Features of Intertextuality in the Musical Oeuvres of Alexander Bakshi

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.