Shostakovich / Stalin: A Different Type of Partnership in Film Music

Abstract

Dmitri Shostakovich was one of the greatest 20th-century composers, although his style was »moderate« in comparison with other trends. The fact that he also composed a large amount of music for the cinema is often ignored or not given due importance. Our intention in this article is firstly to reflect on a specific stage of his musical and cinematographic career, in which, for different reasons, he was obliged to compose music for political and propagandist films in keeping with the values established by the Soviet government of the time and, in particular, films praising the figure of the »butcher-dictator« Iosif Stalin. We will try to understand and analyse these compositions from various viewpoints and, at the same time, the composer’s complex and problematical relationship with Stalin. We also go beyond the title of this article in our analysis of the main aspects of other stages of his compositions for the cinema, in addition to giving a reflective analysis of the reasons why his music for the cinema has scarcely been assessed and, in relating these reasons to the position to which general musicology has relegated music for the cinema, we aim to establish a series of conclusions on the subject.