My First Years in the Conservatory
by SERGEI PROKOFIEV
1
ON August 23, 1904, my mother took me to St. Petersburg, where I was enrolled at the Conservatory of Music. This step was taken mainly upon the advice of Glazunov, the composer, who had heard my compositions the previous February and had praised them. Several days after the audition he had visited my mother and strongly advised her to send me to the Conservatory. There he will have an opportunity to develop his abilities to the full,” he said, “and there is a chance that he may turn out to be a real artist. Think it over, he said as he took his leave. My parents thought it over for a month or so and decided to take Glazunov’s advice, the more so since the Conservatory curriculum provided a general education as well.
Glazunov made me a parting gift of a score of Glinka’s Valse Fantaisie with the inscription: “To my dear confrere Seryozha Prokofiev from A. Glazunov.” My father was much amused at the idea of a doctor of Oxford and Cambridge addressing me as “dear confrere.” “Confrere, indeed! he snorted.
Now that I was to enter the Conservatory, our family was divided. Father had to remain behind in Sontsovka, in the Ukraine, while Mother moved with me to St. Petersburg. It was decided that Father would visit us two or three times during the winter months and that we would spend the Christmas and summer holidays in Sontsovka.
In the train en route to St. Petersburg I brushed up on my zoology. “I’ve gone all the way up to corals,” I wrote to my father from one of the stations. “Reviewed everything up to the porcupine,”
I reported from a second station. And finally I posted a third postcard with the intelligence: “My zoology book got lost.”
On September 2, I took my examinations on general subjects. I passed the first examination successfully and got the highest mark for geography — a five. The teacher actually praised me. “You know the subject very well. I have a great temptation to trip you up.” I got a four for French and the same for arithmetic. The next day I took exams in Russian and German, meriting a four in both.
The main examination was on September 9: the theory of musical composition. I joined a group of about twenty students waiting in the corridor. At last my name was called. I had brought two folios of my own compositions with me. They included four operas, two sonatas, a symphony, and a heap of pianoforte pieces. On top was a sheet of paper on which all my works were listed.
“Are these all your own compositions?” asked Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov, the composer, when I entered the examination room.
“Yes.”
“And can you play the piano?”
“I can.”
“Splendid!” exclaimed Rimsky-Korsakov, and pointing to the piano said: “Sit down and play something.”
There were ten professors in the room besides Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov.
After I had played they tested my ear. Standing with my back to the piano I had to name separate notes and chords. I did so correctly. Then I had to sing notes in different keys, bass and treble, and also in the less known alto and tenor.
After that I was asked to show my compositions. Rimsky-Korsakov wanted me to play something from my opera Undine, after the story by Zhukovsky.
“Let him sing it as well,” someone suggested. “How do you expect him to sing it?” RimskyKorsakov exclaimed.
“Oh yes, he can sing his own things quite well, interjected Glazunov, who had heard me singing another opera, The Feast During the Plague, the winter before. I sang very badly, of course, but Glazunov wanted to put in a good word for me since he had recommended me. I began to play from the manuscript score. Rimsky-Korsakov stood beside me and turned the pages for me, correcting my mistakes with pencil at the same time. After I had played a fragment from Undiney they asked me to play the piano piece Vivo.
Finally I was permitted to withdraw. RimskyKorsakov told my mother that I was enrolled as a student of the Conservatory. On the way home Mother took me into a confectioner’s and bought me some candy,
2
IN Anatole Liadov’s class in harmony I was the youngest student. The eldest had passed his thirtieth birthday. “Here I am on my way to forty, a married man with two children, and Prokosha [his perversion of Prokofiev] here is only thirteen,” he said resentfully. Most of the students in the composers’ department of the Conservatory were musicians of a mature age, and it must have been rather galling for them to have a youngster of thirteen in their midst. I made matters worse by introducing a statistical chart of mistakes made by the class. I don’t blame my fellow students for being indignant.
Besides the theory of composition I took piano lessons, since my mother wanted me to specialize in both fields. Inasmuch as the classes in general subjects coincided with my music lessons, I had to continue my general education at home and take examinations every year in the various subjects.
In the St. Petersburg apartment my mother rented, I had a small room of my own. “Seryozha is delighted with his room,” Mother wrote to my father. “He ensconces himself in it and stays there all the time.” “Ensconced” in my room I did my lessons, wrote my harmony assignments, and composed. I wrote my piano pieces in song form, which explains why they were called “songs,” although in many cases this designation did not conform to the nature of the music. The first of these songs was written before I entered the Conservatory, during my studies with Reinhold Moritsevich Gliere, who taught me the form. I turned out about a dozen a year, and between the ages of eleven and fifteen had written five series of twelve each — sixty in all.
Besides my music studies I continued my poem “The Count,” which I had begun in the Ukraine — a thrilling adventure story in verse, full of shipwrecks, fights, and duels. Attached to the poem were illustrations of the dramatis personae, indifferently executed by myself. When I finished it, I counted the lines. There were 975 of them.
I was also fond of going over chess games played by others, and I loved to invent games, especially naval battles, for the Ilusso-Japanese War was in progress at the time. In my thick notebook I wrote detailed analyses of battles between our warships and the Japanese. I drew diagrams showing the disposition of the vessels and their movements. I invented my own method of calculating combat efficiency indices and the relative strength of the various warships. I had a friend with whom I loved to play naval games. We built battleships out of the thick tinfoil used for wrapping chocolate bars. One day a battle for which we had prepared several weeks took place. Vanya arrived at my house at nine o’clock on Sunday morning in a cab piled high with cardboard boxes. There were eighty-four warships in them.
“This looks like an all-day affair,” my mother remarked, eying the boxes with disfavor.
“I’m afraid so,” I admitted.
“In that case I shall go and spend the day with our aunt,” said my mother.
On the large dining table we placed two basins filled to the brim with water: one for my fleet and the other for Vanya’s. According to the rules of the game, there were to be two first-class armored cruisers per basin; for each of the cruisers we were allowed to substitute two second-class cruisers or four third-class. We put some buckshot inside the cruisers to make sure they would sink if damaged. On each side of the table we placed a tall flower stand for the cannon, which propelled the projectiles by means of springs. The cannon were identical, but each player had the right to use his own shell.
I had a rubber shell I had picked up somewhere; a pin stuck through it gave it a sharp point. Vanya had a wooden one with three pins sticking out of it, but these three sharp points did less damage than my one, and so I had the advantage in artillery. By six o’clock in the evening, five of my cruisers were still holding out while Vanya was playing with his last two vessels. One of them was an armored cruiser made of a huge sheet of tinfoil from a largo package oi tea. The ship had fourteen sections and Vanya staked great hopes on it; but it sank after four direct hits.
“That’s the end,” said Vanya in a sepulchral voice. The tub was too small to hold all his stricken warships and had to be cleaned out several times during the battle to make room for more.
“Put them away some place out of sight,” said Vanya sadly as he took his leave. He walked home — a cab was no longer necessary.
Conservatory students who paid for tuition were entitled to attend rehearsals of symphony concerts. This gave them an opportunity to study classical composition. The Belyaev music publishers, headed by Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov, and Liadov, had a special library of the music they published, for the use of Conservatory students of composition. This had a dual purpose: in the first place, students of theory had an opportunity to acquaint themselves with well-published scores; and secondly, it helped to popularize among the youth the works published by Belyaev. When I told Reinhold Gliere about this library during one of his visits to St. Petersburg, he said: —
“That’s splendid. You find out in advance what pieces will be played at the concerts, get the scores, and study them at home. Then take them with you to one or two rehearsals, but when you go to the concert, leave the score behind; otherwise it will distract your attention.”
I followed this bit of advice.
When I recall my musical tastes at that period, I find that I liked the classics, to which I had been accustomed from childhood, from the time my mother began giving me music lessons. I was also interested in anything new. I did not care for Mozart — he lacked the new, spicy harmonies I was looking for — or for Chopin, who seemed too sweet. His sonatas and études, which I learned to appreciate later, I did not know at the time. But I was very fond of Schumann, especially his pianoforte sonata and his Carnaval. Of the Russian contemporary composers, I liked Rimsky-Korsakov and Scriabin. I remember how thrilled I was by the premiere performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Lay of the Invisible Town of Kitezh. The Tartar invasion, the Battle of Kerzhenets and GrishkaKuterma, made an indelible impression on me. The Snow Maiden by Rimsky-Korsakov was another favorite opera of mine.
3
WE SPENT the summer in the Ukraine, where my father was impatiently awaiting us. We saved on the fare from St. Petersburg to Sontsovka by taking a slow train, a jolly, homey affair that stopped at every station. Fortunately our car was not far from the engine, and so while Mother dozed I jumped out whenever the train stopped, and ran over to look at the engine and ply the engine driver with questions.
I asked him what was the maximum speed the train could make and whether he expected the express train to catch up with us. The engine driver was a good-natured chap, and seeing that he answered all my questions willingly, I plucked up the courage to ask him whether he wouldn’t let me ride with him in the cab.
“I’m sorry, young man,” he replied. “It’s not permitted.” My face fell. The driver took pity on me.
“All right,” he said. “Come over at the next station and I’ll see what I can do. Only come from the other side,” he added, pointing to the side opposite the station platform.
I was nearly beside myself with joy. Naturally the next stop found me hovering by the engine on the offside,
“Climb up,” said the driver after the stationmaster had blown his whistle.
The engine was small and cozy like the rest of the train. It was not especially comfortable in the cab, but I gazed around me with delight. Any fourteenyear-old would have envied me. It was especially exciting when the train approached the next station and we ran from one line to another at a switch.
“You’ll have to go back now,” said the engine driver as the train pulled into the station. Almost breathless with gratitude, I thanked him and ran back to our car in a daze of happiness.
We arrived in Sontsovka at the height of springtide. The irises and the bird-cherry and pear trees were just beginning to bloom. Soon they were followed by the plum and apple trees. Then the chestnut and lilacs burst forth in all their glory. I entered all this faithfully in my plant record, where I kept a record of the names of the flowers and plants and the dates when they blossomed. I had kept this record for several years and thus had accumulated a good deal of comparative data on plants. I had a tender feeling for my horticultural records and made my entries faithfully all through the summer.
In the course of May, June, and July I wrote half of the second act of my opera Undine, the first act of which I had played for Rimsky-Korsakov at the entrance examination. The music of Undine has not been preserved and I do not remember it very well. But I do recall that the second act was less naive than the first; it had some harmonic ideas and even some flashes of ingenuity.
I could not devote much time to composition during the summer months, since I had to prepare for the coming examinations on general subjects. I spent five hours a day on my studies, plus an hour at the piano. As usual, Mother supervised my French and German, while my father tutored me in all the other subjects. I worked according to a strict schedule. My father was extremely systematic and, though stern, was kind and just. All my life I have cherished the deepest gratitude to my parents for inculcating in me from childhood the desire for systematic. study, the ability to organize my time and to take pleasure in my daily tasks.
That summer my father began giving me adult books to read. Until then my reading had been limited exclusively to juvenile literature. I had read a great deal of Jules Verne in the original. Now I was given Gogol, Turgenev, Danilevsky, Ostrovsky, and Tolstoy. This promotion to “grown-up ” literature struck me as an important landmark in mlife and I began to keep a diary of the books I read, giving them marks according to the system in use in schools. Turgenev’s Nest of Noblemen rated five, the highest mark; Dead Souls, five minus; Vyi, a four; Tolstoy’s War and Peace, five. Ostrovsky’s comedies, on the other hand, merited no higher than two’s and three’s in my estimation. Neither the subject matter nor the language of Ostrovsky’s writings appealed to me at the time. I even wrote “very dull” in the margin of the first page of my volume of Ostrovsky and underlined it for greater emphasis. As luck would have it, my mother came into my room one day and, while talking to me about something or other, absent-mindedly turned the leaves of the volume lying on my desk.
“Did you write this?” she asked, pointing to the marginal note.
“ Er — no,” I lied, realizing all at once that it was wrong to mark up books, especially library books.
“It looks very much like your handwrit ing, said my mother suspiciously. “It isn’t very nice to write in books that don’t belong to you.
“But I didn’t!” I insisted vehemently.
“I am not accusing you, but I think that the person who did is not especially brilliant.
My mother knew quite well that I was lying and she deliberately rubbed my nose into it by discussing the matter for a long time without accusing me directly.
4
THAT summer my Aunt Tanya came to Sontsovka from St. Petersburg and brought me a real camera. True, it was a small one, but it held six plates and could be adjusted for exposure. Most interesting, though, were the accessories for developing and printing I got with it. My debut as a photographer was a complete fiasco. When Aunt Tanya and I emerged triumphant from the darkroom after developing my first six pictures of Father, Mother, Aunt Tanya, Stenya, my friend Seryozha, and my dog Shango, we discovered to our horror that we had a miniature gallery of headless trunks! Everybody was vastly amused, but I was ready to weep with chagrin. As a matter of fact, it was not altogether my fault: the camera was a rather cheap model, and the finder was placed too high, with the result that the upper section of the image it reflected did not register on the plate. But this I learned only by experience.
Besides initiating me in the art of photography, Aunt Tanya joined us in croquet games which we played with a passion and zeal that often ended in quarrels. Walking on stilts was another favorite sport at Sontsovka. All the boys went in for it, including Nikita, a twenty-year-old office clerk. After a while we grew bored with merely walking on stilts and introduced stilt battles, two of us at a time trying to knock each other off balance. We invented both offensive and defensive tactics, which I analyzed in the treatise on stilts which I wrote that summer. The Navy, however, still loomed large in my imagination, and whenever our team of six would sally forth in single file on stilts, it would seem to me that we were six battleships in line formation. The lawn in front of the house was the port.
One evening as we were engaged in furious combat near the “port” — that is, the entrance to the house — a small phaeton drove up. In it was seated a figure wrapped in a white dust coat and hood so that only the tips of a mustache and a pair of pincenez were visible. The war whoops of the stilt warriors, the smack of wood on wood as the stilts clashed in combat, and the howls of little Kolya, the youngest combatant, who had been knocked down in the fray, frightened the horses and they reared.
The uproar finally subsided and the figure in white turned out to be Vasily Mitrofanovich Morolev, the new veterinary, who had been invited to Sontsovka. Within an hour Vasily Mitrofanovich was at the dining table entertaining us with amusing stories told in a voice that had ripples of humor in it. His speech was larded with amusing expressions which immediately won him my admiration.
He, in his turn, looked interested as soon as he learned that I was a Conservatory student, for as it turned out he was passionately fond of music and played the piano quite well himself. After dinner he sat me down at the piano and kept me there all evening playing all the Beethoven sonatas I had learned the previous winter in the piano class. He was much interested in Scriabin’s ten mazurkas, opus 3. They were new and exciting and I was just learning to play them, gradually mastering the unusual style of this new composer.
The next day I followed the veterinary doctor around and we talked almost incessantly about music. When he returned home from his rounds he asked my father as a special favor to release me from my lessons that day and permit me to play for him. By the time I had played all of Bach’s preludes and fugues, repeated Scriabin’s mazurkas, and played some of my own pieces, I was worn to a frazzle.
Vasily Mitrofanovich strongly recommended to me the piano score of Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Sadko, and on his next visit he brought it to me.
“There is a marvelous chorus in the second scene where Sadko sails away on his ship, Morolev said. “It is sung by a small male chorus in A major, and then suddenly without any transition the whole orchestra comes in with the same theme in F major. Think of it, the whole chorus and orchestra, but quite pianissimo and without any transition! I had to hold on to the arms of my seat to prevent myself from leaping into the air with joy.”
On my next visit to Sontsovka I discovered something else about Morolev which endeared him to me still more. He turned out to be a chess enthusiast and quite a good player. Wo played two games, winning one apiece. I challenged him to a match to see which of us would win eight games first. He agreed, and now piano playing alternated with chess. Morolev won eight of the fourteen games we played, I won five, and one game was a tie.
I dedicated my first piano sonata and a march to Morolev. Our friendship has continued to this day, and he always tries to find the time to attend performances of my new works. Not long ago I had the pleasure of seeing him at a performance of my ballet Cinderella.
5
UPON my return to St. Petersburg from Sontsovka I passed my examinations in general subjects. Now I began to take lessons in instrumentation under Rimsky-Korsakov, who had returned to the Conservatory after having left it when the 1905 revolution broke out.
Because of my extreme youth I did not notice how the revolution drew near. Probably I did hear often enough of strikes and collisions during the autumn, but I did not realize the true nature of things and appraised the events from the standpoint of the possibility of Father’s arrival in Petersburg, since railway workers were on strike everywhere and there were no trains to Sontsovka.
The Conservatory was in a state of turmoil, and meetings w’ere held among the students. I wrote to my father: “Rimsky-Korsakov published in a Moscow newspaper a very interesting letter on the Conservatory affairs (a very progressive one, defending the rights of the students), and afterwards he expressed the ideas stated in this letter at the sittings of the Directorate. Then the Director (a strongly conservative person) rang the bell, broke up the speech, and left the apartment. It was announced to Rimsky-Korsakov that he had been dismissed from the ranks of professors. The directorship was offered to Glazunov. But Glazunov said that since R imsky-Korsakov had been expelled, he himself not only did not want to be Director, but would also resign his professorship.”
After that the Conservatory was closed for a time. We, the students, collected money to present. Rimsky-Korsakov with a large wreath at the next, concert, but the concert was forbidden out of fear that the audience would express its sympathy for Rimsky-Korsakov too stormily. At the premiere of his opera Kashchey, Rimsky-Korsakov was greeted with an ovation which grew into a political demonstration. Many students, myself among them, signed a statement in which we announced we were leaving the Conservatory out of sympathy for Rimsky-Korsakov.
In the autumn of 1906 the Directorate came to terms with Ilimsky-Korsakov, and he, Glazunov, and Liadov returned to the Conservatory.
At first Rimsky-Korsakov was to conduct two parallel classes, but later he changed his plans and combined both classes into one, giving double the usual number of hours — that is, three or four in succession. Evidently the arrangement was more convenient for him since it saved him an extra trip to the Conservatory, but he believed that it was in the interests of the students as well, since besides hearing their own work criticized, they could learn also from the criticism of the work of their fellow students.
Actually, however, the plan did not work out like that. The classroom was always so crowded that some of the students had to sit on the window sills. When Rimsky-Korsakov would take his seat at the piano to go over somebody’s work, there would be such a crowd of students around him that only the few standing in front could follow the score. Moreover, the long lesson was exhausting, and it was difficult to prevent one’s attention from wandering. The more serious students were able to concentrate and benefit from the lesson. But after all I was only fifteen, and although I was extremely interested in what Rimsky-Korsakov had to say, I found his lessons too much of a strain. It was only later that I realized how much I might have learned from contact with such a man as Rimsky-Korsakov.
He was a great favorite with many of the students, who had the warmest regard for him, dubbing him affectionately “Korsanka.” I used to like to run down to the cloakroom before lessons began, and watch through the window for his approaching figure as he came hurrying down Glinka Street.
That autumn I began to record the titles of the compositions I heard at concerts, giving them marks as I did with my reading. The list was headed by the overture to Borodin’s Prince Igor, which I rated no higher than two after having heard it twice. About three years later I changed my mind about the overture and learned to like it very much indeed. The compositions which merited high marks on my list at this time were the suite from Mlada by Rimsky-Korsakov, variations on the Rococo theme and Romeo and Juliet by Tchaikovsky, Russian songs for orchestra by Liadov, Taneyev’s symphony, Rachmaninov’s Second Concerto, the Third and Eighth symphonies by Beethoven, Bach’s Suite, Schumann’s Second Symphony, one of my favorite songs by Borodin, “To the Shores of the Distant Fatherland,” orchestrated by Glazunov, and Glazunov’s Sixth Symphony.
I still remember the occasion of the twenty-fifth jubilee of Glazunov’s career as a composer. The program of the jubilee concert included his First and Eighth symphonies, with dedication pieces by Liadov and Rimsky-Korsakov in between, as well as diverse greetings and congratulations. The Hall of Columns wore a fest ive air. The First Symphony was conducted by Rimsky-Korsakov. This was the first and only time I saw him conducting. Then came an endless stream of delegations bearing laurel leaves or large baskets of flowers and delivering congratulatory addresses. Glazunov stood on the platform to receive them and they moved slowly toward him, weaving in and out among the white columns in a long queue that stretched across the entire hall. It was a very impressive scene. Glazunov was then at the peak of his fame. His Eighth Symphony wound up the concert. This was the second time I had heard it, and I liked it much better than his First Symphony.
In January that year I began to compose small pianoforte pieces which I wrote in a notebook with a pale-green cover. The first piece was of an intimate lyrical nature, entitled Reproach. People liked this piece when I played it. Evidently because as a rule I did not go in much for lyrical pieces, it was a pleasant surprise for them.
Reproach was followed by several other pieces. The green-covered notebook put an end to the existence of the official title “songs” which I had been giving my piano pieces for five years, beginning wit h the first one, written at the age of eleven. I had been in the habit of writing a “song” on the occasion of the birthday of some member of my family. For some reason I had considered this to be my duty, but the time came when I rebelled and announced to my mother that henceforth I would compose only when the spirit moved me, and not for anyone’s birthday!
An examination of the “songs” of that period will show that some were large, broadly conceived compositions which turned out rather awkward and raw, while others were compact in structure, more intimate in flavor, and better in form.
“What is this?” the composer Miaskovsky asked me one day, noticing my song folio, which I had brought along with me by mistake. He had recently joined our class and still wore Army uniform.
I showed it to him.
“Do you mind letting me take them home to look at? I promise you to return them at the next class,” he said.
I was flattered by this request and gave him the folio. The next lesson he returned it to me with the words: “What a little viper we have been nursing in our bosom!”
Nothing more was said, but judging by Miaskovsky’s tone I saw that my pieces had interested him. Gradually our mutual relations improved, assisted considerably by my pieces and by my sight reading of Reger’s difficult serenade duet, which I played with him on one occasion. I felt that Miaskovsky was taking stock of me and that at any rate he did not regard me as merely a boy.
“No matter how I have tried to play Beethoven’s Ninth in four-hand arrangements, I have never succeeded in playing it to the end,” he once remarked.
“Let’s try,” I exclaimed. “I am sure that we can manage it together.”
Since Miaskovsky lived a long way from the Conservatory, I invited him to come to my house that very day, after a lesson in counterpoint. lie agreed. I was extremely proud to have a grown-up officer come to see me. We did indeed play the symphony, and this was the first of many similar evenings. The next time, I went to his house and we played Glazunov’s Fifth Symphony, then the Seventh, and after that Beethoven’s Second, RimskyKorsakov’s Scheherezade, and so on. We showed each other our compositions and during the summer months sent them by post accompanied by long letters. Miaskovsky’s letters, written in a magnificent style, were intensely interesting. He addressed me as a mature person, and his letters had a considerable influence on my development.