Musical Faces of Post-Irony: «Sad Rayok» and «Forgotten Motives» by Mark Buloshnikov

Abstract

The term “post-irony”, which is gradually entering the research community, has not yet taken a stable position in the system of musicology. Nevertheless, post-irony as a special facet of the comic, which implies the inclusion of a lyrical component in an ironic statement, often acts as an individual composer’s method. At the same time, the ways in which the ironic and lyrical principles are embodied largely depend on the genre of the work and the style context in which it was created.
Representative examples of the embodiment of post-irony were the works “Sad Rayok” (2015) and “Forgotten Motives” (2023) by Mark Buloshnikov, a representative of the generation of millennial composers. The works by Buloshnikov considered in the article demonstrate a close artistic reading of the same theme: irony over the cultural myths and “stamps” of the Soviet period is organically combined in them with a touch of sadness and nostalgia. Analysis of the mentioned opuses allows us to determine some specific features of post-irony. Among them is a close connection with the principle of oscillation. At the same time, the characteristic oscillation between irony and sincerity can be embodied not only in a literary text, but also at the level of the title and the author’s commentary. In addition, post-irony often involves looking into the past through the prism of objective and subjective principles, the desire for a personal interpretation of previous events. Hence — retrospection as the conceptual basis of the essay, as well as reflection, the result of which is a feeling of belonging to the past, nostalgia or a deliberate increase in psychological distance.

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