Bartig - Sergei Prokofievs Alexander Nevsky

Oxford KEYNOTES

Series Editor KEVIN C. KARNES

Aaron Coplands Appalachian Spring

ANNEGRET FAUSER

Arlen and Harburgs Over the Rainbow

WALTER FRISCH

Arvo Prts Tabula Rasa

KEVIN C. KARNES

Beethovens Symphony No. 9

ALEXANDER REHDING

Rodgers and Hammersteins Carousel

TIM CARTER

Sergei Prokofievs Alexander Nevsky

KEVIN BARTIG

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Oxford University Press 2017

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bartig, Kevin author.

Title: Sergei Prokofievs Alexander Nevsky / Kevin Bartig.

Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2017] | Series: Oxford

keynotes | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017006985 | ISBN 9780190269562 (hardcover : alk. paper) |

ISBN 9780190269579 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780190269593 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Prokofiev, Sergey, 1891-1953. Aleksandr Nevski (Cantata) |

Prokofiev, Sergey, 1891-1953. Aleksandr Nevski (Motion picture music)

Classification: LCC ML410.P865 B37 2017 | DDC 781.5/42092dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017006985

INTRODUCTION

O XFORD KEYNOTES REIMAGINES THE canons of Western music for the twenty-first century. With each of its volumes dedicated to a single composition or album, the series provides an informed, critical, and provocative companion to music as artwork and experience. Books in the series explore how works of music have engaged listeners, performers, artists, and others through history and in the present. They illuminate the roles of musicians and musics in shaping Western cultures and societies, and they seek to spark discussion of ongoing transitions in contemporary musical landscapes. Each approaches its key work in a unique way, tailored to the distinct opportunities that the work presents. Targeted at performers, curious listeners, and advanced undergraduates, volumes in the series are written by expert and engaging voices in their fields, and will therefore be of significant interest to scholars and critics as well.

In selecting titles for the series, Oxford Keynotes balances two ways of defining the canons of Western music: as lists of works that critics and scholars deem to have articulated key moments in the history of the art, and as lists of works that comprise the bulk of what consumers listen to, purchase, and perform today. Often, the two lists intersect, but the overlap is imperfect. While not neglecting the first, Oxford Keynotes gives considerable weight to the second. It confronts the musicological canon with the living repertoire of performance and recording in classical, popular, jazz, and other idioms. And it seeks to expand that living repertoire through the latest musicological research.

Kevin C. Karnes

Emory University

in particular.

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The reader is invited to explore the full catalog of Oxford

Keynotes volumes on the series homepage.

www.oup.com/us/oxfordkeynotes

M UCH LIKE THE MULTIMEDIA work it celebrates, this book was in many ways a collaborative effort. Many institutions, archivists, librarians, colleagues, and friends made researching and writing the chapters that follow possible, and it is a great pleasure for me to thank them here. First and foremost, I owe a debt of gratitude to Kevin Karnes. A more enthusiastic and supportive series editor does not exist, and I will always be thankful he encouraged me to write this book. Suzanne Ryan and Norm Hirschy at Oxford University Press made everything about writing and publishing this book easier, and I consider myself fortunate to have worked with them. In Moscow, the staffs of the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art and the State Archive of the Russian Federation ensured that my research was as fruitful as possible. For financial support, I am grateful to Michigan State Universitys Humanities and Arts Research Program.

My debts to friends and colleagues are many. Annegret Fauser helped me get this book started, and I treasure her unflagging encouragement. Daniel Callahan, Maria would not be as rich had William David Brohn not answered my many questions about his reconstruction of Alexander Nevskys score so thoroughly. Marina Frolova-Walker and Patrick Zuk both read a draft of the entire manuscript, and their wisdom and insights made the final book much better. Finally, Alicia Levin, Sarah Long, and Russell Schwab patiently listened to me ramble on about this book and, being the great friends they are, distracted me when I most needed it. Thank you, all of you.

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FIGURE 1.1 Pavel Korins painting of Alexander Nevsky (1943) as it appeared on a 1967 Soviet postage stamp. Wikimedia Commons.

These connections are not coincidental. Pavel Korin, the Soviet artist who painted the image on Name of Russias website during the depths of the Second World War, was aware his audience knew nothing of medieval iconography. They did, however, know Sergei Eisensteins Alexander Nevsky, a 1938 film that dramatized a chapter in Alexanders By 1938, Hitlers crescendoing belligerence weighed on minds across the European continent, and Alexanders concluding proclamation echoed as a statement of contemporary foreign policy long after the theater lights came up. It also stirred patriotism and, by mobilizing historical imagery through such emotional appeals, granted the USSR a long, legitimizing past. Produced in a country that built its postwar identity on wartime sacrifice and victory, Alexander Nevsky survived the Stalin era, as present for Soviet citizens at the height of the Cold War as it was for the Name of Russia voters in the Putin era.