Sulle ‘Sonate di guerra’ di Sergej Prokof’ev

Abstract

The article deals with Sergej Prokof ’ev’s piano sonatas No. 6, 7 and 8, also called ‘War sonatas’, and analyses their relationship to WWII, during which they were composed. With the help of dedicated autograph materials coming from the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI) of Moscow, the Author retraces the genesis of the sonatas and analyses their compositional structure, particularly focusing on the initial movements of sonatas No. 6 and 7 and on No. 7’s Andante caloroso. It is thus possible to individuate analogies, indirect relationships and reciprocal dependencies between these pieces and the war-related imagination dominating the contemporary Soviet society; the latter also overlaps with the Beethovenian matrix which inspired Prokof ’ev to compose the whole cycle, i.e. the Appassionata and Romain Rolland’s book Beethoven.
Les grandes époques créatrices. In addition, the article tackles the issue of the relationship with the musical aesthetics of the Socialist regime, both during the period of Prokof ’ev’s commitment to the Soviet cause and in the following phase, when the sonatas were attacked from the CPSU Central Committee acting against formalist composers.