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

According to Asaf’ev, to perceive a work properly means to recreate fundamental aspects
of the original act of composition, i.e., the organization of sounds in time. But this
recreation cannot be limited to the analyzing intellect. If a musical work is indeed the
result of intellect, feeling and will, the proper understanding of the work demands the use
of intuition in the Bergsonian sense, since neither feeling nor will can be entirely
translated into concepts but depend, in part, on experimential, intuitive knowledge. 262
Asaf’ev was influenced by the notion of Bergson (and the notion of omodernists in
general) of a “living reality”, a constant change of reality and that a mere intellectual
perception cannot attain the individuality of an object. He founded his premises of art to
this constant change and living reality. His view of art as living led to a conclusion that
no ideal abstract schemes exist, i.e. there is no absolute recipe for beauty. Asaf’ev was
clearly against pure rational scheme. He stated that compositors who follow mere
ossified musico-theoretical laws destroy the living and developing quality of art 263 .
Mere studying of musical cores leads to “academicism” which is not capable of
attaining the living quality of art and a genuine artistic experience. Nevertheless,
Asaf’ev’s presentations were contradictory. His rational emphasis grew during the years
on the way towards the socialist realist aesthetics, since “mysticism” was condemnable
from the point of view of the materialists. Following thus more Losskij’s view Asaf’ev
emphasized already in his early writings that both intuitive and rationalistic aspects are
important qualities in doing creative work. As on Losskij, they formed in his concept an
organic unity.
According to Asaf’ev, also music-theoretical terminology needed to be fixed along with
the development of musical culture. 264 Thus the notion of the living and developmental
character of reality is important also with respect of Asaf’ev’s terminological
development. He fixed his terminological explanations all the time and developed them
further in his works. The notion of living reality is important also in order to understand
the procedural nature of Asaf’ev’s terminology. Terms such as sinfonizm reflected his
262 Ibid., p. 63.
263 Asaf’ev: Muz.Form. 1971, pp. 22–23.
264 Ibid., pp. 195, 196–197. This was written during 1925–1926 and given as a report at one of the
congresses for the retraining of instructors of music technicum [school].
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