After his return to Moscow in 1933, Eisenstein undertook Bezhin Meadow. Several weeks before its completion, however, he was ordered to suspend its production. The scenes already shot were put together by Eisenstein, but the film, which was never released, was attacked as “formalistic” because of its poetic interpretation of reality. Eisenstein thus suffered from the same governmental policies toward art that had embroiled the composer Sergey Prokofiev, the writer Isaac Babel, and many other artists in difficulties with Soviet officialdom.
Having expressed contrition for the errors of his past works, Eisenstein was able to make a film recounting the medieval epic of Alexander Nevsky, in accordance with Stalin's policy of glorifying Russian heroes. Made in 1938, this film transfigured the actual historical events, majestically leading to a final resolution that represented the triumph of collectivism. As in medieval epics, the characters were the strongly stylized heroes or demigods of legend. Produced in close collaboration with Prokofiev, who wrote the score, the film represented a blend of images and music into a single rhythmic unity, an indissoluble whole.
During World War II Eisenstein achieved a work of the same style as Alexander Nevsky and even more ambitious—Ivan the Terrible—about the 16th-century tsar Ivan IV, whom Stalin admired. Begun in 1943 in the Ural Mountains, the first part was finished in 1944, the second at the beginning of 1946. A third part was envisaged, but Eisenstein, suffering from angina pectoris, had to take to his bed for several months. He was about to return to work when he died, only a few days after his 50th birthday.
Most critics would agree that though Eisenstein's three greatest films stand far above the others, all of his work is significant; their flaws are those common to artists probing the limits of their craft. It may be that in the entire history of motion pictures, no other filmmaker has surpassed him in his understanding of his art.
Jean Mitry
Major Works
Films.
Strike (1924); Potemkin (1925); October (Ten Days That Shook the World; 1928); Old and New (The General Line; 1929); Alexander Nevsky (1938); Ivan the Terrible, Part One (1944); Ivan the Terrible, Part Two (1958).
Collections of writings.
The Film Sense (1942); Film Form (1949); Notes of a Film Director (1958); Film Essays (1968).
Additional Reading
Marie Seton, Eisenstein (1952; Eng. trans. 1952); Jean Mitry, S.M. Eisenstein (1955), in French; Léon Moussinac, Serge Eisenstein (1964; Eng. trans. 1970); Yon Barna, Eisenstein (1973).
Schnittke, Alfred
▪ Russian composer
born Nov. 24, 1934, Engels, Volga German Autonomous S.S.R. [now in Saratov oblast, Russia]
died Aug. 3, 1998, Hamburg, Germany
postmodernist Russian composer who created serious, dark-toned musical works characterized by abrupt juxtapositions of radically different, often contradictory, styles, an approach that came to be known as “polystylism.”
Schnittke's father was a Jewish journalist who had been born in Germany but was of Latvian descent, and his mother was a Volga-born German Catholic; he found inspiration for his music in his German origins and in his homeland. From 1946 to 1948 the family lived in Vienna, where Schnittke learned to play piano and studied music theory. His studies were completed at the Moscow Conservatory, where he later taught composition. Like most Soviet composers, Schnittke was required to produce many works in easily digestible Socialist Realist style, particularly film scores, of which he wrote more than 60 between 1961 and 1984.
Schnittke's works embraced a wide range of genres and include seven symphonies, numerous string concerti, a piano concerto, the oratorio Nagasaki (1958), six ballets, much choral and vocal music, as well as arrangements of works by Dmitry Shostakovich, Alban Berg, and Scott Joplin. His best-known works include the Concerto Grosso No. 1 and the Violin Concerto No. 4, for which the violinist was instructed to mime the cadenza rather than actually play it.
Like his great predecessor Dmitry Shostakovich, Schnittke intermingled disjointed elements within a single work, but his combinations were far more jarring—an offhand Beethoven quotation, a distorted folk song, fragments of a medieval chant, and passages of ferociously dense, dissonant serialism might appear within the space of a few minutes.
Schnittke's more demanding experimental works were viewed with official disfavour. Virtually unknown outside the Soviet bloc until the mid-1980s, Schnittke rather suddenly acquired a large following in the West through the efforts of a number of prominent Russian musicians, including Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Gidon Kremer, Yury Bashmet, and Mstislav Rostropovich (Rostropovich, Mstislav). In 1985 Schnittke suffered the first of two severe strokes. Upon recovery, he continued to compose. In 1992 he was a winner of the Praemium Imperiale, awarded by the Japan Art Association for lifetime achievement in the arts. In 1994, in New York City, he attended the National Symphony Orchestra's world premiere of his spectral Symphony No. 6 (1993), dedicated to and conducted by Rostropovich.
Prokofiev, Sergey
▪ Russian composer
Introduction
in full Sergey Sergeyevich Prokofiev
born April 23 [April 11, Old Style], 1891, Sontsovka, Ukraine, Russian Empire
died March 5, 1953, Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R.
20th-century Russian (and Soviet) composer who wrote in a wide range of musical genres, including symphonies, concerti, film music, operas, ballets, and program pieces.
Pre-Revolutionary period
Prokofiev (Prokofjev in the transliteration system of the Russian Academy of Sciences) was born into a family of agriculturalists. Village life, with its peasant songs, left a permanent imprint on him. His mother, a good pianist, became the highly gifted child's first mentor in music and arranged trips to the opera in Moscow. A high evaluation was put upon the boy's talent by a Moscow composer and teacher, Sergey Taneyev (Taneyev, Sergey), on whose recommendation the Russian composer Reinhold Glière (Glière, Reinhold) twice went to Sontsovka in the summer months to become young Sergey's first teacher in theory and composition and to prepare him for entrance into the conservatory at St. Petersburg. The years Prokofiev spent at that institution—1904 to 1914—were a period of swift creative growth. His teachers were struck by his originality, and when he graduated he was awarded the Anton Rubinstein Prize in piano for a brilliant performance of his own first large-scale work—the Piano Concerto No. 1 in D-flat Major.
The conservatory gave Prokofiev a firm foundation in the academic fundamentals of music, but he avidly sought musical innovation. His enthusiasms were supported by progressive circles advocating musical renewal. Prokofiev's first public appearance as a pianist took place in 1908 at a concert series, Evenings of Contemporary Music, sponsored by such a group in St. Petersburg. A little later he met with friendly sympathy in a similar circle in Moscow, which helped him make his first appearances as a composer, at the Moscow summer symphony seasons of 1911 and 1912.
Prokofiev's musical talent developed rapidly. He studied the compositions of Igor Stravinsky (Stravinsky, Igor), particularly the early ballets, but maintained a critical attitude toward his countryman's brilliant innovations. Contacts with the then-new currents in theatre, poetry, and painting also played an important role in Prokofiev's development. He was attracted by the work of modernist Russian poets; by the paintings of the Russian followers of Paul Cézanne and Pablo Picasso; and by the theatrical ideas of Vsevolod Meyerhold (Meyerhold, Vsevolod Yemilyevich), whose experimental productions were directed against an obsolescent naturalism. In 1914 Prokofiev became acquainted with the great ballet impresario Sergey Diaghilev (Diaghilev, Sergey Pavlovich), who became one of his most influential advisers for the next decade and a half.