ABSTRACT
Prokofiev is a composer easy to caricature—the precocious enfant terrible of the St. Petersburg Conservatory; the iconoclastic composer-pianist; the neoclassicist with the unflagging penchant for “wrong notes,” farce, and sardonic wit. While commentaries invoking such language aptly describe Prokofiev’s experimental harmonic practice, they tend to dismiss other aspects of his musical idiom—especially his formal process—as uninventive and overly reliant on Classical models. In so doing, they tend to bypass much that is unorthodox and connotatively rich in the composer’s formal strategies.
This chapter starts from the premise that Prokofiev challenged the boundaries of conventional sonata form in particular, obscuring traditional structures through the creative manipulation of expected thematic processes. I provide an analysis of the composer’s Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 10 (1912), in order to demonstrate the manner in which his extreme thematic sectionalization and his prioritization of typically subordinate sonata form components (such as the introduction, solo piano cadenza, and interpolated Andante episode) throw the structure’s proportions out of balance. This exaggerated foregrounding of subsidiary structural elements leads the sonata into a veritable hall of mirrors, undercutting traditional hierarchies and ultimately defamiliarizing the listener from a seemingly straightforward structure. This analysis lays the groundwork for a more repertorially sensitive rethinking of early twentieth-century “neoclassical” sonata forms that gives due emphasis to thematic disruptions and their often far-reaching structural ramifications.
