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

subordinate to politics and didn’t want to destroy the ties to the tradition for the reason
that it was easily accessible for the masses. His idea was to establish massive
institutions that would unite all the public activity. NARKOMPROS (The Peoples
Commissariat of Enlightenment) was appointed to conduct all the spiritual-, artistic- and
educational activities. All the private publication houses were nationalized and put
under the NARKOMPROS. MUZO, the musical section of NARKOMPROS was
founded in 1918, and Lenin ordered also Proletkult to join it in 1920 to cut its
independency.
Despite all the changes, the Revolution didn’t put an end on the flourishing art in
Russia. The whole 1920s was dedicated to the search for a new Soviet style. David Haas
has called the period 1921–1929 “high modernism”. NEP (The New Economic Policy)
(1921) had tolerant attitude towards the artists and invested on art. Musicians had
opportunities to hear and to meet foreign artists such as Darius Mihaud (1892–1974),
Alban Berg (1885–1935) and Paul Hindemith (1895–1963). A Bolševik intellectual
Lunačargskij functioned as a head of NARKOMPROS between the years 1917–1929
and the atmosphere was reasonably free. Nevertheless, despite that Lunačargskij, Blok,
Arthur Lourié, Gorgij and Kasimir Malevič (1879–1935) had done many new
revolutionary artistic experiments during the War-Communism, the official Soviet art
had not yet been born. Nevertheless, during the NEP also the new generation of Soviet
musicians was starting their careers. One of them was Dmitrij Šostakovič. 66
One sign of the prevailing pluralism in music of 1920s was the coexistence of two
independent unions of musicians 67 : ASM (1923) (The Association of Contemporary
Music) attached to the ISCM (Society of Contemporary Music), and RAPM or VAPM
(Russian/All-Union Association of Proletarian Musicians) which was parallel to
Proletkult and analogical to RAPP (The Association of Proletarian Writers) and AHRR
(The Association of Proletarian Painters). RAPM shared the same motto as Lenin when
he declared that art belongs and must be understood by the people (by the victorious
proletariat). Following Lenin’s motto RAPM was against any form of musical creation
apart from the immediate sounding illustration to ideological dogmas. They preferred
66 See Haas 1998, pp. 2–3; Maes [1996] 2002, pp. 243–245.
67 For more detailed information about ASM, RAPM, etc. see Abbreviations.
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