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

4. THE FIRST LITERARY PERIOD OF BORIS ASAF’EV (IGOR GLEBOV)
AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS
Asaf’ev was already thirty when he started his career as a serious musical critic.
Nevertheless, he contributed many newspapers and journals during his lifetime. There
are some 944 literary listed works and 202 compositions and many of them are large
books and symphonies. More than a half (489) date from the years 1921–1930 and of
that 300 are listed from 1925 to 1928. 175
The most notable written works of Asaf’ev’s of that period (1920–1930) are: Symphonic
Etudes (1922) A Book about Stravinsky (1929), Russian Music from the Beginning of
the Nineteenth Century (1930) 176 and Musical Form as a Process (1930) 177 . According
to Soviet authors, in the early works Asaf’ev developed his terminology and theoretical
language that received their cultivated forming in the book Intonation (1947). The next
Chapter presents a general survey of the philosophical and theoretical roots of Asaf’ev’s
thinking. After that the sub-Chapters introduce three philosophical and literary trends
that influenced on Asaf’ev. The practical examples, i.e. how these trends appear on
Asaf’ev’s literary production, are presented along with introducing his most important
works of the first literary period. Asaf’ev’s literary production is presented in a
chronological order. The focus is generally on the “development” of the main concepts
that appear in Asaf’ev’s theory of intonation, which is discussed in the Chapter Five.
My presentation attempts first of all to deepen but also to challenge the Soviet view and
point of importance (mostly by Elena Orlova) on his literary production.
4.1 The Philosophical and Theoretical Roots of Boris Asaf’ev
Elena Orlova has noted many interesting facts about Asaf’ev’s philosophical roots
which have not yet, as far as I know, been challenged by any one. And by this I mean
175 Izbrannye trudy V, pp. 350–379.
176 The book was mostly related to the pedagogical work of Asaf’ev at the Leningrad Conservatory.
177 The Musical Form as a Process was actually the first part to the larger work of Intonation (1947), but
it fell under an ideological cloud and wasn’t published again until 1963.
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