Composing for the screen in Germany and the USSR

Fülszöveg

FILM & MEDIA
RUSSIA & EASTERN EUROPE
Robynn J. Stilwell and Phil Powrie begin to redress the dearth of scholarship on the vibrant, productive, politically charged and yet under-researched period of film music in Germany and the Soviet Union before WWII. The book looks at the role of cultural politics, including propaganda, in the Nazi and Soviet regimes, and how composers from Germany and the USSR drew on ideals of a mythic past in order to promote their existing ruling powers. A focus on the theoretical and aesthetic writings of the period necessarily highlights the influence of two key figures: the filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein in the USSR, and the film composer Hanns Eisler in Germany. Essays also address political influences on the scores of Sergei Prokofiev, Edmund Meisel, and Herbert Windt, as well as the impact of cinema on Alban Berg's opera Lulu. While most of the chapters concentrate on pre-1940 topics, two chapters look at the continuation of earlier aesthetics in more... Tovább

Fülszöveg

FILM & MEDIA
RUSSIA & EASTERN EUROPE
Robynn J. Stilwell and Phil Powrie begin to redress the dearth of scholarship on the vibrant, productive, politically charged and yet under-researched period of film music in Germany and the Soviet Union before WWII. The book looks at the role of cultural politics, including propaganda, in the Nazi and Soviet regimes, and how composers from Germany and the USSR drew on ideals of a mythic past in order to promote their existing ruling powers. A focus on the theoretical and aesthetic writings of the period necessarily highlights the influence of two key figures: the filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein in the USSR, and the film composer Hanns Eisler in Germany. Essays also address political influences on the scores of Sergei Prokofiev, Edmund Meisel, and Herbert Windt, as well as the impact of cinema on Alban Berg's opera Lulu. While most of the chapters concentrate on pre-1940 topics, two chapters look at the continuation of earlier aesthetics in more recent film and music products.
Robynn J. Stilwell is Assistant Professor of Music in the Department of Art, Music and Theatre at Georgetown University. She is editor (with Phil Powrie) of Changing Tunes: The Use of Pre-existing IVIusic in Film.
Phil Powrie is Professor of French Cultural Studies at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Most recently, he is author (with Bruce Babington, Ann Davies, and Chris Perriam) of Carmen on Film: A Cultural History (Indiana University Press, 2007).
Cover illustration © Darko Novakovic Vissza