Ru
EnA. Tsuker
Johannes Brahms in Odessa manner: a detective movie and popular musical classics
Classical music has long been widely used in the cinematography, performing various expressive functions. More often it is included in the structure of films as in-frame music, when it is performed, listened to or heard by characters, but often it is addressed exclusively to the audience as off-screen music, externally unmotivated. A special case is the inclusion of popular classics in a film. It is all about its general popularity. Classical music, unfamiliar to the mass listener-viewer, functions as ordinary, authorial. Another matter is the quotation of classics, which has long lived a double life, as academic with the corresponding functioning and as a component of mass musical culture, filling the modern everyday environment, considerably depreciated and actively replicated in it. Generating a wide range of extra-musical associations not related to its noble origin, it requires special responsibility when introduced into the cinematographic context. Its citation can give a striking effect, but only if it becomes a special-purpose technique.
The article examines the use of the theme of the third movement (Poco Allegretto) of Brahms’ Third Symphony in Sergei Ursulyak’s cult series “Liquidation” (2007). It would seem, what connection could there be between a thrilling detective story with its tough, sometimes bloody plot and Brahms’ subtle poetic lyrics, which also sound off-screen, that is, not motivated by the plot? But slightly modified by the composer Enri Lolashvili, but within the limits of recognition, it becomes the spokesman for that semantic line that neither words nor images are able to reveal. Everything that the main character of the film cannot say is finished by Brahms’ music. Thus, it turns out to be an independent voice of the cinematic whole of the entire series, falls into the very center of its concept and, moreover, influences its genre profile.
Key words
classical music, cinematography, TV series, detective, “Liquidation”, Sergey Ursulyak, Brahms, Poco Allegretto.
For citation
Tsuker A. Johannes Brahms in Odessa manner: a detective movie and popular musical classics. In: South-Russian Musical Anthology. 2025. No. 2. Pp. 61–67.
