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Zusatztext Bartig takes a fresh look at Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky music through a variety of cultural lenses, examining not only the film score itself, but all the various incarnations and appropriations of its music. Behind the elegant and very readable text lies a mountain of solid archival research that lends his book great authority. Even those who already have a close knowledge of the Nevsky music and its history will still undoubtedly find much that is new. Informationen zum Autor Kevin Bartig is Associate Professor of Musicology at Michigan State University and author of Composing for the Red Screen: Prokofiev and Soviet Film (Oxford University Press, 2013). Klappentext Audiences have long enjoyed Sergei Prokofiev's musical score for Alexander Nevsky, a historical film that cast a thirteenth-century Russian victory over invading Teutonic Knights as an allegory of contemporary Soviet strength in the face of Nazi warmongering. The cantata that Prokofiev derived from the score has proven even more popular and remains one of his most-performed works. This critical companion explores this music and the ways in which it has engaged listeners, performers, and artists throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, tracing its path from state propaganda to repertory classic. Zusammenfassung Audiences have long enjoyed Sergei Prokofievs musical score for Sergei Eisensteins 1938 film Alexander Nevsky. The historical epic cast a thirteenth-century Russian victory over invading Teutonic Knights as an allegory of contemporary Soviet strength in the face of Nazi warmongering. Prokofievs and Eisensteins work proved an enormous success, both as a collaboration of two of the twentieth centurys most prominent artists and as a means to bolster patriotism and national pride among Soviet audiences. Arranged as a cantata for concert performance, Prokofievs music for Alexander Nevsky music proved malleable, its meaning reconfigured to suit different circumstances and times. Author Kevin Bartig draws on previously unexamined archival materials to follow Prokofievs Alexander Nevsky from its inception through the present day. He considers the musics genesis as well as the surprisingly different ways it has engaged listeners over the past eighty years, from its beginnings as state propaganda in the 1930s to showpiece for high-fidelity recording in the 1950s to open-air concert favorite in the post-Soviet 1990s. Inhaltsverzeichnis Acknowledgements About the Companion Website Chapter One: Origins, Advantages, Anxieties Chapter Two: Creating a Blockbuster Chapter Three: The Thirteenth Century in Sounds Chapter Four: Nevsky Goes to War Chapter Five: From Hot War to Cold War Chapter Six: Nevsky after the USSR Appendix Further reading ...
