Sergei Prokofiev: Quotes about people

Sergei Prokofiev was Ukrainian & Russian Soviet pianist and composer. Explore interesting quotes on people.
Sergei Prokofiev: 14   quotes 4   likes

“The time is past when music was written for a handful of aesthetes. Today vast crowds of people have come face to face with serious music and are waiting with eager impatience. Composers, take heed of this…But this does not mean that you must pander to this audience. Pandering always has an element of insincerity about it and nothing good ever came of that.”

Sergei Prokofiev

Page 106; from a notebook entry (1937).
Sergei Prokofiev: Autobiography, Articles, Reminiscences (1960)

People , Music , Time , Waiting

“Formalism is music that people don’t understand at first hearing.”

Sergei Prokofiev

Quoted in Boris Schwarz Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 1917-1970 (1972) p. 115.

People , Music , Understanding

“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 human 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. Such is the immutable code of art as I see it.”

Sergei Prokofiev

Page 136; from his "Music and Life" (1951).
Sergei Prokofiev: Autobiography, Articles, Reminiscences (1960)

Life , People , Art , Future