Prokofiev completed the scores to two of the projected three Ivan the Terrible films directed by cinematic pioneer Sergei Eisenstein and set in the sixteenth century. Eisenstein (1898 - 1948) never finished the third chapter, nor did Prokofiev fashion concert versions from his scores as he had done with two of his most popular efforts for film, Lieutenant Kije and Alexander Nevsky. Why he did not is puzzling, but he may simply have feared that extracting a suite might be politically unwise; Eisenstein, owing largely to his work on these films, had come under attack for "formalism" by Stalin's lackeys in the arts, and Stalin himself suspected that Eisenstein was drawing parallels between Ivan's autocratic ways and his own.

Prokofiev's original scores call for mezzo-soprano and bass soloists, chorus, and orchestra. It is impossible to divide their music conveniently into movements or sections. One method is to count each scene in the films with music as a separate number, even if the music in that scene continues without break from the previous one. By that reckoning, there are over 50 numbers, including sections that Prokofiev inserted from the Russian Orthodox liturgy.

After Stalin's death, the films were rehabilitated and Prokofiev's scores unearthed. Abram Stasevich fashioned a popular cantata-like concert version consisting of 25 numbers, and added narration. Around 1990 Christopher Palmer and Michael Lankester each made elaborate and well-conceived concert suites based largely on Stasevich's pioneering effort. The Palmer/Ivan consists of 19 sections and omits narration; the Lankester/Ivan has 29 separate numbers, but adds even more narration than is contained in the already verbally padded Stasevich version.

The music in the first two cues that Prokofiev composed introduce Ivan's theme (a muscular, heroic melody, typically given by the brass) and a rhythmically driven passage that features a variation on the Ivan theme played by the oboe. These two sections provide the music in the Overture sections of the various other versions of Ivan. The fourth and fifth cues in Prokofiev's Ivan contain the music for "Ocean-Sea" (No. 3) in the Stasevich and Lankester versions and for "Russian Sea" (No. 2) in the Palmer.

Analysis of this sort could continue at length, but one can summarize the styles and artistic worth of the Ivan versions with the observation that the original Prokofiev scores are rich in melody (containing, among other famous creations, a theme the composer also used in his opera War and Peace, most notably in the big closing chorus) and colorful in its vocal writing and orchestration. But, most important, Prokofiev captured the drama in the film with music of such vivid character that the notes seem almost to convey the very action and dialogue of the characters.

Of the concert versions, the Stasevich—minus its totally superfluous narration—is the most effective, reducing the score to a more workable size, distilling its best moments, adding necessary bridge passages, and even adding a few sections, such as a well-known humming chorus using that War and Peace theme, that were not in the film scores.

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