Musical Quotation as a Semantic Factor in the Cinematic Texts of the 20th and 21st Centuries (by the Example of Johannes Brahms’ Rhapsody opus 79 No. 2)

This research is devoted to quotation of the music of the Rhapsody opus 79 No. 2 by German composer Johannes Brahms in three motion pictures: “Song of Love” (1947), “Le Phantôme de la liberté” (1974) and “De batter mon Coeur s’est arrȇté” (2005). These films, made by outstanding film producers Clarence Brown, Luis Bunuel and Jacques Audiard, pertain to the genres of biography, comedy of the absurd and drama. The article sets the goal of revealing the meanings arising upon the interaction of the musical quotation with the cinematic texts of the films. Analysis of three films proves that the music of Brahms’ Rhapsody placed in cinematic texts that are different in their genres, styles and time period, conveys a unified field of significations, and in one of the examples brings out the cinematic text to a symbolic level. In several examples it is possible to observe a synthesis of the musical quotation with the video sequence, while, on the other hand, in two examples the musical quotation enters into audio-visual and semantic counterpoint with the cinematic texts. In addition, the musical quotation creates intertextual dialogues between the source of the quotation and the cinematic texts, emphasizing a change of the screen chronotopes, reflecting the protagonists’ feelings and thoughts, enhances the recipient’s emotional response of the events in the film frame, focuses the recipient’s attention on the film’s culmination sections, and influences the motion pictures’ compositional structures. Keywords: Johannes Brahms, cinematic text, musical quotation, meaning, cinematograph, intertextuality in cinema, movie music, Luis Bunuel, Jacques Audiard, Clarence Brown

Art · Linguistics · Literature · Musical · Opus · Cognitive Science and Education Research · Computer Science · Philosophy