Alexander Nevsky () is the score composed by Sergei Prokofiev for Sergei Eisenstein's 1938 film Alexander Nevsky. The subject of the film is the 13th century incursion of the knights of the Livonian Order into the territory of the Novgorod Republic, their capture of the city of Pskov, the summoning of Prince Alexander Nevsky to the defense of Rus', and his subsequent victory over the crusaders in 1242. The majority of the score's song texts were written by the poet Vladimir Lugovskoy.
In 1939, Prokofiev arranged the music of the film score as the cantata Alexander Nevsky, Op. 78, for contralto (often sung by mezzo-sopranos but not in fact in that range), chorus and orchestra. It is one of the few examples (Lieutenant Kijé is another) of film music that has found a permanent place in the standard repertoire, and has also remained one of the most renowned cantatas of the 20th century.
Eisenstein, Prokofiev, and Lugovskoy later collaborated again on another historical epic, Ivan the Terrible Part 1 (1944) and Part 2 (1946, Eisenstein's last film).
Alexander Nevsky, film score (1938)
Composition history
The score was Prokofiev's third for a film, following Lieutenant Kijé (1934) and The Queen of Spades (1936). Prokofiev was heavily involved not just with the composition, but with the recording as well. He experimented with different microphone distances in order to achieve the desired sound. Horns meant to represent the Teutonic Knights, for instance, were played close enough to the microphones to produce a crackling, distorted sound. The brass and choral groups were recorded in different studios and the separate pieces were later mixed.
Prokofiev employed different sections of the orchestra, as well as different compositional styles, to evoke the necessary imagery. For instance, the Teutonic Knights (seen as the adversary) are represented by heavy brass instruments, playing discordant notes in a martial style. The sympathetic Russian forces are represented predominantly by folk-like instruments such as woodwind and strings, often playing quasi-folksong style music.
Publication history
In 2003, German conductor Frank Strobel reconstructed the original score of Alexander Nevsky with the cooperation of the Glinka State Central Museum of Musical Culture and the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI). The score is published by Musikverlage Hans Sikorski, Hamburg.
Performance history
The film Alexander Nevsky premiered on 23 November 1938 at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.
The concert premiere of the complete original film score, as reconstructed by Frank Strobel, took place on 16 October 2003, accompanied by a showing of the film at the Konzerthaus Berlin. Strobel conducted the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Ernst Senff Chor, with mezzo-soprano Marina Domashenko as soloist.
The Russian premiere of the restored film score took place on 27 November 2004 at the Bolshoi Theatre.
Instrumentation
Strings: violins I & II, violas, cellos, double basses
Woodwinds: piccolo, 2 flutes, 3 oboes (including English horn), 3 clarinets (including E-flat clarinet), 2 bass clarinets, 2 alto saxophones, 2 tenor saxophones, 3 bassoons (including contrabassoon) Brass: 4 horns, 5 trumpets (including cornet), 3 trombones, bass trombone, 2 tubas Percussion: timpani, 2 snare drums, bass drum, cymbals, 2 tambourines, wood block, rattle, triangle, xylophone, tubular bells, tamtam, gong Other: 2 harps, piano Banda: 2 horns, tierhorn, 2 trumpets, tenor flügelhorn
Cues
Film score cues are musical numbers, background music, music fragments (e.g., fanfares), musical soundscape (e.g., bells), or strings of these, forming continuous stretches of music with little or no intervening dialogue. The finished soundtrack of Alexander Nevsky contains 27 cues. The original working titles of the cues in Prokofiev's manuscripts are listed in the table below. The list appears to be incomplete, and the titles themselves are not particularly descriptive.
The first column represents the cue numbers to which the titles likely correspond. The original Russian titles are provided by Kevin Bartig in Composing for the Red Screen, where they are not numbered, but are grouped by thematic content.
The fourth and fifth columns give the German titles and their sequence as provided by Musikverlage Hans Sikorski , the publisher of the restored original film score. This order of the cues does not appear to represent the sequence used in the film.
The table can be sorted by clicking on the buttons in the title bar. The default sequence can be restored by refreshing the browser (press F5).