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)

Abstract

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.