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

copy of the foregoing one, just as it cannot be uncoupled from it. 276 This definition is
similar to what he presented in his 1917 article 277 : ”the essence of simfonizm lies in the
ceaseless stratification of a qualitative element of dissimilitude and novelty” and also in
his already mentioned 1921 article “O simfonizme” 278 where he states: “Simfonizm can
be sensed when there is a continual stratification of qualitative element of otherness
(inakost’), novelties of perceptions as far as in the growth of sounding and not only in a
confirmation of earlier proved conditions.”
Asaf’ev’s other important theoretical concepts such as melos, intonation [intonatsija]
and form are defined in the article in the following way: melos (especially melos in
Russian folk-songs) is an uninterrupted melodic fluidity, the element of song. The
fundamental element in Russian and in the West-European music is “a sense of a way of
the creation of abstractly spatial constructions or poetic ideas defined by landmarks. It
flows in the direction of song, melodic and harmonic cell (intonation) and instrumental
metre, which are woven together.” 279
Asaf'ev's definition of a form should be comprehended as a synthesis. As something that
is in Mjaskovskij’s music “intended to hold in check within its limits the pressure of an
irrepressible element which sometimes bends and twists these limits, and sometimes
submissively give in to them”. Asaf’ev admits that these attempts are sometimes futile,
for sonata form is not flexible and will not withstand individual violations. 280 Thus for
Asaf’ev, form is not tied into stiff schemes or strict dogmas, but it is rather living and
flexible. However, his later emphasis on its procedural nature is not yet highlighted in
this article. Asaf’ev’s thinking of free forms culminates into a slander towards
academism, Glazunovizm (axle: Borodin–'Belajevites'–Glazunov, Witold Malyševskij
(1873-1939), Štejnberg, Hvostoščinskij): “The outermost limit of this school of
‘objectivists’ is reached in the compositions of Glazunov which are so perfectly
276 See Ibid., pp. 245, 248.
277 Glebov, Igor (Boris Asafiev). “Soblazny i preodoleniia.” (Temptations and triumphs.) In Melos: Knigi
o musike. [Melos: Books about music]. (Glebov, Igor and Suvchniskii, Pjotr, eds.) vol. 1. St. Petersburg,
1917, p. 6. This is first quoted by Biography 1984, pp. 86–87 and later translated in English by Haas
1998, p. 55 without any references to Biography.
278 Asaf’ev [1921] 1981, p. 96.
279 Asaf’ev: Pathways 2003, p. 237.
280 Ibid., p. 245.
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