Word: prokofieff
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Benny Goodman wants to commission clarinet works by such contemporaries as Prokofieff, William Walton, Aaron Copland. But last week he was busy with his new orchestra. When he was ill last summer with sciatica, for which he underwent an operation at the Mayo Clinic, Goodman disbanded his men, starting rumors that he was through. The new 15-man band, now to be heard on Columbia records, has a new, richer style, which Benny Goodman says is not swing. But it is still Goodman...
...imposing list of top-flight contemporary composers (Paul Hindemith, Serge Prokofieff, William Grant Still, Deems Taylor, et al.) have vowed that they would spend their lives working for Disney if he would give them the chance. Composer Igor Stravinsky himself has signed a contract to do more music with Disney, has blandly averred that Disney's paleontological cataclysm was what he had had in mind all along in his Rite of Spring. Musicians and sound engineers who came to hear Soundman Garity's gadgets perform found that such recording had never before been even approached. Music lovers crowed...
Among modern imitations of classicism, Prokofieff's Classical Symphony has received wide praise. To me it seems a weak-kneed, rather precious imitation of Haydn in modern harmonics. Probably it is somewhat satiric; still it is a good example of the failure of modern composers to recreate in twentieth-century dress the music of the eighteenth century. The spark which lit up the formal pattern of a classical symphony cannot be recaptured merely by reproducing the exteriors. Something else, whatever it is that makes any music great, must also be there...
...takes this obligation seriously, and at the same time has the genius of being able to recognize genius, he may become, as Koussevitzky has become, a very profound influence on the course of contemporary music. Koussevitzky has, for example, introduced to this country all the works of Strawinsky, Prokofieff, and Shostakowitch; it was at his suggestion, in fact, that Strawinsky's Symphonie des Psaumes was written. It may be just Koussy's good luck that his own countrymen, the Russians, have produced so much musical genius this century. It certainly is Toscanini's bad luck that his own countrymen...
...time stands on its own feet as a piece of music and an expression of the composer's self. Most screen scores, even the more recent ones, tend to stick pretty closely to certain standard formulae. To compose music for a comedy especially leaves little leeway for originality, although Prokofieff's comic score to Lieutenant Kije, now recorded as a separate suite, is a masterpiece of its kind. A couple of years back, movie composers tinkered with classical themes as seeds for their music. The turned out by this method some very unusual scores, notably that of Swiss Family Robinson...