Sergei Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kijé music was written to accompany the film of the same name, produced by the Belgoskino film studios in Leningrad in 1933–34. The five-movement suite was first performed in December 1934, and quickly became part of the international concert repertoire. Elements of the suite’s score have been used in several later films, and in two popular songs of the Cold War era.
About Lieutenant Kijé (Prokofiev) in brief
Sergei Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kijé music was written to accompany the film of the same name, produced by the Belgoskino film studios in Leningrad in 1933–34. The five-movement suite was first performed in December 1934, and quickly became part of the international concert repertoire. It has remained one of the composer’s best-known and most frequently recorded works. Elements of the suite’s score have been used in several later films, and in two popular songs of the Cold War era. In the first years of the silent film era, from the 1890s, films were generally accompanied by live music, often improvised, provided by piano or pump organ. The score for the 1916 classic The Birth of a Nation, compiled by Joseph Carl Breil from various classical works and some original writing, was a landmark in film music, and inspired notable composers of the day to provide scores for silent films. In 1929, Prok ofiev was asked to write the music for The Blue Angel and The Murderer’s Murderer, with some contributions from Dimitri Shostakovich. In 1932, the Belgian film studios of Ladenrad asked the composer to write music for the expatriate film The Exterminate. In 1933, he was commissioned to score the film’s soundtrack, which was released in March 1934. The soundtrack was his first film music commission, and his first commission for a feature-length film.
He was also the first Russian composer to work on a feature film, with the score for The Red Badge of Courage (1934) being released in 1936. He also composed music for several short films, including The Red Balloon (1936) and The Red Cauldron (1938). In the 1950s, he wrote music for two feature films, The Red Lion (1949) and The Blue Angel (1952) with some additional music from Shostakovitch. He died in Moscow in 1983, at the age of 83. He is buried in the Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, where he lived with his wife and two children. His son, Vladimir, is also a well-known composer, having worked on the scores for several films and TV shows, including The Godfather, The Godfather and The Searchers. His daughter, Yevgeny, has written a number of books, including a biography of Prok Ofiev, and has written several books of her own. She is also an accomplished pianist, having played the harp, the viola, the cello, the violin, and the contrabass, among other instruments. She died in 2011, aged 89, and is survived by her husband and three children. She was buried in a cemetery in the town of Yekaterinburg, Russia, where she had lived since the 1930s. She had been married to her husband for more than 30 years, and they had three children, all of whom were born in Russia.
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