Kevin Bartig, Ph.D. 2008

Advisor: Annegret Fauser

Dissertation Title: Composing for the Red Screen: Sergei Prokofiev’s Film Music

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Dissertation Abstract:

Sergei Prokofiev’s film scores are unique among music composed for the cinema in having attained a notable popularity in concert halls across the world. Prokofiev accomplished this feat, moreover, while working in the complicated and oppressive artistic milieu of Stalinist Russia. Prokofiev’s film scores were tremendously influential on subsequent generations of film composers, effectively shaping one of the twentieth century’s most prominent and public art forms. Such confluence of continued performance, musical influence and politico-musical interaction is rare in the history of twentieth-century music. 

Prokofiev composed music for eight movies between 1932 and 1946, from the well-known Aleksander Nevsky and Lieutenant Kije to more obscure propaganda films such as “The Partisans” in the Ukranian Steppe and Tonya. Discussion of the composer’s work with film music, including the celebrated collaboration of Prokofiev and director Sergei Eisenstein, has remained remarkably absent from musicological literature. My dissertation explores the film music as a series of composer-director collaborations, each involving different technical problems and aesthetic goals. 

Prokofiev’s film scores furthermore provide a window into the politics of musical life in the Soviet Union of the 1930s and 1940s. Prokofiev’s decision to return to the socialist fold at the exact moment Stalinism had reached a frenzied level fundamentally shaped his work as a composer of film music. This dissertation will draw upon a host of newly declassified archival materials housed in Moscow that will help to clarify and reinterpret the ways in which Prokofiev’s music was tied to and shaped by the Soviet regime.

Recipient of the Glen Haydon Dissertation Award

Dr. Bartig is currently Professor of Musicology at Michigan State University, where he also serves as Chair of the Musicology Area. He specializes in Eastern European music and culture in the twentieth century. A book based on his dissertation was published in 2013, and in 2017 he published a second book entitled Sergei Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky. He received a Teacher-Scholar Award from Michigan State in 2010.