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

somekind of “liturgical” interpretations of operas 300 . I base my point on Asaf’ev’s style
with some background information.
As Fink has emhasized, Russian religious thought played an important role in Russian
modernism: “to uncover new modes of artistic perception and thus to grasp an elusive
reality existing beyond the bounds of the intellect alone” 301 . Fink has noted that “the
notion of intuition as the special faculty for attaining absolute knowledge (that is
perceiving the inner meaning and essence of things) lies in the heart of the Russian
conception of art (beauty), perception and knowledge, all of which come together in the
theology of the icon.” 302 Among Russian Symbolists, music was seen as the most free
from images and was considered to operate more intuitively than visual arts and thus it
was put higher on the hierarchy than for example architecture. Music was considered
most religious among arts. Belyj wrote: “The romantics’ understanding of religion itself
was musical. Having established a close connection between music and religion, the
romantics associated poetry too with a kind of religious rite, and themselves with
priests, dedicated to serving poetry and its teachings.” 303 Asaf’ev’s passages in
Symphonic Etudes contain also references to the ideas of religion and music forming an
”alliance”:
But the kernel and the content of every religious ritual, [..] and especially the kernel and
the living thought of liturgy, and therefore also theatricality lays generally much deeper:
through understanding the means of dedication, through getting ready for the mystery,
through power of rise and bringing the sacrifice – through leading the spirit towards the
understanding of life. [In an original autograph is written yet: “But is it not this also in the
sphere of art”. 304 ] Here is the contiguity of Religion and Art: that which no one knows,
but would like to embody, and that which is known, but transient, and would like to
immortalize… 305
300
Also Orlova has noted this in Asaf’ev: Simf.E 1970, p. 8.
301
Fink 1999, p. 27.
302
Ibid., p. 8. Fink discusses Russian intuitive tradition and the Russian Orthodox religion, Intuitive
perception appears especially in the debate over the worship of icons centred on the nature of icon itself.
“According to iconophiles, the icon is a revelation of divine truth, not a representation; thus by
contemplating the icon, the worshipper is able to enter into spiritual ‘sympathy’ with it and thereby gain
immediate, non-cognitive understanding of reality in its essence.”
303
Steinberg 1982, p. 13.
304 Asaf’ev: Simf.E 1970, p. 255.
305 Ibid., p. 34.
84