A Musical Story by Sergei Prokofiev

In The Case of Wagner Nietzsche says, "Wagner begins from a hallucination-not of sounds but of gestures. Then he seeks the sign language of sounds for them...how he separates, how he gains small units, how he animates these, severs them, and makes them visible" (Kaufmann 626). This musical story of Peter and the Wolf, written by Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev in 1936, is a perfect example of the format in which Nietzsche describes Wagner to have worked in. The gestures, in this case, are the individual characters of the story, such as Peter, Grandpa, the duck, and the bird. The "sign language of sounds" is so much more than sounds alone but individual instruments that have their own tone, quality, and color. Each character has an instrument (or in the protagonists case, a group of instruments) assigned to them which delineates their place in the narrative. Just as Wagner separates, severs, and animates these small units the characters and instruments are introduced to us one-by-one. Even as the story is told the pieces are individually represented but strung together to show us the progression of the story.



The story is in two parts, and I know it is a bit long but I think it should be listened to it in its entirety. If not to pick out the similarities that it has with Nietzsche's words regarding Wagner then at least to find out what happens to Peter and his friends.

Kaufmann, W. The Basic Writings of Nietzsche . New York: The Modern Library, 2000.