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

aesthetically and not according to the physical needs. According to Schopenhauer, art
forms are more ‘objective’ than the subjectively conditioned objects of perception, the
genius thereby communicates knowledge. Schopenhauer classified arts according to
their relation to conceptual thinking. According to him, architectonics stood on the
lowest level, because it dealt with stiff and dead ideas while he saw music as the most
free from words and conceptual thinking. However, Schopenhauer claimed that in a
sense, music is mimetic, but it does not ‘copy’ the familiar world. It is rather a copy of
Will itself by coping and capturing the essence of emotions (joy, pain, horror, etc.),
through which the will does its worst in human life. 182 No other philosopher has given
as high valuation to music as Schopenhauer. His influence was major in a field of arts,
especially on Symbolists and among artists such as Wagner and Stravinsky.
Asaf’ev became interested in Kurt’s Linear Counterpoint (1917) and Romantic
Harmony and its Crisis in Wagner’s “Tristan” (1923) in 1917. Kurt’s Linear
Counterpoint was translated in Russian in 1931: Osnovy linearnogo kontrapunkta.
Melodičeskaja polifonija Baha by Z. Eval’d and edited by Asaf’ev, who wrote also the
Russian preface. 183 In his preface, Asaf’ev’s evaluation of Kurth’s conceptions was
positive, but later on he started to critisize some of Kurth’s essential points. In Musical
Form as a Process Asaf’ev talked about simultaneous formation of his conception of
processual-dynamic nature of musical form together with the conceptions of Kurth:
“The monumental works of Ernst Kurth; Crisis of Romantic Harmony and Linear
Counterpoint once and for all led to an application of a whole cycle of dynamical
definitions of musical phenomenon replacing former static formal terminology. Current
musicology struggles towards the formation of terms which would not reflect
crystallized and stark nature but living process – the formation of determinate
phenomenon.” 184 Asaf’ev and some Soviet scholars insisted that Kurth’s and Asaf’ev’s
conceptions of dynamic nature of musical phenomenon were formed at the same time
but they did not influence on each others. Asaf’ev stated that his dynamical conception
of musical phenomenon developed earlier in 1917 than it did in Germany 185 . However,
182 Määttänen 1995, pp. 213–215, Cooper (eds.) 1997, p. 151.
183 Orlova in Asaf’ev: Muz.Form. 1971, pp. 5–6.
184 Asaf’ev: Muz.Form. 1971, p. 198; See also Mazel 1957, p. 74.
185 Asaf’ev: Muz.Form. 1971, p. 197.
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