Nevskij's cantata

[Chew G]

Morag Kerr in the letter quoted by Will Ryan, stressing the bad blood between Prokofiev and Stravinsky, doesn't mention another dimension. Prokofiev, while still in Paris, sent Stravinsky scores to his friend Myaskovsky in Russia, at a time (the 1930s) when contacts with western music were reduced. And the Symphony of Psalms was, oddly enough, one of the scores acquired by the Moscow Composers' Union in 1933, so it wouldn't have been difficult for Prokofiev, now back in the Soviet Union, to refer back to the Stravinsky, once he'd decided that real medieval Latin hymns were too outre even for the Eisenstein film. (See Caroline Brooke, "Soviet Music in the International Arena, 1932-1941", in European History Quarterly, 31/2 (2001), 231-64, esp. p. 235.)  The text of the cantata can only, I think, be a reference to Stravinsky's "Catholic psalms".
 
 Geoffrey Chew
 Institute of Musicology, Masaryk University, Brno
 chewg at seznam.cz
 
 Department of Music, Royal Holloway, University of London
 g.chew at rhul.ac.uk

________________________________

From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list on behalf of William Ryan
Sent: Sat 8.3.08 21:43
To: SEELANGS at BAMA.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Nevskij's cantata



The words don't make sense as a continuous text in Latin, as has been
noted in a number of places on the internet, but in a letter 'Prokofiev
and his Cymbals' by Morag G. Kerr, in the The Musical Times, Vol. 135,
No. 1820. (Oct., 1994), pp. 608-609 (available via JSTOR), it is pointed
out that the words are separate phrases from the text chosen by
Stravinsky for his Symphony of Psalms and may have been a bit of a joke.
It is the most plausible explanation I have seen.
Will Ryan


The Musical Times, Vol. 135, No. 1820. (Oct., 1994), pp. 608-609.


Giampaolo Gandolfo wrote:
>     In Aleksandr Nevskij's cantata (Prokof'ev) the invading crusaders sing a song in Latin, where two lines don't make sense to me:
>
>     Peregrinus expectavi
>     pedes meos in cimbalis
>     Vincant arma crucifera!
>     Hostis pereat!
>    
> What is the meaning of the first two lines? They dont make any sense to me, neither grammatically nor logically; and how do they relate to the first two?
>     Any idea? Thank you.
>             Giampaolo Gandolfo
>             
>
>  

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