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

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orderline case which was a synthesis of his critics of the past decades, but which also opened up new perspectives to the future music historical and theoretical research. As she has stated Asaf’ev’s analyses Russian operas through the aspect of simfonizm and melos that he considers as aesthetical categories arising from the “fixed points” of style and musical thinking of different composers. In Symphonic Etudes Asaf’ev already introduces also the questions of procedural features of musical form thus setting out the basics of his book Musical Form as a Process. 285 Symphonic Etudes is a collection of articles that Asaf’ev wrote to the journals Muzyka [Music] and Žizn’ iskusstva [Life of Art]. They were inspired by the concrete spectacles of Petrograd theatres. Asaf’ev writes that his intention was to write justifications for the enormous and artistically valuable legacy of Russian opera which was totally underestimated at the time. According to him the book is about Russian theatrical music “in relation with its musical nature, its originality in realization of means and its philosophical meaning”. The theoretical background of the Etudes was originated in his lecture serie “Constructing psychological basics of style of Russian music” and especially in his big summary lecture of “The basics of Russian opera style”. 286 He attempts to put Russian operas into world context, and indicate and explain their cultural pecularities. In doing so Asaf’ev tries to awaken a feeling about a living Russian musical tradition that continues in the musical works of Stravinsky and Prokof’ev. The sharp speculative aspect to Russian musical history makes Symphonic Etudes as well as his Book about Stravinsky (1929) 287 outstanding in relation to its time period. 4.3.1 Sythesis Asaf’ev’s analyses in Symphonic Etudes are not strict technical analyses but rather he again follows Worringer’s call and talks about psychological aspects that are related to 285 Ibid., pp. 3, 5. 286 Ibid., pp. 248–249. 287 See the next Chapter. 79
Russian operas. He concentrates on different types of creative personalities and worldviews in Russian operatic world. Another important aspect is methodological. Asaf’ev questions the traditional means of analysing music. According to him, research needs to be conducted in respect to the peculiarities of the object and not according to some past trends. This trait connects him in a sense to the Russian Formalist scholars. In his analysis he tries to re-evaluate the Russian musical past and to indicate new perspectives for the musicological study. Within that Asaf’ev already grounds his study on different composers such as Glinka. Glinka remained dear to Asaf’ev throughout his career. However his monography on Glinka was not published until in 1947. In it, Asaf’ev presents an extensive analysis on Glinka’s opera Ruslan and Ljudmila 288 . In Symphonic Etudes Asaf’ev states that for example Glinka was a genious musician but not as big thinker and philosopher as Wagner who was able to reflect enormous idelogical constructions. For that reason, many people have disappointed to Glinka’s diaries since his ideas are not as big as his music. However, Asaf’ev notes that the grandiosity of Glinka’s music is not tied to his diaries but to life. 289 He concludes that in order to understand the setting of Ruslan and Ljudmila one must be precise when dealing with the music and the people (Glinka’s contemporaries) of time period i.e., reconstruct the Russian musical way of life in detail 290 . Asaf’ev writes that Glinka’s gradiosity is attainable through an empathy with his music and sensible through an intuitition 291 . Thus in his study Asaf’ev fuses the concepts of Lipps and Losskij/Bergson concepts on music. He states: One can compile a table form calcultion with a help of Glinka’s diaries and letters, but the more powerful evaluation of life and beauty is totally another thing. It is hard to reach what Glinka felt and how he lived. His music is simply something that has to be trusted. It is impossible to evaluate one’s life completly [..] one must believe and the one who 288 See Asaf’ev, Boris V. Glinka. Moscow: Muzgiz, 1950. 289 Asaf’ev: Simf.E 1970, pp. 22–23. 290 Ibid., p. 17. 291 In order to understand Glinka’s music he emphasizes importance of empathy with the psychological basis of the musical style, “penetrating into the world view of Glinka’s characters (Ibid., pp. 17–18). “-we sense intuitively the greatness of the work --” (Ibid., p. 24). 80
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ORIS aSAF’EV AND THE sOVIET mUSIC
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5.2 The Second Literary Period: Int
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the aesthetical and musico-theoreti
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Haas has noted: he used “shaky an
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“leftist” 11 mark on his works
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The Chapter Four and Chapter Five f
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The younger generation, Aleksander
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them to some degree in 1918-1919, h
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produced’, or as ‘the socialist
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conservative writers. 43 This aspec
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authorities and formulators of soci
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control the society according to th
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and “neo-nationalist” Igor Stra
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“mass songs” with ideological t
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possible. As a composer you could n
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Harrison, Charles & Wood, Paul. Art
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Reader, Melvin, ed. A Modern Book o
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Boris Asaf'ev and the Soviet Musicology - E-thesis

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