Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface and acknowledgements
- 1 The ‘silent’ cinema
- 2 Sound on track
- 3 Hollywood's Golden Age: narrative cinema and the classical film score
- 4 Stage and screen
- 5 The mainstream divides: post-war horizons in Hollywood
- 6 ‘Never let it be mediocre’: film music in the United Kingdom
- 7 Defectors to television
- 8 Film music in France
- 9 Global highlights
- 10 Popular music in the cinema
- 11 Classical music in the cinema
- 12 State of the art: film music since the New Hollywood
- Bibliography
- Index of film titles
- General index
9 - Global highlights
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2015
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface and acknowledgements
- 1 The ‘silent’ cinema
- 2 Sound on track
- 3 Hollywood's Golden Age: narrative cinema and the classical film score
- 4 Stage and screen
- 5 The mainstream divides: post-war horizons in Hollywood
- 6 ‘Never let it be mediocre’: film music in the United Kingdom
- 7 Defectors to television
- 8 Film music in France
- 9 Global highlights
- 10 Popular music in the cinema
- 11 Classical music in the cinema
- 12 State of the art: film music since the New Hollywood
- Bibliography
- Index of film titles
- General index
Summary
EARLY SOUND FILMS IN THE SOVIET UNION
Dmitri Shostakovich
Kozintsev's and Trauberg's The New Babylon had allowed Shostakovich the opportunity to compose out substantial and elaborate musical conceptions free from the conflicting demands of dialogue and sound effects. As with all composers who had worked in silent film and progressed to the sound film, the sonic competition presented by other elements of the pre-recorded soundtrack forced him to reconsider his approach. The same directors' Alone (1931) saw Shostakovich in less expansive mode, though typically indulging in both grotesque parody and simple leitmotivic techniques; rather bitty music had been added to this initially silent film in preference to speech and sound effects because reproduction of the last two were notoriously deficient in early Soviet sound technology (Egorova 1997, 15–16). Shostakovich was able to provide fuller cues for The Golden Mountains (dir. Sergei Yutkevich, 1931), for which he wrote the popular song ‘If Only I Had Mountains of Gold’; the score's instrumentation featured a Hawaiian guitar, sitting strangely alongside a neo-classical fugue for organ and orchestra accompanying a scene depicting strikes (Riley 2005, 15–17). Organ music was later to feature prominently in The Gadfly (dir. Alexander Faintsimmer, 1955), with its ‘Romance’ winning popular success.
The Counterplan (dir. Yutkevich and Fridrikh Ermler, 1932), the soundtrack for which included an ondes martenot and a creative use of factory noises of which Clair and Vigo might have approved, spawned another Shostakovich hit tune: the banal, diatonic and patriotically uplifting ‘Song of the Counterplan’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A History of Film Music , pp. 342 - 395Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008