Dmitry Shostakovich and Music for Stalinist Cinema (1936-1953)

“Shostakovich composed music for over thirty films, and yet we know very little of it. In this eagerly-awaited second volume of her survey of Shostakovich’s film music, Joan Titus persuasively shows that the loss is entirely ours. In this fascinating journey through the Stalin-era films, Titus proves an expert guide through the entangled territory of music in the service of propaganda.” Pauline Fairclough, Professor of Music, University of Bristol, author of Classics for the Masses: Shaping Soviet Musical Identity Under Lenin and Stalin

“Dmitry Shostakovich and Music for Stalinist Cinema is a magnificent addition to Joan Titus’s comprehensive treatment of Shostakovich’s film scores. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the composer’s work on film and offers great insight into practices of scoring films outside of Hollywood during the period.” James Buhler, Professor of Music Theory, The University of Texas at Austin, author of Theories of the Soundtrack

“Joan Titus’s study of Shostakovich’s film scoring exposes and clarifies the often fraught relation between the composer’s artistic integrity and the shifting demands of the system of socialist cinema in which he worked.” Claudia Gorbman, Professor Emerita of Film, University of Washington, author of Unheard Melodies

“This essential book, the second in Titus’s ambitious Shostakovich film music trilogy, builds on her highly successful first installment by pressing forward through a crucial time in Soviet history: the late 1930s, World War II, and the postwar period, ending with Stalin’s death in 1953. Impressively interdisciplinary, it is packed with intriguing historical, musical, and filmic observations and interpretations.” Peter J. Schmelz, Professor of Comparative Thought and Literature, Johns Hopkins University, author of Sonic Overload: Alfred Schnittke, Valentin Silvestrov, and Polystylism in the late USSR

“Titus deepens our understanding of Shostakovich and provides one model for how the film music and other lesser studied genres of Soviet composers could be addressed.” — John Leman Riley, DSCH Journal

Joan Titus is Professor of Musicology and Ethnomusicology, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She researches the cultural politics of audiovisual media and has published on the themes of Soviet and Russian film music, indigeneity and transnational identities, and the intersectionality of gender, race, and nationalism in music for screen media.