Sound film captivated Sergey Prokofiev during the final two decades of his life: he considered composing for nearly two dozen pictures, eventually undertaking eight of them, all Soviet productions. Hollywood luminaries such as Gloria Swanson tempted him with commissions, and arguably more people heard his film music than his efforts in all other genres combined. Films for which Prokofiev composed, in particular those of Sergey Eisenstein, are now classics of world cinema. Drawing on newly available sources, Composing for the Red Screen examines - for the first time - the full extent of this prodigious cinematic career. Author Kevin Bartig examines how Prokofiev's film music derived from a self-imposed challenge: to compose "serious" music for a broad audience. The picture that emerges is of a composer seeking an individual film-music voice, shunning Hollywood models and objecting to his Soviet colleagues' ideologically expedient film songs. Looking at Prokofiev's film music as a whole - with well-known blockbusters like Alexander Nevsky considered alongside more obscure or aborted projects - reveals that there were multiple solutions to the challenge, each with varying degrees of success. Prokofiev carefully balanced his own populist agenda, the perceived aesthetic demands of the films themselves, and, later on, Soviet bureaucratic demands for accessibility.

A long-awaited, much-needed contribution to Prokofiev studies and Soviet cinema history. In Kevin Bartig's account, Alexander Nevsky, a showcase score of enduring appeal, becomes utterly fresh, and Ivan the Terrible even more compellingly bizarre. Highlights include a meticulous chronicle of the unfinished film The Queen of Spades, one of the great might-have-beens in the Soviet canon. Bartig also makes the case for the commercial (or at least educational) release of Tonya, a propagandistic film of modest musical appeal, while also filling in details of Prokofiev's service to Soviet power during the Second World War. * Simon Morrison, author of The People's Artist: Prokofiev's Soviet Years *

Kevin Bartig is Assistant Professor of Musicology at Michigan State University.