Search results for ""Author Jay Leyda""

Sergei Rachmaninoff A Lifetime in MusicSergei Bertensson and Jay Leyda, with the assistance of Sophia SatinaWith a new introduction by David Butler CannataAn indispensable and captivating document, now back in print!Throughout his career as composer, conductor, and pianist, Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) was an intensely private individual. When Bertensson and Leyda's 1956 biography appeared, it lifted the veil of secrecy from several areas of Rachmaninoff's life, especially concerning the genesis of his compositions and how their critical reception affected him.The authors consulted a number of people who knew Rachmaninoff, who worked with him, and who corresponded with him. Even with the availabilty of such sources and full access to the Rachmaninoff Archive at the Library of Congress, Bertensson, Leyda, and were tireless in their pursuit of privately held documents, particularly correspondence. The wonderfully engaging product of their labors masterfully incorporates primary materials into the narrative. Almost half a century after it first appeared, this volume remains essential reading.Sergei Bertensson, who knew Rachmaninoff, published other works on music and film, often with a documentary emphasis.Jay Leyda wrote extensively on Russian music and film, as well as on American literature.David Butler Cannata is Professor of Music at Boyer College of Music, Temple University.Sophia Satina was Rachmaninoff's sister-in-law and cousin.Russian Music Studies—Malcolm Hamrick Brown, founding editor

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Sergei Eisenstein's greatness lies not only in his films, such as Potemkin or Ivan the Terrible, or his contributions to the technique and art of the cinema but also in his contributions as a theoretician and philosopher of the art. This edition includes a new translation of Eisenstein's essay on Orozco. Originally published in 1982. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

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Filmmaker Alexander Medvedkin (1900 89), a contemporary of Sergei Eisenstein and Alexander Dovzhenko, is celebrated today for his unique form of "total" documentary cinema, which aimed to bridge the distance between film and life, and for his use of satire during a period when the Soviet authorities preferred that laughter be confined to narrowly prescribed channels. This collection of selected writings by Medvedkin is the first of its kind and reveals how his work is a crucial link in the history of documentary film. Although he was a dedicated communist, Medvedkin's satirical approach and social critiques ultimately led to his suppression by the Soviet regime. State institutions held back or marginalized his work, and for many years, his films were assumed to have been lost or destroyed. These texts, many assembled for this volume by Medvedkin himself, document for the first time his considerable achievements, experiments in film and theater, and attempts to develop satire as a major Soviet film genre. Through scripts, letters, autobiographical writings, and more, we see a Medvedkin supported and admired by figures like Eisenstein, Dovzhenko, and Maxim Gorky. This is a rich testimony to the talent and inventiveness of one of the Soviet era's most revolutionary filmmakers.

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Few figures in cinema history are as towering as Russian filmmaker and theorist Sergei Mikhailovitch Eisenstein (1898-1948). Not only did Eisenstein direct some of the most important and lasting works of the silent era, including Strike, October, and Battleship Potemkin, as well as, in the sound era, the historical epics Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible he also was a theorist whose insights into the workings of film were so powerful that they remain influential for both filmmakers and scholars today. Seagull Books is embarking on a series of translations of key works by Eisenstein into English. On Disney, which was begun in 1940 but was never finished, was part of a series of essays Eistenstein wrote on masters of cinema; for Eisenstein, Walt Disney offered a way to think about how such impulses and animism and totemism survived in modern consciousness and art. This edition presents the original, unfinished essay along with material on Disney that Eisenstein worked on in subsequent years but never succeeded in integrating with the original.

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