Ithaca College

"The Quiet Revolution of a B-Natural: Prokofiev's 'New Simplicity' in the Second Violin Concerto" will appear in twentieth-century music (volume 6/2), a publication of Cambridge University Press.

This essay explores changes in Prokofiev’s compositional style that occurred in the mid-1930s, around the time he was making his decision to return to his homeland. In his diary, Prokofiev wrote about a desire for a ‘new simplicity’, a style that featured simple melodies and comprehensible form. Compared to the avant-garde sounds of his earlier works, Prokofiev’s ‘new simplicity’ features a self-conscious return to classical precedents. Prokofiev believed his new lyricism would be a uniquely modern yet accessible music for the Soviet people. Many of Prokofiev’s most popular works are written in this “new simplicity” style, including Lieutenant Kijé (1933), Romeo and Juliet (1935-36), and Peter and the Wolf (1936). The style is distinctive because of its sudden chromatic swerves to distant harmonic areas that sound markedly trangressive. By invoking and then thwarting tonal conventions, Prokofiev creates a compelling tension between neoclassicism and modernism. This essay presents the first movement of Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2 (1935) as an exemplar of his “new simplicity.” The fractured musical surface is interpreted as a musical narrative, as an ironic satire of sonata form.