Alexandre Nevski (Prokofiev)

Music of film

History

It is about the third composition of Prokofiev for the cinema, after Lieutenant Kijé (Alexandre Feinzimmer 1933) and the Queen of spades (Mikhail Romm - unfinished - 1936).

Prokofiev knows Sergueï Eisenstein, which it finds on its return to Moscow, to have met it on several occasions abroad. When in May 1938 the scenario writer asks him to work with him for Alexandre Nevski, Prokofiev expresses its enthusiasm:

"When Eisenstein proposed to me to write a partition for the film Alexandre Nevski, I accepted with pleasure, because I for a long time admired his splendid talent of director. During our work, the interest did not cease growing and Eisenstein appeared not only one brilliance director, but a musician very fin".

On his side the scenario writer judges " gleaming of images triomphales" a music " who is not satisfied to be illustrative" . This first ideal collaboration will continue with Ivan the Terrible.

The film recalls an event headlight of the Russian history at the 13th century: opposition of Alexandre Nevski to the invasion of the country by the teutonic knights and in particular the Battle of the lake Peïpous which put an end to their Eastern expansion. Per hour when threat the Nazisme, the valiantly carried out fight and the victory obtained brilliantly by the young prince against teutons at the 13th century will take patriotic value of ideal.

Modus operandi

The total partition, for chorus and orchestra of studio, includes/understands 21 sections which are as many musical counterpoints to the images of film. The shortly after the disappearance of the type-setter, André Martin written in the Books of the cinema in connection with collaboration enters the two geniuses:

"Eisenstein and Prokofiev proceed in three ways:

1° by creating the images according to a music composed before;

2° by creating the music according to the images composed before;

3° by constructing any whole without distinct order

the secrecy does not reside in these insufficient receipts, but in the way of touching the choses."

The scenario writer works on the relation between the image and the sound to define the expressivity of his actors or the virtuosity of the sways in the crowd. The musician benefits from the expressionnism of the images of Eisenstein.

The images invent the music: Prokofiev finds the sonority of the small orchestra of the battle only when Eisenstein shows exactly what he wants while turning the scene. The music invents the images: if Prokofiev has an idea settled on the advance of its music, Eisenstein modifies its catch of sight.

This symbiosis between two creative geniuses finds its result in fantastic the " Battle on the glace" , which sees the victory of Nevski over Teutons. The assembly of film, for this memorable sequence, is carried out compared to the music recorded beforehand under the direction of Samuel Samossoud.

After the composition, Prokofiev is also implied in the recording of its music, in particular seeking to exploit the distances from the microphones to obtain desired sonorities. It makes for example place the horns representing the Teutoniques Knights very close them microphonous to confer a slightly distorted sound to them or to record coppers and choruses separately. Eisenstein brings back the remarks of the musician thus:

"The idea me has just known if it were possible to employ the “negative” sides of the microphone in order to obtain particular effects: it is known, for example, that the emission forces of a sound in a microphone damages the film and causes a noise unpleasant to hearing. As the sound of the teutonic trumpets was incontestably unpleasant to the Russian ears, I made directly play the brass band in the microphone, which caused a dramatic effect curieux."

At the culminating point of the battle, the crackings, the cries, exclamations and the rattlings of the band its take over music, before being melted there again. Eisenstein thus describes the fusion of visual and the sound one:

" acts of a audio-visual work, especially expressive images replacing the text traditionally sung, in an opera for example: never music and effective dialog are not superimposed, while the great choruses reappear readily like leitmotivs, indicating to us which are the thoughts of the protagonists, often shown dumb and without movement. To the music thus returned the role to animate this offset of the " héros" , opposed to the healthy turbulence of some characters chosen in humble folk (and to which no music is affected). "

Esthetics

Apart from a few moments of inevitable emphase, the music of Alexandre Nevsky is invigorating, vibrating, cordial. It is the purest style epic of Prokofiev. In connection with the cinematographic character of the writing of the type-setter, written Eisenstein:

"Its music is surprisingly plastic, it is never an illustration; it shows in an astonishing way walk of the events, their dynamic structure in which the émotion." is concretized;

Prokofiev is initially tempted to use an authentic music of the 13th century. But the Gregorian chants of the Roman Church appear to him far too foreign being able to cause the imagination of its Soviet contemporaries and besides, nobody knows really what could sing while delivering battles seven centuries ago knights teutons or valorous Russians. Despite everything its research, Prokofiev does not manage to find the music which it could have incorporated in its work for the crusaders. It thus decides to describe the parties while exploiting specific atmospheres: martial and sinks, raucous, coppered and dissonant stamps, with Latin song ( " Peregrinus Expectavi, Fags meos, In cymbali" ) to evoke the cross Teutoniques Knights; full and sound melody lines and rich harmonies for the Russian defenders; popular songs and stories for the Russian people. Eisenstein brings back the remarks of the musician thus:

"The action, located at XIIe century, is built on two opposite elements: on a side the Russians, other of the crusaders let us teutons. Natural temptation was to employ the music of the time, but the study of the catholic songs showed that, during seven centuries, they had moved away so much from us and that their emotive contents had become to us so foreign, that they were not enough any more to satisfy the imagination of the spectator. For this reason it was much more interesting to interpret them, not as they had been at the time of the Battle on the ice, but as felt we them actuellement."

As a Master of the orchestration, Prokofiev invents strongly coloured rates/rhythms, dense, and robust but can also be tender and lyric. The hardness of the images of Eisenstein the steel of the music answers. The musical drama east impresses EC power virulent and coloured which underlines the energy and the tension of the action., As a born playwright, it draws a picture epic which culminates in the Battle on the ice and precedes what the musician will write later in Guerre and Paix . The vastness of space is geared down by a reason for a perfect simplicity posed on a vast perforated sound scale of broad gapings. The music of Prokofiev translates the emotional load of the ultimate attack on the cold lake, not of organ of the epopee. In the Battle on the cold lake of which the length represents more than one third of film, are entrechoquent the two topics, teutonic and gloomily conqueror, Russian and amply melody. In the final table, the winner, vis-a-vis the corpses and with the ruin of a devastated ground, contemplates the horizon coldly when the soprano entonne his song of compassion full with hope. André Martin still writes:

"For the occupation of Pskov by the Teutons Crusaders, Prokofiev combines sordid agreements, lugubrious behaviors which it still worsens by a convulsif and asthmatic swinging of low. This barbarian orchestra is attached directly to Prokofiev of the " Scythe" continuation; written in 1914. The disfigured melodies, the rough polyphony which accompanies the Teutons knights opposes the clearness of the Russian topics, for which the rich orchestra once and for all, sounds with an amazing dash, fascinating support on arpeggios which shake all the pupitres" .

The orchestration of Alexandre Nevski, model of polyphony, is balanced and effective in the small formations as in large manpower which are not pasted and never telescope.

The Cantata opus 78

Film with the cantata

Prokofiev draws from its music a cantata for mezzo-soprano, chorus and orchestra in seven parts taking again the most significant passages of film and lasting approximately forty minutes. It is created the May 17th 1939 by the orchestra philarmonic of Moscow under the rod of Prokofiev (Valentina Gagrina, mezzo-soprano). Dedicated to the 60 years of Stalin it is already received from the public before becoming a true patriotic song after the declaration of war.

The most notable difference between the two partitions lies in manpower employed. The second invoice however appears to be only one traditional reduction for an orchestra of average size. It seems that, for the cantata, Prokofiev simply worried to establish a coherent original music division, without seeking to make a new work of it nor even operate important modifications.

The evocative power of the music of Prokofiev allows the listener who does not know film to feel, with the listening of the cantata, an emotional load as intense as that which reappears with the memory of the work of Eisenstein.

Cutting

1. " Russia under the Mongolian yoke " (minor C)

the introductory movement represents a table of ravaged Russia by the invader.

2. " Song on Alexandre Nevski" (B flat)

This movement evokes the memory of the victory on the Swedish troops close to Néva in 1240 of prince Alexandre Iaroslavitch, become " Nevski" , and the hope raised in the heart of the Russian people.

3. " Crusaders in Pskov " (C minor sharp)

This part takes again the atmosphere dark of the first movement, but introduced the specific topic of the Teutoniques Knights.

4. " Upright, Russian people! " (E flat)

This movement, in form of popular song, represents the call to the weapons in the towns of Russia.

5. " The battle on the glace"

the fifth, and longest, movement represents the battles final between the troops of Alexandre Nevski and the Teutoniques Knights on the cold surface of the Lac Peïpous in 1242. After a beginning evoking the paddle on the cold lake, the ride of the troops is made hear and the battle begins. The paroxysm of its violence is expressed by cacophonous and dissonant sounds.

6. " The field of the morts" (minor C, mezzo-soprano)

After the battle, an young girl seeks her beloved among the bodies of deaths which she blesses, singing its pain and the sacrifice of the heroes.

7. " The entry of Alexandre Nevski in Pskov" (B flat)

the last movement makes echo with the second and fourth, and represents the joy of the Russian people at the time of the return and the triumphal entry of Alexandre in the town of Pskov.

Orchestration

the cantata opus 78 is written for Mezzo-soprano soloist, chorus and Symphony orchestra.

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