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

Soviet Composers. The new directorate was elected to place the ORGKOMITET in the
First All-Union Congress of Soviet Composers and it consisted of party disciplinarians
excluding Asaf’ev who was designated as its chairman. 142 However, he was too ill to
even attend the Congress. He died in less than a year (1949). 143
3.2 Boris Asaf’ev and the Soviet Musicology in Growth
Different sources (Western along with the Soviet) present Asaf’ev as a “father of Soviet
Musicology”. Russian musicology received a formal recognition as an independent
musical discipline as late as 1921 when Soviet Government established two research
centers: The Russian Institute of Arts History in Petrograd and The State Institute for
Musical Science in Moscow. Before that, the musicological debate had occurred
principally on the pages of different journals based on the 19 th Century critical tradition.
This tradition could be divided into two generations: Kjui, Stasov, Serov, Herman Laroš
(1845–1904) as the first and Kaškin, Semjon Kruglikov (1851–1910) and Engel’ as the
second. 144 The main functionaries who established the new institutes were Lunačarskij
and his right hand Asaf’ev. 145 Asaf’ev had written already in 1918 (published in 1920),
an article which concentrated on musicological tasks in the Soviet Union. 146 Asaf’ev
was elected as the dean of the Petrograd Institute in 1921. 147 Some scholars think that it
was possible only with a help of Lunačarskij 148 .
142
Tull hints that Asaf’ev’s placement as a chairman of the new directorate was only an honorary
appointment.
143
Ibid., pp. 88–89.
144
See Campbell, 2003. He has edited an anthology containing English translations of articles from the
above-mentioned authors.
145
Lunačarskij commented the musicological situation in 1926 with following words: “If one does not
count single, quite often purely selfless attempts to build a science of music in Russia or in the field of
religious singing (line – Razumovskij, Smolenskij and our effective member A. V. Preobraženskij) [--]
then the focus of the Russian musicology lies in the capital study works of S. I. Taneev, [P. P.] Sokal’skij
[--] scientific articles of Serov, Laroš and etc. The only one closer to us is the Muscovite musician B.
Javorskij, a grand musicologist, who has his own method and his ‘school’.” Lunačarskij 1971, p. 201. See
also Schwarz 1983, p. 89.
146
The article was called “Naš Dolg” (Our Duty) in Prožloje Russkoj Muzyki (1920) Leningrad.
147
Schwarz 1983, pp. 88–89. The musical section was named RITM (Razryad istorii i teorii Muzyki) and
changed later into OTIM (Otdel teorii i istorii muzyki).
148
Neil Edmunds has speculated in his article that without a help of Lunačarskij Asaf’ev wouldn’t have
ever gotten so far in his career. Edmunds (2001) in a speech held at seminar in Bristol in 2003. Also
Schwarz (1983, p. 89) seems to think that way.
42