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

constructed in the circumstances of the given artistic concept on the basis of a struggle
towards the abstraction and not on the basis of empathy. 233
Thus Asaf’ev tries to make his contribution to Worringer’s call to write about the
psychological basis of art history. He clearly applies the whole theory of Worringer on
explaining Russian musical tradition. Yet it needs to be mentioned that Asaf’ev clarifies
on the same page in a reference that by abstraction he does not necessary imply to the
process that leads to dead schemes, but rather to human’s spiritual, intellectual and
antropomorphic processes, which means the “personification of nature”. Thus
abstraction and intellectualization does not mean here for Asaf’ev the death of living
and organic, to what he refers by occasion in his other works. In Symphonic Etudes he
writes: “In “Kiteže” we feel the logic of organic process and we sense the organicity in
the process of abstraction.” 234
Reflections of Lipps’s theory can be found in Asaf’ev’s understanding of a special role
of the audience in the formation of aesthetics, and also in his musicological views. In
his later production Asaf’ev emphasizes that there are no special forms of beauty, but
that the laws in making art and conceptions of beauty become formed dialectically
between the composer and the society so that every epoch has its own preferences. The
core of Asaf’ev’s thought is how to comprehend (or empathy) art if it doesn’t arise from
people’s life or from the life generally. He writes that music always reflects society and
vice versa 235 . Thus Lipps’ theory on Asaf’ev’s later production can be interpreted so
that society (an individual in Lipps) projects itself (empathy) into art and sees beauty in
things that are most familiar to it. The influence of the theory of Lipps and Worringer
will be discussed further in the Chapter on Symphonic Etudes (see Chapter 4.3).
233
Asaf’ev: Simf.E 1970, pp. 103–104.
234
Ibid., p. 105.
235
See the Chapter on Intonation.
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