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9780199315147

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Joan Titus's exciting book on Dmitry Shostakovich richly demonstrates the importance of a synthetic approach to music studies - in this case, a study of how a young, classically trained composer learned to write for popular new media and developed as an artist in the process. Titus illustrates how the composer coped with the challenges, both technical and political, in producing sounds, scores, and songs for each movie and how he eventually pioneered successful models of film music that were intelligible for the masses. --Beth Holmgren, Duke University With an impressive set of scholarly tools that span many methods and disciplines and an essential companion website that contains clips from difficult-to-find early Soviet films, Titus's study of Shostakovich's early film scores adroitly introduces a new world of important details and ideas to our understanding of both Shostakovich's music as well as Soviet cinema and culture. --Neil Lerner, Davidson College A welcome addition to the ever-growing field of film music studies. Joan Titus has brought the complex contexts for early Soviet film and film music to vivid life. Hers is that rare kind of interdisciplinary study that benefits both from her extensive knowledge of period documents and willingness to engage with questions of interest to scholars today. Her book also provides tantalizing new insights and speculations on the cross-influences of soundtracks and symphonies in Shostakovich's compositional career. --David Haas, University of Georgia

Joan Titus's exciting book on Dmitry Shostakovich richly demonstrates the importance of a synthetic approach to music studies - in this case, a study of how a young, classically trained composer learned to write for popular new media and developed as an artist in the process. Titus illustrates how the composer coped with the challenges, both technical and political, in producing sounds, scores, and songs for each movie and how he eventually pioneered successful models of film music that were intelligible for the masses. --Beth Holmgren, Duke University With an impressive set of scholarly tools that span many methods and disciplines and an essential companion website that contains clips from difficult-to-find early Soviet films, Titus's study of Shostakovich's early film scores adroitly introduces a new world of important details and ideas to our understanding of both Shostakovich's music as well as Soviet cinema and culture. --Neil Lerner, Davidson College A welcome addition to the ever-growing field of film music studies. Joan Titus has brought the complex contexts for early Soviet film and film music to vivid life. Hers is that rare kind of interdisciplinary study that benefits both from her extensive knowledge of period documents and willingness to engage with questions of interest to scholars today. Her book also provides tantalizing new insights and speculations on the cross-influences of soundtracks and symphonies in Shostakovich's compositional career. --David Haas, University of Georgia Joan Titus's book is the first systematic study of the composer's film-music. It is therefore a most welcome contribution to both Shostakovich studies and the growing body of film-music scholarship. Titus deals with aesthetic and ideological considerations that affected the Soviet film-industry during the technological passage from silent to sound films in her introduction and throughout the book. Her discourse on these subjects is interesting and thought-provoking. --Slavic Review

Author Information

Joan Titus is an associate professor of musicology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. With a background in musicology, film studies, and Slavic, her research interests span cultural politics, music for Russian/Soviet film, gender and music, and indigenous music.

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