Features of Intertextuality in the Musical Oeuvres of Alexander Bakshi

Abstract

Intertextuality is one of the most important phenomena of the contemporary art of music
which expresses its dynamic, dialogic nature. Intertextuality in the musical art of the late
20th and early 21st centuries can be discovered in the form of implementations of vernacular
genres, quotations of other styles, endowing high imagery with grotesque qualities, the musical
dethronement of heroes, caricatured “diminishment,” as well as conferring of fatal or mechanical
traits to previously declared images. The present ideas received development in the musical
works of Moscow-based composer Alexander Bakshi, who works at the crossing of musical,
plastic and playing elements, avoiding unicity of word and notation, aspiring towards a semantic
polyphony. The musical oeuvres of Bakshi are unique, because they present examples of several
types of intertextuality aligning themselves on the basis of the model of instrumental theater, on
the principle of interaction of music and the plastic arts in dramatic theater, as well as in the use
of stylistic intertextual interactions. Intertextuality in his compositions may reveal itself on the
micro-, macro- and mega-levels. Such appliances within the framework of avant-garde musical
compositions act as a mechanism of correction, endowment of grotesque qualities, and “breaking”
of the old codes of organization and transformation. In addition, new means of communication in
the dynamic semantic processes of the musical world also appear.

Keywords: intertextuality, musical semantics, stylistic resonance, stylistic allusion, paradox,
grotesque, Alexander Bakshi.