Top 13 Quotes & Sayings by Sergei Prokofiev

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev.

Last updated on April 20, 2025.

Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor who later worked in the Soviet Union. As the creator of acknowledged masterpieces across numerous music genres, he is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century. His works include such widely heard pieces as the March from The Love for Three Oranges, the suite Lieutenant Kijé, the ballet Romeo and Juliet—from which "Dance of the Knights" is taken—and Peter and the Wolf. Of the established forms and genres in which he worked, he created—excluding juvenilia—seven completed operas, seven symphonies, eight ballets, five piano concertos, two violin concertos, a cello concerto, a symphony-concerto for cello and orchestra, and nine completed piano sonatas.

Russian - Composer | April 23, 1891 - March 5, 1953

Source: Wikipedia

I strenuously object to the very word "grotesque" which has become hackneyed to the point of nausea...I would prefer my music to be described as "Scherzo-ish" in quality, or else by three words describing the various degrees of the Scherzo - whimsicality, laughter, mockery.

Sergei Prokofiev

I detest imitation, I detest hackneyed devices.

Sergei Prokofiev

Formalism is music that people don't understand at first hearing.

Sergei Prokofiev

My chief virtue (or if you like, defect) has been a tireless lifelong search for an original, individual musical idiom. I detest imitation, I detest hackneyed devices.

Sergei Prokofiev

My mother had to explain that one couldnt compose a Liszt rhapsody because it was a piece of music that Liszt himself had composed.

Sergei Prokofiev

Of course I have used dissonance in my time, but there has been too much dissonance. Bach used dissonance as good salt for his music. Others applied pepper, seasoned the dishes more and more highly, till all healthy appetites were sick and until the music was nothing but pepper.

Sergei Prokofiev

At home we didnt talk about religion. So gradually the question faded away by itself and disappeared from the agenda. When I was nineteen my father died; my response to his death was atheistic.

Sergei Prokofiev

There are still so many beautiful things to be said in C major.

Sergei Prokofiev

In my view, the composer, just as the poet, the sculptor or the painter, is in duty bound to serve Man, the people. He must beautify life and defend it. He must be a citizen first and foremost, so that his art might consciously extol human life and lead man to a radiant future.

Sergei Prokofiev

It seemed to me that had Haydn lived to our day he would have retained his own style while accepting something of the new at the same time. That was the kind of symphony I wanted to write: a symphony in the classical style. And when I saw that my idea was beginning to work, I called it the Classical Symphony.

Sergei Prokofiev

I want nothing better, more flexible or more complete than the sonata form, which contains everything necessary for my structural purposes.

Sergei Prokofiev

When the Second World War broke out, I felt that everyone must do his share, and I began composing songs and marches for the front. But soon events assumed such gigantic and far-reaching scope as to demand larger canvasses.

Sergei Prokofiev

I have never doubted the importance of melody. I like melody very much, and I consider it the most important element in music, and I labour many years on the improvement of its quality in my compositions.

Sergei Prokofiev

Top 13 Quotes & Sayings by Sergei Prokofiev

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