Dmitry Shostakovich and Music for Stalinist Cinema (1936-1953)

Book excerpt: "Dmitry Shostakovich was the first Russian musician to emerge as a composer for the Soviet cinema in the late 1920s. The Early Film Music of Dmitry Shostakovich (OUP, 2016), the first of a trilogy on Shostakovich's music for cinema, provides a discussion of his first experiments in film scoring from 1928 to 1936. From 1936 to 1953, he grew into his role as film composer during the height of Stalinism. This book, the second of the trilogy, continues the work of the first by providing an examination of his emergence as a preeminent film composer, and his navigation of the Soviet film industry amidst the cultural politics of late Stalinism. Based on archival materials and contemporaneous press, I interpolate musical analysis of eighteen scores with contemporaneous reception as part of a socio-cultural history of his late Stalinist film scoring. I frame this discussion using the concepts of the mainstream and middlebrow to highlight the complex role of Shostakovich's film music within Soviet arts culture. His experience with diverse filmmakers, genres, and styles allowed him the opportunity to experiment with film scoring and musical meaning, which revealed his heterogenous and thorough knowledge of musical styles, and integration of classical and popular musical trends. This unusual and varied experience makes him an excellent case study for examining the development of the film composer within Soviet film industry during late Stalinism, and situates his scoring within an emerging global film music history"--