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

Iskusstvo (The World of Art) 108 and the Association of Russian Artists and planned to
write an article about them. 109 Asaf’ev traveled abroad and spent time in France (in
Paris), in Austria and in Italy as a guest of Drigo in 1911. 110
Asaf’ev began his active career as a musical critic in 1914. For start, he worked at the
modernist journal Muzyka (Music) 111 , a Muscovite weekly musical journal. One of the
redactors was his old friend from Conservatory Nikolaj Jakovlevič Mjaskovskij who
had originally encouraged Asaf’ev to start writing. On that time he made friends with
Aleksandr Kastal’skij (1856–1926). 112
Asaf’ev’s first articles “Petrogradskie pis’ma” (Letters from Petrograd) dealt with the
Marinskij Theater and the new compositional works and composers. He also wrote
down some bibliography of the sources which he had quoted in his articles. By the end
of the year 1915 the journal had published over 50 articles under the penname Igor
Glebov. 113
Andrej Rimskij-Korsakov 114 (1878–1940) invited Asaf’ev to contribute to the newly
established Muzykal’nyj sovremennik [Musical Contemporary], a “moderately
academic” journal that concentrated on Russian classics. At first Asaf’ev had his doubts
about the journal because there sometimes appeared curtailment and modification. 115 He
agreed to join the board after all, but worked there less than a year because Rimskij-
Korsakov refused to publish his radical praise of a concert that contained musoc by
Prokof’ev, Mjaskovskij and Stravinskij. Pjotr P. Suvčinskij (1892-1985) and a group of
108
A world famous group of Russian artists, founded in 1890 by A. M Benois, S. P. Djagilev and D. V.
Filosofov.
109
He did write about them eventually during the blockade of Leningrad 1941–1943 writing a
biographical cycle of texts Mysli i Dumy where he dedicated the whole first section to Mir Isskustva. It
was not published until after author’s death. Fragments of the manuscript were published in the journal
Soveskaja Muzyka 1955, No.1, pp. 48–58 but the total work did not see the light before 1966.
110
Biography 1984, pp. 67–71.
111
Vladimir Deržanovskij (1881–1942) worked as an editor in Muzyka. See “the List of Journals”.
112
Biography 1984, p. 89.
113
Ibid., pp. 71–73, 89 According to Tull (1976, p. 10) it was originally Deržanovskij who suggested
Asaf’ev this name because of the lack of his self-confidence. Nevertheless, it was also popular at the time
to write critics under a penname.
114
Son of the composer Nikolaj Rimskij-Kosakov.
115
It is unclear to me what he means by that. Maybe he refers to A. Rimskij-Korsakov’s negative attitude
towards Stravinskij. (See Taruskin 1996, pp. 1121–1124.)
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