea of perhaps his reconsidering the "excesses" or "adventurousness" of youth and finding his truest and most heartfelt expression in the beauty of simplicity and of the Russian spirit (a decidedly un-communist one!).

Maybe it was a spiritual journey for him. I think a composer's approach depends so much on just for whom he thinks he's writing music: is to please and titillate his peers? Is it to get good reviews, or maybe make a living? Is it to please the "powers that be"? Or is it to "please" himself, or better yet, to find the consolation of expressing himself as he truly desires, unfettered by external expectations... It would seem that Prokofiev's copious works readily reveal his spirited, witty, and even child-like nature, and with that it seems a stretch to think he would so easily and mindlessly "kow-tow" to the Soviet demands. I think (and, well, yes, _hope_) that he instead was simply finding joy and consolation in writing music dear to his heart...


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

superhorn said:


> Long ago , before CDs existed , I bought the Melodiya/CBS set of the complete Stone Flower ballet
> with Rozhdestvensky & the Bolshoi orchestra , and became very fond of the music .
> It may be relatively simple and folk like , but there's nothing wrong with that .
> I don't know if this set has been reissued on CD , but it should be . The late Silvio Varviso,
> ...





















Rozdestvensky's interpretation is filled with acerbic wittiness & a sharpish recording (quite fitting for the Rozdestvensky approach to the music), Noseda's is more mellowy with a great Chandos sound. Both heartily recommended.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

The ballet was scheduled to be produced at the Bolshoi, the first (of many) version composed in piano score between September of 1948 and March of 1949. Prokofiev endured many disputes with his collaborator, the choreographer Lavrovsky, as well as continual complaints and demands for changes from the authorities and the theater board. His biographer Harlow Robinson describes it as one of the most static and incoherent of his productions, suggesting that some simple folk numbers were added to appease the authorities, and he notes demands for softening of the orchestration. Lavrovsky and the concertmaster for the Bolshoi orchestra visited him in his sick bed to finalize the last revisions. It went into rehearsal on March 1, 1953, Prokofiev died on the 5th.

It is easy to understand speculation to the effect that the tameness of his last works is related to the political repression to which Prokofiev was subjected in 1948. The Sixth Symphony, the most strident, dissonant and perhaps most pessimistic in decades came right before these troubles, the relatively tame Seventh afterward. On the other hand, the simple and lyrical ninth sonata was completed well before the repression began. The evidence is somewhat ambiguous it would seem, though it is acknowledged that Stone Flower was influenced by many forces beyond the composer's control and his power to resist.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

EdwardBast said:


> It is easy to understand speculation to the effect that the tameness of his last works is related to the political repression to which Prokofiev was subjected in 1948.


That's been my feeling also. Prokofiev, older and already ill during the 1948 denunciations, didn't seem to have Shostakovich's resilience. But he still wrote some very fine works. His Cello Sonata is (in my book) superior to Shostakovich's much earlier one, and his Symphony-Concerto for Cello and Orchestra is also quite good, if maybe a bit discursive.


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## monscarmeli (Apr 17, 2014)

EdwardBast said:


> ...His biographer Harlow Robinson describes it as one of the most static and incoherent of his productions, suggesting that some simple folk numbers were added to appease the authorities, and he notes demands for softening of the orchestration....The evidence is somewhat ambiguous it would seem, though it is acknowledged that Stone Flower was influenced by many forces beyond the composer's control and his power to resist...


Thanks for this, the sort of historical/biographical information that gives our best chance for insight into the primary influences on this music...


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

elgars ghost said:


> I think this particular work was Prokofiev's attempt to return to less controversial Peter & The Wolf-style territory in order to keep the Culture Commissars off his back - on at least two occasions Prokofiev tried too hard to conform to Socialist Realism (the opera Semyon Kotko and the Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution) and he ended up in trouble as a result.
> 
> It's probably no coincidence that Prokofiev started work on Tale of The Stone Flower in 1948, the year when the 'Zhdanov Decree' hung over Soviet music like a poisonous cloud, the fallout of which eroded his physical health and shattered his self-confidence. Perhaps also he was increasingly aware of his own mortality in the five years left to him and was nostalgically reflecting on happier times - the story is set in the Ural Mountains which he visited when younger.


One thing to bear in mind is that Cinderella is in a more lyrical style, and that was written well before 1948, as was the 9th sonata. Both are favourites of mine, as is the 7th symphony. But the Stone Flower I've never got into.


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