knowledgable musicians! what kind of music is this?

Question

if any of you know music genres well, i think you will be able to help me. all i know is that it sounds like soviet era ww2 music. i would love to know what composers wrote these or any that sound like these. (the third link is a flash game, the in-game music is the one i like) i looked up soviet music, but they are mostly happy propagandish marches. i want the slow , sad pieces like the ones in the links.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFEXQKK2Kvo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GknIvO21Jw
http://www.addictinggames.com/stalingradsprint.html

Answer 1

This is something of a specialist area of mine. The first contributor is leading you astray somewhat in that the composers he has suggested are all about 50 years too early - writing music in pre-revolutionary Tsarist Russia in the 'nationalist' style prevalent in the second half of of the nineteenth century.

None of the three extracts on the links is composed by Soviet composers. There is a large amount of music you can explore if you like slow, sad pieces. To start with I would suggest some Shostakovich. He was very active through WWII and either side of it (he died in 1975). Some pieces of his to get you going would be:

Symphony No 5 (Written in 1937 but has some of the sort of music I think you're looking for).
Symphony No 7 'Leningrad' (written in 1941 at the height of the siege of Leningrad has music almost entirely inspired by the effects of the war on the people of his home city).
Symphony No 8 (lots of tragic music in here - written in 1943 and is an extended requiem about the war. Music of great sadness and savagery here).
Symphony No 11 'The Year 1905'. Listen especially to the third movement 'Eternal Memory' (this work is about the abortive 1905 uprising but contains very graphic and 'cinematic' music).
Shostakovich also wrote 34 film scores of varying quality. Among those that might interest you are:
The Fall of Berlin (1949)
Five Days, Five Nights (1960)
Hamlet (1964)
Also listen to the 8th, 9th and 10th string quartets. Music on a smaller scale but no less effective. The 8th famously looks back at the bombing of Dresden at the end of WWII.

You could also listen to Khachaturian's Second Symphony from 1942 - the third movement is a threnody for those falling in the war.

Another very effective symphony, although a tougher nut to crack is the 6th of Prokofiev - but perhaps leave that until a bit later.

There is, as you already know, a lot of sub-standard propaganda music out there and so I have deliberately passed that by. The link below might prove useful to you in exploring music from this era more fully.

Enjoy! Thjere are some wonderful gems you are about to discover.

Answer 2

Then - the film music by Shostakovich (eg "Five days - five nights). Tou could give Schnittke a try as well (My Past and My Thoughts). What about Roussel and Albéric Magnard?
Rodion Shchedrin has written some sad, if not depressing, music.

I think you might also like Gavin Bryars'music about the Sinking of the Titanic.

Answer 3

I don't recognize any of that music specifically. It sounds to me more like movie music than classical orchestral music. However, the Soviet composer who was famously active in that time was Dmitry Shostakovich. Some of his symphonies match the mood of your music.

Answer 4

it honestly relies upon on how fundamentalist the Imam you ask is. only like music and dancing in Christianity. There are fundamentalist communities who evaluate it a one way fee ticket to hell, at the same time as interior the church around the corner, there is making a song. the middle East, even after the creation of Islam has created particularly some music. only the unusual fundamentalists who're against it.

Answer 5

listen to;
Cui, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, and even Tchaikovsky,...but since this is video game music-it could be composed by a modern composer using russian romantic idiom.
i would strongly suggest you listen to Gustav Mahler, and John Williams too!

Answer 6

try aaron copland's music...

and you can also try music of John Williams and Vangelis... they are good cinematic composers... they can bring you to a different dimension.