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

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involuntary reaction in 1962 to being back on Russian soil (which he claimed even had
a particular smell), nevertheless speaks volumes about the continuing importance of his
native origins.” 406
I call the Chapter Four and Chapter Five as my “etudes” or designs which I plan to
develop in my future studies to make more systematical presentation of the developmet
of Asaf’ev’s aesthetical vision. The study of the development of Asaf’ev’s aesthetical
terminology is very challenging for a scholar. He formulates his main concepts over and
over again and reinterprets conventional terminology. Yet his writings are sometimes
contradictory. In addition he tends to use rather original phrases and synthesis of words.
That is why his texts sometimes represent almost more artistic than scholarly endeavors.
These features were very typical to Russian modernist movements and especially to the
Futurists who sought to “liberate the words” following the example of Italian Futurist an
ex-Symbolist Filippo Marinetti’s manifestation of 1912 407 . However, Asaf’ev can not be
regarded as a pure representative of any exact modernist movement. He didn’t turn his
back to Puškin, as the Futurists tried to do. Moreover he continued the Stasovian
tradition and explored the past Russian classical tradition with a fresh insight that was
influenced by the modernist theories.
As it has been argued in this work, Asaf’ev was not a dedicated follower of any
philosophical system, moreover he fused many theories and eventually formulated his
own theory of intonation, which was suitable for socialist realist standards since its
original, esspecially Western idealist philosophical roots were well covered and hidden.
That is why I chose Hillary Fink’s notion as a starting point for this work, i.e. to view
Asaf’ev’s texts trough different modernist and philosophical prisms; and not
straightforwardly (as Orlova has emphasized, that it was not the case with Asaf’ev’s
interpretations) but as they would be different windows towards the understanding of
his concepts. This leads to a conclusion that Asaf’ev’s theories reflect different
modernist tendencies but he was also an original thinker and made his own synthesis.
406
Cross 2003, p. 3. The same problem is discussed in Taruskin 1996, pp. 1–19.
407
Lawton 1988, p. 3.