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It's all about the music, dude! Sit down, relax and listen to some tunes.

RE: Huh?

Hi Chris - again, I don't think you and I are really in disagreement here. I never said that Stravinsky should be given total credit for octave displacement, and I made it clear that Prokofiev's lyricism was quite different from Stravinsky's. These guys of course did not just imitate each other, but that doesn't mean that there was no influence at all. Again, my post was in response to the original poster, who did seem to deny that there was any influence at all on Prokofiev from Stravinsky, which I think most musicians would agree is absurd on the face of it. As the person considered the greatest living composer for decades, how could ANY composer NOT have been influenced by Stravinsky? This is all I was driving at, and I gave a few very obvious examples. This would not even be considered up for debate, among musicians. Of course, Stravinsky was also influenced by Prokofiev, again a fact that would not be in debate. The two men, after all, were constantly being compared to each other, especially in Russia.

As for the resentment on Prokofiev's part, that is something mentioned in every course I took on 20th century music, and have read in every bio I have ever read on either composer. I had a double major in theory during my undergraduate, and "specialized," if you will, in Stravinsky, so perhaps I have read quite a bit more than the average musician has on him in particular, but I am nevertheless very surprised that you apparently haven't encountered that before! Prokofiev is certainly one of the ultimate "i've got a chip on my shoulder" composers - not just about Stravinsky, of course, but in general. A big part of it was what you mentioned about having to perform too much, giving him less time than he wanted to devote to composition. He felt very under appreciated, much like Bartok did later in the century, though in Bartok's case, the resentment was directed more at Shostakovitch, witness especially his hilarious parody of the Shostakovitch's Seventh Symphony in the Concerto for Orchestra.


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