Prokofiev's Four Attitudes For Piano

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the years 1904-1909, and the love of Scriabin’s piano works showed in Prokofiev’s early piano pieces. He imitated some of Scriabin’s pianistic techniques in his early piano works like the “repeated-note arpeggios” and “wide-ranging bass”. But he soon turned to seek more radical musical language that completely departs from the romanticism, and during the years 1909-1914 he finished his composition classes and began his course to train as a pianist and conductor. It is in this time he gradually became more and more “scornful of much of traditional music.” His conducting teacher Nikolat Tcherepnin, was a modernist. He tried to foster Prokofiev’s interests in modernism and at the same time rouse Prokofiev’s enthusiasm of the Classical music. Therefore, Prokofiev had a unique way of associating Russian modernism …show more content…
2 was written in 1909, and it clearly reflects Prokofiev’s early style. As Nestyev says, “for a brilliant and powerful virtuoso style, [Etudes] still contain elements of the Romantic pianism of Rachmaninov and Medtner, but the general character of the Etudes, with their predominant trait of stormy expressiveness, is completely Prokofiev’s own”. The romanticism Prokofiev used in Four Etudes for Piano projects his early search for his music style that was influenced by his early devotion to the Classics and Romanticism. Four Etudes for Piano Op. 2 is comprised of four short pieces: 1. D Minor; 2. E Minor; 3. C Minor; and 4. C Minor. These short pieces are titled by their key signatures: they have distinct characters and they do not relate to each other. Prokofiev’s intention in Etude, Op. 2, No. 1 is to test the broken chord construction. Based on his strong link with the Romanticism, Prokofiev attempted his new modernist language in the Etude for Piano Op. 2. However, compared with Sarcasms, the new modernist language is relatively plain. The broad range of the arpeggios imitates the style of his predecessor Scriabin and

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