Peter and the Wolf
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Peter and the Wolf is a composition by Sergei Prokofiev written in 1936 after his return to Russia. It is a children's story (also written by Prokofiev) spoken by a narrator accompanied by the orchestra.
Under the communist regime in the Soviet Union, leader Joseph Stalin had ordered that art had to reflect the communist ideal and that music had to be simple and understandable. Prokofiev wrote this piece, which has been a great success with children and adults alike.
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[edit] Instrumentation
Peter and the Wolf is scored for flute, oboe, clarinet (in A), bassoon, 3 horns, trumpet, trombone, timpani, triangle, tambourine, cymbals, castanets, snare drum, bass drum and strings. Each character in the story has a particular instrument and a musical theme, or leitmotif:
- Bird - Flute
- Duck - Oboe
- Cat - Clarinet
- Grandfather - Bassoon
- Wolf - 3 Horns
- Hunters (gunshots) - Timpani and Bass Drum (The hunters' theme is actually introduced by the woodwinds)
- Peter - String instruments
[edit] Storyline
Peter, a young boy, lives with his grandfather in the Russian countryside. One day Peter leaves the garden gate open, and the duck takes the opportunity to go swimming on the nearby pond. She starts arguing with a little bird ("What kind of bird are you if you can't fly?" - "What kind of bird are you if you can't swim?"). A cat sneaks up on them, and the bird – warned by Peter - flies into a tall tree.
Peter's grumpy grandfather takes him back into the garden and locks the gate in case the wolf comes. Shortly afterwards the wolf does indeed come out of the woods. The cat climbs into the tree, but the duck, who has left the pond, is swallowed by the wolf.
Peter fetches a rope and climbs over the garden wall into the tree. He asks the bird to fly around the wolf's head, while he lowers a noose and catches the wolf by his tail.
Hunters come out of the woods and fire at the wolf, but Peter stops them. Everyone leads the wolf to the zoo in a triumphant procession. At the end one can hear the duck quacking in the wolf's stomach, "because the wolf had swallowed her alive".
[edit] Related works
Walt Disney produced an animated version of the work in 1946, with Sterling Holloway providing the voice of the narrator. This version makes small changes to the original Prokofiev story, particularly in providing names for the characters — Sasha the bird, Sonia the duck, and Ivan the cat, for instance. It was released theatrically as a segment in Make Mine Music, then separately on home video in the 1990s on.[citation needed]
Hans Conreid recorded the narration with a Dixieland Band in or around 1960. Since there is no oboe in a Dixieland Band, the part of the duck was played by a saxophone.[citation needed]
The Clyde Valley Stompers recorded a jazz version on Parlophone Records (45-R 4928) in 1962, which registered on the pop charts of the time.[citation needed]Allan Sherman parodied the work in a 1964 album called Peter and the Commissar, made with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra.[citation needed]
In 1975, Robin Lumley and Jack Lancaster produced a rock version with their fusion group Brand X as the soundtrack for an animated film. Their music makes use of some of Prokofiev's original themes. Along with Vivian Stanshall as the narrator, the staff is illustrious (among others Gary Moore, Manfred Mann, Phil Collins, Bill Bruford, Stephane Grappelli, Alvin Lee, Cozy Powell, Brian Eno, Jon Hiseman), the music very heterogeneous - from psychedelic rock to jazz (Grappelli's violin solo on the motif of the cat).
A sequel to the story was written by Justin Locke in 1985 using the original score. "Peter VS. the Wolf" also requires four actors for a stage presentation. [1]
"Weird Al" Yankovic and Wendy Carlos produced a comedic version in 1988, using a synthesized orchestra and many additions to the story and music. (Peter captures the wolf using his grandfather's dental floss, leading to the moral of the story, "Brush and floss your teeth every day").[citation needed]
A 1990 episode of Tiny Toon Adventures titled Buster and the Wolverine featured Elmyra Duff providing narration for a story where Buster Bunny and his friends, represented with musical instruments, combat an evil "wolverine". In this episode, the characters' instruments are: Buster Bunny, a trumpet; Babs Bunny, a harp; Furrball, a violin; Sweetie Pie, a flute; Hamton J. Pig, a tuba; Plucky Duck, a bike horn (later, bagpipes, then an organ, and finally a synthesizer); and the wolverine, drums.[citation needed]Peter Schickele wrote an alternate, comedic text for the score entitled "Sneaky Pete and the Wolf" for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in 1993.[citation needed]
In September 1996, Coldcut (a duo of scratch/mix djs from south London) released a scratch version of the main theme - included on the track "More Beats and Pieces", from their album "Let Us Play" (released by Ninja Tune.[citation needed]
In 2001, National Public Radio produced Peter and the Wolf: A Special Report, which treats the familiar plot as if it were a developing news story. Robert Siegel, Linda Wertheimer, Ann Taylor, Steve Inskeep of NPR's All Things Considered report onthe event against a performance of the score by the Virginia Symphony.[citation needed]Sesame Workshop produced a version with Sesame Street characters in 2001 as told by way of a trip to a Boston Pops concert. Dubbed as "Elmo's Musical Adventure," the story unfolds inside Baby Bear's imagination as he attends a performance with Papa Bear, conducted by Keith Lockhart. In the story, Peter is played by Elmo, the cat by Oscar the Grouch, the duck by Telly Monster, the bird by Zoe, the grandfather by Big Bird, and the hunters by the Two-Headed Monster. Each character is followed around by a soloist playing that character's instrument.[citation needed]
In February 2004, Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Sophia Loren won a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children for narrating the Russian National Orchestra's album Peter and the Wolf/Wolf Tracks. This recording included Loren narrating Peter and the Wolf and Clinton narrating The Wolf and Peter by Jean-Pascal Beintus, which is also a narrated orchestral piece, but the story is told from the perspective of the wolf and has the theme of leaving animals to live in peace.[citation needed]
In 2006, Neil Tobin produced a Halloween themed narrative with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, John Lanchbery conducting.[citation needed]
