RCA Victor Recording. Printed in Canada // Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) // Symphony No.3
Boston Symphony Orchestra, Conducted by Erich Leinsdorf.
Symphony No.3
- Moderato
- Andante
- Allegro agitato - Allegretto
- Andante mosso - Allegro moderato
Silent signs
I warm my cold November hands
under your thighs
Stop my shiver
Honey that's me you hear roarin'
in your river
Like how you hold me deep inside
when currents quiver
I'm reading your heart
“” DeYarmond Edison, Silent Signs
The air of foreign lands does not inspire me, because I am a Russian, and there is nothing more harmful to a man than to live in exile, to be in a climate incompatible with his race. I must again immerse myself in the atmosphere of my homeland - I must once again see real winter and spring, I must hear Russian speech and walk with the people dear to me. This will give me what I lack here, for their songs are my songs. Here I’m restive. I’m afraid of falling into academism. Yes, my friend, I am going home. “” sergei prokofiev
yet another sergei in this runs of russian composers that began with shostakovich and continued with rachmaninoff. unlike rachmaninoff, prokofiev did return to russia after a brief exile to continue the ambiguous proximities of his creative work to the soviet-sanctioned ‘music of the people’. rachmaninoff, at a decidedly more antagonistic position to stalin’s kitsch sensibilities, spent the last 25 years of life in america, his efforts at acclimatization were awarded with an american citizenship a month before his death in beverly hills. prokofiev, on the other hand, died on the 5th of march 1953, the same day that stalin died; his coffin transported by hand through backstreets to avoid the throngs of mourners pouring in the opposite direction towards stalin’s. his funeral was attended by about thirty people, shostakovich among them.
inasmuch as tchaikovsky was a bellwether of russian Romantic music, the trio of shostakovich, rachmaninoff, and prokofiev was the cerberus sicced by tchaikovsky’s music into the first half of the twentieth century music on the continent. prokofiev is the often overlooked member of the trio——the four-month search it required of me to find a copy of this Symphony No.3 testifies to that——though that does not belie the scale and inextinguishable energy this symphony discharges from the get-go to the last note.
Music here was a terrible narcosis, a sort of intoxication and oblivion, a going off into irrational planes. Drunken mysticism, ecstatic sensations against a background of profound pessimism permeating existence. It was not form or harmoniousness or Apollonic vision that was demanded of music, but passion, feeling, languor, heartache. Such was Tchaikovsky’s music and such also was what the music of Rachmaninoff developed into. “”leonid sabaneyeff, Sabaneyeff
prokofiev’s music as well, indeed ‘ecstatic sensation’ describes this symphony exactly. music of this sort is at the heart of my affinity for the genre. my belief is that if it can’t be anything else, music should be intense. a clasped and headlong thing...a balm for the faithful kind. especially the kind that not only had faith but believed fervently in their faith. even after their faith has passed that talent for devotion nevertheless persists, is merely passed on to more tangible objects, like the music of florence welsh, justin vernon, Tinariwen etc. there’s a story from the bible that was burned into my memory and is perhaps relevant here: that of jesus coming across two men apparently possessed by demons in a port town. he says a thing and the demon conveniently vacate their hosts (Matthew 8: 28-34). these homeless demons, in search of a fresh apartment to possess, are left with nothing but a herd of pigs grazing by the riverside. they rush into the herd and the herd, incapable of withholding voltage discharged by these diabolic parasites, fling themselves immediately into the river and drown. the illustrations in the children’s bibles are as graphic as you’d imagine. in a way that story describes my relation to music and why i have a tremendous optimism in the music that is yet to be written. beside the growing number of those born into no religion do we also find the growing number of those who excised themselves, by the most inconvenient means, from their religion. that talent for devotion will nevertheless persist, it will look for a new host, and should these expats of faith turn their devotion towards music and pick up a guitar, the result will be incomparably special. (tichoumaren, the music of the tuareg people of niger and mali——with musicians like Tinariwen, Bombino, Tartit, Imarhan——translates literally to ‘guitar music’).
What we need is great music, i.e. music that will be in keeping both in conception and technical execution with the grandeur of the epoch. [...] It is not easy to find the right idiom for this music. To begin with it must be melodious; moreover the melody must be simple and comprehensible without being repetitive or trivial. Many composers have difficulty in composing any sort of melody; all the harder is it to compose a melody that has a definite function. The same applies to the technique and the idiom: it must be clear and simple, but not banal. We must seek a new simplicity. “” sergei prokofiev, Autobiography
(song of the week: OMDB - Big Red Machine)
We are a steadily growing group of artists, freely creating and sharing our work with each other and everyone. We call it 37d03d, or a collective of people. People turning things upside down. It was born of a wish to establish an independent and nurturing space in which to make work (generally around music) that is collaborative, spontaneous and expressive in nature and where all unnecessary distractions or obstacles that get in the way are removed. 37d03d is for the benefit and development of the artists involved and just as importantly, for those who would like to access and enjoy the output. It is as much about the process of making work and showing all that openly, as the final outcome. “” mission statement of PEOPLE (37d03d.com)
back at it again with yet another justin vernon project: Big Red Machine (nickname of the 1970’s Cincinnati Reds) is his ongoing collaboration with aaron dessner of The National, born via a Myspace chat in 2008, and hosted on a platform named PEOPLE. i for one had made up my mind to fall absolutely in love with whatever came out of this self-titled album before it was released in june of 2018. and despite this prejudice, exactly that happened: Hymnostic is an unexpected miracle of a song, and an example of two artists coming together to create an indelible mix of their unique sounds into one cohesive unit. and i simply can’t explain OMDB (Over My Dead Body): a slowly galloping beat on a drum machine, layered with an ornamental track on a drum set; vernon gets to do a bit of yell-singing and dessner’s guitar accompaniment is pure sauce.
i don’t think there’s anything vernon can do that i won’t lap up like an honest shill. i realized that while browsing the comments section of a new music video for Bon Iver’s Naeem that was randomly released thursday morning, wherein someone spelt out vernon’s full name in the songwriting credits. i’ve long been a peripheral fan of the music Deyarmond Edison and the imagery of their lyrics especially:
Silent signs
I warm my cold November hands under your thighs
Stop my shiver
Honey that's me you hear roarin' in your river
Like how you hold me deep inside when currents quiver
I'm reading your heart
“” DeYarmond Edison, Silent Signs
cue the audible gasp when my dumb ass discovered on thursday that vernon’s full name is in fact justin deyarmond edison vernon——and DeYarmond Edison was the name of the band he formed with friends he made at a jazz camp in 1997. even in a blind experiment, unbeknownst to me that vernon is behind a project, i still can’t help but be a stan. Rumor has it there’s a new Big Red Machine album in the works, hopefully it’s not released for a little while, am i’m still dealing with this i,i business.