Liszt and Mahler in the postmodern filmic visions of Ken Russell

• Authors: Ryszard Daniel Golianek
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

PL

The British film and television director Ken Russell is esteemed principally for creating filmic biographies of composers of classical music. In the 70s, he shot his most original films on musical subjects: fictionalised, highly individual composer biographies of Mahler (Mahler) and Liszt (Lisztomania), which are the subject of the article. Neither of the films is in the least a realistic documentary biography, since Russell’s principal intention was to place historical biographical facts in cultural contexts that were different from the times in which Mahler and Liszt lived and worked. This gave rise to a characteristically postmodern collision of different narrative and expressive categories. Russell’s pictures remain quite specific commercial works, exceptional tragifarces, in which the depiction of serious problems is at once accompanied by their subjection to grotesque deformation and the demonstration of their absurdities or denaturalisation. The approach proposed by this British director, in which serious issues are accompanied by elements of triteness, is a hallmark of his style. The director’s musical interests are reflected by the fundamental role of music in the structure of his cinematographic works. The choice of musical works also denotes a kind of aesthetic choice on the director’s part, especially when the composers’ biography comes into play.

Keywords

PL

Ken Russell; Gustav Mahler; Franz Liszt; film; postmodern

• Publisher: Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu
• Journal: Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology
• Year: 2014
• Issue: 13
• Pages: 171-182

Dates

published

2018-10-17

Contributors

author

Ryszard Daniel Golianek

• Polish musicologist, professor at the Department of Musicology of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. His scientific interests are mainly focused on the history and aesthetics of music of the 19th century, with opera being one of the main topics of his research. After graduating musicology (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, 1988) and cello (Musical Academy in Poznań, 1989), he obtained his Ph.D. in musicology (1993), presenting the dissertation on the dramaturgy of Dmitri Shostakovich’s string quartets (published in 1995). In his postdoctoral career he was involved in research projects on programme music (habilitation, 2000) and on the work of Juliusz Zarębski (Jules Zarembsky), 19th century Polish pianist and composer (publications: catalogue of his works, monograph, edition of his newly found works). In the years 2006-2010 he studied Giuseppe Poniatowski’s life and operatic output, and since 2011 he works on the Polish threads in the 19th century European music. Since 1999 he also teaches at the Musical Academy in Łódź, having the post of the visiting professor.