Music and Sound in Slavic and Eastern European Cinema

by

Joan Titus

• LAST MODIFIED: 17 April 2025
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791286-0384

Introduction

English language study of music and sound for cinema in eastern Europe is relatively new. With two decades of rumblings, this emerging subfield has seen contributions from three overlapping yet distinct disciplines: music studies (musicology, ethnomusicology, and music theory); cinema and media studies; and Slavic and East European studies. The majority of these disciplines’ writers are scholars, with occasional contributions from librarians and archivists. Together, they provide a variety of perspectives: some focus on music as primary object, while others take broader approaches to sound. The result has been a preponderance of activity between cinema/media studies, Slavic/East European, and music studies; with musicology and music theory occupying a liminal space between the other fields. In music studies, the earliest scholars focused on known composers to introduce their disciplines to discussions of film music outside of Hollywood. This focus on celebrated composers such as Dmitry Shostakovich and Sergey Prokofiev, and later Isaak Dunayevsky, occurred simultaneously with writings on film sound and music in Slavic/East European studies. Within the past decade, those approaches have begun to overlap and join in the middle, complementing each other and creating a dialogue between music studies broadly and Slavic/East European and cinema/media studies. Numerous edited volumes resulted, while few journal articles appeared. Since film music and other kinds of sound study in visual media was new, particularly for this region, edited volumes were initially the main venue for this type of scholarly expression. The number of scholarly monographs also has grown since 2013, firmly positioning several approaches: the study of an individual’s work, sometimes as case study for cultural politics; and study of sound design and/or voice in cinema. Most recently, scholarship in all three disciplines has moved away from Russian centricity and includes more of eastern Europe: first Poland, then other regions including Romania, Hungary, Ukraine, and Czech Republic, to name a few. On the topic of Russia, there has been growing interest in post-Stalinist film musics, with a continued favoring of the avant-garde. With this continued expansion of topic and region, what was once a few interested scholars writing about music and sound across three related fields has coalesced to form a subfield. Additionally, scholarship on music and sound by eastern European scholars is starting to appear in various languages. Recently, there has been an increase in bilingual scholars from that region who are publishing in English. If the publications on “global” musics and on eastern European film sound in recent years are any indication, this subfield of music and sound for Slavic and East European cinema will continue to become more complex and interdisciplinary.

General Histories and Overviews

There are currently few long histories or subject-centered overviews of music for cinema in eastern Europe. Most scholarship, as cited earlier, focuses on case studies, texts, or certain composers with specific arguments about form, style, or sociocultural contexts. The general histories listed in this section differ from this research. Dixon 2022 and Riley 2005, for example, provide a general overview of a particular composer’s work, while Kaganovsky 2018 offers a perspective of a period, and Egorova 1997 a general history of film music as genre. The small number of these broader histories indicates that the field of Slavic and East European music for cinema is still growing, particularly in music studies fields.

• Dixon, Gavin. “Film Music.” In The Routledge Handbook to the Music of Alfred Schnittke. By Gavin Dixon, 257–271. New York: Routledge, 2022.

  This section of the Routledge Handbook provides an overview of Schnittke’s film scores. Dixon organizes it by director chronologically, noting the composer’s unique working relationship with each director, while adding contexts for Schnittke’s aesthetic choices.

• Egorova, Tatiana K. Soviet Film Music: An Historical Survey. Translated by Tatiana A. Ganf, and N. A. Egunova. Amsterdam: Overseas Publishers Association, 1997.

  The only survey of Slavic and East European film music in English, translated from Russian. Provides an overview of Soviet film music, using specific films as case studies and discussion of others relevant films. Focuses primarily on aesthetics, style, and form; and occasionally on director-composer relationship, as with the Eisenstein-Prokofiev collaboration.

• Kaganovsky, Lilya. The Voice of Technology: Soviet Cinema’s Transition to Sound, 1928–1935. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018.

  DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt21215vm

  Contends with the Soviet transition to sound cinema, arguing that the Soviet Union had a varied and long shift to sound. Examines the idea of sound, the voice, and technology in this long transition, demonstrating how filmmakers attended these issues in several case studies.

• Riley, John. Dmitri Shostakovich: A Life in Film. London: I.B. Tauris, 2005.

  This short book on Shostakovich’s film music (from 1929 to 1971) provides brief discussions on the composer’s scores. It is designed for a general readership, and relies primarily on secondary sources instead of archival or primary source materials.