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

from the sphere of elements; elements are in every case derived and relative, which
means, capable of existing only in relation with the system, as members who serve. 294
This determination above is something that Asaf’ev applied to his understanding of
musical form or musical composition as a totality and not as a set of individual
elements. Also Asaf’ev’s aesthetical categories such as simfonizm (as it is seen as an
overall quality of something, or quality that is above the individual elements) reflects
the idea of understanding an object in a first place as an organic whole, but also as a part
of something. The same idea, i.e. considering the elements from the perspective of the
unity, appears also in Asaf’ev’s analyses on opera. However the unity of a musical work
does not mean in Asaf’ev necessary musical or scenic unity; it can appear also at
another level. The concept of unity appears on him through different formulation. In his
analysis of Rimskij-Korsakov’s opera The Tale of the Invisible Town Kiteže he implies
to the unity through the characters of the opera and writes: “Fevron’s spiritual me is
deeply peculiar to his sincere intuitive understanding of the harmony and the unity of
the structure of the Universe.” 295
4.3.2 Symbolist Reflections: Music and Poetry, Art and Religion
Typical of his style, Asaf’ev explains his intentions and goals in Symphonic Etudes
many times, in different forms and through several examples. According to him this
manner is adopted from the idea of etude, and technically from the Symphonic Etudes of
Robert Schumann:
Pro domo sua, I tell that as a musician I feel that my Symphonic Etudes are related to
strivings of Schumann, which means construction in variation forms, through extensive
symphonic development and confrontating the original theme with a contrasting theme.
However, psychologically my urge returns to Šumanovskij: in his time music was
spreading its wings searching support from the great contemporary literary-philosophical
movement and “poetisized” its ideas with literary even fixing its form sometimes in
appointed “programme”. Nowadays an opposite process has started – transmission of
294 Losskij, Nikolaj Mir kak organičeskoe celoe [World as an Organic Whole], Chapter: “Organičeskoe
miroponimanie” [Organic Understanding of World], (1917) p. 7; quoted in Asaf’ev: Simf.E 1970, p. 253.
295 Ibid., p. 102.
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