Boris Asaf'ev and the Soviet Musicology - E-thesis

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phenomena into the area of artistic imagination, nor the naturalistic exposure of the
sensual sphere. Like any activity of man, which apprehends and recognizes reality, music
is directed by the consciousness and represents rational activity. The sensual (i.e., the
emotional) tonus, inevitably characteristic of music, is not its cause, for music is an art of
intoned meaning. This art is conditioned by nature and by the process of human intoning;
man, in this process, does not consider himself apart from his relation to reality, and
neither verbal nor musical intonation is exposed by means of mechanical articulation,
removed from the quality of the voice.” 370
As Haas has noted, the shift in Asaf’ev’s usage of the term intonation occurred when
Asaf’ev began to place more emphasis on the phenomenon of internal hearing and the
psychological aspects on producing a musical sound, i.e. the participation of human will
and intelligence. As a result of this new usage, the intonation in music started to
resemble intonation in speech. 371 The change occurred gradually and, as we can see, in
A Book about Stravinsky his conception of the term was already very broad. As
McQuere has pointed out, in his formulation Asaf’ev distinguished two meanings for
the term. In a wide sense music is equal to intonation: the phenomenon of intonation is
all and it explains all in music. In the narrow sense of the word, intonation is “the
designation of separate representative phenomena of meaning in musical art.” 372 Tull
suggests that the primary changes in intonation occurred between the definitions of
“intonation as a manifestation of sound” and “intonation as an interpretation of sound”.
Intonation, understood as the “interpretation” of sound refers to definite connotation of
human communication, purposefulness, while manifestation reports more of acoustic
phenomena. 373
In the final stage of his concept, i.e. in the book of intonation, Asaf’ev “postulated
regional, social, and historical “vocabularies” of intonation and drew upon a Marxist
understanding of history and social change to explain the evolution and life-cycles of
370 Asaf’ev: Intonation 1977, pp. 904–905.
371 Haas 1998, p. 60.
372 McQuere 1983, p. 225.
373 Tull 1977, p. 157.