Yale University Department of Music
Review
Author(s): Daniel Zimmerman
Review by: Daniel Zimmerman
Source: Journal of Music Theory, Vol. 42, No. 1 (Spring, 1998), pp. 153-164
Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of the Yale University Department of
Music
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The Music of Sergei Prokofiev
By Neil Minturn
New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997
xiii, 241 pp.
REVIEWER
Daniel Zimmerman
Prokofiev's allure for audiences, performers, and biographers has thus
far exceeded his appeal for music theorists. This is partially explained by
Prokofiev's persistence in writing tonally, straight through the first half of
the twentieth century. However, Prokofiev's music resists exclusively
tonal explanations. Stylistic heterogeneity makes the music impervious
to any single analytical approach, a factor bound to decrease its appeal
for analysts still grappling with music less equivocal in its relationship to
tonality.
Serious analysis of Prokofiev's music by Western scholars has taken
the form of dissertations, a smattering of articles, and chapters in more
general studies.' Neil Minturn's new book is thus a major milestone in
Prokofiev studies. An extensively revised and expanded version of his Yale
University dissertation, Minturn's trailblazing book analyzes excerpts
from approximately thirty pieces which span the length and breadth of
Prokofiev's prolific career. Minturn's method is appropriately ad hoc, but
his main tools are set theory and Lewinian transformational theory, both
of which serve him well.
Minturn envisions an "analytical approach [which] rescues [Proko-
fiev's] wrong notes from the maw of traditional consonance and disso-
nance and shows their large-scale impact as well as their local distinc-
tiveness" (23). "Wrong" is never formally defined but it is very nearly a
synonym for "unexpected."2 Wrong notes are the ones that stand out from
otherwise conventional musical environments. Minturn's primary means
of rescue is the "structural set," a set which "occurs frequently and rec-
ognizably throughout a piece, either unordered or in a preferred ordering
and often at important points of articulation," and whose "intervallic
makeup, provides a store of potential transformations upon which the
music may draw" (65). Structural sets also engender "descendants" which
are related to the parent set by subset or superset relations, complemen-
tation, or fragmentation (a process which rearranges some of the parent's
constituent intervals while expanding or contracting others). If the struc-
tural set contains a triadic subset its remaining pitches may be perceived
as wrong notes (55 and 67) but the set's use and influence elsewhere in
the piece will help to integrate them.3 Thus, wrong notes may eventually
be heard as right notes (58-59).
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One might be tempted to interpret Minturn's approach as an attempt
to rescue Prokofiev's music from Schenkerian theory by means of set the-
ory and, indeed, Felix Salzer's analysis of the opening nine measures of
the Piano Sonata No. 8 in Bb Major is contrasted with Minturn's own
analysis via set theory and found wanting (20-23).4 But Minturn ad-
mirably steers a middle course: "We need an analytical approach that rec-
ognizes the characteristic and delicious tension between familiar struc-
tures, such as diatonic fragments and triads, and wrong-note challenges,
but we need not demand at the same [time] that the approach take sides"
(23). According to Minturn, Prokofiev's music does not tend to be (tem-
porarily) incomplete-as does, say, music based on aggregate or pattern
completion-but "super-complete" (66). It admits more than one good
solution to the problems it poses. This idea superbly conveys the implied
aesthetic of much music which extends but does not abandon tonal sign-
posts. By stressing the superfluity of possible interpretations, Prokofiev,
Debussy, and the neoclassical Stravinsky all intimate the pleasures of
ambiguity.
Minturn's first chapter provides a historical context for his theory.
The opposing forces of innovation, championed by nineteenth-century
Romanticists, and tradition are said to "converge in the wrong note" (15).
In Chapter 2, Minturn introduces the music via a well-known passage in
the shorter of Prokofiev's two autobiographies. Here, Prokofiev takes the
highly unusual step of grouping his works into four stylistic categories
and listing specific pieces and passages which illustrate those categories.
Prokofiev describes himself as (1) a classicist, (2) a modernist, (3) a
devotee of toccata-like motor rhythms, and (4) a composer of lyrical,
contemplative music. To explore these categories, Minturn briefly ana-
lyzes a minuet from Romeo and Juliet, the fourth movement of the Quin-
tet (op. 39), the Toccata (op. 11), and an early song (op. 9, no. 1). Only
the first of these pieces is not specifically mentioned in Prokofiev's expo-
sition but it is a fine example of the "classical" category.
The existing English translations of this passage pose problems for
Minturn. Oleg Prokofiev translates his father as follows: "I should like
to pause here to analyse the basic lines along which my work had devel-
oped up to this point."6 Since this sentence follows Sergei's detailed dis-
cussion of his Conservatory years, one might assume he will refer only
to his early works. However, Prokofiev's list includes some thirteen
works written after his graduation from St. Petersburg Conservatory.
More importantly, Prokofiev, in translation, seems to deny the impor-
tance of the grotesque element in his music, a claim that would give pause
to anybody familiar with his music. Oleg translates, "I should like to limit
myself to these four 'lines', and to regard the fifth, 'grotesque', line which
some wish to ascribe to me as simply a deviation from the other lines."'
To his credit, Minturn does not accept these claims at face value. He cor-
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rectly suggests that Prokofiev tried to downplay his love of the grotesque
in order to counter the one-sided publicity he received throughout his
career, particularly from the Western press. Minturn is also correct that
"Prokofiev's inclusion of post-Conservatory pieces invites us to apply his
scheme to his entire corpus of work" (28) and almost correct that "lines
such as ... the grotesque are not thereby invalidated" (26).
Still, an accurate translation of this passage would have alleviated
many difficulties. In the original Russian, Prokofiev does not speak of his
work "up to this point" but simply of "the main lines along which [his]
work developed."8 After delineating the four main lines, Prokofiev asserts,
I would like to restrict myself to these four lines and to regard the fifth,
the "grotesque," which some wish to ascribe to me, rather as inflections
of the other lines. In any case, I object to the very word "grotesque" which
has become repugnant through overuse here [in Russia]. The meaning of
the French word "grotesque" is much distorted when used in this sense.
In reference to my own music, I would prefer to replace ["grotesque"] with
the term "scherzando" or, if you prefer, by three Russian words indicat-
ing its degrees: shutka, smekh, nasmeshka [joking, laughter, mockery].9
This suggests a very different attitude from the one in the previous Eng-
lish translations.'0 Prokofiev did not wish to reject humor as a primary
motivating force in his music. Indeed, by declining to consider the ironic
side of his music as a distinct category, Prokofiev indicates its broader
applicability to the music in the other four lines. This lends credence to
Minturn's central thesis since it implies that wrong notes can be ironi-
cally opposed to otherwise homogenous harmonic contexts throughout
Prokofiev's oeuvre.
An important subthesis of the book, developed at the end of the sec-
ond chapter, is that Prokofiev grew considerably more subtle and flexible
in handling phrase structure in his later years." For instance, his late
masterpiece, the Piano Sonata No. 8 in BL Major, completed in 1944,
"is invested with a phrase rhythm more closely approximating an easy,
proselike flow than strict poetic regularity" (50). Minturn strongly sup-
ports this thesis by comparing the Eighth Sonata with the Scythian Suite
(1914-1915)-a work originally designed to display Prokofiev's mod-
ernist credentials to Diaghilev and the Parisian public.12 The point has not
been made before, probably because it is assumed to contradict other
conspicuous features of Prokofiev's later style.13 His approach to har-
mony and texture became gradually more conservative as he searched for
what he called a "new simplicity" in the early thirties, and more conser-
vative still as he attempted to assimilate, and was later forced to yield to,
the dictates of Socialist Realism in the late thirties and forties.14
Chapter 3 is the heart of Minturn's book. Here, he provides the fullest
exposition of his theoretical apparatus and applies it to two pieces-the
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final movement of the Fourth Piano Sonata and the second of the Sar-
casms. Here too, Minturn introduces two "triadic flip" operations, the
"third flip" which inverts a triad around its third and the "fifth flip" which
inverts a triad so that its root and fifth exchange places (57). The former
is a common and striking component of Prokofiev's syntax." To cite an
example of which Prokofiev was particularly fond, the third flip trans-
forms an E minor triad into an Eb major triad or vice versa. The fifth flip
transforms an E minor triad into an E major triad or vice versa.
The rest of the book is largely devoted to analyses. These are organ-
ized in five chapters covering piano, orchestral music, chamber music,
concertos, and vocal music respectively. Minturn is particularly adept at
analyzing the most difficult repertoire. Some of the most compelling
analyses in this book treat pieces least open to tonal interpretation such
as the Sarcasms, op. 17, no. 2 and the Balmont Songs, op. 36, no. 2.
Where Minturn is less convincing, it is often due to a devaluation of the
force of consonance in determining the structure of more tonal works.
Of the opening seventeen measures of the final movement of Piano
Sonata No. 4, Minturn says,
While this music is not traditionally tonal, C major is nevertheless pro-
jected by the introductory scalar flourish, the arpeggiated C chord in the
left hand, and the cadential bass progression in mm. 16-17. Each of these
three gestures is a tonal interpreter.... The concept of tonal interpreter
captures those aspects of a passage which create tonal stability without
also asserting that all components of the passage so contribute. By a tonal
interpreter I shall mean a harmonic triad, a diatonic scale segment, or a
functional bass segment or progression whenever such a set is heard to
organize pitches around it into a locally tonal scheme" (61).
The concept is a useful one. In this passage however, there are far more
than three tonal interpreters. Every measure after the first contains triads
whose members dominate the musical surface in purely statistical as well
as hierarchical terms. The entire bass line would serve for a Clementi
sonatina. If you combine all the tonal interpreters in the first seventeen
measures of this movement, what you have is tonal music, encompassing
probably 95% of all pitches.
Minturn's assertion that C major pitches do "not entirely absorb the
weight of the decorative chromatic notes" (the F#s and Abs in mm. 2-3),
allows him to see m. 3 as a set class (4-19; see Example la) and draw a
host of compelling connections with other manifestations of that set class
(59-62). On the other hand, the claim that mm. 4-5 proceed "without
resolving the legato, tenuto, dissonant notes" (60) seems a bit strong.
Without allowing ourselves to hear the chromatic appoggiaturas B, F#,
and D# in mm. 4-5 combining with C, E, and G to form a set class (6-
19?; 5-21 and an embellishing F#?), we are likely to overlook the close
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6 (
4-19 (0478) 6-19 (e03467) D 5-21 (e0347)
(a) Rhythmic reduction, mm. 2-5
43
S (e2367) _ (789034) D 5-21 (03478)
5-21 6Z44
(b) Minturn, The Music of Sergei Prokofiev, Example 3.5a (p. 64),
mm. 43-44. Used by permission, Yale University Press
14
8-19
(c) Minturn, The Music of Sergei Prokofiev, Example 3.3 (p. 62),
mm. 14-17. Used by permission, Yale University Press
Example 1. Prokofiev, Piano Sonata No. 4, op. 29, third movement
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relationship between this passage and the second theme (where 5-21 is
also a salient component; see Example lb). This should not, however,
invalidate the clarity of our tonal intuitions. In the tonal context, B re-
solves to C, F# to G, and D# to E. Prokofiev's music demands that we lis-
ten both ways.
One progression easily interpreted as tonal is the one in mm. 14-17.
Attending only to function and not to the mildly untraditional extensions
(major sevenths, ninths, elevenths above the bass), every half-note span
except the last yields a new chord: IV-ii7-viio-V7_ii-ii6-I. Minturn groups
all of the right-hand pitches with tenuto markings in this passage to form
8-19 [01245689]. This decision allows him to highlight the interesting
complementary relationship between 8-19, which spans the passage, and
numerous instances of 4-19 in the treble stratum within the passage
(Example lc).16 This analysis also challenges tonal intuitions. A set class
encompassing two highly dissonant trichordal chromatic clusters as sub-
sets, 8-19 contradicts the fairly consonant flavor of the passage. If, on the
other hand, one groups all the pitches in mm. 15-16, a segment which
deserves to be considered as a harmonic unit because it is a dominant pro-
longed by arpeggiation, one of Prokofiev's favorite sonorities, 7-34,
emerges.17 This analysis achieves more modest results but conforms to
Prokofiev's medium level of tolerance for dissonance.
There are at least two good ways of hearing many passages in Pro-
kofiev's music but that does not mean that they are necessarily disengaged
from each other. In this repertoire, it rarely makes sense to apply set the-
ory without taking the preferences of tonality into account. This caveat
applies to the preferences of Schenkerian theory as well. Prokofiev's
music clearly operates on structural levels and some modified version of
Schenkerian methodology could be useful in sorting them out. Whether
or not prolongation is precisely of the Schenkerian variety is surely a
sticky issue.18 Still, in the absence of some form of Schenkerian method-
ology, the chances are greater that pitches will be unjustifiably related.
In the First String Quartet, for instance, Minturn proposes 3-1 [012]
as a structural set. Unfortunately, his examples sometimes incorporate
pitches drawn from distinct musical strata. Where the music moves into
the first statement of the second theme (Example 2a), Minturn groups the
bass pitches G and G# (in m. 34) with A (within m. 35) as an "ascending
chromatic trichord" (137). However, all of these pitches are structurally
inferior to, and therefore more strongly related to, the F# which opens m.
35 and dominates mm. 35-38. Indeed, the arrival of F# on the downbeat
of m. 35 initiates its role as the primary tonal center of the remainder of
the exposition.
Similarly, Minturn relates bass pitches B in m. 1, C in m. 3, and DM in
m. 7 despite the structure implied in his own reduction (Example 2b)
where DM is subsumed within a slur. Minturn musters a strong defense to
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34 s espress.
p34
PE f
(a) Rhythmic reduction, mm. 34-38
mm.: 1 3 5 6 9
6 7 6 6 6 6 5
63 63 63
5-6-5 5-6
bm: i blI
C: I V-blII
T1 G#/Ab: V6 i iv
(b) Minturn, The Music of Sergei Prokofiev, Example 6.1 (p. 135),
harmonic sketch, mm. 1-9. Used by permission, Yale University Press
20
'VvPT PT " i
24
PPT Hexatonic Region
6-20 (e03478)
PT = Passing tone
(c) Rhythmic reduction, mm. 20-25
Example 2. Prokofiev, String Quartet No. 1, op. 50, first movement
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counteract that slur including Db's relatively strong hypermetric position
and its location at a change in texture (136). However, more powerful set
relationships can be generated by working with Example 2b. The struc-
turally superior pitch-classes in the example's bass-B, C, G, and G#-
all return within the sustained hexatonic region towards the end of the
first theme group. (This is illustrated in Example 2c which is based on
Minturn's Example 2.11, 46.)
Minturn acknowledges the virtues of Salzer's analysis of the Eighth
Piano Sonata, especially his penetrating observation of the motivic par-
allelism between the four-note melody in m. 1 (D-C-Eb-E?) and the mid-
dleground motive of mm. 1-4. However, Minturn criticizes Salzer for
allowing parallel octaves between the structural outer voices of his graph
(21). Indeed, the application of Schenkerian method to Prokofiev's music
often does yield problematic graphs. Minturn prefers to draw motivic par-
allels that contradict structure based primarily on the criterion of conso-
nance. He hears an interesting retrograde relationship between the tenor
voice in m. 1 (F-C-Ab-AM) and the bass in mm. 3-5. But he also draws a
less convincing parallel between the four-note melody in the first mea-
sure (D-C-Eb-E?) and some of the pitches in the bass line of the second
phrase (Bb-A-Ab-F#). Considered as unordered sets, these are tranposi-
tionally related (at T6), not inversionally related as Minturn claims, so that
the ordered inversional relation between some of their components (the
pitches forming three-note chromatic scales) is a rather weak one.
In many cases, Minturn's analyses focus on smaller sets-trichords,
tetrachords, and pentachords rather than hexachords, septachords, and
octachords. Transformations of Prokofiev's favorite smaller sets (3-12, 4-
17, 4-19, 5-21) are particularly well-explored. This strategy works well
when the music is clearly generated from the bottom up as in the second
Sarcasm where [015] segments are joined in a Lewininan retrograde
inversion chain (68-69; 224 n. 11). In some cases, however, one could
argue that smaller sets could be better accounted for as subsets of larger
collections.19
For instance, in the tenth of the Visions Fugitives, Minturn finds numer-
ous examples of set-class 4-19. But this short piece could be profitably
viewed from the standpoint of larger collections (as illustrated in Exam-
ple 3). The harmonic content of the Visions Fugitives No. 10, can be fairly
comprehensively encapsulated as follows: The piece primarily prolongs
the hexatonic collection containing Db and Dk. This central sonority in-
cludes all the pitches of and, indeed, functions as an extended or deco-
rated version of the tonic Bb minor triad.20 Harmonic motion is secured
primarily via the inclusion of the whole-tone collection containing Db.
This collection extends and represents V7. All but one measure of this
piece (m. 25) can be heard as sustaining or prolonging one of these two
sonorities.
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Whole-Tone Region
5-33 (13579) c 6-35 (13579e)
Ridicolosamente
13 IN
Hexatonic Region
6-20 (12569t)
S-1 "a I Is --1! I
PT T '" wNHT NHT
I I I
Whole-Tone Region Hexatonic
IN = Incomplete neighbor 6-35(13579e) Region
NHT = Nonharmonic tone
Example 3. Prokofiev, Visions Fugitives, op. 22, no. 10, mm. 13-21
According to this broad analysis, all the grace notes in mm. 1-13 are
decorative, nonharmonic tones. So are the Abs and Gbs in mm. 19, 27,
and 35 (among various other pitches). In mm. 15-16 and 23-24, a subset
of the primary hexatonic collection clashes with a subset of the primary
whole-tone collection which is presented in a higher registral stratum.
Such an approach recognizes the brilliant wit of the syncopated, embell-
ished, and dynamically accentuated presentation of the piece's first DM s
(m. 16). D? is the pitch-class we have unconsiously been waiting for, if
we recognize Prokofiev's hexatonic predilections, during the gradual
unfolding of (F, Gb, A , Bb, Db) in mm. 1-14. Although there are obvi-
ously harmonic details which need further explication-the E7 chords in
mm. 20 and 28, the purely linear origins of the chords in m. 25, intima-
tions of Gb major throughout-the hexatonic and whole-tone collections
provide a broad framework for understanding this short work's pitch
structure. Minturn's discussion of this piece focuses on hexatonic subsets
(3-11, 3-12, 4-19, 4-20, and 5-21) without drawing the overarching con-
clusions. Not only are the sets he mentions all hexatonic subsets, they are
mostly subsets of the same hexatonic collection (12569t).21
Unfortunately, this book has more than its fair share of the typo-
graphical and computational errors that tend to haunt music-theoretical
monographs. Even in the Appendix, whose purpose is to summarize
"pertinent set and set-class relations" (209), it is in places difficult to nav-
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igate though a thicket of errors. On page 210, 5-22 is twice misidentified
as [01458] rather than [01478], 5-22 is described as the result of a triadic
fifth-flip rather than third-flip, and the union of a major triad with a minor
triad whose root is a semitone below its own is incorrectly said to yield
6-Z19, [013478], rather than 6-Z26, [013578].
Prokofiev's music relies on relationships between nontonal sets. Min-
turn's concept of the structural set allows him to explore these relation-
ships and avoid relegating Prokofiev's wrong notes to exclusively em-
bellishing status. But the music also relies on the ebb and flow of harmonic
tension and wrong notes usually are heard as dissonant notes. In these
analyses, tonal intuitions are too infrequently allowed to inform set-
theoretic investigations. Despite this reservation, I highly recommend
Minturn's book. It contains many important insights, fine analyses, and
material enough to mull over for years to come. Never before has Pro-
kofiev's music received sustained attention from a scholar willing and
able to apply all the tools of set and transformation theory. By applying
these powerful tools, Minturn has substantially deepened our under-
standing of Prokofiev's music.
NOTES
1. Patricia Ruth Ashley, "Prokofiev's Piano Music: Line, Chord, Key" (Ph.D. diss.,
Eastman School of Music, 1963); Malcolm H. Brown, "Prokofieff's Eighth Piano
Sonata," Tempo 70 (1964): 9-15; Malcolm Hamrick Brown, "The Symphonies of
Sergei Prokofiev" (Ph.D. diss., Florida State University, 1967); Lyn Henderson,
"Prokofiev's Fifth Piano Concerto," Music Review 47 (1986-7): 267-82; Rebecca
Sue Kaufman, "Expanded Tonality in the Late Chamber Works of Sergei Pro-
kofiev" (Ph.D. diss., University of Kansas, 1987); Richard Bass, "Prokofiev's
Technique of Chromatic Displacement," Music Analysis 7 (1988): 197-214; Rich-
ard Taruskin, "Tone, Style, and Form in Prokofiev's Soviet Operas: Some Prelim-
inary Observations," 215-39, in Studies in the History of Music, vol. 2: Music and
Drama (New York: Broude Brothers, 1988); Peter Deane Roberts, Modernism in
Russian Piano Music: Skriabin, Prokofiev, and their Russian Contemporaries, 2
vols. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993).
2. Minturn's inspiration for the term is a passage about the Classical Symphony in
Jonathan D. Kramer, Listen to the Music: A Self-Guided Tour Through the Orches-
tral Repertoire (New York: Schirmer Books, 1988), 518. The term also has a
somewhat checkered prior history. Prokofiev himself used a phrase very much like
it to belittle Stravinsky's neoclassical music as "bakhizmov s fal'shivizmami"
("Bachisms with false [notes]") in his autobiography: S. I. Shlifshteyn, ed.,
S. S. Prokof'ev: Materialy, dokumenty, vospominaniya (Moscow: Gosudarstven-
noe muzykal'noe izdatel'stvo, 1961), 171. For its use in Prokofiev scholarship, see
Bass, "Prokofiev's Technique" (213 n. 9). The term has also been used to cast
doubt on early analyses of Stravinsky's neoclassical works. For example, see
Pieter C. van den Toorn, The Music of Igor Stravinsky (New Haven: Yale Univer-
sity Press, 1983), xiv.
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3. One of Prokofiev's favorite set classes, 4-19, seems designed to exploit this di-
chotomy (61). Depending on context, 4-19 could be heard as a major or minor
triad plus an extra pitch (a tonal sonority and a wrong note) or an augmented triad
plus an extra pitch (a wholly atonal entity).
4. Felix Salzer, Structural Hearing: Tonal Coherence in Music (New York: Dover
Publications, 1962), 2 vols., 1:205; 2:208-9.
5. The original Russian version of the shorter autobiography can be found in
S. I. Shlifshteyn, ed., S. S. Prokof'ev: Materialy, dokumenty, vospominaniya. The
first English translation appeared in S. I. Shlifstein, ed., S. Prokofiev: Autobiogra-
phy, Articles, Reminiscences, trans. Rose Prokofieva (Moscow: Foreign Lan-
guages Publishing House, c. 1959). Minturn relies on a translation in Sergei
Prokofiev, Soviet Diary 1927 and Other Writings, ed. and trans. Oleg Prokofiev
(Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992), 248-49. Despite the claim (228)
that this is an "extensively revised and corrected" version of Rose Prokofieva's
work, Northeastern University Press reproduces Prokofieva's translation with
minor alterations.
Prokofiev's much longer autobiography deals solely with his early years. For an
abridged translation, see Prokofiev by Prokofiev: A Composer's Memoir, ed. David
H. Appel, trans. Guy Daniels (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Co., 1979).
6. Oleg Prokofiev, ed., Soviet Diary, 248.
7. Ibid., 249.
8. Shlifshteyn, ed., S.S. Prokof'ev, 148.
9. Ibid., 149.
10. Other translations compound the misreading. The final phrase of the paragraph's
first sentence (skoree kak izgiby predydushchikh liniy) is translated, "as no more
than an occasional deviation from the other four," by Lawrence and Elisabeth Han-
son and "as a sideline of the four," by Victor Seroff. [Lawrence and Elisabeth Han-
son, Prokofiev: A Biography in Three Movements (New York: Random House,
1964), 145; Victor Seroff, Sergei Prokofiev: A Soviet Tragedy (New York: Funk
and Wagnalls, 1968), 76.]
11. Prokofiev's vocal works form an important exception to his general practice in han-
dling phrase structure. For an account of the strong influence of Musorgsky's prose
recitative operas on Prokofiev, see Taruskin, "Tone, Style, and Form," 216-22.
12. It is ironic that some of Prokofiev's most hypermetrically four-square music was
written for the Ballets Russes and was obviously designed to compete with Stra-
vinsky's early ballets for shock value and exoticism. Prokofiev, oft-noted for his
singlemindedness, seems almost not to have noticed that Stravinsky's music was
rhythmically as well as harmonically adventurous.
13. Note, however, that William W. Austin describes the opening theme of the Fifth
Symphony as follows: "asymmetrical, like an arioso recitative." "Prokofiev's Fifth
Symphony," Music Review, 17 (1956): 205.
14. See Harlow Robinson, Sergei Prokofiev: A Biography (New York: Viking, 1987),
pp. 243-44, 266-67, 294-95. For a book based on the clearly politically-moti-
vated idea that Prokofiev's mid-career modernism was aesthetically and morally
inferior to his simpler "Soviet" style, see Israel V. Nestyev, Prokofiev, trans. Flo-
rence Jonas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1961).
Oddly, Minturn seems not to credit the accepted idea that Prokofiev's late style
is less dissonant than his earlier one: "Though one might expect harmonic struc-
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ture and compositional process in works from the modern line to be uniquely con-
stituted in comparison with more mainstream works, such is not the case. In fact,
Prokofiev's harmonic vocabulary and compositional style are remarkably consis-
tent throughout his entire oeuvre" (42).
15. The third-flip is a version of David Lewin's SLIDE operation on Klangs which he
uses to analyze a passage in Prokofiev's Five Songs Without Words, op. 35 (a piece
brought to his attention by Minturn). See Generalized Musical Intervals and
Transformations (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 178, 227-29.
16. Example Ic corrects one omission and two typographical errors in Minturn's
Example 3.3. In the treble staff of m. 14, a tenuto mark is added to the first chord
and the final two pitches are amended.
17. Minturn mentions this set class in his discussion of the second thematic section of
the First Violin Concerto, II (153).
18. For bibliography on nontraditional prolongation, see Robert P. Morgan, "Disso-
nant Prolongation: Theoretical and Compositional Precedents," Journal of Music
Theory 20 (1976): 87, and Charles D. Morrison, "Prolongation in the Final Move-
ment of Bart6k's String Quartet No. 4," Music Theory Spectrum 13 (1991): 179.
19. Joseph Straus discusses this issue, from the opposite point of view, in a review
of van den Toorn in Journal of Music Theory 28 (1984): 132-33. On the bi-
directional generative relationships between large and small sets, see Richard
Cohn, "Properties and Generability of Tranpositionally Invariant Sets," Journal of
Music Theory 35 (1991): 1-32.
20. Robert W. Wason discusses the tonal implications of hexatonic sets in "Tonality
and Atonality in Frederic Rzewski's Variations on 'the People United will Never
be Defeated!'" Perspectives of New Music 26 (1988): 108-43. For an investiga-
tion of the hexatonic implications of late-nineteenth-century triadic progressions,
see Richard Cohn, "Maximally Smooth Cycles, Hexatonic Systems, and the Analy-
sis of Late-Romantic Triadic Progressions," Music Analysis 15 (1996): 9-40.
21. This is partially obscured by typographical errors (44). The form of 4-19 noted in
m. 16 should be (69t2), not (6912), and in mm. 15-16, (9t15), not (9715).
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