Composing for the red screen Prokofiev and Soviet film - Bartig, Kevin (Oxford University Press, 2013)
Includes bibliographical references and index
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. Drawing on newly available sources, Composing for the Red Screen examines - for the first time - the full extent of this prodigious cinematic career
Introduction -- New media, new means : Lieutenant Kizhe. Cinema and new simplicity ; Outlines ; Music for an absent hero ; Celluloid sound ; Skazka -- The queen of spades, the 1937 Pushkin Jubilee, and repatriation. The new simplicity and Pushkin's "True spirit" ; A silent with a soundtrack ; New music for an old tale ; Committee intervention -- The year 1938 : halcyon days in Hollywood and an unanticipated collaboration. Hollywood, part two ; Popov, Eisenstein, and Prokofiev ; Forging collaborative methods -- Alexander Nevsky and the Stalinist Museum. Epic frame, epic sound ; The "assumed vernacular" ; Prokofiev's Russians ; Stalin Prize -- The wartime films. The path to Alma-ata ; Wartime collaboration ; Authenticity versus "Patriotic resonance" ; Cosmopolitan versus Russian ; Ukrainian partisans ; Realities -- Ivan the Terrible and the Russian national tradition. Outlines ; Ivan in Russian music ; Caricatures and villainy ; Prokofiev's Ivan, Eisenstein's Gesamtkunstwerk ; Eisenstein's multivalency ; Stalin Prize revisited -- Epilogue -- Appendix: Prokofiev, "His respect for music was so great"