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Associate Professor in Art and Music Honors Adviser

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Associate Professor in Art and Music Honors Adviser THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY SCHREYER HONORS COLLEGE SCHOOL OF MUSIC HEARING VOICES IN SHOSTAKOVICH UNCOVERING HIDDEN MEANINGS IN THE FILM ODNA CAROLE CHRISTIANA SMITH Spring 2010 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a baccalaureate degree in Music with honors in Music Reviewed and approved* by the following: Eric J. McKee Associate Professor of Music Thesis Supervisor Charles D. Youmans Associate Professor of Music Thesis Supervisor Mark E. Ballora Associate Professor in Art and Music Honors Adviser *Signatures are on file in the Schreyer Honors College. ABSTRACT While the concert works of Dmitri Shostakovich have been subject to much research and analysis by scholars, his works for film remain largely unknown and unappreciated. Unfortunately so, since Shostakovich was involved with many of the projects that are hallmarks of Soviet Cinema or that changed the course of the country‘s cinematic development. One such project, the film Odna (1931), was among the first sound films produced in the Soviet Union and exhibits the innovative methods of combining sound and image in order enhance to audience‘s understanding of the films message. This thesis will examine the use and representation of the human voice in the sound track of Odna and how its interaction with the visual track produces deeper levels of meaning. In designing the sound track, Shostakovich employs the voice in several contexts: recorded dialogue, songs, and vocal ―representations‖ whereby music mimics speech. These vocal elements will be examined through theoretical analysis in the case of music, and dramatic importance in the case of dialogue and sound effects. Also, conclusions concerning the voice‘s narrative role are drawn from the voice‘s synchronization with the visual track as a diegetic, nondiegetic, acousmatic, or ―inner voice‖ entity. The sound techniques that Shostakovich developed for this film had a lasting influence on the development of Soviet sound cinema as a whole. i TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables ..................................................................................................................... iii List of Figures .................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgments................................................................................................................v Introduction ..........................................................................................................................1 Chapter I: Background ........................................................................................................7 Chapter II: Summaries ......................................................................................................14 Summary of the Story ............................................................................................14 Summary of the Sound Track ................................................................................19 Chapter III: Scenes in Leningrad ......................................................................................27 ―Introduction‖ .......................................................................................................27 ―Happy Days are Coming‖ ...................................................................................31 Inner Conflict .........................................................................................................38 The Mismatched Voice ..........................................................................................44 Chapter IV: Scenes in the Altai Mountains ......................................................................54 The Song of the Altai .............................................................................................54 The Song and Dance of the Shaman ......................................................................57 The Lullaby ............................................................................................................62 Chapter V: The Voice of the Bey .....................................................................................68 Revealing the Foe ..................................................................................................71 The Tone of Voice .................................................................................................73 Inflection ................................................................................................................75 Chapter VI: Meta-voice of Soviet Propaganda .................................................................82 The Voices of Communism ...................................................................................85 Sarcasm and Severity .............................................................................................89 Conclusion .........................................................................................................................96 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................101 Appendix: Scores for the Vocal Cues .............................................................................105 ii LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Cue Chart ........................................................................................................... 20 iii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Form of "Introduction" ..................................................................................... 30 Figure 2: Form for "Happy Days are Coming" ................................................................ 35 Figure 3: Form of No. 6 "Happy Days" ........................................................................... 36 Figure 4: Yelena in the Street .......................................................................................... 39 Figure 5: No. 8 mm. 13-16............................................................................................... 41 Figure 6: Shots Inside and Outside .................................................................................. 46 Figure 7: No. 33 mm. 124-128......................................................................................... 77 Figure 8: No. 26 ............................................................................................................... 91 Figure 9: (016) in No. 26 ................................................................................................. 92 Figure 10: No. 17 ............................................................................................................. 93 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to say thank you to all of my professors that aided me in achieving my degree and writing this thesis. I would especially like to acknowledge Dr. Charles Youmans and Dr. Eric McKee for advising me through the research and writing process. Without their encouragement and input, this thesis would have never been written. I also must thank my family and friends for their support. Most of all, I must say thank you to my husband Jeff for his support and patience through long nights of working. His love kept me going through every frustrating time. v Introduction The path of cinematic development took a turn in 1927 when The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson, was released as the first ―talkie‖ film. New technology that allowed for the synchronization of sound with picture opened up new worlds for artistic exploration. In Russia, the introduction of sound technology into film production proved problematic as filmmakers encountered difficulties with unreliable technology, argued over artistic issues, and faced distribution concerns, all of which complicated the production of the first Russian ―talkies.‖1 Odna (Alone), released in 1931, is considered one of the first Soviet sound films. Directors Grigorii Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg could not pass up the chance to experiment with sound synchronization, resulting in the production of a hybrid silent-sound film that, although still using intertitles to communicate much of the dialogue, contains several instances of synchronized dialogue, as well as sound effects, and a full musical score, provided by the young, but talented, Dmitri Shostakovich. This was Shostakovich‘s second attempt at a film score, the first being the score for the film New Babylon (1928). Before the completion of those films, Shostakovich spent several years working in the Splendid Palace Cinema in Leningrad as a cinema pianist, improvising music for the continuous stream of silent films that came through the theater.2 He often used music drawn from the concert repertory, a common practice for any cinema musician in the 1920s. After years of playing Tchaikovsky, Rimsky- 1 Leading Russian filmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein felt that sound should not be used in a realistic way, but in a manner similar to visual montage in which the sound acts as a counterpoint for the visual image rather than resulting from the action. Silent films also had the added benefit of universality. When films were distributed, foreign countries could purchase the films and easily replace the intertitles with translations of the original text. The language barrier in sound films severely limited interexchange of these works. 2 Incidentally, the Splendid Palace also hosted the premier performance of Odna on October 10, 1931. 1 Korsakov, and other Russian greats, the outspoken composer found it necessary that films should have
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