Composing for the Red Screen - Prokofiev and Soviet Film (Hardcover)

Sound film captivated Sergey Prokofiev during the final two decades of his life: he considered composing for nearly two dozen pictures, eventually undertaking eight of them, all Soviet productions. Hollywood luminaries such as Gloria Swanson tempted him with commissions, and arguably more people heard his film music than his efforts in all other genres combined. Films for which Prokofiev composed, in particular those of Sergey Eisenstein, are now classics of world cinema. Drawing on newly available sources, Composing for the Red Screen examines-for the first time-the full extent of this prodigious cinematic career. Bartig examines how Prokofiev's film music derived from a self-imposed challenge: to compose "serious" music for a broad audience. The picture that emerges is of a composer seeking an individual film-music voice, shunning Hollywood models and objecting to his Soviet colleagues' ideologically expedient film songs. Looking at Prokofiev's film music as a whole-with well-known blockbusters like Alexander Nevsky considered alongside more obscure or aborted projects-reveals that there were multiple solutions to the challenge, each with varying degrees of success. Prokofiev carefully balanced his own populist agenda, the perceived aesthetic demands of the films themselves, and, later on, Soviet bureaucratic demands for accessibility.

General

Imprint:	Oxford UniversityPress
Country of origin:	United States
Series:	Oxford Music/Media Series
Release date:	May 2013
First published:	May 2013
Authors:	Kevin Bartig (Assistant Professor of Musicology)
Dimensions:	238 x 162 x 23mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover
Pages:	256
ISBN-13:	978-0-19-996759-9
Categories:	Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Musical scores, lyrics & libretti Books > Arts & Architecture > Performing arts > Films, cinema > General Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Theory of music & musicology > General Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Western music, periods & styles > 20th century music Books > Music > Musical scores, lyrics & libretti Books > Music > Theory of music & musicology > General Books > Music > Western music, periods & styles > 20th century music Promotions
LSN:	0-19-996759-8
Barcode:	9780199967599

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