Soviet orchestration in Prokofiev Five
Recently I played Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony for the first time, after knowing it from one of my first CDs, close to twenty years ago. As with many masterpieces, my first time playing it gave me a new perspective on the important work, and I came out of the experience with a new appreciation for it.
A Russian spirit, in the form the Soviet ethos, permeates the entire piece: a certain emphasis on the collective, and the composite whole, rather than the individual.
A communist propaganda photo from 1930, including a man and a woman. The Russian states “Come to our collectivist farm, comrade!.”
The Soviet ethos comes across in the size and diversity of the orchestra Prokofiev wants. The forces the composer calls for are huge, including all the standard instruments but also all the “bells and whistles” of the orchestra: piccolo, English horn, E-flat Clarinet and Bass Clarinet, Contrabassoon, Harp, orchestral piano, a whopping eight percussion instruments. The inclusion of a large orchestra with almost every standard auxiliary instrument one can imagine creates an orchestra with a lot of diversity and individual differences. The orchestra itself becomes a metaphor for the ideal society, an institution that forces people with many individual differences to strive towards the same noble goal. As in the Soviet utopian vision, the absolute artistic perfection attempted here is an ideal, and will never be reached, but the effort, and the imperfect results of the effort, represent their own heroism. And all this happens in this atmosphere of inclusion, that contrasts with some of his sleeker works, like the conservative first symphony, which includes none of the aforementioned “bells and whistles.” Prokofiev is not interested in excluding instruments that often sit concerts out, they all have a place here, in the genius’s vision.
While I have known this piece for close to twenty years, certain details about it captivated me. The extreme weirdness, but appropriateness of the very beginning became very clear once I was sitting close to it. The second flute holds a drone, while the principal flute and bassoon play the tune in octaves, a tune that stretches an octave and a half, beginning low and rising nobly, with jagged dotted rhythms. There’s an earnest gentleness about this tune, not quite innocent as much as well-intentioned. This exact instrument pairing returns at the very beginning of the last movement, in a similarly jagged rhythm, but this time, starting high and descending, and more giocoso than noble, but similar enough to feel reminiscent of the opening. The deliberate return of this gesture fascinated me, and eventually I realized what it reminded me of. Thinking of how Prokofiev intended this piece as “a hymn to free and happy man,” I realized that this flute-bassoon pairing reminded me of those Soviet propaganda posters, with a stern faced couple, a single man and a single woman, as a stand-in for the whole human race. Here, an ingenious representation of that, a single female voice (the flute) and a single male voice (the bassoon), together reaching upward in a long lyrical line filled with noble feeling.
The concept of a duet in octaves returns constantly within the piece, especially in the third movement. When I was young, the third movement was always my least favorite; I would often skip it. So slow, tragic, heavy, and thick, little about it appealed to me, a Mozartian who always gravitates towards the opposite music, light, clear, and happy. Finally playing the piece just recently, I realized that it is critical to the balance of the piece. Imagine for a moment, this symphony without the tragic, heavy third movement. Despite the amazing writing in the other three movements, the piece would suddenly be almost unbearably trivial. Now imagine it with a somewhat of a lighter third movement, shorter, more noble (a la Elgar), clearer and happier. The resulting piece would lack a seriousness, a weight, that would put it among the masterpieces. How as an artist taking “Man” as your subject, are you not going to engage with tragedy?
The opening of this third movement takes the duet in octaves to an amazing place. The orchestra sets up a plodding, heavy, tragic backdrop, using low string tremolos and the tuba. Then atop this the melody in octaves, in distinct pairings, first clarinet and bass clarinet, then flute and bassoon, then clarinets again, violins in octaves, then English horn and piccolo, and finally flute and bassoon once again. These lines must be passed between instruments seamlessly, a real challenge, the goal should be that the listener hears it as a single long melody passed between instruments. Such a move requires tremendous teamwork and interpersonal awareness in an orchestral setting. While playing the English horn, part, I almost thought of some kind of beautiful moving ballet, with pairs of dancers taking a heavy physical burden, and moving it along, before exhaustedly passing it to another pair, just as their strength gave out. I wondered if Prokofiev had the same thing in mind when writing the music. Imagining how a dancer would choreograph such music would be something I expect from Prokofiev, who excelled as a composer of ballet music. While it’s only something I suppose, it’s something delightful to suppose, and not at all implausible, and that has got to count for something.
‘Onwards, towards the victory of communism,” 1957 poster
It’s rare to have single solo voices declare a melody in this piece. The one exception is the opening of the scherzo, where a single clarinet states the tin-pan alley like melody. How fitting I thought, of course before all that madness, it needs a single troublemaker, as troublemakers often are, to get things rolling. But this is an exception. But a troublemaker in itself, as I was to learn, is not sufficient, as the troublemaker needs a quiet moment to seize attention, and this symphony rarely gives opportunities like that.
The texture of the symphony is thick and loud almost all the time. Sitting within the orchestra, it was very interesting how much of Prokofiev’s detailed writing is just lost in the symphony’s often massive wall of sound. Often more interesting writing is inaudible to the listener, submerged in the huge brass or string chords. I often had lines of music I wanted to bring out, because of their natural interest, and the nuance I could bring to them, but even when bellowing through the instrument, I was still not loud enough. I thought at the time, that if there was a defect in a masterpiece this wonderful, it lied in moments like this. And even in this detail there are points to be made about the human experience. How often have all of us felt our ideas “drowned out” by louder voices, brasher voices? As a woodwind player, our entire section is close to useless in extremely loud orchestral moments, drowned out by strings and brass. What good are nuance, details, delicate thoughts against fortissimo trombones? A single voice against the multitude. In a way then, this symphony constantly reminded me not only of the joys of collectivism, when your goals align with the crowds, but also the frustrations, when your goals run counter to the ideas of the masses.
I would have never noticed these details if I had not gotten the chance to play this wonderful symphony. It made me think about the utopian ideals of our young people nowadays, which are sometimes explicitly Soviet, often in complete contrast to what history has taught us about the success of these ideas. It also made me think, as an American, a capitalist, and an anti-communist, about how many of these utopian visions to me are not “Russian” or “Soviet” or “Communist” but simply human, and universal. And above all, it will never cease to amaze me how the orchestra itself excels as a palate for these ideas, for all ideas, for human genius.
