A Study On Prokofiev's Symphony No.7

Serge Sergeyevich Prokofiev (1891-1953) was a Russian composer,pianist and conductor of 20th century. He created seven symphonies in his lifetime.Symphony No. 7 is the most typical work of his symphonies, which is full of strongpersonal style of Classical form and Romantic expression. As a composer of 20 century,he created Symphony No.7 with the modern composition techniques, and alsoemphasized creating sweet lyrical music with the traditional tonality. Bridged theclassical music and modern music, Symphony No. 7 inserts lots of modern compositiontechniques into the classical musical structures, such as the unique "Prokofiev'sharmony", the canonic melody of horizontal polytonality, and hybrid structuralborderline form. The creation of the work was based on tradition and has characteristicsof lyric and sweet. That is a broad thought of creation which confirmed the prediction ofMokena (a British musician) that the future music will not only have the dear tonalityand logicality of classic system, but also have the form of liberty and broadness in purechromatics.There are three chapters in this paper:Chapter 1: The life and musical creations of Prokofiev. This chapter summarizesProkofiev's art career which are his musical creations in the Russian period, Americanperiod, European period and Soviet period and each period's different artistic style.Chapter 2: The device characteristics of Symphony No. 7. This is the core of thisstudy. Including the harmony structure, form, melody, rhythm etc., and this chapterstudies several characteristics of Symphony No. 7 with device analysis.Section 1: Its creation background, which introduces the motivation of creation, theprocess of the creation, and the audience's evaluations of Symphony No. 7.Section 2: The form structure of the work. The four movement bends are all basedon the classical formal structure, and fuse more than two principles of musical formwhich make out the commixture musical form of Prokofiev's characteristic.Section 3: The structure of the melody. The melody of the work is reformed on thebasis of the traditional music melody, whose characteristic can summarize as: thehorizontal polytonality, asymmetric phrase, often using the jumped interval, and theexpanded melodic range.Section 4: The combination characteristics of rhythms. The work adopts the normal rhythm unit, the regular system of bar, the structure of accent of periodic time, andpolyphonic tonal rhythm, which forms an important characteristic of the work.Section 5: The modality of the harmony. Based on functional harmony of majorand minor, the work maintains the organizational role of major and minor triad;emphasize the leading position of keynote and central chord, and using a lot of coloredchromatic harmony and modern harmony with the special language of " Prokofiev'sharmony", which forms the peculiar harmony style in "song of composer's swan".Section 6: The technique of the tonality. The tonality layout of the work is veryelaborate; the technique of the tonality is extremely various. It combines the moderntechnical with traditional technique, and blends them into the traditional tonal music, sothat it became the typical and ingenious example in classical and modern music.Section 7: Polyphony and orchestral characteristic. Using little polyphony, thetechnique of the work has both the speciphic variation polyphony in Russian folk musicand contrasting polyphony. On orchestrating, the work has adopted the traditionalorchestra and clear orchestration.Chapter 3: The art characteristic and aesthetic ideology of the work. SymphonyNo. 7 combines tradition with modern, and fuse the objectivity, the nationality, lyricism,which has broadness on creational idea. The unique lyric styles in the work expressAesthetic of Feeling, and also represent his brilliant performance, as a composer of 20thcentury. His musical work has a perfect understanding of refinement and popularization,innovation and inheritance, modernity and simplicity, and that represents a direction indevelopment of music art. That is his most grateful contribution to the development ofmusic art.