Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)

In 1936, Sergei Prokofiev received commissions to write three large works for the centennial of Alexander Pushkin's death: incidental music for Alexander Tairov's staging of Eugene Onegin, the score for Mikhail Romm's film The Queen of Spades, and incidental music for Vsevolod Meyerhold's staging of Boris Godunov. Neither the theatrical productions nor the film were realized, for reasons unrelated to Prokofiev. Tairov, Romm, and Meyerhold were censured for their perceived creative excesses and political mistakes. The three projects unraveled in succession, leaving Prokofiev with little to show for his inspired labor and his collaborators fearing—at the minimum—the loss of their careers.

The score for Boris Godunov comprises twenty-four short numbers, of which the most important, from a dramatic standpoint, are the three wordless choruses. Intended for performance in the opening and closing scenes, they alternately denote human sorrow, restless nature, and the implacable forces of historical fate. The sound of the singers, Meyerhold instructed the composer, "should be dark, agitated, menacing, like the roar of the sea. One should feel their power growing, being restrained, an internal rage, a ferment that has yet to find an outlet. When their power has grown to the fullest, the people become organized, and nothing can stand against them." The choruses are contrasted, in the middle scenes of the drama, with a pair of ballroom dances that bear the influence of Pyotr Tchaikovsky. Prokofiev writes enlightened music for unenlightened times, mocking the terrible behavior of early-seventeenth-century Polish courtiers with terrible beauty. His score also includes four songs of loneliness (performed by unnamed wanderers as they shuffle in and out of the stage space), a keening lament for the widow Ksenia, and a discordant, polymetric battle scene. The latter provides the backdrop for a comical clash between three ragtag armies—one from the East, one from the West, and one from parts in between.

For Prokofiev, the utter waste of his music for Boris Godunov, like that of his other Pushkin jubilee scores, was a grim lesson in Stalinist cultural politics. He had recently relocated from Paris to Moscow, assuming that he would be able to maintain his international career while also restoring ties with his homeland. In both expectations, he was tragically disappointed.

Simon Morrison