Article October 9, 2006 Issue

'MUSIC OF THE SPHERES'

P. J. H.

As a piano student in my teens, I played several pieces by Russian composers, including a piano transcription, probably by Prokofiev himself, of the March from his opera The Love for Three Oranges. I remember being intrigued by the novel harmonies, the incisive rhythms, and the general character of exhilarating confidence expressed by the music.

I also loved Prokofiev's Classical Symphony, with its unexpected turns of phrase, arresting modulations, and sparkling freshness of style, which impressed me as belonging to a musical mind I would like to know better.

Fast forward to 2006. In January of this year, I was invited to write a response to an article on Serge Prokofiev and his practice of Christian Science in the Three Oranges Journal, published twice a year in England. Once again, I entered the world of this astonishingly versatile and gifted musician whom musicologists are calling one of the great geniuses of 20th-century Russian music. As noted in the accompanying article, the composer recorded his profound interest in Christian Science in a series of entries in a personal diary he kept over many years.

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