The Sixth Symphony, in E-flat minor, Opus 111
In a letter to his American publishers dated September 6, 1946, Prokofieff announced that he was working on two major compositions—a sonata for violin and piano and a Sixth Symphony. “The symphony will be in three movements,” he wrote. “Two of them were sketched last summer and at present I am working on the third. I am planning to orchestrate the whole symphony in the autumn.”
The various emotional states or moods of the symphony Prokofieff described as follows:—“The first movement is agitated in character, lyrical in places, and austere in others. The second movement, andante, is lighter and more songful. The finale, lighter and major in its character, would be like the finale of my Fifth Symphony but for the austere reminiscences of the first movement.”
How active and productive a worker Prokofieff was may be gathered from other disclosures in the same letter. Besides the Symphony and Sonata, he was applying the finishing touches to a “Symphonic Suite of Waltzes,” drawn from his ballet, “Cinderella”, his opera, “War and Peace” (based on Tolstoy’s historical novel), and his score for the film biography of the Russian poet Lermontov. Earlier that summer he had completed three separate suites from “Cinderella” and a “big new scene” for “War and Peace”. No idler he!
The first performance of Prokofieff’s Sixth Symphony occurred in Moscow on October 10, 1947. Four months later, on February 11, 1948, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union issued its resolution denouncing Prokofieff and six other Soviet composers for their failure to “permeate themselves with a consciousness of the high demands made of musical creation by the Soviet people.” The seven composers were charged with “formalist distortions and anti-democratic tendencies in music” in several of their more recent symphonic and operatic works. It has been assumed that the Sixth Symphony was among the offending scores which the Central Committee had in mind. While it was not placed under the official ban, it did not figure subsequently in the active repertory. To Leopold Stokowski, who conducted its American premiere with the New York Philharmonic on November 24, 1949, in Carnegie Hall, we owe the perceptive analysis of the Sixth Symphony that follows:—
I. “The first part has two themes—the first in a rather fast dance rhythm, the second a slower songlike melody, a little modal in character, recalling the old Russian and Byzantine scales. Later this music becomes gradually more animated as the themes are developed, and after a climax of the development there is a slower transition to the second part.”
II. “I think this second part will need several hearings to be fully understood. The harmonies and texture of the music are extremely complex. Later there is a theme for horns which is simpler and sounds like voices singing. This leads to a warm cantilena of the violins and a slower transition to the third part.”
III. “This is rhythmic and full of humor, verging on the satirical. The rhythms are clear-cut, and while the thematic lines are simple, they are accompanied by most original harmonic sequences, alert and rapid. Near the end a remembrance sounds like an echo of the pensive melancholy of the first part of the symphony, followed by a rushing, tumultuous end.”
Mr. Stokowski has also stated that the Sixth Symphony represents a natural development of Prokofieff’s extraordinary gifts as an original creative artist. “I knew Prokofieff well in Paris and in Russia,” he writes, “and I feel that this symphony is an eloquent expression of the full range of his personality. It is the creation of a master artist, serene in the use and control of his medium.”