Film Music Without a Film: Prokofiev’s Ivan the Terrible, Authorship, and Cold War Politics
Kevin Bartig
Throughout his career, Sergei Prokofiev habitually transformed his stage and cinematic works into symphonic suites and cantatas that often reached larger audiences and proved more enduringly popular than the parent work. Prokofiev’s reworking of his film scores in particular yielded two perennial audience favorites, the Lieutenant Kijé Suite (1934) and the Alexander Nevsky Cantata (1939). Yet Prokofiev attempted no such transformation of his longest and most complex film score, written for the two completed parts of Sergei Eisenstein’s cinematic trilogy Ivan the Terrible (Part I, 1944; Part II, 1946), and at the composer’s death in 1953 the score remained unpublished and heard only in the films. The task of fashioning a concert work from the score fell to the Soviet conductor Abram Stasevich, who arranged the Ivan the Terrible film music as an oratorio in 1961, which was followed in 1975 by a ballet that became a showpiece of Soviet cultural exchange in France, England, and the United States. In this presentation, I detail these Ivan the Terrible reworkings and their critical reception during the final decades of the Cold War. Although most critics outside the Soviet Union assumed the Ivan the Terrible Oratorio and Ballet were forms of state propaganda, their evaluations were nevertheless nuanced and illuminate late-Cold War understandings of a range of issues from authorship to the realities of professional composition in the USSR.
Imagining Ireland Musically: The Affordance and Evidence of Late 20th-Century Cinema
Harry White
In this brief paper, I seek to press home the affordance of cinema as an important, if underresearched agent of representing and indeed imagining Ireland musically in reference to the following exemplary films: (a) The Quiet Man (1952) directed by John Ford, music by Victor Young and Dick Farrelly; (b) Mise Éire (1959) directed by George Morrison, music by Seán Ó Riada; (c) Ryan’s Daughter (1970), directed by David Lean, music by Maurice Jarre; (d) Barry Lyndon (1975), directed by Stanley Kubrick, source music (Handel, Bach, Vivaldi, Paisiello, Mozart, Schubert) with original music by Seán Ó Riada, arranged and performed by The Chieftains (e) In the Name of the Father (1993), directed by Jim Sheridan, with original music by U2 and Trevor Jones and source music from various artists. If we concede that cinema itself is arguably the pre-eminent art form of the present day, it is also possible to argue that the representations of Ireland this affords reflect an emerging Irish modernity (from admittedly different perspectives) which has actually been shaped (or at least influenced) through the medium of film.
The Polyphony Between Image and Music in the Crafting of National Myths: Theodor Grigoriu’s Music for Dacii and Columna
Valentina Sandu-Dediu
A major focus in communist Romania in the 1960s was the construction of the so-called “national epic” using cultural and artistic tools. So what better theme could be found for an international super production than that of the forging of the Romanian people in the wars between the native Dacians and the invading Romans? I will present some musical highlights from Theodor Grigoriu’s scores for two of these blockbusters, Dacii (1967) and Columna (1968), to see how the sound contributes to the atmosphere of the film, in conjunction with the script (in both cases by Titus Popovici) and the direction (Sergiu Nicolaescu and Mircea Drăgan respectively). Grigoriu, who comes from a moderate modernist background in the context of Romanian post-war composition, has a great deal of experience working with Romanian cinema (some 25 film scores), which he also theorizes in interviews and essays. The composer’s voice in these two historical movies favors sparse and evocative interventions instead of large symphonic pages, maintaining a certain balance between dissonant modal language and suggestions from the realm of Romanian folklore.
Swinging Between Communist Propaganda and the Illusion of Westernization: Richard Oschanitzky’s Music in the Films Parașutiștii and Un comisar acuză
Florinela Popa
After the July 1971 Theses, in which Ceaușescu harshly criticized “the plodding towards what is foreign and especially towards what is produced in the West”, it was no longer possible to make films in communist Romania without a clear, “on the line” ideological orientation. The idealization of everyday life in the communist present and the falsification of history became sine qua non conditions for Romanian film in the next two decades. And yet, after those (few) years of freedom and apparent openness to the West (ca. 1968-1970), when the public could enjoy a few foreign films, especially “American” ones, Romanian filmmakers tried to find a middle way between communist propaganda and certain Western models. Without such compromises, the films had no real chance of getting past the censors. The films I will focus on in this paper – one current (Paratroopers, directed by Dinu Cocea) and the other historical (A Commissar Accuses, directed by Sergiu Nicolaescu) – are eloquent of this schizoid and, in many ways, implausible conception. What role did the music, composed in both cases by Richard Oschanitzky (1939-1979), play in this complex equation? To what extent did it, in its turn, suggest the two distinct worlds? These are questions I will reflect on in my paper.
MUSIC OF AN ARRESTED FILM: Paul Constantinescu and His Music for the Film Romania in the Fight Against Bolshevism or Our Holy War (1941)
Nicolae Gheorghiță
Paul Constantinescu (1909-1963) is one of the most prolific Romanian film music composers and probably the first author of such productions even before the establishment of communism in Romania, in the aftermath of the coup d’état on August 23, 1944. Although he was initially seen as a true star in Romanian music, who received awards and was praised by the specialized press and had his music scores published by Universal Edition in Vienna, Constantinescu had an extremely turbulent destiny in the local music scene, as he was stigmatized by all three dictatorships under which he lived: Iron Guard (Legionary Movement), Antonescu’s, and the communist one. This study analyses the music of the war documentary Romania in the Fight Against Bolshevism or The Holy War (1941) and the political context in which this cinematographic creation appeared, a film that was never broadcast during the communist period.
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