Form Vs. Work: A Major Antinomy of Music Theory and Analysis [1 ed.] 9815129015, 9789815129014

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Form vs. Work

Form vs. Work

A Major Antinomy of

Music Theory and Analysis

Ildar D. Khannano�

Published by Jenny Stanford Publishing Pte. Ltd. 101 Thomson Road #06-01, United Square Singapore 307591 Email: [email protected] Web: www.jennystanford.com

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Form vs. Work: A Major Antinomy of Music Theory and Analysis Copyright © 2024 Jenny Stanford Publishing Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 978-981-5129-01-4 (Hardcover) ISBN 978-1-032-69416-0 (eBook)

Contents Introduction 1. The Antinomy of Musical Form vs. Work: Integralism

vs. Formalism 1.1 Conceptual Framework of the Problem: Music

Analysis and Its Objects 1.2 Practical Implications 1.3 Philosophical Investigation of the Problem 1.4 Musicological Dimension 1.5 Distinction of Antinomy “Form vs. Work” from

the Binary Opposition “Form vs. Content” 1.6 Russian and Soviet Ideas on Relationship of

Form vs. Work 1.7 Elaborations on the Same or Similar Topics in

Western Music Theory 1.8 The Semiotic Angle and the French Approach to

the Problem 1.9 The Definition of Form during the Classical Period: A. B. Marx 1.10 The Russian Approach to Classic-Romantic

Musical Form 1.11 Russian Definitions of Musical Work 1.12 German Theory of the Mid-Twentieth Century:

Similarities with Soviet Ideas 1.13 Eastern European Contributions to the Subject 1.14 The Antinomy of Form vs. Work in Chinese and

Arabic Traditions

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vi

Contents

2. Early Stages of Integralism in Russia: Eleventh

through Seventeenth Centuries

45

2.1 Holistic Nature of Russian Orthodox Church

Chant 2.2 The Theory of Russian Orthodox Church Chant 2.3 Similarities and Differences with Byzantine

Chant 2.4 Holistic Definitions of Neumes 2.5 The Folk Song as a Source for the Chant 2.6 Aesthetic and Philosophical Components of

Russian Orthodox Chant Theory 2.7 Some Possible Questions for and Critique of

Western Theory from the Russian Chant Theorists

61

3.1 Transitional Period: Acceptance of Formalist

Aesthetics and Techniques

66

3. Encounters with Western Formalism:

Seventeenth-Twentieth Centuries

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3.2 Russian Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries:

Adoption of Core Categories of Music Theory

67

3.4 Lad and New Music: Yavorsky’s Use of the Term

81

3.6 The Chord, Function, Voice Leading, Scale Step

and Their Further Development

92

3.3 The Indigenous Russian Category of Lad and

the Problems of Its Translations

3.5 Russian Theories of Harmony: From Diletsky

to Kholopov

69

83

3.7 Tonal-Harmonic Function, Metric Period, and

Musical Syntax

104

3.10 Counterpoint, Figured Bass and Partimento as

Formalist Strategies

122

3.8 The Art of Harmonization of Unfigured Melody 3.9 Modulation, the Russian Style

3.11 The Importance of Motive as the Nucleus of

Form

109

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Contents

3.12 Rhythm as the Essence of Motive 3.13 Dual Function of Motive, as a Part of Formal

Design and the Element of Integralist Semantics 3.14 Nineteenth Century: Mature Formalist Approaches 3.15 Formalism and Integralism as Reflections of

Conservatory vs. University Training Systems 3.16 Russian and Soviet Formenlehre 3.17 Formal Functions and Their Types of

Presentations by Sposobin, Tyulin and Skrebkov 3.18 Alexei Losef’s Definition of Form as Eidos and

Number 3.19 Russian Literary Formalism as a Source for

Understanding of Musical Form

4. Reemergence of Integralism in the Nineteenth and

Twentieth Centuries

4.1 Russian Integralism in the Nineteenth Century 4.2 Integral, Tselostnyi Analiz: The Ideas of the 1920s 4.3 Integral Analysis and the Phenomenology of a

Musical Work 4.4 References to Musical Semiotics and Semantics 4.5 Soviet Theory of Musical Genre as a Core of

Integralists Strategy 4.6 The Crowning Category of Integralism:

Intonatsia of Yavorsky and Asafiev 4.7 The Language of Description: a Major

Requirement of the Integral Analysis 4.8 A Hybrid Graph as the Tool of Integralist

Analysis of Musical Dramaturgy 4.9 Folk Song as an Artwork and as the Source of

Forms 4.10 The Folk Song and Mid-Twentieth Century

Musical Modernism 4.11 Formalism and Modernism 4.12 Soviet Events of 1936 and 1948 as the Struggle

with Formalism and Modernism

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Contents

5. Late Soviet and Post-Soviet Developments of the

Opposition Form vs. Work 5.1 The Thaw 5.2 The Coexistence of Both Doctrines in the

Conservatory Programs 5.3 One More Round of Struggle in the 1960s

and 1980s 5.4 1991 Until 2014: Formalism as the Way of

Re-Integration into the Western Tradition 5.5 2014: New Paradigms in lieu of an Old One

6. Sample Analyses: Formalist, Integralist and Mixed

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6.1 A Sample of Yuri Kholopov’s Formalist Analysis 6.2 Viktor Tsukkerman’s Sample of Integral Analysis 6.3 A Sample of Analysis Using Both Integralist and

Formalist Methods

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7.1 The Whole 7.2 Logos 7.3 Theory

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7. In Lieu of Conclusion: Contemplation on the

Categories of the Whole, Logos and Theory

Appendices Notes Index

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Introduction

The relationship of musical form to musical work—the proposed main theme for this book—should be simple and unproblematic. It is commonly known that a musical work is written in a certain form. For example, Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet—a musical work—is rendered in the form of sonata allegro; W. C. Handy’s “St. Louis blues”—in 12-bar blues form. However, the history of music theory proves the opposite: theorists tend to isolate form from work and treat them as if they exist each by itself. Consequently, the scholarly community is divided roughly into two struggling camps: the one that focuses on musical form and the other that accepts musical work as the primary object of analysis and deals with it as a whole. Musical form—a frame category that houses technical-compositional elements, such as harmonic progression, voice leading, tonal-harmonic function, meter, rhythm, tempo, motive, phrase, theme, melody, counterpoint, dynamics, and timbre—has become so rich and complex in the past 300 years that a professional theorist has no reason to go beyond it. Sacrificing its in-depth analysis seems impractical. In response (and often, in retaliation) to such a formalist attitude, the supporters of comprehensive and interdisciplinary treatment of music—in this book, they will be labeled as integralists—parenthesize the musical form and focus on all other facets of the musical work. Indeed, there is much more in Tchaikovsky’s Fantasy overture than a standardized sonata allegro; the idea of 12-bar blues cannot completely cover the content, meaning and intertextual connections of “St. Louis blues.” There are questions of cognition, perception, Form vs. Work: A Major Antinomy of Music Theory and Analysis Ildar D. Khannanov

Copyright © 2024 Jenny Stanford Publishing Pte. Ltd.

ISBN 978-981-5129-01-4 (Hardcover), 978-1-032-69416-0 (eBook) www.jennystanford.com

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Introduction

reception, semantics and semiotics, interpretation, social and individual psychological profile and, ultimately, philosophical reflections on history, tradition, and culture that need to be addressed in order to have a more or less thorough understanding of these masterpieces. The continuous battles among composers, performers and theorists over this problem are manifest in the history of Italian, German, French, British and American music. In the twentieth century, the war in music theory between formalists and integralists took place in the Soviet Union. In the 1930s–1960s, it was exacerbated by the interference of politics. In general, the relationship of the two methods does not form a binary opposition (like, say, form and content in Hegelian interpretation); each side has its own well-documented genesis and evolution. As such, “form vs. work” is an unsolvable contradiction—an antinomy. The following six chapters of this book will present the storyline of this dramatic yet fruitful clash of ideas. The method, chosen for the book, combines properly musicaltheoretical discourse, some elements of historic narration, and the application of philosophical reasoning—a necessary path for approaching such a complex theoretical object of study.

Chapter 1

The Antinomy of Musical Form vs. Work: Integralism vs. Formalism This book presents the history of ideas rather than the play-byplay description of events in chronological order. There will be the elements of historical narrative—the subject matter belongs to history and is inscribed into historical process—yet the primary syntax of the book is based on the unfolding line of reasoning that forms a sequence of concepts and categories. The first chapter is dedicated to formulations of the theoretical framework of the book and the directions of its proposed development.

1.1 Conceptual Framework of the Problem: Music Analysis and Its Objects

Musical art has always been the object of contemplation, reflection, and analysis. The essential human desire to analyze music is caused, in general, by the necessity to understand the world outside and inside the subject. And if for the general population— listeners from all walks of life—the meaning of music is commonly captured by means of symbols and metaphors, and by reflection on emotional reactions to the events and narratives of daily life, for those who have chosen music as a professional field the Form vs. Work: A Major Antinomy of Music Theory and Analysis Ildar D. Khannanov

Copyright © 2024 Jenny Stanford Publishing Pte. Ltd.

ISBN 978-981-5129-01-4 (Hardcover), 978-1-032-69416-0 (eBook) www.jennystanford.com

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The Antinomy of Musical Form vs. Work

problem of understanding music is inevitably narrowed to the task of its analysis. The procedure of analysis, as stated by René Descartes in the second chapter of his Discourse on Method,1 relies upon dividing a complex object into smaller parts that are easier to understand. Descartes assumes that it is possible to reassemble the object and to understand it as a whole. There is a hefty corpus of literature in music theory dedicated to methods of music analysis. For example, Ian Bent published a substantial corpus of texts on this subject (of special interest for this research is his second volume of the collection Music Analysis in the Nineteenth Century, “The Hermeneutic Approaches”2). There were doubts on its validity: “How We Got into Analysis, and How to Get Out,”3 and there were opposite opinions: “How We Got out of Analysis, and How to Get Back in Again.”4 The French discourse on methodology of analysis counts several decades, with its heydays in the 1980s and the latest publication L’Analyse musicale aujourd’hui (2015). There is also the so-called Dahlhaus project, the profound results of which linger well into our times in a number of reflections, for example, by James Hepokoski and Nicole Grimes. This book will deal with one specific aspect of analytical methodology, a dichotomy or antinomy of form vs work. Analysis of music is based upon one of two methods: that which gathers all the aspects of a musical artifact (accidents, in scholastic5 terms) and that which focuses only on its essence (its attribute) while casting away the accidents. More precisely, in cartesian terms, the first is synthesis and the second is analysis. However, in order to synthesize something, it has to be analyzed first. Therefore, this book will deal with two objects of analysis: analytical and synthetic. In the course of the history of music theory, these two objects were termed as musical form and musical work. Analysis (or, strictly speaking, analysis-synthesis) of musical work is destined to discover and to gather all available elements and to construct the meaning by rising to the higher levels of hierarchy (hence, it relies upon the ascending type of hierarchy, termed by scientists as induction or emergence6). It deals with meaning a posteriori of immediate perception of musical materials. Theorists that rely on analysis of musical form

Conceptual Framework of the Problem

take the opposite route: they begin with the idea of pre-existing form and move down the hierarchy to the lower levels to prove its legitimacy. This is how many practitioners of the teaching of form define it, including A. B. Marx (see the subchapter further in this text on his definition of the Form der Kunstwerk). Namely: there are many waltzes and only one form of the waltz. They adopt the top-down hierarchy (termed by scientists as deduction, a tree or a catalogue). Teachers and researchers of musical form assume the existence of form a priori. Thus, the results of music analysis depend to a large extent on the choice of its object. The historic perspective of two and half millennia manifests numerous cases of this opposition in various places and at different times. For example, one can interpret the arguments between ancient Greek canonics and harmonics (namely, the opposition of Ptolemy to Aristoxenus) as one of the earliest precedents of work vs. form antinomy. Aristoxenus, in his treatise The Elements of Harmonics, attempted to explain music in its full complexity. Ptolemy, like his predecessors Philolaus and Archytas, focused on very few selected aspects and the goal of his study was to prove the validity of Pythagorean mathematics. The era of early Greek and Latin Patristic is filled with the discussions of matters that remind the main topic of this book. Theology and philosophy have dealt with the questions of the hierarchy of the components of an artwork and the method of its analysis in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. As seen from the earlier reference to Descartes, Modernity, with its reliance on scientific methods, suggested many solutions to the unsolvable opposition of form to work. In the twentieth century, the Dahlhaus project and the quarrel between New Musicology and North American music theory provided distinct evidence of its importance. However, all these cases are eclipsed by the continuous battle between the supporters of the theory of musical form (and formalism at large) and those who maintained the idea of holistic or integral analysis of a musical work in Russia and in the Soviet Union. In the 1930s and 1940s, the debates between formalists and integralists have become existential and political. This evidence has led the author to the formulation of the problem “musical work vs. the theory

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of musical form” as the primary theme of this book. In a larger context, the book will cover how the North American, Western European, Eastern European, and Russian traditions agree or disagree on the details of this important antinomy. The history of music theory is longer than the events of common practice; it must include the era of chant. Musicians of that era attempted to understand musical structure in relation to musical effects and ideas and to reflect upon the significance of musical form and integrity of musical work.7 In the course of several centuries, two prominent ideas were crystallized into a universal dilemma: whether to focus on musical form [Russ. музыкальная форма, Germ. die musikalische Form, Fr. la forme musicale] (which includes as well harmony, counterpoint and orchestration), or to accept musical work [Russ. музыкальное произведение, Germ. das musikalishe Kunstwerk, Fr. l’oeuvre musicale] in all its complexity as the object of a comprehensive study. It has been pondered by generations of musicians. Russian theorists formulated it as theory of musical form [теория музыкальной формы] and integral8 or tselostnyi analysis [целостный анализ]—the latter is often replaced by a synonym analysis of a musical work [анализ музыкального произведения]9; today they are still central to Russian musical thought. The terms formalism and integralism are used instead of the original definitions musical form and analysis of a musical work. The former is correlative and synchronized, better suiting the norms of the English scholarly style. However, this does not mean that formalist implies formalism in a negative sense.10

1.2 Practical Implications

An enthusiastic and passionate musician can try approaching the musical work as a whole. Such an attitude is laudable because it is all-inclusive. Sometimes, at certain places, one can witness a miracle of holistic and complete performance. It presents an instance of unity of thoughts and feelings of the composer, the performer, and the listener. This musical event can be called Ereigniss in Heidegger’s interpretation. Such an event cannot

Practical Implications

be produced upon request and reproduced at will (as, say, the conditions of a scientific experiment). The enormous scale of the task at hand, considering the infinite heterogeneity and multiplicity of parameters of musical expression, very often makes it almost impossible to create the musical Ereigniss with any degree of certainty. Another possibility is provided by the Platonic theory of knowledge. This approach is more focused and streamlined; instead of trying to grasp the meaning of the musical work as a whole one can analyze exclusively its essential component— the form. The results of such procedure are universal and repeatable, just as the results of a scientific experiment. Classical metaphysics suggests that the essence (Greek οὐσία) is immutable and atemporal. The form in this interpretation is not a mere concatenation of visible objects (notational signs, sounding elements, etc.). It is a mental product derived from observation. It is, indeed, essentialist, but it managed to survive the attempts at its deconstruction and presents certain value in research and pedagogy today as it did in the nineteenth century. Composers, performers and learned listeners cherish music with which they interact closely and on a regular basis. It is understandable that they do not wish to omit a single element or the smallest detail; they try to put together a mosaic of all pertinent aspects, intramusical as well as extramusical. This inevitably leads to descriptive methods, which, in their best form, provide a comprehensive view of music and, in a worse case, are limited to pointing at and listing of an unordered set of elements. The approach to music as the manifestation of form provides a solid foundation for theory; it is based upon a single governing principle; all other elements become its subordinate. The theory of form, in its most reflexive philosophical version, allows for the ultimate clarification of otherwise obscure and eclectic features of music. Such theory goes to the roots of music that is understood both as structure and as a process. The theory of musical form may disregard some phenomena that appear before our eyes and ears; it has the tendency to go deeper into the essence of music, to that which is perceived not by senses but by the mind, first in apperception (Apperzeption in Kantian terms) and then in reasoning based upon logical

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understanding (Kantian Vernunft). As such, a theory of form allows for a prescriptive approach. It proves indispensable for practical goals of composing and performing music: these categories of professionals need to know how to make new music and, much less so, what represents its emotional content, historic evolution and social milieu. However, a pure prescriptive method leaves out some elements that only seem to be not linked to a governing principle; this inevitably leads to an impoverished and singlesided view of the musical work. Hence the dilemma for a theorist: musical work can be analyzed without a single theory; musical form requires a tight-knit and terminally formulated theoretical concept.

1.3 Philosophical Investigation of the Problem

From a wider, philosophical perspective, the difference between the analysis of musical work and the theory of musical form has been clearly defined already in the ancient Greek period. The approach of integralists to music is characterized by a relationship with the phenomenon (Gr. φαινομένων); the formalists look at music as noumenon (the term of Kantian philosophy,11 derived from Greek νοῦς, mind). These two were perfectly separated from each other in philosophy, from Plato to Kant. Such opposition is based upon the differences in the levels of perception: there is perception (primary processing of the incoming information), apperception12 (secondary processing, in Kantian interpretation—the sense of unity of the whole that precedes the experience) and reasoning (processing, independent from the real-time perception). The musical form, in this regard, is the object of reasoning. The musical work is an object of immediate perception and apperception that allows to grasp the extramusical domain but does not stay for a long enough time within the intramusical space. Musical form is detached from these two; it may require a pure contemplation on noumena, without direct use of perception. This distinction is valid not only for the methods of analysis but for the specific qualities of musical works. There are musical works that are clearly perceptible, phenomenal, but lack (or hide)

Musicological Dimension

the noumenal aspect. Such are the folk songs, but also the music of composers who did not provide conceptual commentary to their works. Palestrina, Gesualdo, Vivaldi, Pergolesi, J. S. Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, and Rachmaninoff are in this group. Their music is very complex, but it does not offer itself for analysis. In contrast, there is music that comes together with analytical techniques and conceptual description. Three composers of ars nova (Francesco Landini, Philippe de Vitry and Marchetto di Padua), Wagner, Scriabin, Schoenberg and the New Viennese School, Stockhausen, Boulez, and Cage placed emphasis on explaining the logic and syntax of their compositions. Noumenon is related and derived from Plato’s theory of ideas. The equivalent of Kantian noumenon is Plato’s idea, and more precisely, εἶδος—the image of thought. Noumenon is transparent for perception: it does not even require such a process since it is given to the mind (nous) in its completeness in a moment of time. Phenomenon (work, holistic object) is presented to the mind in all its natural complexity (the mathematicians refer to it as the domain of real numbers, the physics deals with it as a dynamic process), without given explanation, in real time and in a non-hierarchical way—as is. Phenomenon requires step-by-step acquisition; its perception is temporal and dramatic.

1.4 Musicological Dimension

Ancient Greek music theory set the tone for this discussion more than two and half millennia ago. The confrontation between the canonics and harmonics was a relatively late product within the ancient Greek history: the root of this confrontation could be traced to bitter arguments between Pythagoras and Heraclitus. The notion of form as an idealized essence of a thing was generated within the walls of Pythagorean academy. In contrast, Heraclitus suggested the concept of harmony as a part of a larger ontological context, grasped in the idea of the force of nature (his treatise on nature, albeit lost, should have been dedicated to this issue, as seen in his apophtegmata). Several centuries later, music theory displayed the same opposition, termed as the disagreement between harmonics (represented by Aristoxenus)

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and canonics (fully established in writings of Ptolemy). Here, as elsewhere, one can see a principal difference in the choice of the object of study and the corresponding method of its analysis: while canonics focused on form and its numeric description, harmonics spread their analyses over a large field of musical activities, including performance and perception (as seen, for example, in Aristoxenus’s references to the art of singing). Centuries later, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, two models of the discipline of music theory appeared in a logical succession. In the eighteenth century, the theoretical knowledge of music was gathered under the rubric of Formenlehre (Joseph Riepel, Johann Matheson, Heinrich Koch were the most visible figures of this tradition). In the nineteenth century, this discipline expanded to the larger domain that included most of humanities and was renamed Kompositionslehre (A. B. Marx’s four volumes have set the trend; Hugo Riemann’s Grosse Kompositionslehre has become a standard for the curricula of newly established programs at the universities and conservatories). And although the core of the theory of composition was still based upon five pillars, Tonsatz, Harmonielehre, Kontrapunkt, Formenlehre and Instrumentationslehre, it included much more than that. The collaboration of theorist Hugo Riemann and music historian Guido Adler resulted in the first complete version of the holistic musical curriculum, die systematische Musikwissenshaft, the systematic musicology. It was summarized in the publication of the book Grundriß der Musikwissenschaft (1908), in which Riemann provided a complete classification of scholarship on music: (A) acoustics, (B) tone psychology, (C) musical aesthetics, (D) the study of musical matters (music theory proper), and (E) music history. Riemann clarifies the meaning of musical aesthetics as “speculative theory of music.”13 Thus, in that situation the formalism would be labeled as musikalische Sachlehre (Musiktheorie im engeren Sinne),14 while integralism would unite other aspects on that list. In contrast with speculative theory, Sachlehre deals with concrete and practical disciplines, such as teachings of melody and rhythm, the system of harmony, counterpoint, Formenlehre and theory of musical speech (Vortragslehre).

Musicological Dimension

As a part of systematic musicology, German musical aesthetics of the nineteenth century was engaged in these issues more directly: musical formalism as a category had been defined by Eduard Hanslick in his formulation of the essence of music as tönende bewegte Formen—moving sound forms. The word “form” thus has received conceptual emphasis; it was opposed to content (Inhalt) and expression (Ausdruck). This position (which will be discussed at length further in this book) represented one side of a dialogue; the other was offered by a number of scholars and composers, including Richard Wagner, E.T.A Hoffman, Hermann Kretzschmar and, later, in the first third of the twentieth century, by Karl Bühler.15 This position can be united under the premise of Ausdruckstheorie (theory of expression) and hermeneutic. It is of key importance to mention that Bühler’s concept of holistic psychology has been translated into Russian language as tselostnyi method and that is exactly the term and interpretation of the method of analysis of a musical work proposed in the late 1930s by Leo Mazel’ and Viktor Tsukkerman. Therefore, one may say that the origins of Soviet integral method are found in the writings of Bühler, as well as in various schools of Gestaltpsychologie in Western Europe (Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Keller) and in the Soviet Union (Ilya Ehrenburg). Peter Kivy describes a similar dichotomy in his book Antithetical Arts. On the Ancient Quarrel between Literature and Music, namely, that of musical formalism and music as a part of literary discourse. “It is [in other words] a quarrel between those who insist on understanding, interpreting, appreciating music alone in, broadly speaking, literary terms, and those, customarily called “formalists,” who insist on understanding, interpreting, appreciating absolute music in, broadly, speaking, its own terms, whatever those terms may ultimately turn out to be.”16 The stance taken by Kivy is very similar to that of the author of this book: “I am no neutral observer of this ancient quarrel. I am on the side of formalism. But the book will be more a critique of the opposition than the defense of absolute music’s autonomy.”17 Lydia Goehr, in her book The Quest for Voice, suggests that the inclusion of extramusical field into analysis by Kivy is just another kind of “enhanced formalism.”18 It is evident that balancing on a fine line that divides formalism and integralism

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in musicology unites the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. It seems to persist and continue well into the twenty-first.

1.5 Distinction of Antinomy “Form vs. Work” from the Binary Opposition “Form vs. Content”

At this point, our narration has reached the stage where we have to make an important distinction. An inquisitive reader may suggest a binary opposition of form vs. content as an alternative to the subject of this book. Such is, indeed, a primary topic for German nineteenth-century philosophy and aesthetics that has been widely distributed in many countries, including Russia. It will be nevertheless of little interest for the present discussion. In contrast to the relationship of form to its content, form and work exist not as a binary opposition within one and the same ontology of music (as in Hegelian opposition of form and content in his Lectures in Aesthetics) but as the confrontation of two different fields of study. Using contemporary terminology, one can say that form and work manifest a non-binary, heterogeneous relation. These fields are divided institutionally and have different origins. For example, in Russia, the one has been a westernized trend that prevailed at major conservatories; the other was and is an experimental, indigenous current that came from all possible places around the conservatories (universities, centers for study of folk music, research institutions, such as the Institute of Art Theory in Moscow and the Institute of Art History in Leningrad). Form is not included in work; these are two different objects of study. Thus, the opposition—form vs. work—is more productive and its sides are more conceptually independent than form and content. At the peak of its evolution in the West, the form had become an epitome of musical professionalism. All other possible components were treated as extraneous in order to retain the scholarly and artistic rigor in pedagogy and research. In contrast, in twentieth-century aesthetics of music and in philosophy of arts, the idea of an artwork has become so significant that in many cases it outweighed the traditionally powerful concept of

Distinction of Antinomy “Form vs. Work” from the Binary Opposition “Form vs. Content”

form. Both musical form and musical work have become major subjects of research for Theodor Adorno and Carl Dahlhaus. With the advent of the new paradigm, that of post-WWII avantgarde, the difficulty of interpretation of an artwork, which was suddenly revealed by the very development of compositional techniques, has caused serious interest to the idea of musical work as an open structure. Umberto Eco has raised this issue in his famous book Opera aperta and his collocutors in the journal Incontri musicali, Luciano Berio and others have enthusiastically shared his concerns. In the 1960s and 1970s, the art theory in the West and in the Soviet Union raised the question of the status of an artwork. In the situation of constantly changing styles and techniques of art, the category of work [Lat. opus] appeared more and more problematic. It has become clear that the era in which works were produced by the authors (and the work is difficult to imagine without the author) was more limited than it was perceived earlier. The creators of musical works, composers, were a new kind in the era of style galant of Joseph Haydn. His daytime job was not defined as “the composer.” While Palestrina was identified as a “composer” by the musicologists of recent times—his actual duties were formulated in the sixteenth century as magister musica. Only since Mozart and Beethoven, the true authorship was legitimized and that gave the impetus to the era of composers and their output—musical works as such. And even in this status, musical work does not exist as an object fixed in time and space. Roman Ingarden, in his book The Work of Music and the Problem of Its Identity,19 has proved that the constantly changing character of the artwork leaves constant not more than a core (in case of music—notated score), while other components remain variable. French philosopher Roland Barthes announced the death of the author20 in the twentieth century; together with it, the artwork also started losing its ontological status. Musical works come in different kinds. An academic composition is, perhaps, the clearest example, that which has both the author and the work as material objects (an individual author and a written and/or published score). There are some kinds that are more difficult to place into this category. For example, a folk song, recorded in the period of composers and artworks

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(say, in the nineteenth-century folk music collections) is hard to define as an artwork because it has no author by default. An interesting development of these critical ideas is shown in the Kandidat dissertation of professor of Moscow Conservatory Yevgenia Chigareva of 1977.21 She discussed the operas of Mozart and maintains that the musical work manifests artistic individuality [Russ. khudozhestvennaya individual’nost’]. In other words, when form is transformed into a self-standing musical work, it becomes individual (unique and related to the individuality of a human being). And vice versa, when an analyst filters out a form from a given work, it becomes typical. The discussions of the opposition of the individual vs. the typical were very common in Soviet art theories.22 One can add this opposition to the main theme of this book as a clarifying factor. Still, with all the critique and deconstruction of the category of artwork taken into consideration, the author assumes that this category was valid for a significant period of time (at least, for the time of common practice in music) and as such is worthy of discussion. This also explains the intentional limitation of the scope of this book to what is commonly called tonal music: the category of artwork, as it is maintained by many theorists in the West and in Russia, did not characterize music before and after these, roughly, 300 years. That may lead also to the assumption that the category of form is more ancient—it was formulated by Plato. One correction can be made: perhaps, the individual artwork in music, legitimately belonging to a single author, is the latest acquisition; however, the idea of work, thesis, result of production (in both Marxist and postmodernist understandings) is as ancient as the idea of form. For example, the works of art were created by well-known ancient Greek authors, poets, sculptors, and architects, such as Homer and Phidias. Musical work is not a product of negation of musical form (while the content and form are related to each other by this Hegelian procedure). These two categories are heterogeneous in relation to each other and, as such, non-correlative. Both choices are rooted in history: musical form leads to Pythagoras and Plato’s philosophy (μορφή as derivative of εἶδος, ἰδέα);

Distinction of Antinomy “Form vs. Work” from the Binary Opposition “Form vs. Content”

musical work as such appeared in the eighteenth century, although, the idea of an artwork in other arts is traceable to Heraclitus and, later, to Aristotle’s (ἔργον, ὑποκείμενον). Both manifest pro et contra when it comes to practical application. All this makes the choice a difficult one. Both oppositions—non-binary form vs. work and binary form vs. content—have something in common: the form vs. content partially maps on form vs. work in that the artwork is open for the extramusical influences, by default, while form radiates its own “spirit” (in Hanslick’s term) and does not require references to the outer field of signifieds. In other words, musical form, albeit isolated from the musical content (the latter is often caricaturized by formalists as “feelings” and extraneous information) carries its own “content” and value (this was the strongest counterargument of Yuri Kholopov in support of formalism; he coined the term tsennosnyi analiz, value analysis, to confront the integral one, tselostnyi analiz)—perhaps, nonverbal and not available for interpretation, such as, for example, euphony or melodicity. The content that musical form rejects, in turn, is not an amorphous set of references, reactions and extramusical elements. Integralists insist that these are organized by the intellect of the listener in a specific form (such as, for example, the form of the narrative or sujet). Such a complex relationship within the categories of form and work can be schematized as shown in Figure 1.1. Both musical form and musical work refer to certain extraand intramusical components. Perhaps, when integralists and formalists discuss extra- and intramusical fields, they refer to the same objects, shown in Figure 1.1, as an area of overlap of two ellipses. For example, the extramusical field of references may be interpreted from the integralist point of view as a social determinant and the effect of historic evolution, while a formalist can term it as the domain of euphony and harmony. The same applies to the intramusical domain: for a formalist it is the categories of form and number as such; for an integralist, it is the aspect of the social function of music (its genre), historical teleology, and formedness of intertextuality.

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Figure 1.1 An intricate relationship of musical form and musical work.

As for the content and expression, they are located in Figure 1.1, in an isolated area within the formalist domain. Formalists reject them and delegate them to integralists’ home base. However, the content and expression exist within a certain form and that aspect becomes a small island of integralism in the formalist camp. Needless to say, content and expression, regardless of the attitudes of formalists, function as one of the most important and essential points of reference of both musical form and musical work at large. It is impossible to substantiate the slogan that music is self-referential. Not only that it is not such, but it is very difficult to stop the flow of references that music generates naturally. In other words, a listener without technical knowledge of musical composition must be able to perceive both musical work and musical form and it normally happens in terms of content and expression. Form and number are inaudible and lie beyond the regular modes of musical perception. According to Gérard Genette, “a work of art is an intentional aesthetic object, or an artifact (human product) with aesthetic function.”23 Musical work is, indeed, a human product; as such it can express both intra- and extramusical content; it also is structured in a certain way, just as musical form. The definition of musical form is, one way or another, derived from Plato’s intuition on idea and eidos. It is not directly related to “human product” of any kind of organic element, since it is transcendental and atemporal. It is structured in a certain way (differently from

Russian and Soviet Ideas on Relationship of Form vs. Work

the artwork as a whole) and it can also express some content. This content, however, is of its own origin.

1.6 Russian and Soviet Ideas on Relationship of Form vs. Work

It should be of interest to the Western reader that, in parallel with the developments in methodology of the form and analysis in the West, the same set of problems has been thoroughly investigated in the Soviet Union, behind the Iron Curtain. In fact, long before the birth of the USSR—at least since the publication of Azbuka [The Alphabet] by Alexander Mezenets in 1651 and Nikolai Diletsky’s treatise Idea Musikiiskoi Grammatiki [The Idea of Musical Grammar]24 in 1679—Russian musicians have become preoccupied with the theoretical dilemma of the integrated character of neumatic chant notation (in the Early Russian Znamennyi chant) and its difference from a more detailed and precise, but less comprehensive, five-line staff notation. The choice of a style and method of music analysis, the contrasting approaches to composition, and the evaluation of music by listeners in terms of its aesthetics have always depended on solutions to this dilemma. Most of the debates involving the formalists and the integralists have remained unwritten and unpublished, although in each publication in music theory in Russia (whether it be a textbook, an article or a treatise) one can clearly see the association of its author with either one of these two methods. The list of Russian publications provided at the end of this book in the Bibliography section reveals this specific feature in a most elucidating manner. For example, a professor-formalist (Yuri Kholopov as the most fervent) would carefully avoid naming his or her course “Analysis of Musical Works.” This would be a sign of treason—a course should be entitled “Musical Form,” or simply “Form.” Any professor-integralist (Leo Mazel’, Viktor Tsukkerman, or Valentina Kholopova) would not tolerate such a title. As a compromise, the book of Kholopova came out in 2001 with title “Forms of Musical Works.”25 Yuri Kholopov was, apparently, forced to write a program for the courses in Analysis

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of Musical Works (!)26 in the beginning of his teaching career in 1966. The conflict between the integralists and the formalists existed as a decades-long confrontation, which, however, rarely left the walls of the major conservatories. The differences in the textbook titles, as presented above, would not tell a Western reader anything about this passionate ongoing conflict. In fact, the author of this text ventured into this field only upon the impetus from and with the blessing of his teacher at the Moscow Conservatory, Dr. Yuri Kholopov, with whom the author studied for 11 years (1982–1993), first as an undergraduate, and then as a graduate student. The author also studied with Dr. Valentina Kholopova, who had been a student of Leo Mazel’ and Viktor Tsukkerman, the sister of Yuri Kholopov and, quite ironically, his most fervent opponent. In other words, this book contains a fair share of insider information weighted and balanced so that both sides of the argument receive equal representation. In fact, there is a great deal of political and professional intrigue contained in the study of these seemingly pure theoretical matters. The opposition of form to work—normally, a question of musical aesthetics and philosophy—became a litmus test for political orientation of each figure in music theory in the 1930s and 1940s. (The pro-government theorists chose work because, as a rule, it is generally determined by the social milieu, whereas the dissidents turned to musical form as a means of counterbalance against the predominance of socialist realism). The Russian theory of form has its roots in European philosophy, aesthetics, and the theory of composition and performance, which has secured its position in classical musical education. The analysts of musical form, joined together under the banner of defense of classical tradition, held strong positions in their arguments with the integralists. Owing to non-musical conditions, the position of the theory of form was much more difficult to adhere to in the 1930s and 1940s than that of integral analysis. For several decades, integral analysis served as a pillar for the official ideology in music theory, whereas the theory of form was criticized and condemned as representing the “ideologically perverse” position of “formalism.” Figure 1.2 presents the categorical apparatus of both methods in question in schematic form.

Russian and Soviet Ideas on Relationship of Form vs. Work

Figure 1.2 Categories of integral analysis and of theory of form.

Soviet integral (tselostnyi) analysis presupposes that a musical work, its perception by the listener and its social milieu are inseparable from each other, so the analysis must interact with social theory, aesthetics, and psychology. The “nucleus” of integral analysis is comprised of three components, as shown in the central box in the upper part of

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Figure 1.2. These three components constitute a musical work in a broad sense; therefore, the synonym of integral analysis is “analysis of the musical work.” There are two requirements for such analysis: (1) the language of description must be as close to the poetic language of music as possible, and (2) it must be scientific, i.e. related to psychology, sociology and other sciences of the humanitarian cycle. Numerous aspects of music that the traditional theory of form considered sufficient for the description of a musical work, such as form, harmony and counterpoint, in the integral analysis are moved aside beyond the nucleus. According to the integralists, these aspects are essentially the resultant effects of the musical work, along with the aspects of axiology, performance, and ontology of music. This placement of harmony, form, and counterpoint as noncentral categories, outside the main focus of music analysis, has always drawn critique from the formalists, for whom this triad identifies the “sacred essence” of music. Once again, the argument of the formalists was not as well positioned during Soviet times and any attempts to criticize the integralists could have cost a music theorist pertaining to the formalist camp his or her life. The lower part of Figure 1.2 shows the categories of the Soviet method of form. The musical work does not present an essencedefining element in this scheme. On the contrary, form is the central category that serves as a controlling factor for all the other aspects of composition. Harmony has its input in form when it is coupled with rhythm. Here metric and harmonic structures contribute to the creation of a periodic form. Of course, the other aspects of musical life, such as perception, performance, and social interaction, are not brushed away. (This latter argument has often been encouraged by the integralists, but it usually misses the target, since the Russian formalists do not share the views of Hanslick and his adherents). All the voluminous and heterogeneous aspects beyond musical form are perceived as its effects. This division has proved to be a very serious one. In fact, the most important contributors to Russian theory can be divided into two groups, according to this diagram. Figure 1.3 represents the leading theorists in pre-revolutionary Russia, the Soviet Union and contemporary Russia, placed into two large categories.

Russian and Soviet Ideas on Relationship of Form vs. Work

As shown in this figure, the pendulum of the popular support has swung at alternate times either in the direction of the integralists or in the direction of the formalists.

Figure 1.3 Russian and Soviet theorists according to their inclinations.

Not only the music theorists, but also the Russian composers have been divided over the issue of form vs. work (see Figure 1.4). It is interesting to observe how some composers, like Sergey Rachmaninoff, did not fit into the mainstream musical poetics of their time, especially for the reason that their training in music and what it stood for was related to the “wrong” theoretical ideology.

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Figure 1.4 Russian and Soviet composers as integralists and formalists.

Both methods have very little in common with the analysis of tonal music in the United States, which is what should make the subject of this book interesting for American readers. In general, Russian methods tend to be more open-end process­

Russian and Soviet Ideas on Relationship of Form vs. Work

oriented, while North American methods tend to rely more on abstract symmetry27 and predetermined structure (see Figure 1.5).

Figure 1.5 A comparison of theory methods in North America and in Russia.

The Russian theory of form operates with a system of typical forms as they were presented by A. B. Marx28 and Ludwig Bussler,29 without reliance on a single principal structure underlying all

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tonal music. This is not to say that the theory of form is totally a-systemic; it pursues the dynamic principles of unfolding as the result of a dialectic conflict of the multiple components. Such components include the three tonal-harmonic functions, the ternary functional division of form (initium-motus-terminus, according to Asafiev), the triple interaction of metric divisions, rhythmic patterns, and the periodic formal structures. Form is presented as a dynamic process (once again, quoting Asafiev's Musical Form as a Process), one which is not conditioned by any pre-compositional scheme or a single principle. This allows Russian theory to unite under one tonal roof the music of Beethoven, Brahms, Liszt, Wagner, Prokofiev and Bartok.

1.7 Elaborations on the Same or Similar Topics in Western Music Theory

As we shall explore further in this study, these two conceptual premises of the indigenous Russian music theory did not result from mundane political confrontation but occurred at a very early stage in its musical development. A thorough analysis of these successive historical stages suggests that several significant events in early Russian history changed Russian musical thinking, making it profoundly different from its Western counterpart. Nonetheless, Russian music theory encountered the same dilemma of work vs. form as did many other national traditions, and this occurred in Russian theory very early, at the time of its inception. This book addresses the specificity of the solutions to this dichotomy found by Russian musicians, while its very existence in music theory has no need of being validated, and its significance cannot be overestimated. As it is already mentioned, it suffices to remember the discussions within Dahlhaus’ music theory project,30 as well as the more recent debates of the American formalists (the theorists whose background was in the positivist trend of thought from the 1960s) with the American integralists (or the “New Musicologists”). Dahlhaus’s position is worthy of a longer quotation: Musical analysis, to put it banally, is either a means or an end. It aims at theory and is thus its first step; or it tries to do justice

Elaborations on the Same or Similar Topics in Western Music Theory

to a musical work as a particular individual formation. The distinction between theoretically and aesthetically oriented analyses may appear pedantic but is not superfluous. All too often, musical analyses or analytic fragments, most of all descriptions of harmonies and tonality, suffer from turbidity of purpose and hence provoke the suspicion that they are useless. Analyses deserving this title are, on the one hand, efforts to demonstrate the validity of a theory, of the system of functions and scale degrees; the possibility of a consistent and through its simplicity persuasive designation of chords by functional symbols or degree numbers then serves as proof; it reveals less about the work than about the theory [emphasis is mine—I. Kh.]. Or, on the other hand, an analysis should isolate the characteristics that distinguish the harmonic structure of one work from that of another. In this case it does not suffice to number the chords and to let the reader find in these numbers the special quality of the harmonic structure. The individual character of the chord structures and relations must rather be expressly shown and articulated by an interpretation of the analysis: an analysis of a second order (of which the categories have hardly been developed). If so, one may conclude that an analysis functions neither as demonstration or proof of a theory nor as a conceptual transcription of the particularity of a work, then it is unnecessary: it appears as mere application of a nomenclature, as labeling, which says nothing because it is aimless. Theoretically oriented analysis treats a piece of music as a document, as testimonial for facts outside itself or for a rule transcending the single case. Aesthetically oriented analysis, on the other hand, understands the same piece as a work complete in itself and existing for its own sake. To this difference between document and work corresponds, at least roughly, a difference between partial and comprehensive analysis.31

Dahlhaus adds many more figures to the scene. Yet, the opposition—or antinomy—is clearly stated as the clash of interests of an analyst. The form is, indeed, a theory outside of the musical work. One and the same form is applicable to a great number of different individual works. Dahlhaus attempts to replace the category of form with that of the document. This seems to be unnecessary; it contradicts the professional musical terminology.

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The Anglo-American musicology and music theory of the 1990s approached this opposition in a very dramatic, even confrontational, manner. Perhaps, the most eloquent witness to validity of such opposition was revealed in famous debates between American theorists of the 1980s and the representatives of New Musicology. The essence of their disagreement lies in the preference given to either form or work. Richard Taruskin—the unanimous leader of New Musicology— labeled the intention of theorists to focus on the musical score as a manifestation of fetishism. His adherence to musical work as a whole was rooted in philosophical traditions of the 1980s, in particular, in Michel Foucault’s reliance upon practice (borrowed from the Frankfurt school in resonance with the Marxist concept) and Deleuze’s thoughts on production. Thus, musical work is the result of practice and production. These tendencies remain active today. Perhaps, the specificity of North American music theory of the post-World War Two period welcomed some of this critique: it has been, indeed, very formal and formalized, much more than, say, the European theory of the nineteenth century. Nicole Grimes, the editor and contributor of the collection Rethinking Hanslick. Music, Formalism, Expression, describes this situation with this fundamental opposition in the West—and in the East—in following terms: Broadly speaking, musicology in the West Germany in the Cold War years can be understood as identifying certain modes of thought (such as sociopolitical readings of musical works) as extramusicological and thereby outside the concerns of musicological discussion. In this climate, the music was considered to be a “socially functionless, non-authoritarian discourse.” East German musicology during this period can be understood as “theorizing music as social discourse.” Anne Shreffler sees the Marxist musicology of East Germany as anticipating the tenets of the North American “New Musicology” promoted by commentators such as Joseph Kerman and Lawrence Kramer. For Marxist music historians, the priority was to reconnect music with society. As Shreffler argues, East German musicology was concerned with the need to find out how music communicates, between whom and in what

Elaborations on the Same or Similar Topics in Western Music Theory

contexts, how it did so in the past, what is communicated and for what purpose, and finally, how the “message of a work changes, if it does over time.”32

Dahlhaus approached both sides of this debate in a weighted manner, which makes it difficult to categorize his oeuvre as belonging to either position.33 The “New Musicology” has been more decisive in taking sides and its major point has been the interest toward an artwork as a whole and the rejection of fetishization of the score. In North America the two sides were more polarized than in post-WWII Germany for obvious reasons: the German theorists on both sides spoke the same language and refer to a single tradition of the past. This tendency of New Musicology is derived from the experience of reading the most current texts of philosophy, of predominantly phenomenological and postmodernist trends, in which the intertextual and referential characteristics of the work of art were the primary object of study. North American theorists of formalist upbringing, of course, were opposed to this innovation and enhanced the argument of Hanslick and Stravinsky in their analyses of the scores. The adjacent fields shed light on the same dichotomy in various unorthodox ways. Contemporary musical semiotics34—a highly organized discipline that champions such names as Eero Tarasti, Michael Spitzer and Robert Hatten—offers an approach to music that seems to be an alternative to both theory of form and analysis of musical work. Since it deals with music as a form of communication, it cannot limit its scope to form only and adheres to holistic choices, while its methods of evaluation of extramusical content are as precise and focused as those of formalists. The theory of form had its own path of development in the Anglophone West in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. What strikes the eye immediately is that in this tradition there is no single interpretation of musical form. Upon a closer examination, one can discern a variety of approaches within the current Formenlehre, contributed to by Donald Tovey, Nicholas Cook, Charles Rosen, E. T. Cone, L. B. Meyer, Leonard Ratner, William Rothstein, William Caplin, Warren Darcy and James Hepokoski. Thus, Caplin’s treatment of the object of analysis is

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strict; it is limited to form as such. Hepokoski and Darcy suggested widening of the scope by adding (or, rather, returning) the rhetoric into the discussion of new sonata theory. In the collection of articles Musical Form, Forms and Formenlehre, three prominent North American scholars, William Caplin, James Hepokoski and James Webster, presented their most recent take on formulation of the question “What is form?”35 These concepts have been only partially related to formalism as a category of musical aesthetics. The actual daily concern of the teachers and researchers of tonal music was musical form as the tool of professional music making, in its both venues of composition and performance. The single definition of form, outside general philosophical discussion and in a precise musical sense, proves to be difficult. Pieter Bergé, the editor and the contributor of the Musical Form, Forms and Formenlehre, notices this difficulty in the texts of leading experts in form: William E. Caplin, for instance, launches his essay “What Are Formal Functions?” with the question, “what is form?” Quickly thereafter, however, he undertakes the exercise of listing “terms and expressions associated with discourse about form in music.” The list is impressively long and contains a series of terms that open up fascinating perspectives on how to approach form .... Soon enough, however, Caplin admits that he will deliberately avoid providing anything like a “dictionary definition” of form in music, stating that a “more effective (…) approach” might be to “consider (…) the sorts of things we typically do when analyzing form in connection with a specific work.” In other words, the general question about the very identity of musical form is rapidly abandoned in favor of a potentially infinite list of more practical and concrete investigations. James Hepokoski also poses the question, “what is ‘form’ itself?” at the onset of his essay “Sonata Theory and Dialogic Form,” and thereby firmly states that it is “[T] he most basic question at stake when we deal with our own concretizations of musical structure or when we seek to build systems of formal classifications.” In addressing this key question, however, Hepokoski almost immediately proceeds to “single out two of its basic principles.” First, he notes that the perception of form is essentially “a collaborative enterprise,” and secondly, he suggests that “the full range of an implicit musical form” only reveals itself in “a

The Semiotic Angle and the French Approach to the Problem

dialogical process” between the specific composition itself and its broader generic context. However crucial these principles may be—and they are indeed! — the question “what is musical form?” is in some way deflected to an exposition of some of its essential characteristics.36

The form as a musical phenomenon exceeds the limits of scholastic definitions, provided in the language of musical aesthetics. In this sense, the rigorous descriptions by Hanslick remain inadequate when it comes to the analysis of particular forms in specific stylistic periods. As James Hepokoski mentioned, Dahlhaus’ agreement with formalism was not so much dictated by the desire to support Hanslick as by “an effort to keep the Austro-German canon from Beethoven to Schoenberg free from aggressively socio-political interpretations.”37 This makes the main opposition of categories in this book, musical work vs. musical form, even more intellectually challenging.

1.8 The Semiotic Angle and the French Approach to the Problem

The segment above deals with the predominantly Germanic approach to the antinomy of form vs. work. However, there is a different angle, established in the rich context of French thought, on general topics and on music analysis in particular. It treats musical work primarily as the means of communication and music analysis as the problem of semiotics, semiology, and post­ structuralism. The works of Nicolas Ruwet and Jean Molino present the primary literature in this area. Their achievements are further elaborated on in the publications of Jean-Jacques Nattiez. All these texts bear implicit critique of North American positivist tradition and its roots in German classical thought. They (as well as Joseph Kerman and Leo Treitler) “insist on the inadequacy of positivist myopia in analytical method and tendentiousness of Hegelian historical discourse.”38 Molino distinguishes two sides of the process of musical semiology: poietic and esthetic. These match rather adequately onto the terms used in this book. Poietic suggests Greek etymology of making something (from ποιέω, “I make, I do”), while esthetic is related

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to perception (Greek αἴσθησις). Indeed, the main objection of the teachers of form to those who embrace musical work as a whole is that such an approach deemphasizes the role of making music. In response to that, integralists accuse formalists of not including the aspects of music perception into the analytical procedure.

1.9 The Definition of Form during the Classical Period: A. B. Marx

In order not to exaggerate the “tendentiousness of Hegelian historical discourse” one may wish to reread the definition of musical form by one of the most influential theorists of this direction A. B. Marx. In the opening section of volume 2 of his seminal Die Lehre von der musikalischen Komposition Marx provides the definition of form of the musical artwork: So, we want to learn how to produce free works of art. Everyone here knows that there are works of art of the most varied forms. Even the most superficial observer can easily perceive that a dance or march differs from a sonata or fugue in its outward form, and that in turn all marches, or all waltzes among each other, as well as all fugues among each other, despite all differences in detail, in general, show a certain similarity, a certain conformity of form. We have only mentioned a few well-known and easily distinguishable forms. But it is easy to see that every work of art must have its form. For every work of art necessarily has its beginning and its end, i.e., its extent; it is made up of parts of different kinds, different numbers—composed in different ways. The quintessence of all these characteristics is called the form of the work of art; form is the way in which the content of the work—the composer’s sensation, idea, idea—outwardly became a form, and one has to characterize the form of the work of art more unspecific as the expression, as the outward form of its content.39

Contrary to the commonly circulating interpretation of this old and venerable teaching, its attention to detail and its comprehensive character suggest an understanding of form that

The Russian Approach to Classic-Romantic Musical Form

is probably unmatched in the history of music theory. On the one hand, Marx follows the trend of his time—Hegelian binary oppositions—and leans toward the idea of form as the vehicle of expression of musical content. This opposition has been avoided in this book for the reasons stated earlier. On the other hand, Marx brings up the undeniable arguments, such as Aristotelian division of all temporal arts into the beginning, the middle, and the end (Greek το ἀρχον, το μέζον καὶ το ἔσχατος). He also reiterates the well-known fact—that musical form is articulated; that it is not a flux of indiscernible components but rather a process that offers, quite naturally, division into parts. Another distinguishing feature of Marx’s definition is that it is not purely formalists (as many formalist definitions that occur later, especially those of Hanslick and Babbitt). Marx suggests that musical form—a technical device that must be studied by a professional musician—is destined to express the content of musical work (Kunstwerk). In this sense, Marx’s teaching is syncretic; it unites the purely platonic idea of form with the aspect of music that had become very popular in the nineteenth century in Germany and labeled as the theory of expression (the word Ausdruckstheorie was commonly used in Germany before Karl Büchler formulated it as a term in 1933). Musical form is not only a structure; it is a living, breathing and feeling entity, filled with human action and expression. This may explain the fact that the textbook of A. B. Marx has been the winner in longevity. While most of the textbooks hardly ever outlive their author(s), this one was used by Reinhold Glière in lessons in composition for Sergei Prokofiev in 1902–03.

1.10 The Russian Approach to Classic-Romantic Musical Form

In contrast to North American theory, the Russian traditions of analysis accept the nineteenth-century music theory wholeheartedly and rely heavily on the teaching of A. B. Marx. Soviet theorists also took and developed further some ideas from the treatises by Ebenezer Prout and Hugo Riemann. In 1947, Igor Sposobin published a textbook Musical Form that he wrote during

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World War Two. It has become the core of the Soviet method of musical form for decades. His definition of form goes as follows: Musical form is the design [Russ. stroyeniye]40 of musical work. The form is defined by the content of each given work, is created in unity with content and is characterized by the interaction of sounding elements that are distributed in time.41

This definition is formalist, but it has many aspects that come from both A. B. Marx’s teaching, nineteenth-century philosophy (for example, his use of the term content), and the indigenous Russian musical ideas. In general, Sposobin accepts A. B. Marx’s views of form. This acceptance results in several postulates that are common to both the integralist and the formalist camps in Russia but would raise a storm of objections from contemporary American theorists. These postulates include:

1. Viewing form as based upon themes. 2. Assigning an exclusive form-building role to the motive. 3. Relying upon the generative force of harmonic progression interpreted functionally. 4. Perceiving the coherence of the musical whole as the interaction of the metric- and phrasal structure with the tonal-harmonic functions. 5. Understanding formal segments in light of the theory of formal functions.42 6. Maintaining a dynamic view on form, as opposed to adhering to a single hierarchical scheme. 7. Establishing the connection between form and genre. 8. Applying aesthetic and philosophic abstractions to conclusions made in music analysis. 9. Accepting historicism in the treatment of form, with preference given to the historical features of form and genre from the nineteenth century.

These postulates comprise the core of musical research and pedagogy in Russia and, unlike the debates on priority of musical work over musical form and vice versa, they are largely accepted by both the integralists and the formalists. It goes without saying that the integralists have their personal angle on each of these postulates, just as the formalists.

The Russian Approach to Classic-Romantic Musical Form

Subsequently, the Russian theorists reassessed thematic structure as presenting the foundation of form. In contrast to the common interpretation of form as a patchwork of periods (a view ubiquitous in the eighteenth-century German theory), the Russian theorists adopted the role of the musical theme as a building block of musical form. Yuri Kholopov writes in his article “The Principles of Classification of Musical Forms”: It is commonly known that the true basis of musical composition is the well-formed theme—the bearer of musical images. When listening to or performing a musical work, we perceive its form mainly as the exposition and the development of musical themes (and not as periods or other structural units). A composer does not write periods, but themes, independently of whether these themes acquire the shape of a period or any larger form. Therefore, the classification of form based on periods contradicts the actual form building.43

This reliance upon thematicism [Russ. thematism] is not related to the famous Western tendencies of the 1970s, initiated by Rudolph Reti. Rather, it reflects the views of A. B. Marx and Riemann. Kholopov cites Riemann's classification of forms based upon the interactions of themes. In Riemann's article “Grundriss der Kompositionslehre,” there are four types of forms listed, corresponding to the number and relationships of themes: 1. Containing only one theme (the binary song-type form). 2. Containing an independent b section (the ternary song-type form or the small rondo form). 3. Containing three or more themes (large rondo forms). 4. Containing two themes interpreted as a unity (“the socalled sonata form”) (cited and translated into Russian by Kholopov44).

In general, the Russian theory of form is based upon a number of rigorous principles. In the work of Yuri Kholopov, these principles are derived from the Pythagorean numeric proportions and the idea of the divine origin of numbers. The Russian theory of form is very different from the integralist method, which allows for a diversity of explanations of various musical phenomena. The strength of the Russian theory of form is in its

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academic rigor and its adherence to a single universal principle. Integralists can only counter this with the all-encompassing multiplicity. The large-scale form begins with the motive and develops by means of several factors; one of them is formal functions. Soviet theorists have discovered the idea of functional differentiation of the segments of form, that which can be traced back to A. B. Marx’s Ruhe-Bewegung-Ruhe general principle and five rondoforms that are generated in the course of its application. Unlike Schoenberg, Ratz and Caplin, whose functional scheme works primarily within the theme, Soviet music theorists applied the idea of formal function to the sections of large-scale forms. Sposobin suggested six functions, Skrebkov—three, Tyulin— four. The most used in the research and pedagogic practice was the system of Sposobin. Valentina Kholopova in a private conversation told the author that the community of the Soviet theorists was unaware about the origins of Sposobin’s functions. Yet, they proved to be very useful and easily applicable in the pedagogy of Classical and Romantic forms. In a nutshell, there are three main functions, referring roughly to Aristotelian το ἀρχών, το μέσον και το ἔσχατος. Sposobin suggests the terms Expositional, Intermediary, and Recapitulatory functions. One can discover them in the opening movement of the sonata as Exposition, Development and Recapitulation, but these also apply to the Primary theme and the Subsidiary theme within the exposition, or to the Main theme and the B section of the Large Ternary form. There are also two framing functions, Introductory and function of the Coda, and, Sposobin had to ad, the Transitional function that applies to all modulatory sections of the form. This is not the end of Sposobin’s discussions, however. He suggests that there are the common types of presentation [типы изложения] for each function. In the beginning of his textbook Musical Form (1947), he allots some 60 pages on discussion of the features, appropriate for each function. Thus, the Introductions can be slow and in a different key from the main; they can be expressed by a single chord, an accompaniment figure, or a full-blown smaller form. The Primary is tight-knit and it does not develop. Its role is to expose the material, etc.

Russian Definitions of Musical Work

Then, Sposobin brings in a number of cases where the function contradicts its type of presentation. His favorite example is the opening of the first song from Schubert’s Die Winterreise. The listener is offered all the traditional features of the Closing function: the melodic line descending to tonic; repeated PAC’s, slowing down. Yet, this is, contrary to the impression, the beginning of a monumental vocal cycle. Here, it would be appropriate to question why Schubert chose the “ending” type of music for the beginning of the vocal cycle. It happens so that great composers often chose not to follow the functional prescription: they violate the anticipated function by introducing a contradicting one, for different reasons. Such violations, together with the violations of regular metric period with expansions and extractions of metric measures, generate the narrative, unique for each musical work.

1.11 Russian Definitions of Musical Work

The concept of musical work is discussed in many Russian and Soviet books and articles. As with the form, it makes sense to start with the definition, provided by Mazel’ and Tsukkerman in their seminal text, Analysis of Musical Works, published in 1967. These two founding fathers of integralist analysis shed light on both musical work and musical form. Musical work, as a work of any other arts, presents the unity of form and content. By content we understand artistic imagebased reflection of the social-historic reality, the typical human characters, thoughts, feelings and experiences.

The musical form is understood as a holistic organization of musical means that embody the contents of the work.45

It may look like both Sposobin and Mazel’/Tsukkerman discuss the same binary opposition of form vs. content. Indeed, this is a borrowed vocabulary from Hegel and nineteenth-century philosophy. However, the emphasis in Mazel’ and Tsukkerman’s book is placed so differently from that of Sposobin that the two concepts remain non-correlative. Mazel’ and Tsukkerman begin the opening chapter with the definition of the purpose of analysis.

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The course in Analysis of Musical Works presents the science of design (stroyeniye)46 of a musical work and the liaisons of this design with the content of music; it teaches how to use the data of this science, together with the data from other disciplines in holistic (tseolstnyi) analysis of musical works.47

Immediately noticeable is the reliance on integral analysis and on the data from adjacent fields. The design of the musical work here is not limited to its form. Mazel’ and Tsukkerman go onto the clarification of the role of analysis: The notion of analysis is interpreted here only partially in its original meaning (dissection, dissolution into elements). We interpret it in a more general way, as a synonym of in-depth study, meticulous logical consideration of any kind of phenomena.48

It is obvious that music analysis is more often just a careful consideration of the phenomenon; rarely it is the analysis in a true sense. Integral analysis is a kind of synthetic judgement on various facts related to music. An interesting elaboration is given in the rubric a few pages later: Mazel’ and Tsukkerman take the discussion away from the technical and structural detail of musical form: “The specificity of art. Artistic image. Unity of the general and individual, objective and subjective, rational and emotional. Realism in art. The features of realist musical art.”49 Here, Mazel’ and Tsukkerman prompt us into the sphere of integral analysis proper. These features, artistic image, realism, the unity of objective and subjective, are not the part of the formalist discussion. Mazel’ and Tsukkerman add their definition of expressive means of music and focus on melody—something rather unusual in the world of formalist music theory.

1.12 German Theory of the Mid-Twentieth Century: Similarities with Soviet Ideas

Between the era of Hanslick and the time of Dahlhaus lies the period that is stricken by the greatest tragedy for the nations of the world. In that period marked by two major military conflicts in global history, WWI and WWII, the debates over form and

German Theory of the Mid-Twentieth Century: Similarities with Soviet Ideas

work, formalism and integralism, took place on the background of the cruel collisions between the power of the state and the interests of the people. In parallel with the Soviet integralistformalist controversy, German theory in the first half of the twentieth century presents a fascinating story of moving from one polarity to another under the effect of political circumstances. In the beginning of the twentieth century, German music theory continued its professional evolution with significant development of skill-based disciplines, such as harmony, form, counterpoint, and orchestration. These were the defining factors of German superiority in music theory in the second half of the nineteenth century and there was no reason to change this rather successful path. However, during the Nazi regime, the teaching of traditional musical-theoretical disciplines that were dubbed der Tonsatz has become marred and associated with the backwardness of the cultural politics of this time. In 1945 it has been rejected wholesale and another discipline—die Musikwissenschaft—has completely ousted the old-fashioned musical subjects. This monumental shift from conservatory to university environment seemed the most reasonable in the first years after 1945, but soon the teachers realized that the infant was thrown away together with the bath water: the violent suppression of the traditional disciplines and expulsion of the old teachers of harmony, such as Wilhelm Maler and Hermann Grabner, proved to be very costly. As suggested by Ludwig Holtmeier in his article “From ‘Musiktheorie’ to ‘Tonsatz’: National Socialism and Music Theory after 1945,” during the Second World War, Grabner was concerned about the state of affairs in the field: The word Musiktheorie has been brought into such discredit in the last few years that in many instances it is now replaced with Musiklehre, Satzleher, Tonsatz, or similar terms. ... Theory requires knowledge and power of reasoning.50

Grabner had the reason for nostalgia: in the previous generation, Ernst Kurth, Hugo Riemann, and August Halm were leading the community of theorists into the highest levels of reflection on music, on par with philosophy, natural and social sciences. With the Nazi regime, all this wealth of free thought came to a halt. However, after World War Two, with the radical changes and transition to Dahlhaus’ project, the country has lost

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even what it had—the Tonsatz, the practical aspect of professional musical training. Even today young teachers of music theory in Germany experience the lost time in development of the core subjects and must borrow methods and textbooks from North American colleagues. This situation is thoroughly described in alreadyquoted Ludwig Holtmeier’s paper. The Musikwissenschaft, a concept that was introduced by the thinkers of German Enlightenment in the eighteenth century and received full attention of the theorists of post-WWII era, such as Carl Dahlhaus, has been based upon musical hermeneutic and semantics. It has been a doctrine maximally similar to the Russian integralist method. This similarity has been rediscovered later: Soviet tselostnyi analiz, conceived in 1930 by Mazel’, Tsukkerman and Ryzhkin as the product of Marxists doctrine of art as a reflection of social life, has received the second breath in 1980 after coming into resonance with the Dahlhaus project.51

1.13 Eastern European Contributions to the Subject

In addition to Germany, North America and Soviet Union, music scholarship in the countries of former Eastern Bloc, such as Poland, former Czechoslovak Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria and former Yugoslavia, was involved in solving form vs. work antinomy. For example, in the book by Mieczysław Tomaszewski Chopin’s Music Read Anew the framework for discussion is set up as the opposition between the neopositivist and the hermeneutic interpretations: The entire nineteenth century read Chopin’s music in a more or less similar way, attaining an apogee in the modernist interpretations by Stanisław Przybyszewski and Ignacy Paderewski at the turn of the twentieth century. Then musicological neopositivism set in, and the interpretation of Chopin’s music lost all metaphor that ever tried to capture the unique expressive character of individual works. Hermeneutic approaches only survived in journalism and in program notes. Scholarly interpretation did away with the category of a work’s expressive qualities as unyielding to so-called scientific accuracy.52

Eastern European Contributions to the Subject

It is important to emphasize as well that Tomazcewski’s new reading is closer to the hermeneutic side, and he brings to the attention of his readers the early scholarship of Chopin’s music represented by none other than Schumann and Liszt. In this sense, the integralist position appears to have received surprisingly strong support from the Western European tradition of the nineteenth century, a fact which diminishes the role of the opposition between Russia and Western Europe in the twentieth century, and, in particular, in the context of the debates between the formalists and the integralists. In other words, Soviet integralism is not a figment of communist ideology; rather, it is the continuation of both Russian indigenous centennial tradition and the hermeneutic trend in Western European tradition of the nineteenth century. The Czech musicologists of the earlier generation, such as Miroslav Černý53 and Jiří Vysloužil,54 have also emphasized phenomenology and hermeneutics in their writings. The former created one of the most interesting elaborations on Asafiev’s concept of musical form as a process, while the latter wrote about the phenomenology of a musical work in the footsteps of Edmund Husserl and Roman Ingarden.55 Another famous Czech musicologist, Jaroslav Jiranek, followed Marxist ideas in his studies of musical semantics.56 The author of this book has published an article about the interaction between the Soviet theorists and the musicologists in Eastern Europe between the two world wars.57 It was nothing short of a fruitful collaboration, and the topic of interest for this book has never left the focus of the discussions on both sides. The names of Soviet theorists have been among those most commonly cited in the works of Eastern European musicologists. For example, even today in Poland the name of Leo Mazel’ is mentioned as often in papers and articles dedicated to the music of Chopin as the names of any contemporary Western theorists. Unlike the Eastern European musicologists, their Western colleagues have not been as fortunate in acquiring access to Soviet and Russian materials and in working in close collaboration with the Soviet theorists. The existent English and German literature on Russian/Soviet theory proves just how difficult it is to describe Russian concepts in a language that

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harmonizes with the context, correlate them with the Western European concepts and give them an adequate evaluation. Very often, these studies (for example, the attitude of the editors of the early editions of The New Grove’s Dictionary, the books on music of Tchaikovsky by Edward Garden and Henry Zajaczkowski, and the critique of Russian operas and symphonies by Carl Dahlhaus and Theodor Adorno), maintain somewhat derogatory tone, which does not mesh with the recorded achievements of Russian composers and performers. In contrast to them, the study Russian Theoretical Thought in Music, together with five dissertations which have been written in recent decades—one by Gordon McQuere on the music theory of Boleslaw Yavorsky, another by James R. Tull, B. V. Asafiev’s Musical Form as A Process. Translation and Commentary, the third by Ellon D. Carpenter, The Theory of Music in Russia and in the Soviet Union, ca. 1650–1950, the fourth by David E. Haas, Form and Line in Music and Musical Thought of Leningrad: 1917–1932, and, the last, but not the least, by Philip Ewell, Analytical Approaches to Large-Scale Structure in the Music of Alexander Scriabin—stand out as being well-informed and comprehensive. I shall refer to them further in this book. And, undoubtedly, there were texts (for example, a number of books by Iosif Ryzhkin on the “advantages of socialist realism in music”), which in the present day may be treated merely as curious artifacts. In other words, some modern scholars may disagree with a number of previous evaluations made by both Western and Soviet theorists, as their conclusions might seem to serve more localized interests.

1.14 The Antinomy of Form vs. Work in Chinese and Arabic Traditions

Obviously, the antinomy discussed in this book relies on Greek terms of form (μορφή, ἔιδος) and work (ἐργόν), with all their rich local connotations. It would be futile to try to translate these terms into languages of cultures that are based upon different categories. However, from the history of Chinese thought one can gather some similar contrasting positions. For example, there is a difference between Confucian and Daoist approaches. The former presupposes following the given law (the form in a wide sense),

The Antinomy of Form vs. Work in Chinese and Arabic Traditions

while the latter relies on the multiplicity of factors that constantly change the behavior, expressed in the turning of the wheel of Yin and Yang. With an eye for objective differences, one can still interpret this Chinese antinomy as a parallel to that of formalism and integralism in Russia and many European countries, and that applies to the corresponding approaches to arts—including— music. The classical Arabic tradition is famous for passing to the West of the authentic ancient Greek knowledge. One thing that the Arabic thinkers introduced into that knowledge from their own cultural heritage was ultimate rationalism. Even the texts of Aristotle were streamlined in this fashion—a reasonable influence, if one considers the origins of the most advanced mathematics in India since the sixth century and the countries of the Arabic caliphate (seventh to thirteenth centuries). Together with a proclivity toward pure numerology (a distinct formalist trend), the Arabic art also offered the gateway into sensual elements in poetry and music—something that can resonate with integralist attitudes. As seen from these two examples, given in the most transient way due to limitation of the size of this book, the major dichotomy in music theory in Russia can be connected to similar antinomies in a global perspective. The first chapter offered an overview of theoretical issues that mark the antinomy of form and work. As revealed in various cultural encounters, such antinomy is ubiquitous and is present on a number of levels, from the highest philosophical to the lowest pragmatic. The importance of this dichotomy is rooted in compositional practice and that argument supports both theoretical-philosophical concepts. Every composer stands before this choice: whether to focus on purely musical aspects (formal aspects, musical Sache) or to overtly present, at the risk of harsh criticisms of the guardians of music as such, the elements of perception and reflection in historic and social milieu. Selfimposed limitation by the boundaries of form proved to be efficient in certain periods. In the second half of the nineteenth century, in the heydays of conservatory tradition, it seemed

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perfectly sufficient to operate with purely musical elements, such as mode, key, motive, harmony, counterpoint, and form, in order to create successful music. At other times—turning points in history, such as, for example, the revolutionary first decade of the twentieth century—extramusical components, either socio-political or abstract mathematical, had become a kind of prerequisite for music making. These discrepancies in poetics of each composer—and they form a complete spectrum, with the finest gradations and mixtures of two approaches—determine the choice of tools of music analysis. And, as always, the devil hides in the detail: some composers of the nineteenth century subscribed to the dialectic opposition of form vs. content (following what was suggested by Hegel) and the theorists followed this binary opposition in their analyses. As shown in this chapter, the antinomy of form and work presupposes different figures and different levels of comparison. The focus and, at times, transfixion on form alone, can be approached with a different philosophical tool. The musical form as a sole object of analysis can be described as Husserlian epoché—refusal to discuss the whole context, intentional placing of the object in parentheses. Such an approach has been rejected in many Eastern European traditions, as mentioned at the end of this chapter. Stemming from the purely theoretical comparisons in this chapter, the following discussion in this book is planned as follows: in Chapter 2, the reader will be exposed to the history and evolution of the Russian musical-theoretical tradition, predominantly based upon integralist ideas, from the early stages to the seventeenth century—a watershed in history that welcomed the Western influences, after simmering in isolation for at least seven centuries. Chapter 3 will cover the dramatic changes that were introduced by this overwhelming process of westernization of Russia (since Peter the Great); this chapter will cover the aspects that contribute to the idea of musical formalism, as borrowed from the Western counterpart and developed from within. Chapter 4 will return to the integralist trend that has been interrupted by westernization but did not disappear altogether. Restarting in the nineteenth century, this part of the antinomy gained momentum under the socio-political

The Antinomy of Form vs. Work in Chinese and Arabic Traditions

changes and bloomed into a well-developed concept of holistic analysis in 1930–40. Chapter 5 will reflect upon the last decades of existence of Soviet music theory and the post-1991 period, in which both sides of the antinomy become entangled and existed in one indivisible context. Thus, the next four chapters will elaborate on each approach and will add the necessary historic dimension and factual texture to this discussion.

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Chapter 2

Early Stages of Integralism in Russia: Eleventh through Seventeenth Centuries As mentioned in the Introduction, the antinomy of form vs. work emerged and reemerged in various places and in different time periods. The specificity of early Russian music is revealed in its predominantly holistic nature. This chapter will further explore the antinomy of form and work by tracing it to the early periods of Russian music theory. It will cover the ideas of holistic nature of Russian Orthodox Church chant, the theory of Russian Orthodox Church chant, connections and differences with Byzantine chant, holistic definitions of neumes, the folk song as a source for the chant, and the aesthetic and philosophical components of Russian Orthodox chant theory. All these arguments contribute to the idea of holistic, integral approach to music making that characterizes Russian indigenous tradition. It is remarkable how it developed its own attitude, in contrast to and in parallel with the predominantly formalist trends unfolding during this period (tenth to seventeenth centuries) in the West. There are quite reasonable possible questions for and critique of Western theory from the Russian chant theorists (reconstructed by the author from the sources), that which, perhaps, deserves a further discussion by representatives of both Russian and Western sides. Form vs. Work: A Major Antinomy of Music Theory and Analysis Ildar D. Khannanov

Copyright © 2024 Jenny Stanford Publishing Pte. Ltd.

ISBN 978-981-5129-01-4 (Hardcover), 978-1-032-69416-0 (eBook) www.jennystanford.com

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2.1 Holistic Nature of Russian Orthodox Church Chant A comprehensive holistic approach has become rather expressed in Russian chant tradition since the eleventh century; as it will be shown further, its neumatic notation system offers a complete image of a musical event, without going into detail in terms of precise fixed pitch and duration. Russian chant notation is based on znamya—literally, a banner, a pictogram that covers all pertinent elements of musical expression in a coherent and comprehensive form as the representation of integral, holistic worldview. Znamya is a diacritical58 sign that refers to a short melodic pattern—a phrase with its characteristic trajectory and speech-dependent rhythm and pitch geometry (Example 2.1).

Example 2.1 Znamya, a neume of the Russian Orthodox Church Znamennyi chant.

Znamennyi neumatic notation comes in great contrast with the rhythmic notation of ars nova (Franco of Cologne) and the line notation (derived from Guido of Arezzo’s ideas) (Example 2.2).

Example 2.2 Mensural notation of ars nova.

The line notation and the Western system of meter and rhythm were introduced to the Russian tradition only in the seventeenth century. The latter presents the aspects of the whole—the pitch and duration—on separate axes (abscissa and ordinates) expressed by a separate method of notation. It is a trade-off of holistic

Holistic Nature of Russian Orthodox Church Chant

capturing for precision in location of a single sound. From the discovery of polyphony to the regulation of rhythm in ars nova, the Western line notation came as a remedy for the technical difficulties in the emerging polyphonic tradition, in which the vertical alignment of voices was the most pressing issue. It has been reached at the expense of other parameters that were placed in parenthesis and delegated to the aural tradition of teaching and performance practices. In contrast, by holding to neumatic notation, Russian music retained the integral and coherent character of music making. Russian nineteenth-century theory of form is also rooted in ancient tradition. Contrary to the common perception, it is not only the product of assimilation of Western Formenlehre; there had been strong neo-Platonic and Greek patristic trends that survived through centuries and reached the texts of Alexei Losef and Yuri Kholopov in the twentieth century. Joining the Western theory in the seventeenth century was not an absolute innovation: Russian neo-Platonism that was housed in Greek Orthodox theology was reunited with the formal and formalist tendencies in the current Western musical thought. In a sense, learning the intricate balance of these two approaches in the history of Russian music scholarship may as well give the key to understanding of the Russian musical tradition as such. The concepts of Russian music theory are often expressed in a non-convertible form and in a highly idiomatic language, making it difficult to interpret them by using conventional Western terminology. The challenge occurs already on the level of translation, since the terms and categories of Soviet Russian music theory have rarely been interpreted and evaluated in the West (for example, “poliphonicheskii sklad”59 or “smyslovoye znachenie”60 have no direct equivalents in English and require heuristic interpretations). The fact that in the Soviet period the vocabulary of Russian musical terms suffered a significant infusion of specifically political idioms and neologisms adds greatly to this difficulty. One possible way to probe the deeper layers of Russian musical thinking is to look back into its early history. At that time, during the gradual centennial development, a number of conceptual premises became an integral part of the theoretical

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discourse. The most noteworthy of them included a specific view of modal structure expressed in the indigenous category of soglasie (one of four trichordal links that form a scale—the obikhod in the church chant) later transformed into lad (Russian term for both mode and key), an integral approach to neumatic notation (znamena and kryuki), the use of aesthetic and philosophical reasoning as an inseparable ingredient of analysis and a firm belief in folk music as the main source of composition. In due time, these ideas became archetypal and independent of any political and aesthetic changes that took place in the country. The principles and categories, mentioned above, had been adhered to for centuries, and the Russian theorists became less aware of them, making it difficult for them to reflect on their own musical heritage. It suffices to point out that although the relationship between the two major methods of analysis is of great importance, no major research has yet been published on this topic in the Russian language.61 It can be explained by the active confrontation of the participants from both sides and the absence of a figure, nonaligned with either of the two methods, who would be capable of creating an unbiased account of this conflict from a safe distance. The author indulges in the idea that this book will make this possible.

2.2 The Theory of Russian Orthodox Church Chant

Early music theory in Russia has been developing in parallel with liturgical music, that is, with the tradition of chant (raspev)62 of the Russian Orthodox Church. Russian monodic chant takes its root in the eleventh century and is still present in the Christian tradition of the Old Believers. It has been developing in its written form in so-called “Azbuki” (Russ. “alphabet books”) and, most actively, in its oral tradition. The sheer number of genres, types of chants, performers and composers of that time is staggering. It is indicative of the wealth and diversity of the early Russian musical culture.63 In its turn, this culture has deep roots in the ancient Byzantine tradition of psaltica, from which it has derived its system of notation. The

The Theory of Russian Orthodox Church Chant

Russian raspev uses an indigenous intervallic system (obikhod scale) and various short melodic patterns (popevkas). Through the centuries, the raspev underwent dramatic changes in both its vocabulary of signs (znamena, kryuki) and the systems of modal and rhythmic organization. All the innovations to the raspevs were introduced by the Russian church choir singers of that time, raspevchshiks, whom we can call de facto “theorists.” These singers were usually monks (e.g., inok Khristophor, Ivan Shaidurov or Alexander Mezenets), just like most of the early Western-European musicians. The fact that they composed music exclusively in the style of monophonic chant does not make them any less credible as theorists than Tinctoris, Zarlino, or Kircher. The specificity of the monodic musical culture determined the style and content of early Russian music theory. The instrumental music was not used in Russian churches. However, this was not a disadvantage: complexity and flexibility of vocal expression fully compensated for lacking the instrumental accompaniment. The ban of instrumental performance in the church has its roots in early Patristic views of instrumental music as the lowest in the hierarchy, related to common ternary division into musica universalis, musica humana and musica instrumentalis. From the early Azbuki-Perechisleniya [alphabet books—lists of neumes] to the present day, the theory of Russian church chants constitutes a strong component of the Russian theoretical thought. Maxim Brazhnikov—one of the most prominent contributors into this theory during the Soviet period—mentions in his textbook Drevnerusskaya Teoriya Muzyki [The Ancient Russian Music Theory] that by the fourteenth century “Znamennyi system of notation had been completely formed and established.”64 Since 1604, when the Azbuka by inok [monk] Khristophor saw the light of day, a continuous tradition, represented by the most brilliant musicians and music scholars, has been developing in a steady and consistent manner; in this way, it has reached the twenty-first century. Toward the middle of the nineteenth century, the theory of Orthodox chant was transformed into a new discipline, known as musical paleography. Numerous theoretical treatises and articles on different aspects of Russian paleography were written and published by Vukol

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Undol’sky (1846), Alexei L’vov (1858), Dmitri Razumovsky (1863), and Stepan Smolensky (1887, 1903, 1909). The latter was the Rector of the Synodal Uchilishche [College] in Moscow, who gave his blessings to Rachmaninoff’s participation in liturgical music. He also contributed to the study of the early historical ancient Kondakarnyi notation. The twentieth century, albeit politically unfriendly to this discipline, has shown an unfading interest to paleography. Thus, Vasily Metallov has widened the horizons of paleography with his two major treatises, Azbuka Kryukovogo Peniya [Azbuka of Kryuk Singing] (1899) and Russkaya Simiographiya [Russian Simiography] (1912), while Antonin Preobrazhensky focused his research on the similarities between the Greek and the Russian chant traditions in his publications of 1909 and 1926. During the Soviet period, notwithstanding the fact that religion was banned from the public sphere, the research in Russian paleography continued. Maxim Brazhnikov created a course in Musical Paleography at the Leningrad Conservatory and taught it from 1969 to 1972.65 Tatyana Vladyshevskaia, the daughter of a priest of the Old-Believers’ church, taught the same course at the Moscow Conservatory in the 1980s. The author of this book had an opportunity to take this course with Dr. Vladyshevskaia. After 1991, the tradition of the theory of ancient chants grew exponentially and presently it includes hundreds of venues for research, both in its theoretical and applied aspects. A well-known fact—inheritance of Russian church music from its Byzantine prototype—allows one to see a crucial advantage of Russian music: while there was no notation in the fifth to eighth centuries in the West, notation existed in the Byzantine tradition and many aspects of pitch structure (eight modes, for example) were borrowed by Western musicians from the Byzantine oktoikhos. In this respect, Russian music theory is as ancient as any other in European history. Moreover, Russian music theory has its deep roots in the Greek Orthodox Christian culture and is thereby, via Byzantine connection, closer related to the ancient Greek foundation of music theory than its Western counterpart. Indeed, the similarities66 of organizing principles of the Lesser Perfect system (based on three overlapping tetrachords and one disjointed tetrachord) and the Russian

Similarities and Differences with Byzantine Chant

obikhod system (based on four adjacent trichords) are selfexplanatory, as shown in Example 2.3.

Example 2.3 Two ancient Greek systems and Russian Obikhod: a comparison.

If the tetrachord above the Mese (the A4) is disjointed (διεζευγμένον), this creates the Greater Perfect System of two octaves, and the note above the Mese is called the Paramese; it is B4. If the tetrachord above the Mese is conjoined (συνημμένον), this creates a Lesser Perfect System, and the note above the Mese is called the Trite; the B flat is not the last note of the higher tetrachord but its third note (all notes are counted down from the top). The presence of this B flat results in a clash against the B natural an octave lower, which is the Hypate. The same crossreference of pitches characterizes the obikhod scale, and both Lesser Perfect System and obikhod do not replicate the pitches located at a distance of an octave from each other. These similarities have been described in both Russian and WesternEuropean literature (e.g., in Kholopov, Wellesz, and Velimirovich).

2.3 Similarities and Differences with Byzantine Chant

It is known that the most ancient genre of Byzantine chant— the kontakion—has been preserved in the Russian Orthodox kondakarnyi tradition,67 the one example of which is the hymn (prooemio, tropar’) “Ti Hupermaho Stratego” [Greek “Τη Ὑπερμάχω Στρατηγώ,” Engl. “To Thee, the Champion Leader,” Russ. “Взбранной Воеводе”]. Another common feature of both late Greek and early Russian musical traditions is a musical

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genre based on eight collections of short melodic patterns (the Byzantine oktoikhos68 and the Russian osmoglasie). These collections served as a fixed repertory of building blocks used in musical composition. A neume with the same name (e.g., a Strela) has eight versions which are specific to each glas. Each chant is also attributed to a certain glas, which makes this system related to a great extent to the Arabic Maquam and the Indian Raga. All eight collections made use of the same scalar material (the Perfect System in Byzantium, or the obikhod scale in Russia); the difference between any two collections lies not in the intervallic species, but in the melodic shapes and genre attribution (e.g., the sixth glas contains mostly the popevkas for mourning and funeral chants69). Therefore, modality in the Eastern European chant is expressed in melodic shapes based on the same scale, while in the Western European chant it is expressed in different species of a scale (pitch collections) without any specification of melodic shapes used, as shown in Example 2.4.

Example 2.4 Popevki of Russian Osmoglasie compared with Western modes.

Similarities and Differences with Byzantine Chant

The meaning of the term mode in contemporary interpretation relates to the general idea of “mode of expression.” From there, the development of modality in the East and in the West went along different paths. Whereas the Western tradition relied upon pitch configurations of measured and calculated (as suggested by St. Augustin’s musica est ars bene modulandi) pre-compositional devices (the modal species of an octave), the Russian tradition incorporated the idea of modality in melody itself, using fixed contour (Gestalt) as modal inflexion. Egon Wellesz in his famous History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography first expressed this position.70 This explains the profound discrepancy in understanding of modes (and later of the principles of tonality) in Russia and in Western Europe. As it has been addressed earlier, the indigenous Russian term lad cannot be translated into either mode or tonality without significant loss of meaning. Without clarifying these differences in early Russian and Western theory, it is impossible to understand the original views of Asafiev, Yavorsky, Tyulin, Kholopov and other twentieth-century Russian theorists. The careless dismissal of the early periods of Russian music theory by Anglo-Saxon scholars does not mesh with the views of the leading theorists in Russia. Tatiana Vladyshevskaia discusses the theory of Znamennyi chant and brings in the names of chanters, such as Vasily Rogov, Inok Khristophor, and Ivan Shaidurov, the Russian chant theorists. The first written theoretical sources in Russia appeared only in the early 15th century. There were monastic manuscripts, one of which was created in Kirillo-Belozer monastery in 1430–1440s; it already has a certain established system, which has manifested itself in the hierarchy of signs.71

Vladyshevskaia’s view is supported by the idea of theory of vocal art in the dissertation of Angela Zingarenko, The History and Theory of Training of the Professional Singers in Russia in the Seventeenth-first half of the Nineteenth Centuries: To the Problem of Education of Musical Ear (2008). She insists on the theoretical tradition of teaching the singers—ancient Russian “solfeggio” since the 11th century (in line with Keldysh). Judging by the ultimate complexity of chants, it seems reasonable that they had solid

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training that included the knowledge of music theory of an appropriate kind.

2.4 Holistic Definitions of Neumes

In observing these discrepancies with the Western analytical thinking, the Russian approach appears more integrated and holistic. In their understanding of both modality as unity of a complete melodic pattern and of notation as an image of such pattern, Russian musicians thought about music in complex integrated categories. Milos Velimirovich points out that the Byzantine neumatic notation includes six signs denoting a twonote ascending motive. Of course, each one of them (in addition to indicating the respective pitches) offers complete information on the methods of performance, dynamics, vocal technique and aesthetic and theological interpretations. The same applies to the Znamennyi chant: the neumes Skameitsa, Golubchik, Perevodka and Strela all indicate two-note ascending patterns, but their individual interpretations take up many pages in the Azbuka. Therefore, unlike the limited information which two notes in five-line staff notation provide to a musician, the Znamennyi notation offers an all-inclusive description of diverse aspects, from the technical to the aesthetic. A good example of a sign with a wide and comprehensive field of meanings is the neume Golubchik (Russ. “The Little Dove”) (Example 2.5).

Example 2.5 The “Little Dove,” “swift” and “quiet”.

The meaning of this neume cannot be explained in a single sentence of the dictionary definition; it requires a two-pagelong text.72 The following is a demonstration of holistic essence of Russian neume, and, therefore, the integral approach to musical elements as carriers of both technical and expressive elements:

Holistic Definitions of Neumes

“The ‘Little Dove’.” This znamya belongs to the category of the “two-glas-stepped” that marks the ascending direction within a melody. It is depicted in the form of a small comma (like in Arrows) with two small dashes on its right side. This znamya comes in two types: the quiet and the swift (the quiet ‘Little Dove’ has one larger dash on the right side; it is sung twice as long as the swift). The height of the ‘Little Dove’ depends on the next adjacent znamya: there are no markings or complementary signs for the ‘Little Dove’. The first pitch of the ‘Little Dove’ is at an interval of a third below the first pitch of the next znamya. The power and color of the ‘Little Dove’ were described by the ancient interpreters in the following words: “to gurgle from the back of the throat”. This znamya gives a full, though moderate sound. Dmitri Allemanov describes it as “a gurgling sound.” According to the interpreters of the Znamennyi chant, the ‘Little Dove’ is placed over unstressed syllables and one-syllable words. It serves the function of the leading tone to the next soglasiye, to the rhythmic stress in the entire chant, or the transitional sounds to the next line in the text which begins with the stress. Thereby, the ‘Little Dove’ is a penultimate and connecting znamya: it continues the movement of the Comma, which normally precedes it, on a different syllable and with a different character, that is, it connects the previous znamya with the subsequent one. This sign also possesses the function of warning. Such signs play an important role in the rhythms of the words. The singer who sight-reads music written in square notation frequently “gropes his way through,” which means that he moves blindly merely by the sensation of what is “directly under his feet.” It is important to mention, however, that the penultimate signs of the Znamennyi notation have nothing in common with grace notes. The latter are absolutely alien to church singing, because they possess a sophisticated dramatic character, presenting an indispensable element in secular music of later times. The difference between the ‘Little Dove’ and the ‘Little Bench’ is such that the former creates a full sound, while the latter is tranquil and stable. Absence of overt expression of passion is one of the main features of Russian church singing. Therefore, an inseparable companion of a church singer is the quality of moderation. This is something which he or she is constantly reminded about, not only by the Znamennyi melody, but also

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by the simiography of the Znamennyi chant. One of the signs which constantly reminds about moderation is the ‘Little Dove’. The historical ethical-mentoring interpretation of the signs of Russian chant defines this one as signifying “setting aside all the pride.” While raising the singer to the higher pitches of the chant and by moving his mind and heart aloft, at the same time the ‘Little Dove’ cautions him about human vanity, reasoning to him by means of both its name and its appearance. This znamya tells a singer much. He must soar to the skies in prayer, fulfilling his musical ordeal as a spiritual deed, endowed with a humble and simple heart, in the name of the Holy Spirit appearing over the Jordan River in the shape of a dove.” (Protohierei Archpriest Boris Nikolayev, Znamennyii Chant and Kryuk Notation)

Such is just one entry describing a single notational sign, a neume Golubchik. The early Russian music theory textbooks— Azbukovniki—contained such thorough descriptions for each neume. A student of chant could not limit his or her knowledge to mere technical aspects (pitch and duration); the knowledge of musical element came with the complete description that ended with a reference to the Holy Scripture. A five-line transcription completely eliminates the value and the essence of such a system. In fact, it would only provide the information on Golubchik as a mere two-note motive. If Western musicians learned very early how to operate with puncti73 that can be related to the indexes in Peircean classification of signs, their Russian colleagues have retained the neume—the equivalent of Peircean icon—as the minimal relevant element.74 Therefore, if one discovers the strange predilection toward holistic analysis of integrated musical objects in Soviet music theory, its roots can be found already at the earliest stage of Russian musical culture. If there is a mystery about Asafiev’s term intonatsia (a kind of integration of musical structure with its semantic meaning), the answer could be found in the descriptions of the popevka’s in the seventeenth-century Azbuka’s. Only by the end of the seventeenth century, Russian musical tradition started paving its way toward Western European music. As usually happens during such decisive historical moments, there were both supporters and critics of the new system of

Holistic Definitions of Neumes

notation. The acquisition of five-line staff notation and polyphony was seen by the opposition as an alien intrusion from the West into the complex and subtle nature of melody in the Russian style. Musicologist Mstislav Keldysh shares the regrets of seventeenthcentury theorist Alexander Mezenets about the transition from the neumatic to five-line staff notation: Contemporary notation in which the durations of notes are given in arithmetic values cannot express all the “degrees and powers, the nuance and subtlety» (A. Mezenets, Azbuka75) of the Znamennyi singing, with its rhythmic freedom and intonational flexibility.76

This is clearly seen in the case of the jubilation sign—Greek phi, the so-called “fita.” It is placed above the certain part of the text (jubilation) and marks an encrypted segment (not written out in regular neumes). It completely resists any type of detailed notation and presupposes a free improvisation. In general, each neume (kryuk or znamya) referred not to a single note but to the popevka (melodic pattern, usually consisting of a few notes and extending through three to five scale steps). A striking difference of a znamya with a note is that znamya signifies all the expressive characteristics of music together with pitch and rhythm.77 For example, the neume ‘Merezha s Povorotkoi’ means, in addition to a certain particular group of pitches,78 a type of motion (“division with turning around”). ‘Dva v Chelnu’ means literally “two in the boat,” and the neume alludes to the depiction of two men in the boat, while the musical figure notated by this neume presupposes the effect of shaking the boat sideways. The Azbuka goes at length in providing such metaphoric descriptions for each neume. Every znamya is usually tied to a certain word, and the speech intonation (prosody and articulation) adds even more meaning to the kinetic, sonoric and linear aspects of each neume, as seen in Example 2.6. In other words, neumatic notation of chant possesses the capacity to express many musical aspects within a single integrated sign. The tendency to think in an all-encompassing fashion was present at a very early stage of Russian music history. The methodology of integral, tselostnyi, analysis owes its existence to the ancient Russian chant.

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Example 2.6 The difference between a neume and a note.

2.5 The Folk Song as a Source for the Chant The tradition of chant was the field of professional activity in early Russian musical culture. Other types of music were also present. For example, folk music before the seventeenth century was as important as church music,79 and only the absence of transcriptions prevents scholars today from fully evaluating its role. The unmistakable historic details in the verbal texts of the earliest notations by L’vov and Prach led Mstislav Keldysh to the conclusion that the lyric prolonged songs appeared in Russia as early as the fifteenth century.80 Examples of a Russian prolonged lyric song provide the grounds for comparison with the most elaborate examples of the Znamennyi chant, as shown in Example 2.7. The Russian chant and the folk song are structured similarly. They present prosaic melodic patterns of irregular structure and length that are not rhymed, which Russian music theory calls “popevkas.” This term is commonly used for both the Znamennyi chant and the Russian folk song. The characteristic features of the popevka are the non-square rhythmic grouping and undefined metric placement. Another feature of the popevka is its tonal ambiguity, which defies not only any single tonal center but also any fixed intervallic content of a particular mode. This is an example of what we described earlier as the specific Russian

Aesthetic and Philosophical Components of Russian Orthodox Chant Theory

Example 2.7 Samples of Russian prolonged song and Znamennyi chant.

expression of modality beyond a fixed mode. Some of the unexplainable occurrences of accidentals in folk songs and in chants result from the presence of both B natural and B flat in the Obikhod scale. In summary, there are strong similarities between the early chant and Russian folk song. The influence of the folk song tradition on the Russian Orthodox chant is undeniable. It is mentioned here to show that the tradition of derivation of professional music from the folk music in Russia was not merely a tribute to the nineteenth-century nationalism but a significant archetype of Russian musical thinking.

2.6 Aesthetic and Philosophical Components of Russian Orthodox Chant Theory

Another aspect of early Russian music theory is its strong aesthetic component. Every Russian treatise on chant contains numerous

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aesthetic judgments in the introduction as well as in the body of the text. There are no segments in such treatises that are dedicated to purely technical descriptions. One possible explanation for this is that Orthodox Christianity permitted less personal freedom than most modern Western denominations do. The monks in monasteries condemned various inappropriate aspects of musical practices and set up high aesthetic requirements. Their views on any musical manifestations that did not meet these requirements, including all Western European chants, were extremely critical. The Russian church musicians even condemned the tessitura of the Western chant (tenor). They assumed that only the basses could express divine grace. In 1651, the Stoglavyi Orthodox Church Council urged all worshipers “to sing in the churches in an orderly, serene and harmonious fashion and to read the Scripture softly and slowly.”81 This distinguished the Russian theory of that time from the Western European music scholarship, which was oriented much more toward the technical aspects of composition (such as the so-called Klangschrittlehre or teaching of interval progressions). Early Russian music theory (prior to the end of the seventeenth century) covers the period in which it developed independently from the Western European tradition. The seventeenth century marked the opening of a new era in Russian music, a “coming out” from the isolation caused by global division of Christian churches into Eastern and Western since in the fourth century. In the seventeenth century, the reforms of Peter the Great breached the wall and put the country on a long and windy path of Westernization. During all the time up to that great change, Russian music theory had accumulated its most conspicuous genuine qualities. We can list them as follows: 1. Specific understanding of modality as delineating melodic shape rather than intervallic structure. 2. An integrated quality of the system of notation. 3. An integral approach to melody. 4. A reverent attitude toward folk music. 5. A strong aesthetic component in music theory.

Most of these qualities have survived in the Russian music theory of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, it is

Critique of Western Theory from the Russian Chant Theorists

important to note that they had been formed in the earliest period of the Russian musical culture, spanning from the eleventh to the mid-seventeenth century.

2.7 Some Possible Questions for and Critique of Western Theory from the Russian Chant Theorists

In comparison with the more technical, scientific, and detailed approach to music in the Western Europe, early Russian music theory presents a formidable contrast. Instead of labeling it as backward and dependent on Western achievements, it seems to be more productive to consider that the split in the directions between Western and Eastern Europe was more than merely a case of victory of the fittest. Just as the Western theorists remain puzzled by the slow development of technical compositional ideas in the East, the Eastern European musicians (for instance, the Russian church chanters) may have as many questions for their Western counterparts regarding comprehensive and holistic aspects of music theory. Why was it necessary to isolate a single pitch and to label it with a sign based upon a geometric shape—punctum, i.e., a note? What was gained by such a strategy? If it was about greater precision in scientific sense, then it has been attained at the expense of significant reduction of linear coherence of melodic patterns. And, ironically, Western theorists had first destroyed that linear coherence by introducing the puncti and then, for centuries to follow (from Philippe de Vitry to Schenker), were trying to restore the linear coherence that had been lost in the process. In fact, counterpoint is essentially an attempt to restore the linear dimension, while its etymology (point counter point) conceals the impossibility of the linear aspect to be restored in full since it relies on isolated points and intervals in succession (Klangschritte). Meanwhile, in the Eastern European chant, notes marking precise pitch and duration had never been used. The linear coherence of melody has been preserved in neumatic notation, and, as a result, the integral character of analysis has never been compromised.

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Why was it necessary to separate the method of notation of pitch (the position on the staff) from the method of notation of rhythm (rhythmic values expressed in the shapes of notes)? Once again, this is precisely what was achieved by the Western musicians first and then they had to try to restore the unity of rhythm and pitch by proclaiming “the form-building role of harmony” (Riemann) or “the metric validity of the Ursatz” (Schenker). Meanwhile, the Znamennyi neume retained the aspects of both rhythm and pitch as denoted by one and the same sign. Moreover, the neume retains the rhythmic pattern of the word to which it is normally attached, and this memory of the rhythm of speech has been projected on the instrumental music of Russian composers of the common period, such as L’vov, Berezovsky, Kastal’sky and Rachmaninoff. Why have Western theorists become preoccupied with the mode as a pitch collection, while in music there are no pitch collections by default? The Eastern European theory of modes— Oktoikhos or Osmoglasie—emphasized scale or mode as a mode of existence of melodic shapes in accordance with their expressive meanings. The Western European critique of this system as supposedly being un-theoretical, imprecise, or illogical misses its essential point because mode in music is neither a pitch collection nor an interval vector. These abstract mathematical categories simply do not apply to music. Their essential characteristics lie in an abstraction from the principle of functional differentiation of the elements while in music, the elements of expression (patterns, forms, lines) are essentially functionally differentiated as long as they bear meaning. In conclusion to this chapter, it is necessary to emphasize that despite its relationship to and initiation stemming from the Byzantine tradition, the actual content of the Znamennyi and other Russian Orthodox chants is essentially different from the Byzantine prototypes. The neumes may be similar to each other in their appearance, may look alike, (for example, there is similarity between Russian Strela (the arrow) and Byzantine Oxeia (ascending trait)), but the musical content they describe is rather different. This is the case also with the similarly of the names. For example, example, the Byzantine neume Chamele is a leap down on a perfect fifth, while the Russian Khamila presents

Critique of Western Theory from the Russian Chant Theorists

an oscillation down and up a step. The modal system of the Oktoikhos in the Byzantine tradition had been transformed early in its history to fit the Western European system of the eight church modes, while the Russian Osmoglasiye has retained its ancient form of collections of patterns. All this makes early Russian music theory, ranging from the eleventh to the seventeenth century, a solid, well-developed, independent tradition, worthy of comparison with its Western counterpart. In contrast to the previous chapter, the next chapter will cover the early stages of the interaction of the Russian and Western-European traditions. Since that time—the middle of the seventeenth century—Russia took the direction to the West and, with various degrees of enthusiasm, it followed it until today. The keyword for this assimilation is formalism, formal approach to music. First rather reluctantly (as seen in this chapter), then, gradually, more and more enthusiastically, Russian musicians embraced the Western knowledge, associated it with common roots in ancient Greek culture and have become vocal supporters of all its ideas, including the eighteenth-century concepts of Generalbass, harmony, counterpoint and form, as well as all the innovations introduced in the nineteenth century. A distinguishing feature of Russian music theory is that it still adheres to many nineteenth-century ideas (theories of A. B. Marx and Hugo Riemann) while in the West many of them were abandoned.

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Chapter 3

Encounters with Western Formalism: Seventeenth-Twentieth Centuries The formal approach to music has a millennial pedigree. Its most convincing aspect is manifest in systematicity of elements and hierarchy of structures. As mentioned in Chapter 1, systemic character of music theory—its terms and categories form a tightknit hierarchy—has been summarized by Hugo Riemann and Guido Adler in the nineteenth century and reflected upon by Carl Dahlhaus in the twentieth. Thus, the formal approach is not rooted in a single concept; instead, it gathers several elements, such as the pitch system (mode, key, and in Russian context—lad), harmony (including the functional syntax of chord progression, cycles that determine the key and progressions that modulate), counterpoint and voice leading, motive (in its dual meaning, as a smallest structural element and the transmitter of expression), rhythm (as a character of motive and an independent constitutive element of music), meter (in both musical and poetic realization), and formal function. All these elements come together or, as Yuri Kholopov suggested, are poured into a vessel—a musical form. In this chapter, all these technical elements will be studied one after another, together with the larger issues, such as formalism in a wider sense, the style of thinking and analyzing as depended on a kind of training (in contrast with integralism, formalism Form vs. Work: A Major Antinomy of Music Theory and Analysis Ildar D. Khannanov

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is associated with traditional conservatory curricula; it is very pragmatic since it is used, above all, for training composers), as well as neo-Platonic interpretations of form by Losef and Kholopov and the roots of this tradition in Russian literary formalism (represented by Viktor Schklovsky, Yuri Tynyanov, and Viktor Zhirmunski).

3.1 Transitional Period: Acceptance of Formalist Aesthetics and Techniques

In stark contrast to Azbuka by Alexander Mezenets, the treatises by dyak (deacon) Ioanniky Korenyev and regent Nikolai Diletsky mark the assimilation of Western European theory. Both treatises were published as one book in 1679, although there is evidence that Korenyev's treatise was written earlier.82 In his text, Korenyev defends the new polyphonic trend in music. He compares a conservative supporter of monophony to a man working at a plow looking backward. “They praise the obsolete habitually and condemn the newly improved because of their ignorance.”83 Korenyev accused the Russian chanters of lack of knowledge of the standard clefs (claves). He considered the clefs to be the key to musical grammar. This view is maintained as well by Diletsky. The clef here is the early precursor and synonym of the Western category of key. The breadth of his views allows Korenyev to define music as a part of the integral system of the arts. The first question that he asks is “What is mousikia?” Korenyev is interested in musical art as it was conceived by the Greeks. He attributes the origins of music to the legendary figures of King David, Pythagoras, Orpheus and Amphion. Furthermore, he asserts that as a discipline, mousikia forms an integral part of the seven arts, therefore, it is a sister discipline to mathematics, philosophy and grammar. Here one can notice that Westernization was welcomed in Russia because its positive aspects were associated with the root, common for both Russian and Western cultures—the ancient Greek tradition. It is seen in the way Korenyev supports his arguments by Greek references: they were not perceived as exotic since Russian Orthodox Church and even the Russian language borrowed the letter and the spirit of the Greek culture.

Russian Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

3.2 Russian Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: Adoption of Core Categories of Music Theory The prominent Russian-Swiss mathematician of the eighteenth century, Leonard Euler wrote a treatise Tentamen novae theoriae musicae (1739) that combined the formalist precision of the cutting-edge scientific method with the discussion of “pleasantness of chords,” which in our concept can be labeled as integralist. In many aspects, it resonates with Diletsky’s ideas, which will be discussed later in this chapter. Euler treated chords as wellestablished entities with character and function. In general, the eighteenth century in Russia was remarkable; its list of achievements includes the incidental music for the theater, various kinds of musical entertainment at the court of the Russian emperors, the first attempt in Europe to collect and notate folk music,84 and the transition from monody to part-singing in the churches. All this galvanized the history of Russian music at this time, which is often denoted as the “Russian Baroque.” Without abandoning the indigenous terms, such as a welldeveloped notion of lad, derived from the earlier category of glas, Russian musicians adopted the system of terms and categories of the Western music theory. While the term “tonal function” entered the vocabulary of both Western and Russian traditions in the middle of the nineteenth century and had become an essential category of Soviet views on harmony, the older practices of Generalbass were not fully adopted in Russia in the eighteenth century and the theory of functional harmony—not without the influence of Diletsky—gradually ousted other models of music making. Again, if a Russian music theory scholar in the West accepts harmonic functionalism as essential in Russia—as suggested by Philip Ewell in his article “Harmonic Functionalism in Russian Music Theory. A Primer”—its roots belong not to the 1920s, and not even to the middle of the nineteenth century, but to the times of discoveries of Rameau and earlier, the ideas of Diletsky of the second half of the seventeenth century. And although neither Tchaikovsky nor Rimsky-Korsakov used Riemann’s chord notation, their operation with primary triads

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was essentially functional. It is true that Rameau did not use the term “function” either since it has been introduced into mathematics very recently, in 1692 by Leibniz and Bernoulli, 26 years before Rameau’s first book. Yet all the aspects of functionality of tonique, dominante-tonique and sous-dominante are already there in the first three books. We can label his method of chord design and fundamental bass progression as a protofunctional syntax. In general, the history of adoption of functional view on harmony in Russia remains an exciting theme for separate research. Music of prominent eighteenth-century Russian composers is organized clearly by functional cycles. Maxim Berezovsky and Dmitry Bortnyansky wrote music in Austro-Italian style. Berezovsky studied at the Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna with Padre Martini; he graduated in 1771. Mozart graduated from the same Accademia in 1770. Bortnyansky studied in Venice, Rome, Bologna and Naples. Example 3.1 shows an opening of one of the most famous compositions of Berezovsky.

Example 3.1 Functional syntax in Berezovsky’s choral concerto “Ne Otverzhi Mene.”

Although this music belongs to choral polyphony—it is a choral concerto—its structure manifests all the aspects of the Classical homophonic-harmonic texture and is based upon highly articulated cyclical tonal-functional syntax. Noteworthy are the balanced, perfectly spaced and doubled chords, just as they appear in Mozart’s keyboard compositions. Standard harmonic voice leading also belongs to the Austro-Italian style: notice, for example, the digression to subdominant via V6/5 and the return to tonic by means of V4/2. The use of these inversions enables the perfect artistic voice leading.

The Indigenous Russian Category of Lad and the Problems of Its Translations

3.3 The Indigenous Russian Category of Lad and the Problems of Its Translations Any analytical approach to music, be it formalist or integralist or any other specific kind, requires placement of the sounding object into a certain context. Thus, musical form does not exist in a vacuum. In fact, a form is a product of interaction and synthesis of several parameters, such as harmony, meter, motivic-thematic process, formal-functional design, and tonal plan. Harmonic means exist in the context of a system. Such a system can be labeled as “pitch structure” in the most abstract global interpretation. In the historic reality of music, the systems come in many kinds; their variety can be grouped, roughly, into modal and tonal. The Russian music theory, in parallel with the history of theory in the West, offered some rather exotic and unorthodox systems. They remind those accepted in the West but, upon closer examination, reveal significant discrepancies. In the early Russian music, in the chant era (that which lasted until the seventeenth century, much longer than the Western chant tradition), the system was defined as oktoikh (as described earlier in Chapter 2); it was formed not as a set of pitch collections but as eight collections—glasy—of melodic patterns (popevkas). So, the znamya (a sign in Russian Orthodox church chant notation of Znamennyi chant) is an icon, in Peircean term. It does not refer to a single tone; rather, it represents a complete melody, albeit small. Or one can say that znamya represents a small musical work. It is indivisible and not analyzable any further; therefore, its essence cannot be reduced to a form in a narrow Western interpretation as an equivalent of a structure. In comparison, the Gregorian chant as it has been adapted into early polyphony in the West had some inner structural divisions, for example, the distinction of repercussa and finalis. So, the Western chant notation, after it abandoned neumes in the eleventh century for the square notation, started working with indexes in Peircean classification. The Russian system did not allow for a strict distinction between the form and the work. Each popevka is already a small work of musical art with its own shape and trajectory. It is given as a whole, as a phenomenon, and does

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not presuppose Plato’s and Descartes’ analytical procedures. There is simply no distinction between the appearance and the essence. Without a doubt, such a style of music making is abundant in the world. Rhetorical figures, say, suspiratio, anabasis, or pianto, are also indivisible. The patterns of partimento, as well as formulae in many traditions, including Arab classical period and Chinese court music, employ ready-made units of expression. In this perspective, the Western tradition after the invention of a note—a geometric point in pitch space and time of music— happens to be rather unique and unprecedented. The Russian approach to the musical system—the context in which other elements exist and interact—is thus different in principle from the Western types. After the transitional period of the seventeenth century, with the adoption of Western terminology by Diletsky, the eighteenth century was the time of the search for a new term that would continue the legacy of oktoikh and glas but would adapt to the new Western notation. Within the terminological apparatus of Russian philosophy, literary discourse and art theories, the term lad has grown into the universal signifier (see below the endnote reference 91 to quotations from the vocabulary of Russian eighth-century language). In the nineteenth century, lad started playing its role as the main substitute for ancient glas. The influence of the ancient tradition based upon popevka’s of Znamennyi chant is hard to miss. Mili Balakirev, Alexander Dargomyzhsky, Modest Mussorgsky and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov wrote music based on this principle. Mussorgsky emphasized the connection of his vocal and instrumental lines to the vernacular speech inflections that he gathered by listening to the conversations of peasants. Boris Asafiev’s definition of intonatsia—a corner stone of Russian music theory of the twentieth century—relies upon Latin chant intonatio, the opening figure of the psalm. It is obvious, however, that his Russian musical idea had much more in common with the popevkas of Znamennyi chant. The category of lad, therefore, has a rich pedigree. Its meaning is hidden from the eye of a Western scholar since its roots are buried in centuries of tradition that is not commonly known even for most Russians who are not experts in ancient church music.

The Indigenous Russian Category of Lad and the Problems of Its Translations

There were attempts to interpret lad in the context of current Western theory as mode or tonality.85 The result leaves to desire more. Russian theoretical terminology has become very advanced toward the beginning of the eighteenth century. It included both Western ideas and indigenous Russian categories. In the treatise of Nikolai Diletsky, published in 1679, we find the complete set of terms related to Western musical tradition and to the emerging Russian polyphony written in five-line notation, the partes singing. Diletsky suggests that: “Musikia in the key, that is, in the clef, falls into four types: dural’naya (natural), bemolarnaya (flatted), diezisovaya (with sharps), and smeshannaya (mixture).” In other words, the term “key” was known to Russians in the middle of the seventeenth century. In the current English language, the word “key” is used more often than “tonality.” The latter, introduced by Alexandre-Étienne Choron (or by CastilBlaze in some other sources) and thoroughly reflected upon by François-Joseph Fétis has several specific meanings and remains an apple of dissent among theorists. Diletsky also mentions the “tone” as the church tonus, but he suggests that it belongs to the older church music: “The tones of the church hiermologia do not apply to our subject, except for joyful, sad and mixed.” It is evident that he knew both terms, the key, and the mode (tonus). As already mentioned, Diletsky discusses the koncordanzas—the chords, in which the C harmonizes with E and G, and D harmonizes with F an A. Diletsky introduced the sixth chord (seksta), rules of voice leading (no parallel fifth), cadences (padezhi), counterpoint, fugue, invention, rhetorical disposition, harmonization, and theory of musical effects (joyful, sobbing music, and the mixture of both). Alexander Mezenets, the author of the Azbuka of Znamennyi Chant, mustered the experience of Russian monodic chant theory. In that style of music, the equivalent of mode or the key is labeled as glas (ikhos). Its system was much more complex than a Western key. The four trichords of the Russian scale, obikhod, were called so-glasie, which means “agreement”; consequently, glas is a precursor of lad, its closest equivalent. In this sense, to translate the German term Tonart as lad is ultimately incorrect. An art amateur and music aficionado, Maximilian Rezvoi made

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exactly such an error in his translation of 1830. He confessed that he did not have the required expertise and took just a few lessons in Generalbass with the music teacher from St. Petersburg Johann Leopold (Leopol’d Ivanovich) Fuchs. Following the latter, Rezvoi interpreted Tonart as mode.86 To clarify the confusion, let us present the definitions of all three, modus, Tonart and lad: 1. Modus—a pitch collection of tones marked by notational signs. 2. Tonart—a type of the scale (in terms of A. B. Marx, Die Tonfolge und ihre Arten87), such as dur, moll, Kirchentonarten, etc. [Tonality—a system of relationships of central and peripheral elements]. 3. Lad—harmonious relationship of musical elements expressed in melodic shapes; it may or may not have the tension-resolution patterns of stable and unstable elements and can be based on one or several central elements.

The Russian word lad is thus the descriptor of harmony, agreement, and peaceful coexistence. It carries religious, philo­ sophical, and ethical connotations. Its etymology and semantics are so rich that it may as well symbolize the Russian approach to art and philosophy of life in general. Yuri Tyulin defines lad in a way that precludes its direct translation as Tonart: Lad is not invented by music theorists but evolves naturally within the artistic practice. Consequently, is has intonational origin and it is formed in our consciousness as socially abstracted apperceptive system. It is the system of stereotypes, established by the previous experiences of perception of music.88

In contrast to lad, tonality is defined by Tyulin in a very straightforward way: “Tonality is the absolute pitch level of the lad and its inflection (major or minor).”89 Yuri Kholopov dedicated some 30 pages to the definition of lad in the Soviet Musical Encyclopedia, vol. 3 (1976). In his Harmony. Theoretical Course he defines lad in two ways. From the point of view of philosophy and aesthetics, lad is a kind of pleasing effect of music on the listeners, and equivalent of

The Indigenous Russian Category of Lad and the Problems of Its Translations

harmony; in a narrow, theoretical sense, it is the projection of such pleasing effect on musical structure and its realization of the systematic relationship of musical-logical notions of stable and unstable, central and peripheral, rest-gravitation, stasis-motion and many others.90 The pre-Christian Russian goddess of love had the name Lada. “To get along” is expressed in Russian language as ladit’. Counting is slozhenie; rhythmic coordination at work is slazhennost’. The root -lad- is the product of Indo-European root -log-. The word lad was used in the eighteenth century in its current meaning, long before a failed attempt to use it as an equivalent of German Tonart by Rezvoi in 1830. The Dictionary of the XVIII Century Russian Language provides examples from poetry and theory of arts of that century, marking specific meaning of this word.91 Lad in the eighteenth-century Russian language meant the poetic structure (prosody), metric aspect of both poetry and music, and musical harmony. It also referred to frets on lute, balalaika, and other fretted stringed instruments. The last example in the footnote is especially telling: “poetry has the tendency to ascribe frets (lads) to strings and calls the string frets (lads).”92 Apparent from the quotations in the dictionary, the term lad functioned in the eighteenth century and earlier also as a folk term. Each ethnic tradition has a set of specialized words. In this respect, interpretation of the word lad as something used “in common language” (v prostorechii) by Maximilan Rezvoi93 sounds rather strange, to say the least. The use of lad in music may create an impression of something disorganized or lacking unity. For example, such is rather common Western perception of the lad in Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil marked as disunity. Curiously enough, from the standpoint of the listener, there is nothing more united, coherent, organic, euphonous, and wholesome than the harmonic language of Rachmaninoff. It is known that Heinrich Schenker did not welcome the analysis of his music. In contrast to that, contemporary Schenkerians, such as Poundie Burstein and Timothy Jackson, have revised the previous approaches and now delve without hesitation into graphing of music that was previously rendered inferior. In particular, Jackson is working on a hybrid analysis of Rachmaninoff’s Third piano concerto and his analysis

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will display Schenkerian graph together with the graph of musical narrative and actantial scheme.94 In her dissertation The Problem of Tonal Disunity in Sergei Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil, op. 37, Ellen Bakulina quotes the author of this book with regard to the tonality of the “Priidite”: Khannanov interprets this movement, with some hesitance, as being in A major, and interprets the D minor harmony as minor subdominant of A. He also recognizes the tonal disorientation of the section and call it cathartic because it exceeds ‘normative length of syntax and breath’.95

The author of this book, indeed, interprets the opening phrase of “Priidite” as written in A major with minor subdominant on D, so eloquently described by Rimsky-Korsakov as harmonic major. The opening phrase is cathartic because it exceeds in length and complexity any Classical prototype, hence making the listener breathless and placing the listener on the verge of cleansing with tears (κάθαρσις, from κάθαιρειν—to clean, to purify, but also from κατὰ + ἄρσις, literally, after a sigh, after an inhale— the condition at the end of the tragedy) (Example 3.2):

Example 3.2 Sergei Rachmaninoff. “Priidite” from the All-Night Vigil.

The Indigenous Russian Category of Lad and the Problems of Its Translations

Here we deal with lad, and not with the Tonart. Lad was a common word in the vocabulary of Rachmaninoff, and, as a native speaker, he understood all the finest hues of its meaning. And no Russian theorists, from Yavorsky to Kholopov, would see any traces of disunity in the example above. Absolute unity of Rachmaninoff’s harmony is the result of the inner working of the lad. As has been already mentioned, unity in music comes only as the result of disunity. Unity as such is impossible. It would contradict all Western European postulates, from Heraclitan antizoon sympheronta, to Aristotelian theory of drama, to Hegelian dialectics. And the lad aways appears as elusive, sophisticated, hierarchical, and heterogeneous. Unlike the “monotonality,” lad does not deal exclusively with the pitch structure. It unites pitch (space) with time (meter), thus forming the spatial-temporal continuum (the term of Vladimir Vernadsky) or chronotop (the term of Alexey Ukhtomsky, borrowed and applied to literature by Mikhail Bakhtin). The lad is not always anchored to a single pitch (“tonic”) and is not a single system of relationships to such pitch. It is, indeed, not monotonal, but that has nothing to do with the quality of disunity. Since Nikolai Diletsky, Russian musicians knew that there are three types of music, joyful (major), sad (minor) and mixed. Example 3.3 shows the “mixed” type. Example 3.3 Diletsky’s “mixed” mode = intermittent mode.

The term peremennyi lad was introduced by Boleslav Yavorsky (see the table of his modes on p. 82). From Diletsky to Yavorsky, the idea existed in Russian music and was reflected in numerous analyses. The tritonal lads of Yavorsky suggest some combination of the stable sonorities that bifurcate the center. Yuri Tyulin took this term and developed it into a universal concept. The peremennyie lady characterize Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian and 200 other ethnic folk traditions and in the folk music they were conceived, long time before the Russian Church music adopted them. “Peremennyi” means, literally, “that which changes from one position or direction to another.”96 Or, in Tyulin’s words:

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The shared character of the natural lads presupposes the possibility of easy and inconspicuous modulation without alterations but only by means of emphasis on intermittent functions of the chords. Hence the intermittent are the lads, in which the role of the tonic is performed by different chords that take turns [emphasis is mine—I. Kh.], with the returning (digression) to initial tonic or staying in the new (move).97

There had been attempts to translate this term into English as mutable. The author of this book, as a student of Jacques Derrida, is aware of the difficulty, or even, impossibility of completely adequate translation. Still, it seems more plausible to translate peremennyi as intermittent. It, indeed, captures the idea of the elusive and playful folk lad, in which the chords with interchangeable functions play the role of the key switches for disorienting the sense of tonality. Its beauty lies not in the fact that there is a modulation (or mutation), but that it does not get established and remains in a metastable condition. A folk singer plays a strategy game with the listener, based upon deception of expectations (Example 3.4).

Example 3.4 Kholopov: Intermittent lad in folk melody: the strategy of avoidance of monotonality.98

The translation of peremennyi as mutable alludes to the Western method of solmization and mutation—notably, the technique from an entirely different era and unrelated culture. And solmization was not perfect and cannot serve as a model for Russian peremetnnost’. Gene Anderson clarifies the imperfection of the mutation technique in his short but eloquent article on the subject:

The Indigenous Russian Category of Lad and the Problems of Its Translations

Étienne Loulié, for example, said that La Gamme du Si had been established some thirty or forty years earlier because of the difficulty of mutations, while Sebastien de Brossard called mutation “the embarrassment of the ancient gamut.”99

The perception of mutation as an embarrassment was true: the mutation was “the substitution of one syllable for another”; it was necessary when “the range of a chant or melody exceeded that of a hexachord.”100 In other words, mutation was just an extension of the scale above the given hexachord—an awkward and meaningless practice that was replaced by the seven-note solfege (La Gamme du Si). The Russian term peremennost’ has nothing in common with that. It does not indicate working with a given pitch collection toward its expansion or replacement with another pitch collection. The point of peremennost’ is the reassignment of functions to the tones of the same pitch collection. Peremennost’ is characteristic of Russian archaic folk music, that of epic genre. In it, a three- or four-note pattern, an oligotonic popevka, or a variant (the term of theory of rhythm of Valentina Kholopova) can turn and twist its accents in endless repetitions (Kholopova’s metric-accentvariant technique), so that the support tones will keep changing intermittently. It is a condition of tonality with several tonics simultaneously. Yuri Kholopov provided a table of ten conditions of tonalities [sostoyania tonal’nostey]—peremennost’ is one of them (Table 3.1). Table 3.1 Yuri Kholopov: Ten conditions of tonality (quoted from: Harmony. Theoretical Course101) Ten conditions of tonality Symbols:

C (center); T (tonic); S (sonantness—resolutions of intervals);

F (functionality) 1. Functional tonality: C+, T+, S+, F+ 2. Loose tonality: C+, T+, S+, F3. Dissonant tonality: C+, T+, S-, F+ 4. Hovering tonality: C+, T-, S+, F+ 5. Inverted tonality: C (1,2), T+, S+, F+ 6. Intermittent tonality: C (1 2), T+, S+, F+ 7. Oscillating tonality: C (1-2-3), T+, S+, F8. Polyvalent tonality: C (1–2), T+, S+, F9. Ablated tonality: C (undefined), T-, S-, F10. Polytonality: C+1, T+, S+, F+ C+2, T+, S+, F+

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There are more profound reasons for the disagreements concerning lad. Schenker and some philosophers of his time, such as Alexius Meinong, understood music in a teleological fashion. For them, the reason for the existence of melody was its final tone—the goal of development. Edmund Husserl, in his Texte zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewußtsein, places the view of Meinong under critique. He suggests that melody lives in the succession of the moments of the present. These moments “sink in the flux of time.”102 Schoenberg’s main disagreement with Schenker appears to be similar to that of Husserl. He also criticized Schenker for his disregard toward the opening gesture of composition—the motive. Schoenberg’s model of tonal form (and, perhaps, of his own forms) is beginning-heavy. Schenker’s is the opposite. The truth is, as always, somewhere in the middle. It will suffice to suggest here that the majority of ethnic modal systems in the world are not end-oriented; the Russian lad is a part of this majority. Lad does not present a simple geometry—a vector, directed at the terminal tonic. It plays with time and avoids revealing its goal. The “background unity” is undesirable for the lad. Apparent from this discussion is the specificity of the integralist approach to music in Russia. Again and again, it leads to a conclusion about the non-binary character of the opposition of form vs. work. It is a true antinomy—incompatible realms, governed by laws that are not logically comparable with each other. Where the formalists see the disunity, integralists enjoy the ultimate case of harmony. Where the integralists are missing important elements of their world—the pleroma—formalists savor the beauty of form. But is it only Russia that is “plagued” by integralism in music? What is unity, and what is coherence, in general? Schenker’s brilliance—an undeniable achievement—is his seeing unity in very complex structures of Classical music. Einheit, unity, as such has never been discussed, let alone, implemented in the technique of analysis before Schenker. Unity, undeniably, exists in music. It gives the ultimate pleasure to perceive such unity, especially in times and places where unity does not exist in social, economic and political milieu. In church music, the idea of unity echoes that of unity with God. Yet, if one understands such unity in too straightforward terms, as a

The Indigenous Russian Category of Lad and the Problems of Its Translations

kind of relationship of the elements in the scientific experiment illustrated by graphic representation of connections (dots connected with lines), such hopes can hit the brick wall of disappointment. Moreover, even in the analysis of physical processes there are always the elements that are forcefully excluded, for the clarity of the argument. Heraclitus provided several categories as the replacements of absolute binary unity: συνάψιες—a synapse, ἕνας—one-ness, and, most elusive, πάντα— all. There are also συνουσία—coexistence, and συμβάλλον— things that happened to be together, literally, thrown together. All these terms can be used in music analysis; they can, indeed, reconcile the irreconcilables. One can hope that, at least, the notorious Beethovenian standard (in terms of Dahlhaus) would keep the fortress. Yet, his late piano sonatas, say, op. 110, present the smorgasbord of disunity. And, since unity can be not only harmonic but also thematic, the first movement of Eroica manifests thematic disunity in the Subsidiary group: there are several themes in that group that create a structural explosion. It would be much more plausible to ascribe unity to a sonata allegro movement with only two themes, Primary and Subsidiary, and why do we need more? The proof of unity can be even more incoherent than the object of analysis in these cases. Moving further into the history of music, one can find ultimate disunity in Gustav Mahler’s symphonies. The very notion of sonata form fails to support their opening movements. An alternative terminological apparatus, very different and, perhaps, unrelated to music theory professionally, was offered by Theodor Adorno in his book Mahler. A Musical Physiognomy. Suspense, emotional explosion and Abgesang—these three pillars of Mahler’s musical strategy seem to work very well in analysis; they explain this music in the absence of traditional structures. Yet it is very difficult for a professionally trained theorist to accept these elusive, hermeneutic definitions. Perhaps formalists, in the worst case, rely too heavily on tangible evidence. Philosophy suffered from the same illness until Edmund Husserl’s Copernican Turn. Today, philosophers try to stay away from the visual metaphors (Martin Heidegger defined the modal verb “to be” as the first such metaphor, the one that

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destroys the possibility of scientific and logocentric ontology). And although Heraclitus suggests that eyes are more reliable than ears, for a musician, there is not much choice here. Integralists can be proud in that they deal not with obvious harmony but with the hidden one (ἁρμονία αφανής, φανερής κρείττων), and for the most insistent supporters of musical logocentrism, Heraclitus could suggest that the nature likes to hide (ἡ φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ). If the tonics are hidden from the perception of an analyst in the peremennyi lad, it does not mean that they cannot make sense for the listener. As Tyulin suggested, there is no legitimate process of modulation or the change of the key; the scale remains the same, but the accents (mental, not physical) and the values of functions keep shifting. Such is the disunity that brings about the unity of the higher order. Holistic theory is capable of unifying, processing, and packaging the seemingly eclectic sets of elements. Tatiana Vladyshevskaia has published a chapter in the Proceedings of the Worldwide Music Conference, 2021 about semiotics of Russian early-music terms. She relied upon Charles Sanders Peirce’s’ triad, index, icon, and symbol in categorization of neumatic signs of the Znamennyi notation. According to Vladyshevskaia, most of the neumes belong to the category of iconic signs, in which “there is a correspondence between their shapes and names, for example, the kryuk is depicted as a hook.”103 The symbols are characteristic of the most complex signs, such as fitas and faces; these are the markers for a free vocal improvisation or jubilation. The only types of signs that fall into the category of index are the so-called “singing signs,” such as Shaidurov’s cinnabar markings. They provide the information for the performance, the indications for the singers concerning the absolute pitch in the absence of the clefs. Thus, the bulk of the neumes in Znamennyi chant are icons. In contrast, most of the signs in Western five-line notation are indexes. The icon may include and organize into a single whole the endless variety of indexes. Here lies the deepest divide between indigenous Russian and Western traditions, related to the distinction into tselostnyi (holistic) and analytical (formalist) methods. For an eye, trained in the Western analytical tradition, both glas and lad present eclectic phenomena and do not rise to the

Lad and New Music

level of noumena, in Kantian terms. Both of them are studied by memorization (akin to Italian partimenti and solfeggi). One may assume that glas and lad are untheoretical. The question, however, remains open: was it done this way because of the inherent backwardness of the Eastern tradition in comparison with the Western, or was it a conscious choice, justified by the complexity of musical materials and comprehensive character of a musical artwork? Western tradition habitually hides one gesture that is, perhaps, not very artistic in nature: a given wealth of musical material should be dissected into the smallest and simplest elements; an icon should be dissolved into indexes. Indexes are easily compatible; they fit together and offer an opportunity to establish a process of development—a keyword for the Western culture of modernity; they allow to create a large-scale form, organized along the strict hierarchical principles. Both Znamennyi church chant tradition and Russian folk music—two places where glas and lad were born and existed naturally—did not provide an opportunity to produce a clockwork, an edifice, a complex device, or a functioning organism. Instead, Russian music (and much of Eastern European, and, perhaps, some South European), both early church chant and nineteenth-century Romantic paradigm, reveal a kind of body without organs, in terms of Gilles Deleuze. There is nothing machinic, nothing complex, only bare naked subjectivity of an individual. Such music is einfache by default; it operates with the line of rich atomic images rather than with the complex mechanisms bult upon the simplified indexes. Even Tchaikovsky’s last three symphonies and Rachmaninoff’s Third piano concerto “bog down” in view of an analytically trained Western musician. Yet they connect directly to the psyche of the listener and pass along the strongest and most veritable emotions and thoughts through a wide-band channel of communication.

3.4 Lad and New Music: Yavorsky’s Use of the Term

The story of glas and lad did not end in the nineteenth century. Boleslav Yavorsky, the theorist of the turn of the twentieth

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century, created the first complete theory of new music. In 1892, he has already formulated the main postulates of his theory of lad rhythm in a new system of tritonal equilibrium. He consciously rejected tonal music, as seen in the Appendix of his treatise The Design of Musical Speech. He labeled old tonality as “two­ dimensional” and suggested a series of pitch structures that hinge on the resolution of a tritone into major third or minor sixth without submission to a single tonal center (Example 3.5).

Example 3.5 Yavorsky’s system tritonal lads, gathered from Yuri Kholopov104 and Sergei Protopopov.

Russian Theories of Harmony

Not only this system is more complex than the seven modes of limited transposition of Olivier Messiaen and the theoretical explanation of the octatonic of Arthur Berger; it is also different from these two in principle. Yavorsky does not treat his system as a pitch collection ordered as a set form. Instead of linear presentation like mode or Tonart, his examples show the scales as the results of resolution of dominant verticalities to tonic and subdominant to tonic, albeit there are many dominants and subdominants in a single Yavorsky’s lad. And Yavorsky does not hesitate to use the term lad; each one in Example 3.5 retains the idea of tension and resolution of the unstable verticality into a stable one. Each system—a tritone and its resolution—exists as a functional cycle, and the terms tonic, subdominant and dominant are retained. It is interesting to compare Yavorsky’s theory with neoRiemannian concept of Richard Cohn. They both deal with equal division of the octave, and both depart from traditional tonalfunctional system. If neo-Riemannian theory is formulated as non­ functional pitch centricity, namely, retainting the chords as they come from the tradition and eliminating functional relationship (replacing it with the geometric idea of adjacency and parsimony), Yavorsky deconstructed traditional tonality in the opposite direction. He retained functional relationship but eliminated the triad (his system is based upon relationship of intervals, the tritone and its resolution). Therefore, Yavorsky’s system can be defined as “functional pitch a-centricity (Yavorsky’s idea of retaining functionality and abandoning the centralized design of tonality based upon perfect fifth and its derivative, major triad).”105 Lad is the primary category of Russian music theory. Tonality is perceived—after Yavorsky—as simply a pitch level of lad. Yuri Kholopov, Igor Sposobin, Yuri Tyulin, and others use the term lad-tonality (ladotonal’nost’) in this sense.

3.5 Russian Theories of Harmony: From Diletsky to Kholopov

The concept of harmony in Russia has always been central and it has been treated in both narrow technical meaning

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(as the art of connection of chords) and wide philosophical interpretation (as Greek άρμονία). It is closely coordinated with the terms lad and rhythm; all three contribute to the creation of musical form. Some aspects of harmony were present in monodic theory of Russian chant era (harmoniousness is not contingent upon the presence of the harmonic verticality). Soon after the adoption of five-line notation and in the context of so-called partes singing (see the discussion above), Russian choirmasters (regents) of the seventeenth century developed their views on harmony. Nikolai Diletsky—the regent at the court of the Tsar Mikhail Alexeyevich in Moscow—had the education and upbringing in the Jesuite school and had extensive knowledge of Western (Italian) music theory. Unlike Korenyev's book mentioned earlier, his treatise Idea musikiiskoi grammatiki [The Idea of Musical Grammar] focuses more on the technical aspects of four-part writing than on the questions of musical aesthetics. In this regard Diletsky’s oeuvre is similar to Rameau’s Traité de l'harmonie. However, the fact that Diletsky published his treatise in 1679, some 40 years earlier than the Traité, led Russian theorists to the hypothesis of an earlier occurrence of the concept of harmony in Eastern Europe.106 Diletsky gives precise definitions of the major and minor triads, konkordanzas: “Ut, Mi, Sol is used for joyful singing; Re, Fa, La is used for sad singing.”107 This indicates that in his time the triads were fully recognized as chords and units of harmony, responsible for both voice leading and expression of affects. Moreover, Diletsky presents the sixth chord as a substitute for the triad. He hints at an idea of inversion and resolution of the dominant (Example 3.6).

Example 3.6 Explanation of the use of the sixth chord by Diletsky.

Russian Theories of Harmony

In Diletsky’s own words:

However, the b-mi [that is, the B—translators note] in a simple tone shows up as the sixth when the piece does not begin with it; if the piece begins with this sound in the bass at the settlement of the glas it will need a diez system [sharps—I. Kh.].”108

That is to say, the sixth chord is a substitution of or elaboration on tonic triad. [An inversion!—I. Kh.] One can use it after the presentation of the tonic triad. However, if the piece begins with the B in the bass, we have to use a different key ( glas109), the one with sharps (i.e., B minor or B major). From this elegant explanation, there is one step to formulation of the sixth chord as an inversion of the triad. In the second half of the seventeenth century, Diletsky seems to grasp and anticipate what would be the eighteenthcentury theory of harmony and tonality. Here is his explanation of the cadences: Cadences can be of two kinds, usual and unusual [modern Russ. obuknovennyie i neobyknovennye]. The usual are those in which the bass from the upper fifth falls down on a fifth, or moves up on a fourth (Example 3.7).110

Examples 3.7 a and b. PAC’s with motion down on fifth or up on fourth.

The unusual cadences are those that move down at a fourth or up at a fifth (Example 3.8). Diletsky’s comment to Example 3.8: This applies to the final, ending cadences. As for the cadences that appear in the middle, I can say briefly: remember about music that is either joyful, or sad, or mixed, so distribute your middle cadences accordingly.111 Example 3.8 Plagal cadences.

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These three are nothing but perfect authentic cadence, plagal cadence, and half cadence. As already mentioned, Diletsky was a chanter (regent) at the court of Tsar Alexey Mikhailovich; his descriptions apply, therefore, mostly to choral music. However, he mentions that his theory works for “music for harp, lyra, husli, organ, as well as for voice.”112 So, his examples of cadences present a layout of the period form. It is not unprecedented: the period form with two cadences had been mastered in Renaissance dance music; see, for example, Tielman Susato’s “Mauriska” from La Dansereye. Period form is more ubiquitous than one may assume from analyses of Viennese Classical music alone. There is as well the idea of basso fondamentale [!—I. Kh.]. “The fundamental rule, or in Slavic, the substantial rule, is when the bass moves on fundamental tones [!—I. Kh.] while other voices concertize [that is, use non-chord tones, move in adjacent fashion—I. Kh.]” (Example 3.9)113:

Example 3.9 Diletsky’s demonstration of the fundamental bass in contrast to the upper voices.

The prominent place of Diletsky's treatise and its harmonic nature in the Russian musical heritage explain the deep roots of the concept of harmony in the following centuries of the Russian theoretical tradition. His contributions resonate with the great achievements of the age of reason—les Lumières. Harmony à la Rameau is given a preferential treatment in Russia, which is one of the primary causes for the rejection of the Schenkerian doctrine. Contrary to denigratory tone of Schenkerians, Russian musicians revered what Raphaëlle Legrand, in her book Rameau et le pouvoir de l’harmonie, calls “le régne de l’harmonie.”114 Such “rein of harmony” is comfortably stretches over Russian, as well as German, Italian, Czech, Hungarian music of the eighteenth, nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries.

Russian Theories of Harmony

Russian theorists generally regard any major revision of the theory of tonal functions as unacceptable. The idea of harmony appealed to them so strongly that within a century the idea of harmonization of the Znamennyi chant was realized in the “partesnoye penie” (part-singing). Centuries later, Sergei Rachmaninoff included harmonizations of the Russian Orthodox church chant into his compositions (in Third piano concerto, Vespers, etc.). At this point, one can see how the antinomy of formalism vs. integralism is placed in a different perspective and thus receives a different shade of meaning. The category of harmony is difficult to fit into either camp. On the one hand, harmony is an agency that holds together the musical form—hence, the “form-building role of harmony” [Russ. formoobrazuyushaya rol’ harmonii]—a common topic in Soviet music theory and its German prototype. Pythagoreans would probably object to this—for them, the form is eternal combination of elements that refers to divine numbers. Yet, from Heraclitan view—and that is the original meaning of harmony—form is held by harmony. On the other hand, an artwork as a whole is not an eclectic and accidental combination of elements; these elements are held together by harmony in a wider sense, despite their heterogeneity. As Heraclitus formulated it: συμφερόμενον διαφερόμενον,115 the opposites are brought together, or the irreconcilables are reconciled. Therefore, harmony appears to override the antinomy form vs. work; it is a universal signifier for musical meaning. It is for a reason that Philip Ewell, a student of Allen Forte who was the major promoter of Schenker, published in 2020 an article “Harmonic Functionalism in Russian Music Theory: A Primer,” in which he summarizes the significance of harmonic functionalism for both Russian and current North American traditions: Most current U.S. music theory textbooks, though steeped primarily in Schenkerian thought, have prominent sections outlining the three harmonic functions. T, D, and S. Thus, even American textbooks can be said to be hybrids of these two systems. But this dual borrowing is more prominent in Russia—their functionalism grew out of a step theory that never really left Russian music theoretical thought, from the nineteenth century until today.116

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One can only add a slight correction to Ewell’s time frame: considering Diletsky’s knowledge and the tradition of partes singing, the beginning of the encounters with Western concept of harmony should be shifted back from the nineteenth century to the second half of the seventeenth century. Soviet theorists, including Sposobin and Kholopov, believed that there is a hard link between the terms tonique, dominante and sous-dominante of Rameau and Riemann’s labeling them as tonal-harmonic functions. This connection is vehemently denied by current North American theory (by Nathan Martin and Thomas Christensen, to name a few). Yet, both Russian and French colleagues agree on exactly such a line of inheritance. Raphaëlle Legrand maintains that: The principle of fundamental bass foreshadows that of functional notation (Roman numeral notation) that represents different scale steps of a given key, but the former is different from the latter in the perspective (in the angle of interpretation).117

Yuri Kholopov presents a similar understanding in his Harmony: A Theoretical Course: The foundation for functional logic was laid by Rameau. He analyzed the authentic relation, the D to T and discovered that the dominant emerges from the component of tonic since the fundamental of dominant is contained in tonic chord. The dominant is being born from tonic and is in quintal relationship with it. Hence the dependent character of the dominant and its exclusive role in the lad. Resolution of dominant to tonic is the return, restauration of the initial harmony. Therefore, it gives the sense of complete rest and produces the most perfect cadence.118

Functional harmony has become a household item in Russia in the second half of the nineteenth century. Translations of Riemann’s texts, including his Harmony Simplified [Russ. Uproshchennaya garmonia] were made at that time. The references to Hugo Riemann by Georgy Catoire in 1920s were already the old news for his colleagues. Igor Sposobin and the creators of Uchebnik Garmonii, the so-called Brigade textbook (1937), followed the indigenous Russian tradition that came from Diletsky, as well as the teachings of Rameau, Vogler, Weber, Marx, and many others. Riemann’s functionalism does not begin the

Russian Theories of Harmony

period of development of tonal-functional syntax in the West as well as in Russia; it ends and crowns it. Since Russian music theory has been holistic—integralist— from its early stages (as shown in Chapter 2), the discussions of technical aspects are never done without the references to musical content and expression. In this regard, Russian scholars have mentioned the profound resemblance of Diletsky’s ideas with the theory of affects (Affektenlehre). He distinguished three genera of music: major, minor, and a third type—a mixed genus. It is very difficult to discern the technical-compositional (structural) aspects from a kind of semantic or hermeneutic interpretations in Diletsky’s text. The far-reaching consequences of such view are obvious: Diletsky saw the birth of the “mixture of affects” in the seventeenth century Italian music, long before it was described in theory in the West as the Affektenlehre. Perhaps, Diletsky’s idea can be related to René Descartes Passions de l’ame (1649) or even to Johannes Tinctoris’ Complexus effectuum musices (1472–1475). So, more precisely, Diletsky worked not with the affects but with the effects of music. Diletsky states that music presents voices that provoke human hearts either to joy, or to sadness; he explains the meaning of any musical structure by the emotional state that it evokes. He perceives the origins of music in sobbing. “According to the Holy Scripture, Adam sat in the Eden, naked, and he was weeping and sobbing. Sobbing is the voice (glas), and the voice is music.”119 The voices of human beings and of instruments are “crossed” by the mind” (presekaiemy umom).120 This specific syncretism—unity of the emotional element with the rational, and of the psychological aspect with the technical—is what essentially defines the Russian musical-theoretical views in this century as well as in earlier times. A similar character—a double-bind of technical and emotional approaches to music—is noticed in the theory of Rameau by Catherine Kintzler, in her book Jean-Philippe Rameau: Splendeur et naufrage de l’esthétique du plaisir à l’âge classique. She complains about single-sided perception of Rameau as only technique-oriented and science-obsessed: When Rameau provides the definition of music, he explicitly attributes to it the power to excite emotions, sentiments

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and to acquire the soul (l’âme) by the affective effects. Besides these declarations, there is a great temptation to dissociate a rigid theorist from an emotional and sensitive artist.121

Unfortunately, Rameau is, indeed, viewed more commonly as a “rigid theorist” while integralist aspects, despite being overtly present in his treatises, are commonly overlooked. We must reiterate that Russian treatises are never purely technical in their description of musical content; they may emphasize the main intervals and their resolutions, but there is always a strong aesthetic and psychological component present in each analysis. Even in the twentieth century, when the analysis in most Western traditions has been reduced to the domain of operations with numbers, Russian analytical texts remained saturated with aesthetic, psychological and sociological metaphors. Therefore, it seems quite reasonable that the discussion of the seventeenth-century Russian music by Soviet theorists circled around the same topic of musical work vs. musical form. Nina Gerasimova-Persidskaya dedicated a large chapter in her book Russkaya Muzyka XVII Veka: Vstrecha Dvukh Epokh [Russian Music of the Seventeenth Century: the Meeting of Two Epochs]122 to the problem of musical work. It is entitled “Muzykal’noye Proizvedeniye—Muzykal’nyi Ob’’yekt. Mesto Etikh Ponyatii v Obeikh Paradigmakh” [The Musical Work—Musical Object. The Place of these Categories in Both Paradigms]. She finds it possible to elaborate on seventeenth-century music with the tools provided by Soviet music theory and musical aesthetics. Her conceptual apparatus is built upon the theory of Yevgenyi Nazaikinsky presented in the book Logika Muzykal’noi Kompositsii [The Logic of a Musical Composition]. She cites his claim that “the musical work is the object, a complex materialideal formation which bears the imprint of the context of genre. As such, it presents the creation of the time of composer’s music.”123 Gerasimova-Persidskaya argues that the time of composer’s music and musical work did not yet arrive in the Russian seventeenth century and the Znamennyi chants and partes concerti continued to represent the realm of musical objects of a different kind (Example 3.10). Nina Gerasimova-Persidskaya suggests that the Znamennyi chant “belonged to the canonic type of culture ruled by syncretism—the artistic events and artifacts were not yet

Russian Theories of Harmony

distinguished from the laws, which were broader than the laws of any single given art.”125 It is in the transition from the Znamennyi chant to partes (part) singing (shown on Example 3.10) in the seventeenth century that Gerasimova-Persidskaya discovers the most important shift of paradigm in Russian music, and this change is closely related to the main topic of this book, to the transition from the syncretic and atemporal universality of chant to the “temporary, dispensable character of the partes genres,”126 such as the Mnogoletiye to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, quoted by Gerasimova-Persidskaya.

Example 3.10 Partes harmonization of the Znamennyi chant—the Blazhenna of the first ikhos.124

Currently, the study of partes era continues in multiple publications. For example, the dissertation of Natalia Plotnikova, Russkoye Partesnoye Mnogogolosiye Konza XVII – Serediny XVII Veka: Istochnikovedenyie, Istoriya [Russian Partes Polyphony at the End of Seventeenth – the Middle of the Eighteenth Centuries: Source Study, History and Theory (2013) describes the partes polyphony and works of three leading figures of that time, Vasily Titov, Nikolai Diletsky and Nikolai Kalashnikov.

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3.6 The Chord, Function, Voice Leading, Scale

Step and Their Further Development The chord is, perhaps, the most common term of music theory. With all that, the category of the chord is one of the most underrated and poorly defined. It is often taken for granted. All musicians play chords: guitarists strum, comb or roll, pianists and harpists strike and arpeggiate. One can admire the efforts and time (more than 2000 years since the discovery of intervals!) that it took to discover the chord as a category of music theory: There are only two sounds that are distant from each other due to the low and high notes, which are in common: but such sounds are also heard by many junctures interspersed [tramezzaro— to interpose, to partition] with other sounds, which are smoothly concentrated, as is evident; and the most proportions are contained; the musicians call this composition Harmonia. … Musicians properly name Harmonia the concentration of chords [strings], or of sonorous voices in their ways, without offending any of the ears.127

This statement comes from Gioseffo Zarlino’s Le institutioni harmoniche, book II, published in 1558. Musicians, whom he mentions, most notably included Palestrina (Example 3.11).

Example 3.11 Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. Motet “Nigra sum sed formosa,” harmonic reduction.

The Chord, Function, Voice Leading, Scale Step and Their Further Development

Not only the chords here are displayed in their perfect shapes, but they are also rendered in the Classical balance of spacing and doubling. These chords are not the products of the line; rather, the melodic line exhibits the clear following the structure of the chord (the Fa – Le – Do, or Do – Mi – Sol). It is obvious that even in the time where the melody sounds alone (before the entrance of the second voice) it is already submitted to the power of harmony (trias harmonica, l’accord parfait). The triad is the product of millennial evolution: it crowns the development of musical means from tone to interval, and to the system of intervals. The chord cannot be neglected and cannot be reduced to the accidental combination of the tones of melodic lines. The chord is solid and sovereign entity. Yuri Kholopov suggested in his treatise Harmony. A Theoretical Course (1988) that there are three essential aspects of each chord: linearcontrapuntal, functional-syntactic, and embellishment-sonoric: Three sides of the chord: 1. Linearity of tones, belonging of the tones of the chord to melodic lines. 2. Tonal functionality (the value of a chord in relation to general or local tonal center). 3. Fonism (sonic, timbral aspect), the value of the chord by itself, outside the relationship of lad-tonal functions.128

The historic evolution that takes its roots in the earliest stages of human development shows a very long period in its beginning within which the tones fixed in pitch had been identified and used in music (that was preceded by the age of the ekmelic— music that does not use fixed pitch). Ancient Greek musicians knew the category of tone, ὁ τόνος, as both musical tone and tension—the force of nature. It took several centuries in a number of cultures to discover the intervals and the system of their relationships. In Greek context, it was the σύστημα: διάφωνα και σύμφωνα. For twenty centuries after that music has been developing within the contexts of monody and polyphony, and only in the middle of the sixteenth century, Gioseffo Zarlino included the middle tone within the perfect fifth (senario), thus creating the theoretical foundation for the chord (harmonia, cordo). In the next two centuries, music has become chordal by

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nature. In 1722, Rameau summarized the experience of practicing musicians in regard to chords: It is obvious that the harmony can stir different passions proportionally to the chords that it employs. There are the chords that are sad, languid, tender, pleasant, joyful, and surprising. There is also a progression of chords to express each of these sentiments.129

This is an astounding revelation of integralist attitude (hermeneutic, semantic) in the text of a formalist treatise. Perhaps these sensations gave Rameau an idea to distribute the roles of the chords in a progression; these roles were labeled a century later as functions by Hugo Riemann. In this sense, tonal-harmonic function occupies the top level of the hierarchy of compositional means. It is the ultimate achievement of the musical intellect, preconditioned by the intensive development of sciences in the seventeenth century and the introduction of the category of function into mathematics by Leibniz and Bernoulli.130 It supports the idea of harmony and builds the form—the large-scale form that the weak relationships of non-chord tones cannot support. Hence the evolution of music in the past 2600 years can be presented as conquering one level of pitch structure at a time (Table 3.2).

Table 3.2 The evolution and hierarchy (emergence) of pitch structure in Western traditions Enlightenment, Lumières: chord function (18th century, Rameau; 19th century, Riemann) Renaissance: chord, (armonia) (16 century, Zarlino) Classical Greek period: interval (ἡ σύστημα) (5–4 centuries B.C.E. Archytas, Philolaus)

Ancient pre-Classical Greece: tone (ὁ τόνος) (6 century B.C.E.)

Each transition from one level to another on this paradigm represents a quantum leap: this is the hierarchy of emergence type. The function cannot be reduced to chord. The chord cannot be reduced to its components (intervals, members, scale steps,

The Chord, Function, Voice Leading, Scale Step and Their Further Development

etc.). Intervals cannot be reduced to tones. The interval provides a context for a tone, akin to the role of the two-dimensional space for a mono-dimensional object (a point on a line). The chord, in its turn, provides the context, or, what is called in mathematical topology, an ambient space, for the interval. Function envelops the chord in the ambient space of the highest order—the fourth dimension of musical space. Such are the rules of ascending hierarchy, also known as emergence or induction. The system is more complex than the sum of its components. The function of a chord (or of a key area) is the highest aspect in this hierarchy. It moves one chord into another. This movement may necessitate an economy of a bound horizontal organization, which is called voice leading—a term, well-known long before Schenker and used by theorists from many countries: such are the German Stimmführung, French conduite de voix, Italian condotta delle voci, and Russian golosovedeniye. The voice leading is the finish of harmonic progression but not its generative agent. Harmonic progression is generated by the interaction of tonal-harmonic functions. The linear motion cannot start without a cause. There is great potential energy, locked in each of the three primary chords of tonality; melodic lines reveal the process of transformation of potential energy of chords into kinetic energy of functions.131 Schenker’s graph, in a sense, confirms this and illuminates the realization of the power of functions. Hence the hierarchy of powers of linear unfolding (Table 3.3). Table 3.3 The hierarchy of connections, from adjacency of NCTs to the logic of the tonal plan Functional relations of key areas outside voice leading in the tonal plan, (the strongest force) Functions within the voice-leading patterns of harmonic progression (stronger forces)

Embellishments, non-functional voice-leading connections, NCT relationships (weak forces)

Moreover, on a very large scale, even the relationship of large T to large D becomes insufficient. The keys start playing

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metaphoric, symbolic roles. Thus, the opening scene of Mozart’s Don Giovanni presents the killing of Il Commendatore. It happens in D minor—the tragic key of Requiem. In the middle of the opera, Don Giovanni sings a blatant arietta in D major “Deh, vieni alla finestra.” Yet his hubris meets the fatum in the last scene that returns, symbolically, the key of D minor. Or, in a large symphonic cycle, even the key areas become not as important as the genre contrast: opening stormy allegro reflects the young years of the protagonist; the slow middle movement, adagio or andante—the age of reason; the minuet or scherzo—the irony of life and a paradoxical solution to the earlier dramatic problems in coming out and lightening up, and, in finale, the individual suffering is alleviated by joining the collective movement, the element of dance, rondo. Such is the description of the idea of symphony as a whole by Asafiev, presented in his Symphonic Etudes after reading Paul Bekker’s masterpiece the Symphony from Beethoven to Mahler (1921). Such is the power of harmony. It is rather peculiar to observe how philosophers who surrounded Rameau failed to trust him in his discovery of the essence of harmony. André Charrak in Raison et perception fonder l’harmonie au XVIIIme siecle suggests that: The editors of Encyclopedia were unanimous regarding the fact that there must be a fundamental junction of all sciences … but such systematic unity cannot be determined a priori. D’Alembert affirmed that first principles that unite all the knowledge escape human understanding.132

Charrak provided a very careful evaluation of the critique of eighteenth-century theory of harmony. Thus, the rejection of it by encyclopedists cannot and should not be overrated. They did not believe in the possibility of derivation of musical concepts from the ideas of sciences (mathematics and physics) and, ultimately, from the laws of nature. This was caused not so much by the inadequacy of their philosophical positions as their misinterpretation of the significance of music. After all, Rousseau and d’Alembert were experts in the fields other than music; Rameau was a well-established musician—an official composer and theorist of the French royal court. And if it was his opinion against theirs, there is a reason to side with his. Raphaëlle Legrand joins this evaluation:

The Chord, Function, Voice Leading, Scale Step and Their Further Development

And if theorists noticed weaknesses in his reasoning, eclecticism of his method, and poverty of his argumentation, the results were nevertheless powerfully efficient.133

This discussion, provided by the leading contemporary theorists, professors of Sorbonne, André Charrak, Katherine Kintzler and Raphaëlle Legrand, offers an argument solid and hefty enough to outweigh the opinions of Rameau’s critics. It also supports the aspirations of most of Russian musicians who have chosen, from the outset, the position based upon the central role of harmony in music. As the eighteenth-century discovery, tonal-functional system was under constant development in the nineteenth, in Russia and in the West. Toward the fin de siècle, the function of the dominant seventh chord has become sovereign; it is seen in the evolution of harmony in music of Liszt, Wagner, and Scriabin. It was not just any dissonance that got emancipated; the dominant seventh chord departed from the tonal context of its resolution. Boleslav Yavorsky offered a new pitch system, based upon the resolutions of the tritone, in which he retained three tonal-harmonic functions and added one more, the ,

connecting dominant and subdominant, as seen in the last connection in Example 3.12. This system, akin to Nikolas Roslavets’s idea of Synthetakkord,134 presents the material not in linear scalar (set) format but as a combination of verticalities in tensionresolution patterns. The dyads here work the same way as the chords. So, Yavorsky retained both the chord and function as the ideas and applied them to new material (Example 3.12).

d

D

Yavorsky’s

harmonic

functions,

d

Example 3.12 Protopopov.135

D

according

to

Sergei

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Noteworthy is the interpretation of a tritone as the dominant and the interval of its resolution (either major third or minor sixth) as tonic. The dual system (see the set of all Yavorsky’s lads in the Example 3.5 earlier in this text), is a combination of two adjacent tritones; the resulting interval is thus a perfect fifth. It then moves into diminished fourth and resolves into minor third. The perfect fifth is labeled by Yavorsky as the natural subdominant; the diminished fourth is viewed as its alteration, as chromatic subdominant, and the minor third as tonic. A new function, that which connects two tritones as the parts of diminished seventh chord, is called connecting function (D crossed by S). Since each Yavorsky’s lad is comprised of two or three tritonal cells, dominants multiply: Di, Dii and Diii. There is a trend of theory in the United States that was labeled by William Caplin as the Princeton school. It adheres to the idea of chord and does not hesitate to place it in the center of the theoretical systems. David Lewin, Richard Cohn, Dmitri Tymoczko, as well as Fred Lerdahl, use chords, although, in contrast to the Russian tradition, always outside the functional context. Yavorsky’s system aims at the same goals: it is based upon parsimony of voice leading. There is a problem in neoRiemannian parsimony: the PLR transformations work only in mixture mode (Russian mazhorominor) and will not do so in major or minor. The relative connection, C-E-G to C-E-A has one whole step (G to A) that does not fit into absolutely smooth voice leading. Yavorsky came up with the solution in his Subdominant to Tonic relation: resolution of the tritone to minor third is mediated by intermediate step, from perfect fifth to diminished fourth. Yuri Kholopov dedicated two hundred pages of his Harmony. Theoretical Course to tonal-harmonic functions. He quoted Siegfried Karg-Elert’s136 and Tomasz Zieliński’s137 versions and came up with the elaborate system, with two new names, attakta (enveloping function of a chord minor second above and below the chord of resolution) and tritonanta (a tritonal chordal link) (Figure 3.1).

The Chord, Function, Voice Leading, Scale Step and Their Further Development

Figure 3.1 Kholopov’s functions for omnitonality.

The author of this book suggested a hybrid functional system, based upon the principles of mathematical topology. Each function has its place in the specific tonal space. The function of dominant begins its movement from the subdominant, rises abruptly, stays on the top briefly, and falls straight down on tonic. The subdominant behaves differently in tonal topology. It rises slowly and in a shallow curve above the tonic and falls, slowly and gradually to tonic (Figure 3.2).

Figure 3.2 Ildar Khannanov. Topology of movements of dominant and subdominant.138

The subdominant—and there had been an interesting distinction in German theories of the nineteenth century into Subdominant (the function below tonic) and Unterdominant (the function below the dominant)—can be renamed into downward-directed dominant. More precisely, the subdominant

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is not only located below tonic but it directs its functionality downward. The dominant, similarly, can be renamed into upward-directed dominant. The roles of subdominant are diverse: here it prepares the dominant; there it offsets the tension of dominant to tonic and works as a counterbalance for the tonal system. As for the lines in Figure 3.2, they can be interpreted as graphs of functions of dominant and tonic. They are similar to the graph of quadratic function since the change of the variable in regard of the argument is gradual and accelerating or decelerating. Perhaps, they can present an alternative to the graphic lines commonly used in analyses that rely on connecting the note heads. The lines on Figure 3.2 describe the fluctuation of intensities, rather than “real” note connections. They can also be viewed in light of Riemann’s theory of dynamic shading. William Caplin describes this concept in the following way: Riemann’s initial model of rhythm is based not on a series of undifferentiated pulses, as in Akzenttheorie, but rather on the gradually changing intensity of two or three tones grouped into metrical motive. The most important feature of a metrical motive is its dynamic shading (dynamische Schattierung): a steady growth, a becoming, a “positive development” leads to a dynamic climax followed by passing away, a dying off, a “negative development.”139

Needless to say that for Riemann harmonic function and metric placement were intertwined in a single dynamic concept. Therefore, one may assume that functional events in harmony happen also as a kind of “shading,” gradual rising and falling, and reaching the goal. The point of implementing functional hearing is not limited to conceptual framework of a theory or a doctrine. Function is not so much a concept as it is a skill. Practical use of such skill is difficult to overestimate. When a composer or a performer in the nineteenth century had to analyze long, chromatic and modulating chord progressions, solely by ear, functional hearing was used as the Ariadne’s thread. Instead of trying to identify each chord by its Roman numeral and figured bass index, a student had to identify aural areas by three functional markers.

The Chord, Function, Voice Leading, Scale Step and Their Further Development

This would reveal the overall logic of harmonic progression, its syntax in general. After second and other subsequent listenings, a student would be able to clarify which particular chords represent the already defined functional nodes. Following the hierarchy of pitch structure in Figure 3.3., we can devise a pedagogic method for the skills of analysis of a given harmonic progression by ear. Let us take one example from Vera Kirillova's teaching guide Harmonic Analysis in a Course in Ear Training (2007). It comes from Gnessin’s school; as such it is not much different from the instruction in ear training and musicianship at major conservatories in the Soviet Union and Russian Federation in 1980s and 1990s (Example 3.13).

Example 3.13 Harmonic progression given for the aural ID, by Vera Kirillova in: Harmonic Analysis in the Course in Solfeggio; Chromaticism of Extended Tonality (2007).

It is evident that this progression is rather complex and, perhaps, too difficult for the immediate identification of all chords with exact inversions and arrangements. It would be unreasonable to ask a student to provide a complete Roman numeral analysis with NCTs from the first hearing. However, if we break it into several steps that correspond to the hierarchy discussed above, we will come up with very good results. First of all, a student should attune his or her ear to the functions of chords and functional cycles. Upon the years of formal training, a student becomes capable of hearing the tonicity,

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the dominantness, the subdominantness and the leadingtonness of every sonority (Russ. тоничность, доминатовость, субдоминантовость и вводнотоновость). Also, one should be able to hear the placement of the fundamentals of each chord in one of the four parts and the substitutions of the fundamental chords with the variants (such as ii substituting for IV and tritone sub7 substituting for V7). Apparently, the root of the first chord is A and it is in Tenor, and of the second chord—the D, in Soprano. The first chord emanates tension, while the second seems to resolve it. On can assume that these are D and T. The cycle is marked with the slur. There are sequential repetitions of the same cycle at different levels of transposition. The second cycle brings in a chromatic local key of E flat major. The third cycle returns to the initial key. The fourth cycle is, apparently, a cadential pattern—cadence is a particular case of tonal-functional cycle and the principles that govern it are the same as for the first three. After hearing four cycles lined up, a student will hear a larger cycle that circumscribes the tonic. The next step, emersion into the level of higher resolution (akin to processing a photograph), will require a switch of a hearing mode. This time a student will analyze aurally the shapes of chords, inversions, and their parsimonious connections. At this point, one may notice that the first D-T cycle involves a very specific sound of V4/2; the second and the third begin with the V4/3 inversions, and the cadence employs the three common functions, yet each regular chord is substituted by a chromatic double. Instead of iv – V – i, we hear half-diminished seventh chord of V, “Rachmaninoff’s subdominant” and tonic. These sonorities must be internalized and memorized as acoustic phenomena. The last step will include finding the tones that are not included into the functions of harmonic progression, contributing to the activation of voices and linear chromatic progressions in different parts. As the result of such training—and it takes decades starting from the very early age—a musician becomes sensitive to the inner logic of harmonic progression, by developing what the German theorists call innere Hören. These sensations, untranslatable into verbal languages, guide composers in their work and allow

The Chord, Function, Voice Leading, Scale Step and Their Further Development

performers to understand and logically interpret and phrase the tonal compositions. Phrasing is primarily tied to the tonalharmonic cycles.140 Other parameters, such as voice leading or counterpoint, come out of this heuristic procedure; they do not exist by themselves. Thus functional hearing rises the awareness of musical logic and meaning and brings them to the highest levels, far beyond the level of visualized structure and clichéd technique. In the new music, the question of whether someone understands it is somewhat misleading; understanding cannot substitute for or replace hearing. The question of harmony—the problem of harmony—will linger as long as the adequate perception of tonal music and its form will remain actual. It is not a minute issue. Both, Soviet integralists and formalists, contributed to expanding the category of harmony beyond its technical use. Leo Mazel’ wrote a treatise on harmony Problemy Klassicheskoi Gramonii [The Problems of Classical Harmony],141 in which the technical discussion is balanced by philosophical and aesthetic aspects. His student, Valentina Kholopova, a strong supporter of integralism, offered a topic on so-called “aesthetic harmony” in her two-year course in Analysis of Musical Works at Moscow Conservatory. She tried to take harmony to a higher level of discussion. Thus symmetry in music is the manifestation of aesthetic harmony. Indeed, aesthetic reasoning is based upon the category of the beautiful [die Schöne] (since Alexander Baumgarten and Nikolai Hartman, German philosophers of arts). Yuri Kholopov, her adversary in music theory, maintains that harmony is, originally, a copper stud which was used in log or marble house construction in ancient Greece. As such, this device—ἁρμονία—was used to hold together the parts of the building that could not be fixed in space together otherwise. So, these both definitions lie beyond the technical one (“the art of connecting the chords”). Both are fruitful and pregnant with elaboration on music that can stretch far beyond and above the given fields of form and work. The form is thus derivative of these two approaches to harmony. In general aesthetic terms, form is the source of beauty (formosa in Latin means both shapely and beautiful). In formalist approach of Kholopov and Losef, form (forma) is derived

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from harmony and generated by the power of divine numbers. Formalism, in this respect, can be introduced not as a kind of free reasoning on the possibilities of structure but as an attribute of musical form. Indeed, formalism without the precedence of form is useless. Musical form is a subject that is hard to define; however, from the experience with tonal compositions of the past three centuries, the listeners, composer and performers gain the knowledge of certain elements that are crucial for the form building. Musical form is both a structure and a process. Its processual aspect requires an agency—a kind of physical force— that should be common and available on a cognitive level. That has been detected by theorists of ancient Greece as dissonant­ to-consonant attraction, or, in other words, the gravitation of the unstable elements toward the stable. Centuries later, these were realized as tonal-harmonic functions.

3.7 Tonal-Harmonic Function, Metric Period, and Musical Syntax

The tonal-harmonic function is linear by nature. Function in mathematics was introduced by Leibniz and Bernoulli in 1694 and presented in the form y = f (x) by Euler in 1748 and by Dirichlet in 1837. While the x and y are entities or the real objects, f is incorporeal and immaterial: it does not signify any entity but refers to action upon the entities. The character of entities is important, however. For example, it is illegal to divide by zero. In this sense the term “dominant” is not the descriptor of a single verticality; rather, it signifies the role of such verticality, the type of action that is directed at the next chord and other chords, including the long-range tension-resolution spans. As suggested by Rameau in Traité de l’harmonie “we call Dominant the first of the two notes in the bass of the perfect cadence because it always precedes the final note and, therefore, dominates over it.”142 Paradoxically, when students are given either Roman numerals or figured bass indexes without tonal-harmonic functions, they stop hearing the linear dimension of harmonic progression. Neither Roman numeral, nor, let alone, the figure over a tone in

Tonal-Harmonic Function, Metric Period, and Musical Syntax

the bass, since they are the descriptors or attributes of singular entities, can indicate any tendency to move toward any object, be it a scale step, a chord, or a key area. And the entity that is suited for the functional inference is the chord. The chord can be represented by its root or even by one of its members; nevertheless, it is the chord that contains the potential energy of instability that is realized in tonal-harmonic function. Noticed by Rameau, echoed by Fétis, the real character of the structural chord—l’accord parfait—is defined by its place within the metric grid of a period. Structural chords occur in the areas of two cadences. In fact, harmonic function is determined by metric binary link of light and heavy elements; the very existence of this metric element is preconditioned by harmonic tensionrelaxation unit. They are mutually dependent (Figure 3.3).

Figure 3.3 Intertwined rhythm and harmony.

In contrast to the descriptions of pitch structure alone (such as harmonic progression, tonal plan, voice-leading patterns, melodic fluency, embellishment, linear unfolding, prolongation), Riemann introduced a relatively new aspect: the interaction of rhythmic patterns with harmonic tension-relaxation spans. Musical rhythm has been and is still studied by itself; Riemann suggested to introduce it into the context of pitch relationships. Such synthesis constitutes the heterogeneous model of tonal music. It relies upon inference, akin to the following of one part of syllogism in Aristotelian formal logic by another. For example, it is hard to argue against the fact that an isolated single beat cannot be identified as strong in the absence of other beats that it can be compared to. Yuri Kholopov, in his lecture on Riemann within the course in Musical-Theoretical Systems at Moscow Conservatory, started with this statement. Therefore, the first beat is either neutral or weak, by default. Riemann used the terms light and heavy (Example 3.14).

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leicht

schwer

T

D

Example 3.14 Harmonic logic and hierarchy of metric period; step one—the opening motive.

This simplest connection of the harmonically unstable element to the stable (or stable to unstable) and, at the same time, metrically light (Ger. leicht) to heavy (Ger. schwer), constitutes the first complete unit of metric form. As mentioned by many, including Schenker in his Harmonielehre, the motive asks for repetition. This biological urge to repeat is not related to the mechanical copy-paste process: the link of two elements is unfinished, by definition, and requires a continuation as a dynamic process. Two is the number of imperfection, in theology and early music theory. Sounding two elements open the perspective of not just linear replication but that of growing and unfolding in a hierarchical fashion.

Example 3.15 Two plus two creating the two on a higher level.

Tonal-Harmonic Function, Metric Period, and Musical Syntax

If there is the necessity for the next link of two elements, and within the link there is already a hierarchy of light and heavy elements, this tendency may produce not a mere repetition but the replication—self-similarity or recursion—on a higher level (Example 3.15). This process of dialectic growth (thesis – antithesis = synthesis) allows for at least three levels in our hierarchy. Hence the metric period (or metric sentence) of eight measures with three distinct hierarchical levels (Figure 3.4).

Figure 3.4 Metric period, synthesis of meter and harmony, three levels of hierarchy.143

In this ideal structure, tonal-harmonic functions help emphasizing metric waves of light and heavy measures; the influence is reciprocal, and the very notion of tonal-harmonic function becomes contingent upon the position of the chord in the eight-measure grid. The first half represents, on the third highest level, the idea of the dominant; the second—that of tonic. That is reflected in predominant direction of smaller links: in the antecedent phrase, it is T to D, in the consequent—D to T. If we add to this proto structure the idea of rhymed poetic verse, with weak and strong rhymes, the result will be a period form; if the model is based upon a more streamlined prosaic sentence, harmonic progression will end in the measure eight

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without the medial cadence, thus generating the sentence form. It is not difficult to notice that the model of metric period is universal and can generate (by self-similarity) larger forms. It is, in fact, the Ursatz proposed by Hugo Riemann much earlier than the Schenkerian idea. From the standpoint of theoretical speculation, only Riemann’s and Schenker’s models rise to the expectations for the united formal design of musical composition. Igor Sposobin created his teaching of form based upon A. B. Marx’s and Riemann’s understanding of harmony as a form-building principle within the metric period and beyond. Yuri Kholopov adopted this teaching and developed it further in a number of his publications. A detailed description of the use of metric period in analyses in the Soviet Union is found in my recent publications, “Beethoven’s Theme of the Slow Movement of Piano Sonata op. 13: Phrasing, Functional Cycles, Metre and Dramaturgy” in Estonian journal Res musica (2021), and in “Scriabin and the Classical Tradition,” Chapter 15 of Demystifying Scriabin (2021).144 Riemann attempted to understand music as a kind of non­ verbal language with its own syntax and logic. The titles of his most important texts are Musikalische Syntaxis (his dissertation of 1877) and Musikalische Logik. Ein Beitrag zur Theorie der Musik (published in Neue Zeitschrift für Musik in 1872). Obvious from these titles is Riemann’s intention—a very different goal in comparison with today’s descriptive and scientocentric methods. What agency moves tonal music forward? For Riemann it is the interaction of harmonic functional syntax with the metric positioning of functions. At the crossing of these two heterogeneous agencies, as a result of their synthesis and resonance with each other, the musical dynamics, the force or energy of movement is generated, and it is conveyed to the listener in the form of a cognitive automaton. Boleslav Yavorsky’s theory of lad rhythm [teoria ladovogo ritma] is the direct development of Riemann’s idea of metric period. In the archival materials for his two books, The Design of Musical Speech and The Exercises in Theory of Lad Rhythm, one can see references to Riemann. The main idea of Yavorsky is the fusion of tonal-functional tension (that of dominant to tonic, as well as subdominant to both tonic and dominant) and the metric scheme of the motive, the coupling of predictus and ictus. He uses the

The Art of Harmonization of Unfigured Melody

terms “gravitation” and “momentum” to describe the physicality of the musical events that happen before, during and after the strong beat within the motivic group. Igor Sposobin and three of his colleagues, Iosif Dubovsky, Sergey Yevseyev and Vladimir Sokolov, the authors of the Uchebnik Garmonii [Textbook Harmony] (1937),145 commonly known as the Brigade textbook, mastered a formidable combination of abstract knowledge, compositional experience, and the connections to non-Western traditions. Igor Sposobin was the author of the concept. The Chapter 2 in the Brigade textbook presents, clearly and thoroughly, his (and not Riemann’s) view of the system of tonal-harmonic functions. In Chapter 17, entitled “The Complete Functional System,” he returns to the topic and enhances it with more chords. This is remarkable: no contemporary textbook in harmony provides such a heavy theoretical discussion in the beginning. Sposobin does not use Riemann’s chord notation; he introduces Roman numerals coupled with the functional symbols. The functional hearing is not given by birth; it must be developed from the earliest age. Thus, the Roman numeral ii is ambivalent: it may imply either subdominant or dominant. A student is given full definition as Sii. This enables a student to direct the harmonic progression, since this symbol indicates not only what is the root of a chord but also what will happen next. Such chord notation had never been implemented by either Riemann, or any other functionalist in the West.

3.8 The Art of Harmonization of Unfigured Melody

However, this conceptual part is not the most valuable in the Brigade textbook. It is the artistic quality of the melodies for harmonization that breathes in the soul of music into its otherwise rather ordinary didactic chapters. One of its four authors, Iosif Dubovsky was a theorist, composer, and expert in folk music. He has written six-volume research on Russian peasant songs and studied the Kazakh folk music. The core of this style is the socalled prolonged song. It is characterized by endless melodicism, in slower tempo, that generates the sense of optimal voice leading. Chapter 27 in the Brigade textbook dedicated to

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harmonization of a folk melody in the natural lads. Thus, musical examples in this textbook are not limited to the “Viennese canon.” Sergei Yevseev was a pianist (a student of Nikolai Medtner) and a composer. He created courses in modern harmony. Vladimir Sokolov was a theorist and an expert in solfeggio, a Russian version of ear training. Thus, the brigade146 was a complete team of theorists and practically oriented composers, folklorists, pianists, and teachers of ear training. Yuri Kholopov, in a private conversation with the author, suggested that all four authors of the Brigade textbook were composers of Romantic Lied. The melodies in the Brigade textbook present its most valuable component. At the end of each chapter, there are some ten to twenty unfigured melodies and basses. Example 3.16 shows one of them.

Example 3.16 An unfigured melody from Chapter 46 of the Brigade textbook.

The melody is rooted in the folk style of a prolonged song; it also leans toward the mid-nineteenth century Romantic cantilena, spiced with graceful chromaticism (this chapter deals with the alterations in the chords of the dominant sphere). It is written in an elaborate song-form, a small binary without recapitulation. The opening period seems to shift the key; a modulation into the key of mediant would be unreasonable at the end of a Classical period form. This is the staple of the folk style, the intermittent lad: it establishes the system with several centers from the very beginning. Noteworthy is the work with the motives: an inconspicuous two eighth notes in the opening line are not left behind.

The Art of Harmonization of Unfigured Melody

The composer creates a line of development, a kind of developing variation on this motive; a student is supposed to introduce it in different contexts in the inner voices. The voice leading calls for tied notes in the inner voices; the brigade, undoubtedly, prepared these places in their own harmonization. The melody makes a good impression and creates a positive impact on the formation of a young professional; it teaches, besides the technique of harmonization, some aspects of good taste in music. The two auxiliary cadences—an appropriate gesture at the end of harmonic progression—imply the possibility of two cases of so-called Rachmaninoff’s subdominant, a trivalent chord that contains two lower notes from subdominant triad, the top note from tonic, and the leading tone from the dominant. How can a student approach the harmonization of this melody? Only a melody is given, just as the melodies that J. S. Bach harmonized 371 times, according to Bach-Riemenshneider’s collection. It would be reasonable to suggest a figured bass technique, but this exercise does not provide a bass line, yet alone the figures that suggest a choice of chords. There is a great deal of confusion regarding the composition from the bass in current music theory. As seen in Diletsky, he recognized the effective order of voices and their hierarchy as early as 1679: How to teach harmonization since harmony is coherent? [Should we] find other voices from the bass, or [should we] underlay the bass to a given melody (“the path”)? If to start with the bass, it is necessary to write a beautiful melody in one voice; then to add other voices. If you must find (invent) the bass to a given melody, consider that there are many possible tones in the bass that can fit. … If you cannot find the right tones in the bass, skip ahead, and look at the cadences, in joyful or sad tone. After defining the tone, you will have no difficulty finding the right notes for the bass under a given melody.147

Nobody would argue that the bass identifies the chordal vertical. However, one has first to discover an appropriate bass line under a given melody. The bass is generated by the melody and its key. Diletsky also suggests that “we can arrange [harmony] from the bass by placing the melody in the bass voice.”148 Melody generates harmony; therefore, the melody can be placed

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in any of four voices of harmonic progression. The bass is important for the definition of chords. This, however, is not the same as to suggest that music is composed from the bass up. As the poet said: “Among the pleasures of life, only love precedes music; but love is also a melody.”149 Melody has always had the priority over bass and other voices. Melody preexists composer’s music and, in its simplest form, in folklore, it exists alone. However, upon a closer examination, one can notice that all voices, melody and bass included, are controlled by harmony. As suggested by Rameau: “Harmony is the assembly of sounds that agreeably affect the ear” and “Melody is a voice of a single part; they say that music is melodious when each part reflects the beauty of harmony.”150 The relationship of melody and its harmonic progression is complex. Melody has more to offer than does its harmonic support. Rameau jokes about it in his Traité: Melody is undoubtedly the expression of forces of harmony, but it is impossible to give it certain rules, so good taste plays in its creation a larger role than other methods. Let us give then to the proud genius the pleasure in distinguishing himself or herself in this genre.151

However, without closely following the harmonic design, melody becomes aharmonious and its overall sound turns into something asyntactic and anti-musical. Rameau suggested that “la mélodie naît de l’harmonie.” One can also associate harmony with the frozen melody, and vice versa, melody with melted harmony. Harmony is already present in all good melodies; no good melody can exist without a meaningful harmonic progression, written out or implied. Therefore, there is a method that can bring the results in harmonization of a given melody. It requires a well-developed sense of tension-resolution cycles and hearing of tonal-functional syntax. In the study of languages, the order of learning goes as follows: 1. Function; syntax and the order of words in a sentence. 2. Forms; morphology of parts of speech. 3. Vocabulary meanings of the words.

The Art of Harmonization of Unfigured Melody

The same path works for harmonization of unfigured melody:

1. Function of each chord in a cycle; functional cycle T-S-D-T and its variants. 2. Form; morphology of chords, balanced spacing and doubling, appropriate inversions. 3. Connections, voice leading, embellishments, prolongations, figuration, etc.

Example 3.17 presents step 1: a preliminary functional analysis of melody.

Example 3.17 Step one. Analysis of the melody from Chapter 46 of the Brigade textbook.

In fact, we begin with distribution of slurs, dynamics, tempo markings—a complete expressive notation of melody as an artwork. The slurs follow the tonal-functional cycles. It takes experience and mastery of harmonization to distribute these cycles in a meaningful way. In addition to a basic level, there is a tonal-functional cycle of a higher level; it marks the segments of the form as a whole. The next step is harnessing the harmonization with some concrete voice leading ideas. Here, the functional method suggests thinking not in chords but in short standard chord progressions, a kind of golden nuggets of harmony (Example 3.18).

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Example 3.18 Step two: aspects of morphology, chord forms and standard progressions.

The lowered fifth of the dominant four-two is indicated by the symbols of flat 5 before the main symbol. The four-two is marked simply by superscript or subscript 2, as in German Sekundakkord. The cadential six-four—an apple of dissent in current theory—is simply labeled by K (Russian kadansovyi kvartsekstakkord). After the steps one and two are taken, it is time to harmonize the melody (Example 3.19).

Example 3.19 Step three. Complete harmonization.

The Art of Harmonization of Unfigured Melody

All the cadences and key functions are in the right places. Lower voices do not interfere with melody; there are many tied notes that let harmony escape the vertical thump. Noteworthy is the acceleration of the functional change in the middle and significant slow-down on the last system. A key trick of Sposobin is what in partimento technique is called cadenza lunga. There are two beats for cadential six-four and two—for the dominant. All efforts are spent on creating smooth and flowing linear expression. This is a well-formed and tested way of successful harmonization of an unfigured melody. In 2022, it celebrated the 300-year anniversary, since it has been introduced in the first treatise on harmony, the Traité de l’harmonie by Rameau. However, he was not the inventor of the method; it was implemented in music by J. S. Bach; before that, it has been prepared by the indispensable contributions of hundreds of Italian composers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and by the constellation of teachers of solfeggi and partimenti. Upon listening to or playing the harmonic progression in Example 3.19, one may wonder: is it not integral, holistic, or tselostnyi? Contrary to the views of integralists, anybody who is capable of harmonization on this level may suggest that it is already, in a sense, complete. It generates that unmistakable character of a musical event (Heideggerian Ereigniss) with a number of components coming together in a unique tight-knit combination. It feels right and seems to capture much more than is given to an eye. It would not be an exaggeration to suggest that playing this progression may unite the subject with Being in the musical moment-here, in its Dasein. If performed frequently as a musical work, this harmonization may acquire a context of its reception history and social status, so cherished in research of New Musicologists. Of course, at this stage, it is just an exercise in harmonization, but the given melody, composed in the style, invokes much more than what it is intended for. And if it is possible to create the organic whole by harmonizing a melody with tonal-harmonic functions as the core principle, this must be the way for a composer to create and for a theorist to analyze a musical work.

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3.9 Modulation, the Russian Style Upon reading several textbooks and treatises of the nineteenthcentury conservatory tradition, one may conclude that the most important skill of a composer of tonal music and, therefore, the most important object of analysis, was the harmonization of an unfigured melody that necessarily included modulation. Riemann published a separate book Systematische Modulationslehre als Grundlage der musikalischen Formenlehre in 1887. It was translated into Russian by Yuri Engel in 1898. The book approaches modulation in a comprehensive way. The theory includes sequences, digressions Ausweichungen, modulations into the key of the Subsidiary theme, etc. Modulation is treated not as a scheme but as a device that serves the building of the form. There is a discussion of returning modulation and modulation as a part of development. Riemann published also a more pragmatic and didactic Katechismus der Harmonie- und Modulationslehre (Praktische Anleitung zum mehrstimmigen Tonsatz) in 1906. Salomon Jadassohn introduced modulation in his Die Kunst zu Modulieren und zu Präludieren in 1890. The Beiträge zur Modulationslehre (1903) by Max Reger were well-known in Russia and his exercises were included into teaching materials at major conservatories. Large sections on modulation are found in the textbooks by Ernst Richter and Leo Bussler, both commonly known in Russia. And, of course, the volume I, pages 200 through 268 of Adolf Bernhard Marx’s Die Lehre are dedicated to modulation in relationship to form— perhaps, the most well-read text on the subject in Russia. Also, Gottfried Weber in Chapter III, Divisions VI and VII of his Versuch einer geordneten Theorie der Tonsetzkunst (1817–21), translated in into English in 1948 as the Attempt at a Systematically Organized Theory of Music, proposed the idea of affinity or relationship of keys—from the closest to the most remote. He suggests at least three degrees of such affinity. In Chapter VII he discusses the modulation in the key and outside the key, using the characteristics of affinity, established in the previous chapters. Perhaps not without the reference to Weber, Rimsky-Korsakov devised a system dubbed “four degrees of kinship of the keys”

Modulation, the Russian Style

[chetyre stepeni rodstva tonal’nostei]. He treated modulation as the form-building device, related to the sections of the Classical forms. Just as there are smaller forms and the larger forms (Ger. kleine und große Formen), there are smaller and larger modulations. Yuri Kholopov used the term “small modulation” [malaya modulatsiya] for the modulating period and similar small-scale events. Smaller ones include apposition of keys, digressions, and diatonic pivot chord modulations of the first degree of kinship, i.e., to closely related keys, plus the key of minor subdominant in major (as suggested by Rimsky-Korsakov). Modulations to the closely related key also form the parts of a larger modulatory process, which is called by Tchaikovsky postupennaia modulatsia—gradual modulation. Of course, the requirements for students learning modulations to the closely related keys in the second half of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries were higher than in our times because these modulations were used in actual composition (tonal par excellence). The Russian approach to the art of modulation evolved in the course of centuries. Toward the time of Igor Sposobin and his colleagues—the authors of the Brigade textbook in harmony, the method of modulation has crystallized and had been implemented in dozens of colleges of preconsevatory training. Sposobin’s definitions are both succinct (written for the students of the middle school) and deeply rooted in tradition: Modulation is the transition into the new key and the completion in it of a musical design (in particular, of the period). Cadential closing of the design (period) in a new key distinguishes modulation from the intratonal digression.152

The authors of the Brigade textbook emphasize the significance of modulation: Modulation is the most important harmonic factor of development in the musical work since there are only either parts of the larger work or smaller compositions that are monotonal.153

Of ultimate importance is the idea of the authors of the Brigade textbook on the functional relationship of the keys in modulation. In contrast with currently circulating distinction into modulations

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to the closely related keys and to remote keys, the Russian teachers emphasize functional syntax that the new keys form with the initial key: The correlation or the liaison of keys that are changing in the process of modulation are akin, to a certain degree, to the functional relations of chords in a monotonal presentation. Therefore, by analogy with the tonal functions of chord, we may call the keys in modulation the functions of the higher order. Thus, similar to tonic, the relative key is the only stable key of modulation. Others are grouped around the unstable functions of dominant, subdominant, and double dominant.154

This observation cannot be underestimated: Russian teachers of harmony recognized the higher levels of syntax. The source of it is not Schenkerian Ursatz but Riemannian model of metric period. This places modulation in the context of musical form and tonal-harmonic syntax. And it is, indeed, required from the students: not only that they should know the mechanism of modulation (they should know the pivot chords and general technique of composing, improvising at the keyboard and notation of modulations), but the modulation should be placed in a certain location in the metric grid of syntactically solid musical statement (period, sentence, smaller forms, etc.). Here again, students should be able to hear the functional syntax with placement in a metric grid. In general, the modulation should include: (1) Establishing the initial key by using the T-S-D-T cycle.

(2) Getting to the pivot chord, preferably emphasized by means of digression.

(3) Since the pivot chord is often only theoretically related to the new key and presents some voice leading problems connecting to the new cadence, there is another chord—a kind of service sonority—is used after the pivot chord in order to bring in the new cadence. This chord is called by Sposobin “modulating chord—that which follows the pivot and reveals the new key.”155

(4) A cadence, i.e., a cycle T-S-D-T in a new key is required to establish it and to make the modulation sound convincing.

Modulation, the Russian Style

Sposobin and his colleagues offer the terminology that is different from currently used in North American theory. It is also more elaborate. What is called the pivot chord is labeled by Sposobin as the common or mediating chord (obshchii, posredstvuyushchii akkord). Again, Sposobin is not satisfied with the idea of mere substitution as it is commonly presented in today’s theory, for example: “a chord that is four in the original key becomes two in the new key.” The manner of elimination of function from the discussion of harmony in today’s teaching practice is costly—it results in problems in acquisition and retention of useful musical skills. The common or mediating chord manifests the switch of function: “it is related to the principle of intermittent functionality and intermittent modality.”156 Thus, Sposobin relates the ability of the pivot chord to switch its functionality to the general theory of modes with intermittent centers, discussed earlier in this book in connection with the discoveries of Yavorsky, Tyulin and Kholopov. The skill of modulation is examined in Russia on several levels and parameters. A student has to identify modulation by ear, specifically in tonal-functional terms. The student then has to be able to improvise the modulation from given key to another given key (without preparation), using the template harmonic progression in a period form. Then, the student should be able to write it in S.A.T.B. texture, to harmonize an unfigured melody that modulates, and ultimately, should be able to analyze modulations in the score. Here is an example of modulation through a diatonic pivot chord with standard optimal voice leading inscribed into metric period template, with digression into pivot (common chord) (Example 3.20).

Example 3.20 Modulation to the first degree of kinship.

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Example 3.20 is parsed into five sections underlined by phrasing slurs. The first two segments present the key by passing through the two tonal-functional cycles. This is rather sufficient for establishing the key both on paper and in cognition of the listener. The same role is played by the functional cycle in the beginning of the consequent. The consequent phrase of this metric period offers the place for modulation. In other words, metric grid houses the modulation; outside of metric grid modulation turns into a trivial party trick. If it is placed in the wrong location, the result will be awkward syntax, often, even a comic effect. Modulation should fit into the space after the return of the basic idea in the consequent and before the cadence in the new key, that is the PAC of the period. The PAC takes up measures 7 and 8; therefore, modulation should take place in m. 6. Gesture 4 (slur 4) in Example 3.20 is the digression into the pivot chord (here marked as common chord—C). It allows to underline the pivot chord and mark it as a vehicle of modulation. Moving from the pivot chord directly into a new cadence is undesirable for two reasons: (1) the pivot chord is often not adjusted to the smooth voice leading into the new cadential 6/4 chord; (2) its neutrality does not allow emphasizing the directionality toward the cadence. In contrast with neutral common chord, the modulating chord (marked here as M.) is filled with tendencies; it reveals the new key by a new accidental and an altered scale step that signal the appearance of the new key. Noteworthy is the fact that this explanation is not only technical; it offers the description of the mechanism of cognition and acquisition of skills. The modulation to the keys of the second degree of kinship on two signs in the key signature involves two consecutive pivot chord modulations. It is commonly happening in transitions and middle sections. In particular, the Transition in sonata allegro often “overshoots” and lands in the dominant of the dominant. For that, one needs the skills of modulations to the key of the second degree of kinship (according to Rimsky-Korsakov, Sposobin and a number of other Russian theorists), say, from C major to D major. Large modulations (appropriate for the large-scale forms) to the third degree of kinship are based upon the series of small

Modulation, the Russian Style

diatonic pivot chord modulations and modulating sequences with the shortcuts (such as taking minor subdominant in major when modulating toward the flats). The longer modulatory paths that support the Development sections of the sonata allegri allow to reach the keys that differ from the initial key on three to five signs in the key signature. A student must be able to develop a plan of gradual modulation that includes several steps—diatonic pivot chord modulations and modulating sequences on different intervals. For example, from C to G, to a, to d, to Bb, and to Eb. And, at the end of the Development section, a composer has to return to the initial key rather quickly: for that, Rimsky-Korsakov suggested the fourth degree of kinship, abrupt modulations on a tritone and on a minor second, mostly enharmonic, via dominant seventh or diminished seventh chords. Thus, the musical form itself received a more precise definition: form is, essentially, modulation. As already mentioned, the modulation must be included into a template progression in a period form. In the beginning of the course, a student is assigned to write at least two simple progressions in the form of a period; one in major and another in minor. There are models, provided in special textbooks on keyboard harmony, such as two volumes of Semyon Maximov’s Uprazhneniya po Garmonii na Fortepiano [Exercises in Harmony at the Keyboard] (Example 3.21).

Example 3.21 Semyon Maximov. Template harmonic progression in a period form.157

Such a progression, after the approval of the teacher, is memorized and learned at the keyboard in all keys and used in the process of learning harmony throughout the semester. A student embeds each newly learned harmonic device into this progression in the right metric position. Modulation is performed

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at the exam as a complete period, the small b section and recapitulation; the pivot chords are calculated in mind and the period is played with a number of diatonic pivot chord progressions (as a gradual modulation to the remote keys). Modulations are normally included into the small b section or into a modulatory segment (in measure 6) within the consequent phrase. A student should know how to return to the initial key by means of enharmonic modulation. The destination key is normally given to the student by the professor during the exam and no time is allotted for preparation. Modulations are performed in class upon request of the teacher.

3.10 Counterpoint, Figured Bass and Partimento as Formalist Strategies

When counterpoint is torn away from any system of harmony, it loses its meaning. Raphaëlle Legrand marks the difference of our current condition from that which was ruled by harmony: Today we oppose, in a rigid fashion, the “counterpoint” and “harmony” as if such division existed in history (Baroque is considered in this interpretation as the divider of these two eras). We also reinforce such view in exercises in pedagogy. However, for centuries the term “harmony” was used in invention of the principles of polyphonic music; they include, among others, the intervallic progressions and motion of superimposed melodic lines, that which we grouped today under the term “counterpoint.”158

There are many voices, from different places and times, that support this statement. Indeed, the title of the treatise by Boethius discussed the divine harmony of the spheres at the time, when, one may notice, there was no “harmony” in a narrow sense. Zarlino’s treatise, written at the height of development of counterpoint in the High Renaissance, carries the name “the establishment of harmony.” The third volume out of four is, indeed, dedicated to counterpoint, but it does not offer the discussion of counterpoint as an isolated discipline; rather it is dedicated to the explication of the principles of harmony. Indeed, in this volume Zarlino writes about “perfect harmony as the result of the

Counterpoint, Figured Bass and Partimento as Formalist Strategies

use of imperfect intervals” and other issues related to harmonic progression. As for the Baroque style, the counterpoint of the eighteenth century is inseparable from the theory of harmony in general, and Rameau’s discoveries in particular. This phenomenon presents itself rather eloquently in pedagogic practice. If students are not instructed about the tonal-functional cycles and not trained to hear them and to use them in keyboard harmonizations of unfigured melodies, the task of writing a countersubject becomes an impasse. There is a scheme of the fugue exposition with the order of entrances of voices and the names of components, subject, answer, countersubject, and the free voice; it does not help, however, in this initial exposure of a student to the intricacies of polyphony. The author of this book devised a form—a page with preliminary exercises that students should complete before writing a fugue exposition. It contains the following step-by-step technique: 1. Designing the order of entrances of voices in three-part fugue exposition. 2. Harmonizing a given fugue subject in strict four parts S.A.T.B. chorale style. 3. Creating the countersubject from the fragments of Alto, Tenor, and Bass. 4. Adding a free voice to subject and countersubject, testing the relationship of subject and countersubject in invertible counterpoint.

A student must harmonize a given subject in four parts with regular voice leading and correct doubling and spacing of the chords. For example, a subject from Bach’s Fugue in D sharp minor from the first volume of Well-Tempered Clavier is given to students, to write a three-part fugue exposition (Example 3.22).

Example 3.22 Harmonization of the subject.

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The correct and artistically wholesome harmonization should already display some contrapuntal ideas in the lower voices. Once the harmonization is ready, a student can choose the most active complementary fragments of the alto, tenor or bass and compile from them a countersubject (Example 3.23).

Example 3.23 Choosing the tones of the countersubject and trying it in invertible counterpoint.

As seen in the form, there is room for the experiments with invertible counterpoint; if the resultant connection needs corrections, they should be introduced into the harmonization. After this stage of precompositional schematization, writing up a three-part fugue exposition, following the paradigm of order of entrances of voices, is rather easy. One must consider the ranges and positioning of voices in different octaves, compose the modulatory bridges from the subject to the answer and back and edit the initial connection after testing it in invertible counterpoint of an octave (Example 3.24). In fact, every time a student creates a good harmonic progression with solid tonal-functional syntax, it gives birth to counterpoint that shows up by itself, without artificial “linear” elements and coercion from the teacher. And vice versa, when a good counterpoint is created, it must be based upon solid harmonic progression. When teaching counterpoint, it makes sense to speak about harmony; when teaching harmony, one can benefit from the discussion of counterpoint.

Counterpoint, Figured Bass and Partimento as Formalist Strategies

Example 3.24 Writing up the complete exposition.

It is also possible to interpret the counterpoint in a wider, integralist sense. In Russian philosophy of the nineteenth century, the term polyphonίa, with the stress on the last syllable, marked something very different from musical term polyphony [Russian polyphόnia]. Religious philosopher Vladimir Soloviev suggested the principal impenetrability of the world, either as divine product or as something beyond divine provision. Hence the antinomy of thought, expressed as polyphonίa. From this concept there is a line of inheritance to Mikhail Bakhtin’s polyphony of voices and dialogic consciousness in the novel— Dostoevsky’s novel in particular. In this sense, counterpoint is the strategy that unites the elements from the periphery, from the domain of languages, other than our own. One can substitute polyphonia with polylogy, in contrast with homology: working with several languages instead of one. This seemingly abstract discussion can bring some tangible results if applied in analysis of music, especially, of the lateRomantic compositions. From Baroque imitative genre (canon, invention, fugue), the idea of counterpoint stepped outside its limits, and, toward the end of Romanticism, counterpoint acquired a new face. In Rachmaninoff’s Etude-tableau op. 39, no. 5, in

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the recapitulation, one can witness a new type of counterpoint (Example 3.25).

Example 3.25 Rachmaninoff, Etude-Tableau op. 39, No. 5, climax, polyphony of affects.159

Unlike the imitative counterpoint of melodic lines, subjects, motives, etc., Rachmaninoff offers a counterpoint of three distinct affective states. The top is occupied by a separate type of expression. The block-chords and so-called ribbon polyphony (folk heterophony) create an image related to the Russian folk choirs—predominantly female choirs from the North (Arkhangelsk region). They combine singing with the slow round dance. The Russian “Birch-tree ensemble” [Russkaya Beryozka] is a good example of such art. This is one affect—a pious, motherlike expression, based upon smooth gliding motion. It is also enhanced by panting, double inhale, sobbing, and catharsis (such is the translation of remarks on the top of the score). The second affect takes the lowest register in the left-hand part—it is the domain of the natural elements. Rachmaninoff is the master of musical depiction of conditions of water. Here, of course, it is a roaring autumnal mountain river, or the ocean surfs under the squall. Obviously, these two affects are incompatible. Rachmaninoff adds the third affect, the melody in the lower register that is incompatible with both the upper and the lower actants. It represents a heroic baritone or tenor, with Beethovenian iambic patterns. No pianist can sustain all three affects “in counterpoint”: usually, one is given the preference

Counterpoint, Figured Bass and Partimento as Formalist Strategies

at the expense of two others. Ashkenazy emphasizes the upper element; Horowitz focuses on the melody in the left hand. This is the polyphony of affects. Such cases are in abundance in the music of Chopin and Tchaikovsky. Hence, the counterpoint can be a part of either formalist or integralist approach; the choice of the angle drastically changes its meaning. Soviet theorists often abstained from using the term counterpoint. They preferred the category of polyphony. The word counterpoint is a part of the professional jargon of older schools of theory. Speaking historically, one can notice that the era of polyphony in Europe began at the end of the ninth century; the word contrapunctus appeared in the treatises by the end of the fourteenth century. Its meaning was narrow and specific to the newly discovered notation of rhythm (a binary hierarchy of meter of the ars nova). As for the universal idea of simultaneous unfolding of two or more melodies, the Greek word πολυφωνία is the most adequate; in polyphonic music we deal not with “points against points” but with multiplicity of voices that progress through time in dynamic fashion. The rules of counterpoint, as they are presented in school books, are well-known:

1. Parallel perfect consonances are forbidden. 2. Dissonant intervals should be introduced by means of suspensions. 3. Minor seventh should resolve by step in the upper voice. 4. Major seventh should resolve by step up in the upper voice. 5. Perfect fourth should resolve by step down in the upper voice. 6. The tritone should be prepared by the perfect fifth and resolve in both voices into a third or a sixth. 7. The gambitus of a phrase should not span a dissonant interval. 8. The phrase should begin and end on perfect consonant interval. 9. In strict style, melody should not arpeggiate the triad.

10. Two voices should present a complementary principle; the

counterpoint does the opposite of what the melody does.

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Out of ten points (and there can be more), only one—number 10—is, strictly speaking, contrapuntal. The other nine are based upon the qualities of intervals, that is, verticalities. The teaching of qualities of intervals had been the core of theory of harmony since Pythagoras. The melodic aspect of harmony has been thoroughly described by Aristoxenus in his Ἁρμονικών στοιχείων. His idea of δυνάμεις is directly related to the qualities of intervals and scale steps, as a part of his theory of harmony. Unstable scale steps and intervals that they form—διάφωνα— are enclosed in the stable scale steps and intervals—σύμφωνα. The smaller intervals, ἡμίτονος, τóνος, ἡμιδίτονος, δίτονος— roughly, the m2, M2, m3 and M3 of our equally-tempered system— belong to the category of melodic dissonances in that system. As for the rule 10, harmonic progression in a chorale S. A. T. B. texture presupposes the same character under the name “activation of voices.” One should remember, however, that harmonic progression is a higher-level phenomenon in comparison with the non-chord tones and embellishments. Polyphony is, perhaps, the most universal characteristic of music. While there was no “counterpoint” in Arabic music during the Caliphate, there had been polyphony in various realizations. Within the European context, polyphony describes imitative counterpoint as well as the homophonic-harmonic texture. As for the practice of figured bass, it had a limited use and existed for a short period of time before the introduction of theory of harmony. As such, figured bass is the practice of accompaniment. In this sense, the Italian word “continuo” means “to follow,” that is, to follow the singer with the improvised keyboard accompaniment. Here, the author sides with Arnold Schoenberg: The realization of a thoroughbass may have had value formerly when it was still the keyboard player’s task to accompany from the figured bass. To teach it today, when no musician needs it anymore, serves no purpose and is a waste of time, hinders more important work, and fails above all to make the pupil self-reliant. The principal aim of harmony instruction is to connect chords with an ear to their individualities, to arrange them in such progressions as will produce an effect suitable for the task at hand; and to achieve this aim, not much skill in voice leading is required. The little that is necessary to deal with

Counterpoint, Figured Bass and Partimento as Formalist Strategies

forbidden parallels, dissonances, and the like can be mastered rather easily. Besides, courses in counterpoint and form deal in a much more appropriate way with the construction of parts, which is inconceivable without motivic activity, whereas for chord connection not much more is required than to avoid unmelodic voice leading. On the other hand, the melodizing so commonly encountered ruins pupil’s taste and evokes in him [or her] false notions concerning composition. Therefore, I prefer the older method, which from the outset required the pupil to determine the sequence of chords himself or herself.160

The statements of Schoenberg, emphasized by italics, are homage to the nineteenth-century conservatory tradition. Each of these statements fit exactly into the ideas and views on harmony of Russian and Soviet teachers of harmony. Boleslav Yavorsky wrote in 1908: When they say that counterpoint preceded harmony, they say rubbish, since everything was preceded, accompanied, and followed by the form, that is the rhythm of lad in time, which is, in fact harmony.161

Schoenberg’s emphasis on the fact that the written figured bass realizations in today’s academic environment are wasteful, where students are pressed in time and have to cover the materials of courses that have been taught at the pre-college level in the nineteenth century, is especially concerning. In the figured bass the chords are given in notation; students do not train their ear and compositional intuition on determining the chords under the given note of melody or above given bass. Instead of learning harmony the right way, they are obliged to do the exercises that do not contribute to training of ear and gaining the necessary aural skills. The figured bass is useful at the keyboard, in the form of improvised harmonic progressions. Functionalists, such as Johann Daube in the eighteenth century or Hermann Grabner in the twentieth, published books on Generalbass. Daube wrote a book General-bass in drey Accorden (1756), which combines this term with the functional theory of Rameau. Grabner published a small book (40 pages-long) Generalbassübungen,162 in which, in a very easy and elegant way, he introduced the figured bass techniques through a set of exercises. He begins with two-part

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models with figures in the bass and his first lesson is how to translate functional chord connections into figured bass symbols. Grabner takes a student from exercises in chorale to advanced accompaniments to voices in cantata texture. A different facet of music theory has been (re)discovered recently: the Italian compositional techniques of partimento and solfeggi. Russian eighteenth-century music theory was a part of this tradition: Giovanni Paisiello, who worked at the court of Ekaterina the Great, composed the book on partimenti and fundamental bass that is presently considered one of the most important contributions into this field. The recent interest in the tradition of solfeggi and partimenti, as the third way of interpreting tonal composition (beyond harmony and counter­ point), emphasized in the studies of Robert Gjerdingen and Giorgio Sanguinetti, places this treatise (written in Russia in 1782) into a new context—that of the most advanced and promising approaches to tonal music of its time. Recently, the promoters of partimento technique, its schematic concept, started referring to the Italian tradition as a kind of teaching of counterpoint and figured bass (again, in the orbit of Schenkerian doctrine). Yet, the major treatise on partimenti, written by Giovanni Paisiello, carries the words basso fondamentale in its title: Regole per bene accompagnare il partimento o sia il basso fondamentale sopra il Cembalo. And the regolo dell’ottava, which is used today by supporters of Schenker as another alternative to theory of harmony, happened to be borrowed from French tradition of the règle de l’octave and basso fondamentale directly from Rameau! These rules of the octave, French and Italian, are one of the earliest attempts to distribute tonalharmonic functions along the ascending and descending scales. Thus, what Campion, Paisiello and Fenaroli did with the seven notes of the scale can be termed as placing of three functional cycles T-D-T/S-T/S-D-T.163 Here is the statement of Giorgio Sanguinetti and a page of early regolo dell’ottava by Luigi Antonio Sabattini (Example 3.26): Règle de l’octave is a French term: the Italians used simply “scala.” The switch to the translation from French occurred somewhere in the nineteenth century. Luigi Antonio Sabbatini comes quite close in 1799, referring to the French fundamental bass system (see picture below), until then quite unestablished in Italy:164

Counterpoint, Figured Bass and Partimento as Formalist Strategies

Example 3.26 Regole di ottave that utilizes the basso fondamentale.

Thus, French theory of harmony, functional syntax realized in the basso fondamentale, happened to be more important, than maintained by Schenkerians. Even more so basso fondamentale figured in music of Beethoven. His streamlined harmonic progressions are, more than any other types, supported by the bass that moves on fourths and fifths and represents the roots of the chords. As for the basso continuo, or basso numerato, its role was, indeed, secondary and subsidiary. In general, a smooth bass line is not the criterion of ultimate artistry or the sign of a true masterpiece. Melody moves stepwise but it is inappropriate for the bass to mimic that. There are some figured bass passages in partimenti; even if so, they are intended for improvisation and not for written realizations. Most other places in partimenti do not have figures in the bass. And, indeed, there is a difference between the theoretical principle (basso fondamentale) and its realization in different types of bass lines. A beautiful edifice hides inside a firm structure of concrete posts and metal tresses, pipelines, and electric connections. These can be less pleasing for the eye, yet without them the edifice would crumble. Needless to say that in modern art, including the architecture, there are the styles (say, Bauhaus or that of Le Corbusier) that give

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preference to bare structure. The beauty is in the eye of the beholder; for some, the power of structure is as pleasing as any decorative elements.

3.11 The Importance of Motive as the Nucleus of Form

In addition to tonality and harmony, the discoveries of the eighteenth-century theory in Western Europe included the emphasis on motive as a building block for musical form. The Russian formalist tradition accepted this element and maintained its importance until today. The motive has been thoroughly defined in the Dictionnaire de musique (1768)165 by Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Motif is a Gallicized word, taken from Italian motivo, is used only in technical terms by composers. It is a basic and principal idea by means of which the composer defines his subject and arranges his design. It is this motif that puts the pen into the hand in order to throw this or that thing on paper, and not any other. In this sense the principal motif is always present in the spirit of the composer, and he is trying to enforce that it is always present in the spirit of the listener. They say that the Author fights the battle until he or she loses the motif of life, after which he or she starts knitting together the chords and melodies that have nothing in common with each other. Besides this motif, which is the principal idea of the piece, there are other specific motifs, the ideas that determine modulations, concatenations, harmonic textures, and by these ideas they judge the quality of composition, whether the Author thoroughly followed his motives, or, if he has introduced a change, as he often proceeds from note to note, and his music lacks knowledge or invention. It is in this context they say “the motif of fugue, motif of the cadence, motif of the change of the mode …166

This dictionary became a handbook for several generations of Russian composers. The motive remains a stronghold of Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet analysis. The following statement of Schenker would not resonate with the views of many Russian theorists:

The Importance of Motive as the Nucleus of Form

Great composers trust their long-range vision. For this reason they do not base their compositions upon some “melody,” “motive,” or “idea.” Rather, the content is rooted in voice-leading transformations and linear progressions whose unity allows no segmentation or names of segments.167

The debates over the role of motive between the supporters of Schoenberg and the Schenkerians did not stir interest among the musicologists and music theorists in Russia in the 1990s, principally, because they perceived the role of the motive as irrefutable. The Russian idea of motive has been formulated by many composers and theorists. Boleslav Yavorsky in The Design of Musical Speech and in archival materials for the book provides a cluster of terms that explain the motive. First of all, the relationships of sounds is characterized by the forces of attraction and the phenomenon of balance. Sounds can be stable or unstable; “there is no absolute stability but ubiquitous tendency to resolve.”168 Such equilibrium creates a burst of energy, lad momentum. It is generated by both tension-resolution patterns of intervals (pitch structure) and the rhythmic relationship of the unstable and stable beats (metric structure). The unity of both is called the intonatsia. The larger elements are labeled as turnarounds. This is, essentially, the Russian twentieth-century understanding of the role and the essence of the motive. Yuri Kholopov, in his Introduction to Musical Form, provides the summary of Russian views on motive: Motive is the embryo of thought, its grain. It plays the role of genetic code of a theme, which is inscribed on the organism as a whole as well as on each cell of that organism.

Motive is the smallest building cell of the musical form, its smallest independent building element. Motive is the smallest expressive element of a musical character or musical image.169

One can add to the definitions above that Russian music has dealt with motivic structure at the very early stages. Then, the role of motive was played by popevka in both Russian folk music and in Russian Orthodox Church chant. Popevka, in its relation to speech inflections, was used by composers of the

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nineteenth century and extensively discussed by the theorists. In the twentieth century, popevka was one of the models for Yavorsky’s and Asafiev’s term intonatsia. There are many other factors that partake in form building. However, larger forms can easily fall apart without unifying power of the motive, which Boris Asafiev labeled as initium. As seen in Example 3.27, motivic analysis reveals extra-long-range structures created by the smallest elements.

Example 3.27 Beethoven, Piano Sonata op. 22, motivische Arbeit.

The importance of such motivic work (Germ. motivische Arbeit) is impossible to ignore. The Russian theorists use the terms motivic subtraction [мотивное вычленение], variation on the motive [вариационное развитие мотива] and motivic transformation [мотивная трансформация]. Motive experiences significant changes, which generates a powerful narrative and dramatic (irreversible) movement forward.

3.12 Rhythm as the Essence of Motive

The ultimate importance of motive for composition is obvious. It is also rather clear that the most important aspect of the motive, its primary source of energy, comes not from harmony but from its rhythmic shape. In this sense, motive is a twisted rhythmic pattern, the one that changes the direction of motion, quickly and abruptly. Motive is constituted by the sudden change in

Rhythm as the Essence of Motive

direction of melodic line, rising to the strong beat and leaving it, supported by harmonic tension-resolution pattern. Such idea of motive has been developing in the eighteenth century in the works by Joseph Riepel and Heinrich Koch. The former authored the book Taktordnung (the second volume of Anfangsgründe zur musicalischen Setzkunst) with the term rhythmopoeia in the subtitle. Ever since, the Greek term rhythmopoeia constituted the field of studies of rhythm in Germany and in Russia, and the functions of each measure in an eight-measure period form were clearly defined, together with the division into two phrases four measures each (Vierter).170 This legacy was followed by Hugo Riemann, who introduced the idea of motive as a group of notes with one strong beat and placed the motive into the context of achtacktige Periodenform. This model was adopted, albeit without direct references, by Boleslav Yavorsky. His modal equilibrium, or lad rhythm, is derived from Riemann’s idea of meter directly. The model, in which harmonic functional cycle works in the same paradigm with the metric event of predictus and ictus, is seen in one of many of Yavorsky’s examples from the archival materials for his book The Design of Musical Speech (Figure 3.5).

Figure 3.5 Yavorsky’s rhythmic scheme of intonatsia.171

In Figure 3.5, the vertical lines mark the bar lines; Yavorsky provides several versions of harmonic progression, expressed

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in tonal-functional terms, that render the predictus and ictus in the way that generates the meaning of the motive. Another notable contribution to the theory of rhythm and meter was done by Georgi Conus in his treatise172 on the socalled metrotectonism. It is an eye-opening study of metrotectonic blocks that form the foundation of music of Beethoven. The statistical analysis of the hypermetric structures has led Conus to the conclusion that Beethoven was aware of the proportional character of his large-scale metric designs. Conus’ research was ahead of his time for a century: today, Richard Cohn engaged in calculation of the rhythmic network (in one of his paper presentations he applied his method to the Scherzo of Beethoven’s Ninth symphony). Conus saw the meter as dynamic and organic force; he had a theory of so-called “pulse wave”—an agency that moves the metric structure and adds the processual character to metric unfolding. He referred to the terms of Henry Bergson, to élan vital in particular. However, the root of dynamic view of rhythm goes back to the centuries of Russian tradition of church monody. The chant notation and the patterns—popevkas—are truly unique in their metric design. If for the Western conservative musical preferences the proportional blocks of 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32 have become a kind of cognitive mechanism, Russian musical ear seems to be radical (in terms of Pieter C. Van den Toorn). The seminal treatise of Valentina Kholopova, The Russian Musical Rhythmic,173 displays the specific Russian ways of working with rhythm. It is normal for this tradition to operate with the non-square meters. Five four is basic and, perhaps, most desirable in the Russian folk song, church chant and in music of the nineteenth-century composers, such as Mili Balakirev, Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, Mussorgsky, and Tchaikovsky. The non-square metric unit does not allow to form large-scale hypermetric structure; it resists hierarchy. This may be the explanation of difficulties in writing large-scale compositions in “Beethovenian standard” (by the term of Dahlhaus, used in his Nineteenth-Century Music as a major criterion against symphonies of Tchaikovsky and Dvořák). On the other hand, the Western standard, proposed by Dahlhaus, may not be at all that useful. From the scientific or scientocentric point of view, musical rhythm presents the measured and calculated time. From the position of musical practice, rhythm has nothing to do with counting.

Rhythm as the Essence of Motive

Ancient Greek etymology of the noun ῥυθμός can be traced back to the verb ῥέω (to flow, to gush, to move in ebb and flow, to flatter (like a flag in the wind). Riemann’s approach to this is known as shading.174 In this sense, the natural development of motive and its rhythmic rendering went in the direction of further struggle of grouping with the bar line and quadratic pre-existent structure. Valentina Kholopova’s Kandidat dissertation Questions of Rhythm in Music of Composers of the Twentieth Century provided ideas for the music of Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Stravinsky. Kholopova came up with formulation of Stravinsky’s strategies of operation with meter and rhythm in the following way (Example 3.28): 1. Stravinsky establishes the ostinato with the emphasis on a bar line. 2. He then introduces a short motive with simplified oscillating structure, the variant. 3. This motive undergoes three types of transformations:

(a) the motive can be shifted to the right or to the left from its original position, thus creating a new variant in regard to meter; (b) the motive can be extended or shortened by adding or subtracting the oscillations, thus creating new lengths; (c) the motive may remain the same in position and length, but the phenomenal accents can be rearranged within the motive.

Example 3.28 Igor Stravinsky. Soldier’s Tale. Meter-length-accent variation.

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Thus, Stravinsky introduced a new technique of composition. It is based not on gradual transformation of the motive (development or variation) but on manipulation of a simple combination, a formula or popevka, using the so-called variant technique (the term is borrowed by Kholopova from mathematics). The three operations with the given variant are summarized in the name of the technique: accent-length-meter variant technique.175 Despite the harsh critique by Theodor Adorno, Stravinsky introduced a method of metric composition independent of pitch relationship (the latter experienced the crisis at the end of the nineteenth century, according to Ernst Kurth). Metric composition—a constant agon of the motive and the bar line—can be played even on trash cans. It has become one of the most notable principles of composition in the twentieth century across the genre and social strata. It can be seen in music of Aaron Copland and Steve Reich, as well as in jazz, film and pop music of diverse genres and styles. Rhythm viewed in this way, as an organic and dynamic entity, unifies the formalist and integralists strategies. In fact, regarding rhythm, Valentina Kholopova appears to be rather skilled formalist, with rigorous, Germanic style of presentation and formulation of ideas and multiple analytical musical examples.

3.13 Dual Function of Motive, as a Part of Formal Design and the Element of Integralist Semantics

Placing the category of motive into the context of antinomy of form vs. work may reveal its interesting essential feature—a dual function. Motive in technical terms is the smallest element of the formal design of a composition. It is a part of the syntagmatic dimension: two motives comprise a phrase; two phrases comprise a sentence, two sentences generate a period, etc. However, motive also carries another role, that which may not seem important for the music theorists but presents the most valuable part of music perception for the listeners. The untrained listener cannot grasp the compositional function of motive. However, in the most successful musical works, the

Dual Function of Motive

motives connect the plan of expression with the plan of content. And if for a composer or a music theorists, the three eighths and a quarter in the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth symphony present the nucleus for the further development (harmonic progression, metric grid, unfolding of the form, etc.), for many listeners it is “how the fate knocks at one’s door” (in terms of Romain Rolland). Tchaikovsky did not hesitate to call this a fatum motive. Thus, the motive is the smallest element of musical content. Two or more motives create a theme; several themes create a narrative, the narrative leads to dramaturgy. This is the paradigmatic dimension of music and paradigmatic function of motive. There are sigh motives, motives of the will (the score of Scriabin’s Poem of ecstasy is filled with markings of this nature), there is even the motive of suffering of Gods—Wagner’s Motiv des Wälsungenleids. Tchaikovsky wrote the Theme of Love (the Subsidiary of the Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture). Therefore, both the motive and the theme have dual functions. They present the focal point of the discussion in this book: one side of the motive and theme is formal, another—integral. Russian theorists adhere to the form-building role of the motive and this firm belief is based upon the references to the rich tradition of the eighteenth- and nineteenth- century Italian, French and German schools of music theory. The Traité de mélodie of Anton Reicha had been known to Russian theorists and composers since its first appearance; a more powerful source for the understanding of the role of motive is found in A. B. Marx’s textbook: Such tone shape,—a group of two, three or more tones,—which is used to create a larger series of tones based on its model, which is, as it were, a germ or seed (impulse) from which the larger series of tones grows, we call a motif.176

It is understandable that a great composer can see far ahead and does not simply fumble his or her way through the composition. However, so many sketchbooks show the resistance of the material: composers, such as Beethoven, Stravinsky, and Rachmaninoff, began writing music from the smallest elements. Without an appropriate motive, no large-scale form can be created, and many measures of the complete form fit, somehow, into

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the smallest initial element. This phenomenon, known to many musicians, makes musical hierarchy rather special: unlike regular presentation in the form of a pyramid with the top element at the peak, musical hierarchy is better represented by the pyramid lying on its side (Figure 3.6).

Figure 3.6 Hierarchy in common presentation and as the pyramid lying on its side.177

The difference between these two graphic presentations summarizes the major disagreement of Schenkerian and Schoenbergian models. The latter has deep roots in pragmatics of music making. Working on their motives has been a daily exercise for many great composers from Bach to Schoenberg. Russian musicians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were in complete agreement with this tradition.

3.14 Nineteenth Century: Mature Formalist Approaches

Here, it makes sense to set aside the technical aspects of the formal approach to music and to return to the larger issues. Thus, by the middle of the nineteenth century Russian musicians have completely mastered the circle of skill-based disciplines that instill the professional attitudes and competencies. Since that time, an image of a professional musician was formed—akin to the status of musicus in Baroque period. Therefore, the idea of musical formalism is rooted in austere training, a kind of stoic trials through which all real musicians should pass. And this status was associated with the study at the conservatory.

Nineteenth Century: Mature Formalist Approaches

The nineteenth century in Russia began with a triumphant victory over Napoleon in 1812. The wave of the patriotic enthusiasm carried the demand for an indigenous national style of music. This delayed the establishment of the conservatories since they were by default cosmopolitan. In these times, music scholars were affiliated with universities. Such was the figure of Vladimir Odoyevsky, a philosopher and musicologist of the university tradition (following Euler). One of his truly inter­ disciplinary publications is The Essay of Theory of Fine Arts and Its Application to Music (1823). It presents a remarkable attempt to view music not as an object but as a means of learning. In the middle of the nineteenth century (1858–59) the process of establishing the Conservatory in St. Petersburg attracted the attention of a teacher whose role in forming the Russian musicaltheoretical pedagogy has been severely underrated ever since. Nikolai Zaremba held degrees in Law and Music (just as Riemann and Schenker did). He studied in Berlin with Adolf Bernhard Marx and returned to Russia to teach at the newly established St. Petersburg Conservatory shortly after taking lessons with this great German theorist. The website of the St. Petersburg Conservatory depicts Zaremba as the “man who presented Tchaikovsky to the world.” There is a slight irony in the recollections of him by his students—Professor Zaremba was apparently obsessed with the teaching of A. B. Marx. This period lays the foundation of the conservatory tradition in Russian and Soviet music theory.178 From this first-hand encounter with German theory the following generations of Russian theorists inherited the Germanic rigor and thoroughness of thought, the Odrnung that in many other domains was not characteristic of Russian life. The postulates of the theories of Sergei Taneyev, Igor Sposobin, Yuri Kholopov and Valentina Kholopova are structured with clarity and logic, reminiscent of the style of A. B. Marx. The all-inclusive character of the teaching of Marx did not go unnoticed. Tchaikovsky organized the Department of History, Theory and Composition at the Moscow Conservatory in the 1860s using Marx’s model. Following the title of his opus magnum, Die Lehre von der Komposition, theoretish und praktish, the Moscow Conservatory offered the courses neither in “theory” nor

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in “analysis” (which is the case today at many musical institutions of higher education). While the liberal arts curriculum is obligatory for most North American theory programs, Russian conservatories still operate with the theory of composition as it was laid out by A. B. Marx. Five traditional subjects of Kompositionslehre are ear training (called solfeggio in Russia), harmony, counterpoint, form, and instrumentation. Young Sergei Prokofiev took lessons in composition from Reinhold Glière, and the materials of his study included the four volumes of A. B. Marx’s Teaching of Composition. Yuri Kholopov has received musical training in this style as well. The classical forms as elaborated by Tchaikovsky deserve a separate study. Contrary to the views of some German and British musicologists, Tchaikovsky was an exceptionally welltrained musician. He studied formally at the St. Petersburg Conservatory (to be precise, the pre-College school affiliated with the Conservatory in 1859–60 and the St. Petersburg Conservatory for five years). Tchaikovsky’s musical technique bears all the signs of a solid, formal, rigorous schooling. In fact, he was one of the first conservatory-trained composers in Europe since neither Brahms nor Wagner nor Berlioz studied at the conservatories. The forms of Tchaikovsky’s music are often mistaken for something else. For example, it is common to hear a widespread assumption that the Primary Theme of the First Piano Concerto is the bravura theme in D-flat major, and that it is inappropriate for the concerto which is written in B-flat minor. In fact, the primary theme is in B-flat minor, but it is less conspicuous than the Introduction—that famous theme in D-flat major. This tradition comes from Haydn and Beethoven (e.g., the first movement of Sonata Pathétique has precisely the same formal outline). Tchaikovsky may be called a “formalist” composer and theorist because he had contributed significantly to the development of formal thinking in music. However, Tchaikovsky also contributed to the same degree to the integralist tradition. His discussion of emotional truth in music with Nadezhda von Mekk complements his rigorous formalist knowledge.

Formalism and Integralism as Reflections of Conservatory vs. University Training Systems

3.15 Formalism and Integralism as Reflections of Conservatory vs. University Training Systems Formalism, in the most positive sense of this word, has flourished at St. Petersburg and Moscow conservatories from the time they opened. If one is looking for the deeper and a more profound meaning of formalism in music, it could be found in the teaching of many of the famous professors of the second half of the nineteenth century, such as Alexey Puzyrevsky, Nikolai Kashkin, Anton Arensky, Alexander Sacchetti, German Laroche and Sergei Taneyev. Their formalism constitutes the rigorous limits of the field of study as a professional field. If Taneyev taught musical forms, his teaching had to be in-depth; if Arensky taught harmony, it had to be pragmatic and limited in its scope, but at the same time it had to be classical as well. If Sachetti taught a course Vseobshaya Istoriya Muzyki [Universal History of Music], it had to be based upon rigorous principles, limiting the variety of approaches to the material. According to Fyodor Arzamanov, the author of a monograph on Taneyev, Sergei Ivanovich “searched for the truth in music.”179 Taneyev insisted upon a correct understanding of musical form. In fact, as he stated, “the form is the foundation of musical composition.”180 Conservatory training established the goal of highest level of professionalism in music, often bordering with a kind of craftsmanship with limited scope. In the nineteenth century, the age of students commonly accepted to conservatories was eleven. And even that was not the beginning of their training: most musicians began studying music with private teachers as early as the ages of four or five. In this sense, integralism is more appropriate in the university environment, with its better access to the constellation of adjacent fields. After the October revolution, one of the first decrees of the new government was the establishment of Children’s Music Schools and Uchilishe’s in Petrograd, Moscow and throughout the country. These first efforts were done by Anatoly Lunacharski and the Gnesin family. Conservatory professors were engaged in teaching at

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the elementary, middle, and high-school levels. Musical academics included the study of elementary music theory in the first seven years, courses in harmony in the years eight and nine, courses in forms and analysis, counterpoint and music history offered at the end of the high-school education. By the time a student entered the conservatory, he or she had 22 semesters of ear training, the same number of semesters of music history, four semesters of harmony and voice leading, including harmonization of chromatic modulating unfigured melodies, keyboard improvisations of modulations to remote keys and three-part advanced polyphonic dictations. This wealth of skills and knowledge proved to be an undisputable advantage over anybody who has not received such training. However, vehement adherence to formalism and intolerance to interdisciplinary ideas was not uncommon among these distinguished professionals. In this system, the idea of music theory presents itself not as a subject of abstract intellectual character but as mostly skill-based knowledge. A theorist is not a philosopher or mathematician but, primarily, a practicing musician. Keyboard skills, aural skills and encyclopedic knowledge of literature make up the prerequisites and often an unsurpassable barrier for the career of conservatorytrained theorist. In this sense, the dialogue between conservatory and university-trained musicians (or, in other words, formalists with integralists) is often impossible. A good example is the conversation of Sergei Rachmaninoff with Joseph Jasser100 on the problems of contemporary composition. Rachmaninoff may appear for university-trained experts as someone with backward views and obsolete training, but Rachmaninoff’s point in this conversation, if shared and understood properly, can be summarized as the impenetrability of his ideas for his collocutor. The practical consequences of the difference between conservatory and university training are such that a person who has received the university training in music understands it by means of analysis (visual assessment of structures in notated score), while a person who went through the complete path of conservatory training (in Russia it is comprised of four stages, children’s music school—uchilishe—conservatory—aspirantura, spanning from the age of 4 to 25) understands music by hearing

Russian and Soviet Formenlehre

its structural and procedural aspects. In other words, the difference between formalist and integralist approaches boils down to the difference between seeing and hearing. Needless to say, the nineteenth century brought up composers and performers, such as Liszt, Bizet, Rubinstein, Rimsky-Korsakov, Debussy, Rachmaninoff and Scriabin, who could hear music further than anybody else. There is a category of the depth of hearing: normal ear loses the track of modulation very quickly; well-trained conservatory hearing can follow the modulatory track much further. A good exercise is to listen to modulatory path in, say, J.S. Bach’s Eine kleine harmonische Labyrinth, or in a symphonic development by Bruckner, Mahler, or Richard Strauss. Nineteenth-century conservatory ear training is based upon perfection of functional-syntactic hearing starting from an early age. This is not the case for the integralists, many of whom have started their training rather late; they operate with general scientific categories. In this sense, formalists and integralists speak different languages.

3.16 Russian and Soviet Formenlehre

The teaching of form, often abridged by Russian theorists as forma, entails the involvement of Russian music theory in Western European (German, French and Italian) traditions. However, the ideas of beauty of form and holy character of number were present in Russian antiquity (inherited from the Greek culture through the Russian Orthodox Church) and the Russian idea of form has quickly outgrown the basic assimilation of the German Formenlehre and Kompositionslhere. The texts that have become the staples of Russian teaching of form and formalism are Stroyenie Muzykal’noi Rechi [The Design of Musical Speech] (1908) by Boleslav Yavorsky, Muzukal’naya Forma [Musical Form] (1947) by Igor Sposobin, a number of publications on the subject by Yuri Kholopov, Stroyenie Muzykal’noi Rechi [The Structure of Musical Speech] by Yuri Tyulin, as well as Muzykal’naya Forma [Musical Form]—the Leningrad “brigade” textbook in form by Tyulin, Tatiana Berschadskaya, Iosif Pustylnik, Alexander Pen, Tigran Ter-Martyrosyan, and Alfred

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Schnittke. These texts are the most popular and ubiquitous; they truly represent Russian teaching of form. There is another angle to Russian musical formalism: the theory of new music. Here, the dissertation of Yuri Kholopov Sovremennye Cherty Garmonii Prokofieva [Modern Features of Harmony of Prokofiev] begins the tradition, which includes Anton Vebern. Zhisn’ i Tvorchestvo [Anton Webern. Life and Work] published in co-authorship with his sister Valentina Kholopova, and a number of publications by various authors. As it is mentioned in the Preface, this book is focused on theory of music of the common practice. The engagement of the Soviet theorists with New Music, however, added fuel to the fire of the major disagreements between formalists and integralists. Contrary to common misconception in the West that Russians did not have the teaching of form and were not able to write music in large-scale forms (such are, for example, the opinions of Carl Dahlhaus on Tchaikovsky’s symphonies,182 Faubion Bowers on Scriabin’s sonatas183 and Henry Zajaczkowski on Tchaikovsky’s coherence of the large-scale forms,184) the Russian composers and theorists have developed a formidable tradition of Formenlehre. Tchaikovsky’s forms are the product of advanced elaboration on German models. It is clearly seen in by times controversial interpretations of Tchaikovsky’s music in the West as well as in the Soviet Union. Yuri Kholopov dedicated a rather polemic article Chto zhe Delat’ s Muzykal’nymi Formami Tchaikovskogo? (What Can We Do with Musical Forms of Tchaikovsky?) (1995).185 Tchaikovsky’s forms are much more advanced than the ones offered by current Formenlehre. They are also the most underrated among others. An example of such complexity is shown in analysis of the Subsidiary theme from Romeo and Juliet at the end of this book. The list of major textbooks, treatises and first-tier dissertations on Formenlehre by Russian and Soviet authors is impressive—see the Appendix to Chapter 3. This list is far from being complete. Three books: Igor Sposobin’s Musical Form, Mazel’ and Tsukkerman’s Analysis of Musical Work, and Tyulin and brigade’s Musical Form represented three major schools: that

Russian and Soviet Formenlehre

of Moscow formalism, Moscow intergralism and Leningrad hybrid method. Mazel’ and Tsukkerman were the founding fathers of Soviet tselostnyi analysis; in contrast to, say, Dahlhaus’ Musikwissenschaft project or North American New Musicology, Soviet integralists have never completely parted with the Classical forms and had a strong grip on traditional analytical techniques. All these textbooks and materials were widely distributed and actively used in the curricula of more than 40 conservatories and more than thousand uchilishes (pre­ conservatory colleges) and specialized music schools. Each author on this list has received thorough academic training in music. Conus, Sposobin, and Mazel' had university degrees in natural sciences in addition to musical education. Russian texts, especially by Conus, Sposobin, Mazel’ and Tsukkerman, Medushevsky and Kholopov were not just pale shadows of the German prototypes; they offered radical changes in Formenlehre while keeping a strong connection to the mainstream theory of the past (Zarlino, Rameau, Marx, and Riemann). There is one aspect that distinguishes Russian and German Formenlehre from what is called today “the new Formenlehre”: the older one was based upon a formidable and rich concept of harmony. Since the attitude to harmony has been revised and the nineteenth-century model—functional-syntactic—has been rejected, the new Formenlehre has lost is foundation. It turned into the detailed analysis of schematics of form (position of medial ceasura, definition of cadences, overall placement, and concatenation of segments (rotational models, two-dimensional sonata, etc.). Riemann defines harmony and rhythm as “form-giving principles.”186 Russian textbooks in musical form are filled with the definitions of “form building role of harmony” [formoobrazuyushaya rol’ garmonii]. Yavorsky develops further Riemann’s idea of functional syntax and suggests that musical form is built upon the cycles of stable and unstable elements, of predictus and ictus, conjugation (“buckling”) of interval and chords, gravitation and momentum. These physical, motivic, cyclical aspects create the impetus for musical form, which is viewed not as a schema or a crystal, but as a dynamic process (hence, Asafiev’s term “musical form as a process”).

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3.17 Formal Functions and Their Types of Presentations by Sposobin, Tyulin and Skrebkov Soviet theorists took the idea of function to the next stage.

They applied it to the segments of musical form. The model of

all Soviet systems of formal functions is taken from Asafiev’s triad initium-motus-terminus, which is, in a sense, an imprint of A. B. Marx’s idea of Ruhe-Bewegung-Ruhe as the main functional principle behind all Classical forms (his five rondoforms), as well as Aristotle’s ἀρχών και μείζον και το ἕσχατος from his Poetics. Igor Sposobin created a magnificent and pragmatic system of six large-scale formal functions: (1) presentation, (2) connection, (3) middle, (4) recapitulation, (5) introduction, and (6) closing, accompanied with the four types of their presentation: expositional, intermediary, closing and introductory. His book Muzykal’naya Forma, dedicated to formal functions, was written during World War Two and published in 1947. Yuri Nikolayevich Tyulin in his The Design of Musical Speech (1962) kept the idea of a triad in his system of three functions: (1) the main, (2) the preparatory, and (3) the completing. Sergey Sergeyevich Skrebkov in his Analysis of Musical Works (1958) offered another division, into primary functions and subsidiary functions (the latter includes the introduction, the connection and the addition). Leo Mazel’ in his The Design of Musical Works (1972) distributes the types of presentation as follows: expositional, developmental, concluding and introductory. In 1982, Anatoly Milka published a book Teoreticheskiye Osnovy Funktsional’nosti v Muzyke [The Theoretical Foundations of Functionality in Music]187 with the most universal summary of the Soviet tradition. The third generation of teaching of formal functions is represented by Viktor Bobrovsky in his Functional Foundation of Musical Form (1978). He moved the idea of compositional function toward its use in the dramaturgy of an instrumental work. He also suggested a number of elaborations, such as compositional modulation. Started by Tyulin, the idea of intermittent formal function—by analogy with earlier discussed intermittent lad—has become central in Bobrovsky’s treatise. Valentina Kholopova, in her seminal article “O Prototypakh

Alexei Losef’s Definition of Form as Eidos and Number

Funktsii Muzykal’noi Formy” [On the Prototypes of Functions of the Musical Form]188 proposed a connection between formal functions and the parts of rhetorical disposition. Yekaterina Rutchievskaya in her Classical Musical Form and Yevgenyi Nazaikinsky in his Logic of Musical Composition provided extensive commentary to this rich tradition. Unlike William Caplin’s concept of formal functions that has been presented in 1998 in his Classical Forms: A Theory of Formal Functions for Music of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, Soviet tradition of formal functions was established in 1930s by Asafiev and ever since it was implemented in pedagogy at both the level of conservatories and that of uchilishe’s. A major contrast between North American (and Viennese) theory of formal functions and that created by Soviet theorists that the former is focusing on small-scale (intrathematic) events in narrow technical dimension and the former is dedicated to large-scale (extrathematic) processes in wide interdisciplinary context.

3.18 Alexei Losef’s Definition of Form as Eidos and Number (According to Plotinus)

Russian formalism of a different kind gained a momentum in the 1960s in an underground movement that embraced and absorbed both Western modernism and Russian philosophical mysticism, or Russian neo-Platonism, associated with the names of Alexei Losef and his follower Yuri Kholopov. For them, musical form was not merely a compositional device but the bearer of the inner meaning of music, which is related to the universal ontological significance of number. Losef’s influence on Kholopov is difficult to overestimate. At times it seemed that Kholopov was ready to follow Losef as his religious mentor. This strong connection translated into Kholopov’s powerful theory of music as realized number. The idea is taken from the style of reasoning that comes from ancient Greek and the Greek Patristic times. Kholopov, following the footsteps of Losef, has experienced a kind of epiphany upon reading Losef’s translation of Book Six, Treatise 6 of Plotinus’

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Enneads into Russian language. This book has been omitted in two English translations as presenting obscure mathematics. It means that Plotinus’ theology of Number has not found its supporters in the West. However, the East had always been ready to absorb this knowledge and to apply it to many aspects of life, including music. The following fragment comes from Dialektika Tchisla u Plotina [Dialectic of number in Plotinus], first published in 1928 and included into 1991 volume Myth, Number, Essence. The treatise contains the translation of the text of Plotinus, the Book VI/6 of the Enneads, and Losef’s introduction and commentary. The introduction opens with a very important attempt to reconcile two leading philosophical paradigms of the time (Kantian and Husserlian) by connecting them with the thought of Plotinus: The Self Itself (τὸ τοῦ ἀυτοῦ). In the first quarter of the twentieth century there were strong differences between the Kantianstranscendentalists and the Husserlians-phenomenologists. Those who believed in upbringing (and to the related concepts of “hypothesis,” “method,” and “pure possibility”) did not understand or did not want to understand what is the eidos in Husserl’s interpretation. The phenomenologists also failed to understand the notions of Kantian philosophy, cited above; they accused them of being metaphysical and arbitrary. In fact, Kant’s concept of the Ursprung and Husserl’s concept of the Eidos essentially do not contradict each other.189

Thus, Losef finds a compromise for the most acute confrontation in the Western philosophy of the first quarter of the twentieth century. He finds it in the writings of Plotinus, in his concept of number as “the self itself.” Losef’s profound intuitions in both the ancient Greek and Russian languages have enabled him to disentangle this confrontation. The Greek word eidos means “kind” in the widest sense. It is a purely sensual “kind,” a figure, a form,190 a picture, and, at the same time, a purely essential kind, i.e., the tangibly [Russ. naglyadno] and optically presented essence. Indeed, this is something that presents itself to the eye [Russ. naglyadnoye] or, more precisely, something that the eye can see [Russ. vozzritel’nοye]. The objects of the mind—essential meaning-bearing objects—are also presentable to the eye, both as naglyadnyie and

Alexei Losef’s Definition of Form as Eidos and Number

vozzritel’nye; however, they are visible through the “eyes of the mind.” Here we meet with the so-called “intellectual intuition.” It allows Being and Non-Being to be brought closer to each other, to the border that separates them. This move, a rather insightful elaboration on the well-known categories including the Aristotelian “kind” or “genus,” makes it possible for us to interpret musical form as a kind (Russ.-vid, Greek eidos, Latin aspectus) that is tangible and available to our senses as an image (Russ. obraz, ikona, Greek ἔικονος, μορφῆ, Latin forma), but can be seen with both our physical eyes and with the eyes of the mind. In his book Vvedenie v muzykal’nuyu formu [Introduction to Musical Form] Kholopov discloses in a very reserved, discreet form his ideas on this subject: Carl Dahlhaus in his definition of form quotes Riemann, his unity in diversity (Einheit im Verschiedenen), and considers form in

its three relationships. By the idea which comes from Plotinus

and is realized in the aesthetics of the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries (by A. E. Shaftsbury and J. J. Winkelmann), the form-

eidos is realized in a pair, the idea of any thing (its principle) and

its image (German Gestalt, Greek μορφῆ). Plotinus distinguishes inner form-eidos and the outer form.191

Kholopov credits Dahlhaus with the main ideas on form out of respect to Western thought that was instilled in the Soviet intelligentsia from an early age. However, Dahlhaus does not come even close to the depth of understanding of form in the likeness of Plotinus’ theology of number. In this case, the due credit for the discovery of such interpretation of musical form must, undoubtedly, be given to Losef and Kholopov. In a footnote on the same page, Kholopov does not hesitate to bring in the ideas of Losef from his book on Philosophy of the Beautiful in Plotinus, published in The History of Antique Aesthetics, vol. 6, in 1980. Kholopov modestly places his ultimate view of form in the comments to this quotation in a footnote! “The beautiful appears there where the eidos-form overpowers the matter. Music, for example, is beautiful then, when the eidos is realized as an appropriated harmony of numbers” (p. 445). He then brings another quotation from Plotinus’s treatise On the Intelligent Beauty:

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The stone which was turned by the sculptor into the beauty of the eidos (the face of God in this case) has become beautiful not as a result of its being a stone but as a result of the face of God [form, eidos, Russ, lik, oblik, ikona—I. Kh.] which was invested into this stone by the art.192

Kholopov manages to join together the traditional Russian definition, proposed by Glinka, forma—znachit krasota [Russ. form—means beauty] with the idea that krasota (i.e. beauty) is the quality of the inner eidos, which in music is the harmony of number. Losef’s most outstanding translation of Book VI/6 of The Enneads begins with a brief overview of the content of Book Six, Treatise 6: Chapters 2–6. What is not the number? It is not something endless and formless, since the very endlessness can be thought only in terms of an eidos; it is not a simply-sensible thing but something essential. It is not something subjective-psychological and, as a part of existing essences, it is not simply a partner of something, but it exists by itself. Chapters 7–11 and 14–17. What is number as such? The number is something intelligent and existent. It is present in everything. Chapters 8, 9, 10, 11, and 15 discuss the number as an intelligent essence as such, while Chapters 14 and 16 link this essence to the outer sensible world. The treatise ends with the reasoning on number as formed endlessness.193

This transient evaluation of Plotinus’s ideas already gives much food for thought to a music theorist. While historians of philosophy would be looking for the flaws in Plotinus’s logic, and philosophers of science would be preparing a barrage of critique of his book, a musician can find these brief descriptions extremely informative. Indeed, the status of number remains the major problem of music theory from its inception. What is perceived as a blessing by scientists—the number allows to count and measure—musicians may take with serious reservations. Although St. Augustine had defined music as ars bene modulandi, it remains unanswered in which sense the number applies to the structure, dynamics, and content of a musical work? Why do we have to count and measure music, just as we count eggs in a basket, or measure the square footage of our apartments?

Alexei Losef’s Definition of Form as Eidos and Number

Does music not deserve a more refined use of numbers? Plotinus, Losef and Kholopov seem to find the answer. Losef continues his elaborations on Plotinus’ ideas and delves into the sphere of the ethical: Good is something that is formed, Evil is something spread and disseminated. According to Plato, the Good—Ἀγαθόν—is the absolute unity of everything. Unity—either of the multiplicity or of the number of singularities—is the condition of wholesomeness [tselostnosti.194] Each part is identical with the whole.195

Plotinus inherited from Plato a complete, rigorously and precisely formed Universe. It appeared to him as a beautiful and amazing sculpture: The precondition of the intelligibility of the world is the identity of each thing to the world as a whole and dwelling of the universness [Russ. vselenskosti] in each smallest thing which belongs to the Universe. It means that the world is absolutely singular, that it dwells in itself and is held by itself, that it never falls apart and never disappears into a mindless endlessness of fragmentation.196

This passionate discussion of matters pertaining to mathematics, so uncharacteristic for contemporary science, switches the focus from the materialist and logocentric objects to the sphere of the ethical. The unity of the number, the identity of the parts to the whole is presented by Plotinus as a struggle for a monotheistic vision of the Universe. This explains Kholopov’s attitude and behavior in the later part of his life. He did not merely promote a concept of music as something based upon numbers. He was struggling against the mediocrity of Soviet musical aesthetics with its atheistic indifference to the most important existential questions. He perceived himself as occupying a higher moral ground, as did many of his contemporaries from the 1960s. It was important for Kholopov to confront the materialist, social-determinist hypocrisy of his surroundings with the aesthetic and ethical concept that was deeply rooted in the classical tradition. Losef and his philosophy provided Kholopov with the necessary contextual support. Both the logic of Plotinus and Losef’s interpretation is impeccable:

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The number cannot be an infinite set.197 The number in its meaning precedes the countable essences of things. The essence, difference and identity, rest, and motion—the main kinds of the intelligible—presuppose the preexistence of number. Therefore, number generates them; they are the products of the number.198

Losef summarizes the ideas of Plotinus and maps them on his contemporary condition in philosophy: We have rejected the object; the subject has gone the same way. What is left? Creation of thought’s structure by the power of the thought itself. Plotinus often uses such words as γεγνᾶν, ποιεῖν, μερίζειν, ἐνεργεῖν. Therein, as it happens, lies the cradle of generation by the number: it presents the energy, the energeticism of the intelligible, energeticism of the self-generating meaning.199 The number generates the essence. “Ἡ τοῦ ἀριθμοῦ δύναμις ὑποστᾶσα ἐμέρισε τὸ ὄν και ὁῖον ὠδίνειν ἐποίησεν ἀυτὸ τὸ πλῆθος.” The mind itself is the number.200

Losef continues his discussion of the ultimate role of the number and summons another source in support of this concept. It was another thinker from the Greek Patristic era, namely, Proclus, who wrote: The singular differs from the other being [Russ. inobytiye] and thus receives the border and form, i.e., its volume, size, and fragmentation into parts, and thus turns into multiplicity. But since it does not cease to be a unity, every multiplicity presents a certain singularity. There exists a triad within the single dialectic beginning, within unity, before this singularity turns into the existent things: (1) the bare and undividable singularity; (2) multiplicity and endless fragmentation; (3) separate singularity. Proclus distinguished (1) unity in itself (ἀυτοέν), the united (ἡνωμένα), and the one (ἑνάς). According to Proclus, multiplicity appears only after unity and lives in the form of participation in it.201

Upon serious consideration, after pondering the questions raised by Losef and Kholopov, one might stumble at an unexpected conclusion: never before in the modern history of music theory (from Kirnberger, Koch, Reicha, and A. B. Marx and up to Schoenberg and Schenker) has the essence of musical form been rationalized in the same depth and detail as in the writings

Russian Literary Formalism as a Source for Understanding of Musical Form

and in teaching of Yuri Kholopov. His understanding of form embraced both technical-compositional aspects and the loftiest ideas, coming from major philosophical and theological sources. The interpretation of musical form should stay on the level that music as an art form deserves. Nothing below the level of categorical thinking of Kant, Husserl, and Plotinus, can serve this purpose. However, not all the concepts of form rise so high, yet they have been important for the development of musical art. Thus, the idea of form as a technique of composition and a reflection of its rhetorical disposition—the major achievements of eighteenth-century German theory—is impressive and very useful. The following period of accumulation of information on the components of musical composition and the establishment of composition theory—Kompositionslehre—in the nineteenth century also deserves its credit. The legacy of Losef has been carefully preserved and developed further in post-1991 Russia. There is Losef’ library on the Arbat street in Moscow. One of the most active proponents of Losef’s ideas at present is Konstantin Zenkin. His major contribution to Losef’s studies, besides numerous articles and papers, is the book Music—Eidos—Time. A. F. Losef and Horizons of Modern Scholarship in Music (2015).202

3.19 Russian Literary Formalism as a Source for Understanding of Musical Form

Another tradition that corresponds with Kholopov’s idea of musical form is Russian literary formalism. It is related to Kholopov’s concept not through any direct references in his texts but by the fact that Russian literary formalism has become the part of the fabrics of the various Russian art theories, whether it is the theory of literature, painting, theater, film or music. It is worthy to mention that formalism was a dominant trend in Russian culture before the October Revolution and not only in music. It is difficult to imagine any of these fields without looking back at the ground-breaking works of Viktor Shklovsky, Yuri Tynyanov, Roman Yakobson, Pyotr Bogatyryov, Boris

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Eikhenbaum and Viktor Zhirmunsky. As this book covers various aspects of Soviet formalism, it is reasonable to cover one of its sources, that which lies not in music but in literature. Viktor Zhirmunsky—one of the founding fathers of the formalist movement—writes in the introduction to his collection of articles and papers Voprosy Teorii Literatury [Problems of Theory of Literature]203 in 1928: This collection presents several articles dedicated to the questions of poetics, in other words, to the so-called “formal”204 problems of literary scholarship. As it is known, the interest toward poetic “form” governed the Russian literary scholarship. Presently, the so-called “formal method” is gradually becoming an aspect of history and historiography. This gives me the right to precede this series of articles on the questions of theoretical poetics with a brief historical overview explaining my attitude to these questions.

I came to the formal analysis of poetic works from the problems of philosophy and history of literature, which were in the focus of my early books and articles about German Romanticism.205 The winters of 1915–1916 and 1916–1917 were for me, as for many other historians of literature, the time of a methodological crisis and a search for truth. At that time the mood of my generation was defined by a sense of dissatisfaction with the eclecticism and decadence of the old university tradition of history of literature. We have had a heightened interest in the principal methodological questions which addressed the new problems of literary form. This necessity to study the history and theory of poetics has been introduced earlier by Alexander Veselovsky and Alexander Potebnya and was picked up by the theorists of Symbolism: Andrey Belyi, Valery Bryusov, and Vyacheslav Ivanov. This interest in formal problems corresponded with the general literary positions of the Symbolists: their defense of the self-sufficient status of art, its autonomy from such issues that are extraneous to art. Some, like Valery Bryusov, were led by this idea toward the formalistic aestheticism; the literary group of Acmeists (Gumilev, Gorodetsky) picked up this trend: they were subconsciously drawn to classical forms and a classical understanding of literary craft.

Russian Literary Formalism as a Source for Understanding of Musical Form

Others, like Vyacheslav Ivanov and Andrey Belyi, by deepening the traditional Russian romantic trend, saw a poetic work as a system of symbolic expressive means for the intuition of a poet ….

In sync with the scientific “modernism” of our times, we have been learning to understand the theoretical problems of poetics and the specificity of poetry of remote periods on the examples of live contemporary poetry.206

Whether they were consciously borrowed or intuitively discovered in an independent manner by coincidence, the postulates of Kholopov’s school sound in accord with those of the Russian literary formalists. Indeed, both struggled against eclecticism in theory; both defended the autonomy of art as presenting the field of expressive intuitions of the artist; both used technical analysis of live examples, learning by models to understand the art forms of remote periods and styles. Zhirmunsky continues with his review of the formalist decade. He touches upon Victor Shklovsky's concept of art: Viktor Shklovsky adhered to the poetics of futurism:

1. Art as an approach [Russ. priyom]. 2. The word as such. 3. Teaching of the “dominant,” of “difficult form,” “motivation and revealing the approach.” 4. Automatization of approaches. 5. Canonization of the minor line.126

These five postulates of poetic theory developed by Shklovsky can be compared with Kholopov’s ideas on musical form. He insisted on music as a number of approaches [priyoms]. His teaching and method of research were focused on the musical material and the viable approach to it. Kholopov carefully avoided garnering any arbitrary opinions and interpreting the content of music beyond its materials and the various approaches to it. Music as such, the motive as such, the theme as such, and the function of a chord as such—all of these are the working terms of Kholopov’s teaching. Such expressions as “difficult form” would bring smiles to the faces of those who have experienced studying with Kholopov. The concept of the dominant, in both the strict tonal sense and as a prevalent formal idea, was very

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close to Kholopov’s understanding of music. Automatization of approaches was a very important part of Kholopov’s method of teaching. He required his students to exceed in impeccable improvisations of the pieces (preludes, chorales, sonatas, etc.), polished and raised to an automatic level. This allowed his students to develop a sense of estrangement from the pieces they were composing, i.e., a distanced attitude from the emotional content of the work. In addition, one of Kholopov’s most beloved terms was “calligraphy”, which he treated as an aesthetic approach to art. As for the canonization of the minor line, Kholopov’s life presents an astonishing example of such a canonization. Zhirmunsky suggests a remarkable statement that contains both the feelings of pride and painful self-criticism: We were trying to hide within the aesthetic row and were looking for the foundation for the rather specific dialectic of artistic form. I [was trying to unfold] the feeling of life, a super-aesthetic system. Shklovsky was working on composition, building on the sujet [Russ. sujetoslozheniye] and fabula. He considered poetry as a kind of ornamental art, i.e., subjectless art; he had the interest in the “smart language” as the limit of the form of speech, purely aesthetic speech. He wrote about the uttering with the goal of expression, but without any communication. He thought that the works of words present a kind of weaving of sounds, articulatory motions and thoughts.208

The attempts to create an isolated dialectic of artistic form unite Russian formalists and Losef’s philosophy based upon references to Greek Patristic thought. Thus, the line is circled: the complete understanding of sources of Russian and Soviet theory of musical form can be presented as the interaction between Losef ’s speculative theory of form and the ideas of Russian formalists. One cannot overlook the similarities with the processes in the other forms of arts (primarily, literature and painting) in Paris and Vienna at the same time. However, the Russian thought was not only independent of Parisian and Viennese modernism, but, in addition, had its roots in the Greek and Russian Orthodox Christian tradition, which endowed it with a primary position among the innovators of that time. After all, it was through OPOYAZ (the Society for Study of Poetic Language), via the Prague

Russian Literary Formalism as a Source for Understanding of Musical Form

Circle, that the French idea of structuralism—perhaps, the central trend of analytical methodology of the arts in the twentieth century—has gained its well-deserved status. In addition, the development of modernist music in Russia and in Western Europe owes much to Sergey Dyagilev. The Russian Seasons exported a great deal of cutting-edge artistic ideas of the time. A very interesting continuation the Russian formalist aesthetics received in the recent publication of new Formenlehre by Warren Darcy and James Hepokoski. One of the most important innovations of The Elements of Sonata Theory is an attempt to return teaching of form to its earlier European roots. In particular, the authors suggested the return of the principles of rhetorical disposition (trajectory, medial caesura) and of the elements of literary theory that correlate with the concepts of Russian formalists (who are quoted in the book). The idea of deformation is borrowed from Viktor Schklovsky; rhetorical prototypes of sonata form is, essentially, how the Russian teachers of form viewed it for decades. This longer chapter addressed the arguments of formal thinking in music. The field of form as the whole is very rich and diverse. All the facets of musical formalism were given above for a purpose: their cumulative effect exceeds the abstract idea of autonomy, that which is commonly discussed at the academia as the opposition to wholistic, integralist approach. Autonomy, music as such, together with the autonomy of music analysis is a rather tired subject. Formalism of this kind is weak and lifeless. The discourse on authenticity, autonomy and origin has been discussed and abandoned by philosophers in the 1960–80s. The actual tradition that centers around the study of musical form is quite different from that academic byproduct of politics. Its elements are related to each other systematically and logically. There are various hierarchical levels—from the discussion of technical element to the philosophical conclusions. Many statements of musical formalists cannot be properly verbalized. They are pragmatic components of continuous professional training, such as the art of harmonization of unfigured melody or the skill of

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improvisation of modulations. Formalist poetics may seem less analytical than integralist; it aims at making music, rather than contemplating and reflecting on its qualities. Even the most elevated facets, such as neo-platonic and literary-formalist approaches, fit into the task of making music. Musical form precludes reductionism. It is practically impossible to cancel all the facets of musical form in favor of one principle, especially if such principle is introduced from the outside of the professional field. A music amateur is tempted to come up with a single idea that explains everything. In the twentieth century, one could witness the birth of many ideas of music that failed to get traction in musical practice. The formalist approach—the tradition of at least three centuries—operates with parameters of independent origins. Gilles Deleuze described such situations as heterogeneity [hétérogénéité]. Indeed, the rhythm and harmony have different origins; motive comes from its own place; lad has the roots in aesthetics and philosophy, as well as in ancient religious tradition, etc. Nevertheless, these components get intertwined with each other under the auspices of form— they are poured into a vessel, akin to Augustine’s emanation. Harmonic cycles are reflected in metric hierarchy; rhythm exists not in the vacuum but as the characteristic aspect of the motive. Cadence is not something that ought to be studied separately: it is the result of harmonic progression that is generated at the beginning of a musical statement. Harmonic progression is not one solid cycle but several smaller ones that are marked by metric segmentation. Lad provides the sounding material for the chords. These technical elements of music can be explained by references to literary formalism or neo-platonic numerology. The formal approach is conceptually non-homogeneous. Thus, from the technical issues of tonality (lad in the Russian context), to harmony (with strong leaning toward functional syntax and modulation in both Russian and Western European conservatory traditions), counterpoint, form (including motive, rhythm, meter, formal function), to more abstract issues, such as neo-Platonic poetics of number and Russian literary formalism, formal thinking presents a complete professional field with the rich pedigree, extensive evolution and complex hierarchy. It is too

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big and too strong to be challenged by any alternative approach to music. Yet, in the course of history, such an approach came to being, and as we have seen in Chapter 2, it developed in parallel with formalism. The next chapter will cover the core aspects of Soviet integralist worldview (the reader may find many analogies with similar aspects in Western theory), and it will prove to be a good match for musical formalism.

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Reemergence of Integralism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries As stated in Chapter 2, Russian indigenous musical culture was predominantly integralist. It was reflected in the system of neumatic notation that used segments of curved lines and iconic elements, and not the points on a two-dimensional Cartesian plane. The role music played then was holistic and syncretic; music was an inseparable part of worship and was depended on the text of Holy Scripture. Then, in the seventeenth century, as shown in Chapter 3, the formalist trend gradually ousted the old ways of music making (that which Korenyev labeled as “ploughing with one’s head backward”). Diletsky’s approach is rather technical; his book belongs to the category of Western treatises on music theory of his times. Yet, the integralist, holistic trend persisted— perhaps in recessive form—throughout the centuries. In the nineteenth century, as it was mentioned earlier in Chapter 3, there was a strong national movement—after the war with Napoleon—that retained the original, authentic Russian elements in all arts. There had been the resistance to the new conservatory trend, expressed in a passional critique of Alexander Serov and Vladimir Stasov. In the twentieth century, the integralist trend suddenly gained traction—so that it collided with the wellestablished conservatory formalism. The echoes of the battles Form vs. Work: A Major Antinomy of Music Theory and Analysis Ildar D. Khannanov

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of the 1920–40 still sound in the hallways of major Russian conservatories.

4.1 Russian Integralism in the Nineteenth Century

Soviet integral analysis (tselostnyi analiz) became fully fledged by the end of the 1920s. However, it would be hardly plausible to depict the situation in Russian music theory in the nineteenth century as an undivided rule of Western formalism. Not only did the composers of the Mighty Handful oppose the idea of establishing conservatories (in the beginning, of course), not only Tchaikovsky departed from the conservatory ban on the psychologization of music theory by openly discussing the emotional truth, but there were other independently working musicologists who professed such views on music that can be described as integralist per se. In fact, the most famous integralists of the twentieth century, Tsukkerman and Mazel’, cite as their earliest predecessor Alexander Serov and his analysis of Beethoven’s Overture Leonore III. This small book was written in Russian but published first by Franz Brendel in German in Neue Zeitschrift für Musik in 1861.209 The journal, at the early stages of its existence, has seen the contributions of Robert Schumann. This association places Schumann in the camp of integralists and casts doubt on the wholesale association of Western theory with formalism alone. Serov opens his analysis with a brilliant and poignant critique of Hanslickian formalism, of which he was fully aware: That instrumental music is not a game, a simple exchange of positions of sounds, or something like crystallization of melodic, harmonic and rhythmic values, interwoven into beautiful forms or arabesques—despite the sophisms of Herr Hanslick—is an already answered question for anybody who, in 1861, seriously understands music. Music is the language of the soul; it is the domain of feelings and moods; it is the life of the soul expressed in sound.210

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Schumann would have signed under this statement, considering his engagement with literary images. It is of interest to compare this quotation with another one, from Hanslick (quoted by Carl Dahlhaus): If one asks what can be expressed with the sounding material, the answer will be: musical ideas. A fully developed and completely brought to life musical idea, which, however, is already an independent beauty, is and end in itself and not the mean and material for the expression of feelings and thoughts, that which also sets forth in highest sense symbolic, universally spread meaning, that which we find an any artistic beauty. Moving sound forms is single and all content and meaning of music.211

Dahlhaus quotes Hanslick in a subchapter of his Allgemeine Theorie der Musik, entitled Streit um der Formalismus—literally, fight over formalism. This, again, proves that the main dilemma of the Soviet music analysis has been discussed, in very similar terms, in the nineteenth century in German music theory and continued well into the twentieth. In an attempt to save Hanslick’s argument from oversimplification, Dahlhaus offers his explanation of the “moving sound forms” as taken from the ideas of Humboldt and brothers Grimm: Almost as often misunderstood as quoted, the phrase “sounding moving forms” that gave birth to numerous aphorisms related to Eduard Hanslick’s text On Musically Beautiful was meant as a challenge to the so-called “aesthetics of feeling” that Hanslick said to destroy. Not without the reason was his thesis considered a paradox, formulated in quid pro quo contradictory terms: from the form arises the content and so does its opposite. By this provocative assertion his critics triggered a controversy which, it seems, has not been solved yet; flattened to trivial definition, music is nothing but the form and form of empty, expressionless tones. Perhaps Hanslick should not be blamed for this; however, from polemical irritation the unfortunate metaphors “arabesque” and “kaleidoscope” were drawn. On the other hand, he unequivocally understood the inner form or energeia in terminology of the Sphrachphilosophie of Wilhelm von Humboldt and especially Jacob Grimm: “the forms, which are formed from the tones, are ... derived from within the spirit.212

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This quite complex apology for Hanslick’s radical idea seems to be slightly revisionist. From the standpoint of techniques of musical composition of the nineteenth century references to the Sprachphilosophie appear quite farfetched and the discussion of relationship of form and expression remains, as Dahlhaus admits, unresolved. Serov’s analysis and method he used present a valid argument that calls for the response in the same language, without changing the topic of discussion to some abstract categories, surely plausible, yet distant from musical issue at hand. Still, despite the exceptions like Serov’s analysis of Leonore III, as a mainstream, the Russian nineteenth century went under the banner of formalism. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Russian musicians became indoctrinated in European music theory. During this period, the ideas of form and theory of composition entered public consciousness. This occurred gradually and soon became second nature to Russian musicians. It is in this context that we should understand the energy and pathos of the Soviet formalists, who stood up against the Soviet ideology, being determined to protect the centennial professional tradition. This explains the fervor with which the Russian theorist Yuri Kholopov defends the concept of form and argues against the integralists. On this background, a mysterious figure of Boleslav Yavorsky may catch the beam of light. His biography is rather unusual for a Russian music theorist. He traveled back and forth between Kiev and Moscow and managed to leave an indelible trace in both cities. After the October Revolution, he held a ministerial position, communicated with Lunacharsky, participated in GAKhN (State Academy of Art Sciences), and was the editor of MUSGIZ publishing house. He taught in Kiev and in Moscow, has left a generation of students with prominent careers in music theory. However, his academic output is rather limited; the main text, The Design of Musical Speech (1908), is nothing but random notes, sketches, and the plans of the chapters. The Union of Composers of Russia has commissioned a new publication of Yavorsky’s opus magnum to the author. It came out in October 2022, entitled The Unknown Yavorsky. While working with the archival materials—there are over 9000 folders in the

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National Museum of Music in Moscow—the author stumbled upon a major plan of Yavorsky. According to the unpublished materials (including a complete handwritten book of 1901), he attempted to create a new theory of music, or, more precisely, a theory for all music. In a sense, the effort was similar to Jay Rahn’s famous treatise A Theory for All Music: Problems and Solutions in Analysis of Non-Western Forms (1983). Yavorsky did not work on a concept of new music exclusively, although his ideas cannot be interpreted as anything other than a project of music theory for the twentieth century. For example, he provided several tables and graphs of the rows. He mentioned that “the row refers to any kind of musical elements.”213 In particular, Yavorsky illustrates the rows of pitches, intervals, chords, and rhythmic values. This is written in 1898, some twenty years before Schoenberg’s use of the term die Reihe. Yavorsky does not make any distinctions between Monteverdi, Beethoven, or the music of the future. His systematic, Germanic in the best sense of the word, thinking is boundless. He manipulates Riemann’s idea of metric period and translates it into the interdisciplinary, general scientific categories, such as symmetry and progression. He introduces the term intonatsia. This term was picked up by Asafiev and developed into a major category of Soviet music analysis. In Yavorsky’s original interpretation, the intonatsia is a connection of two elements of musical logic: the light and heavy, weak and strong, unstable and stable, predictus and ictus. It is related to both pitch structure and metric-rhythmic hierarchy and altogether ascends to the idea of musical speech. In a sense, Yavorsky took the idea of Riemann— the marriage of harmony and meter—further and turned it into a universal category of tritonal equilibrium, or lad rhythm. Yavorsky also reinterpreted and reformulated the idea of lad by making it applicable to new music. Such universalia and systematic views became extremely popular in Soviet music theory in the 1980s. Medushevsky, Kholopov, Nazaikinsky, Milka, Aranovsky may have referred to the works of Ludwig von Bertalanffy (General System Theory (1950)) and Abraham Moles (Sociodynamique de la culture (1967)), but the core of their terminology and categorical apparatus was derived from

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Yavorsky’s teaching. With all that, he kept referring to musical speech as the reflection of life: Any manifestation of life can serve as the content of human speech, which falls into two categories—sounding and plastic. Musical speech, one of the components of sounding speech, derives its material and laws from the same life of which it is a manifestation.214

Thus, Yavorsky ushered the new theory which was a hybrid: formalist and integralist at the same time. He constantly referred to breathing, the lengths of human thought—the psychological topics, carefully avoided by the formalists.

4.2 Integral, Tselostnyi Analiz: The Ideas of the 1920s

Toward the twentieth century, on the wave of enthusiasm for scientific research, the method of integral (tselostnyi, integrated, holistic) analysis has been placed in a highly academic, philosophical and sociological context. The fin de siècle—for Russians, as well as for the French, Germans, Austrians, Swedes, Italians, British and Americans—has become the time of reflection on the roots and evaluation of millennial history. The freedom of thought that was carefully developed since Kant and Hegel gave the fruit at the end of the nineteenth century—the time, when seven Kondratiev’s economic cycles climaxed, and Europe relaxed after the decades of revolutions and wars. Boris Glebov (Asafiev) belonged to that generation of the Russian Silver Age. His writings on music were not standard by any stretch of imagination. Asafiev’s oeuvre falls, roughly, into two parts: the articles published in Melos and other pre-revolutionary periodicals and the publications of the Soviet period. He, like so many other Russian aristocrats, decided to stay. However, his contributions proved to be universal. In some aspects, his views anticipated the blooming of European musical semiotics (which is supported by Eero Tarasti, see my interview with him “Signs and Meanings. International Congress on Musical Signification: The Overview and an Interview with Eero Tarasti,” in: Musical Academy Quarterly,

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Moscow, Spring 2007/2.). It is hard to imagine the sociology of music of the twentieth century without his contributions. His idea of musical form as a process has received an unanticipated continuation in the publications of Janet Schmallfeldt. The idea of intonatsia is, on the one hand, elusive and not rigorous, and, on the other, easily translatable into the practice of millions of performers, composers and listeners. Just as each individual has the specific tone of voice, easily recognizable by others, each instance of musical expression has the unmistakable tone (intonatsia). We recognize music as Beethoven’s before making any analytical decisions about its genre, form and style. It makes sense to compare the intonatsia with other similar terms of the Western music theory, which has been done in my paper and recent publication “Boris Asafiev’s intonatsia in the context of music theory of the 21st century” (Rasprave: Časopis Instituta Za Hrvatski Jezik I Jezikoslovlje (2018). Asafiev laid the ground for the method of integral analysis. He has been an undeniable authority for Mazel’ and Tsukkerman and the next generation of integralists. Asafiev was not alone, however, in his generation to tackle the idea of interdisciplinary holistic methodology. In the mid-1920s in Moscow, a new type of analysis emerged in the work of Viktor Belyayev. Its premises were tried on the example of Stravinsky’s Svadebka [Les Noces] in 1923 (only two years after the world premiere). The new method included all the extramusical aspects of music—aesthetic value, philosophical meaning and historical underpinning of its inception, all as the integral parts of the analytical procedure. The novelty of this method was such that it gave no preference to any of these aspects and diminished the role of musical form in the creation of musical meaning. Among the ten chapters of this book, form is discussed at a rather late stage—in the ninth chapter. Belyayev begins by assembling the entire context of Stravinsky’s pioneering masterpiece and comparing it to the “New Russian School”: In approaching closer the presentation of real Russian folk life

than any Russian composer, Stravinsky did so just when that life

was already becoming a legend, irrevocable, and incapable of

regeneration in its original living form.215

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This is not the beginning of the exposition of the theory; no analysis has been approached yet either. Nevertheless, Belyayev already prepared his readers to the set of ideas circumscribing the musical composition—Les Noces—as a whole. The next two chapters are dedicated to the elaboration on this important contextual method, which includes the idea of a Russian national character preserved by Stravinsky: He has abandoned the generally accepted methods of developing a musical concept and processing the folklore material and has replaced them by the idea of expanding of the role of the epic folk-song—the first instance in which it has been thus applied in art music of Russia. Particular genres of lament, song and buffoonery are chosen by composer as the structural elements.215

Only after the careful introduction of the cultural context, Belyayev ventures into the discussion of properly theoretical topics, such as motive (Chapter IV), thematicism (Chapter V), rhythm (Chapter VI), harmony (Chapter VII), counterpoint (Chapter VIII), and, finally, form (Chapter IX). Since form was not the primary goal of analysis in this context, Belyayev’s presentation of this topic carries the impact of the previous discussion: “As we know, form in music is not something that stands apart from the composition but the result of the whole process, determined by all its detail.”217 The conclusion (Chapter X) is related not to the reflection on the purely theoretical topics from Chapters IV–IX but to the initial idea of the national character of Les Noces. As I shall demonstrate later, this approach to music and its overall conception and procedure have become a staple of the so-called tzelostnyi analysis. For example, Viktor Tsukkerman’s 500-page monograph on Glinka’s Kamarinskaya follows the same plan and design. Thus, Belyayev’s book on Les Noces, in addition to being the first reaction to one of the most important compositions of the twentieth century, laid out the path for the mainstream Soviet method, namely, integral (tselostnyi) analysis. In fact, Belyayev was not alone, nor was he exactly the first to introduce this idea in the Soviet period. Rather, he managed to realize the actively circulating positions and views in a single text that has received the status of a manifesto. The stormy revolutionary

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environment prevailing at the two main conservatories in Moscow and St. Petersburg (Petrograd) produced an avalanche of innovations. Of special interest is an article by Anatoly Butskoi, “Sovremennyie Studencheskiye Organizatsii v Konservatoriyakh” [Contemporary Student Organizations in the Russian Conservatories], published in Melos, Book 1, in 1917. Butskoi—a student of Yavorsky at Kiev Conservatory—wrote a short note on the wave of revolutionary enthusiasm and signed it with just one letter “B.” From this note we learn the following: “Who does not remember those clear days, those first, then yet unclouded days of the Russian revolution, the days of unanimous joy and hope ….”218 This enthusiasm was genuine and overwhelming. The desire for a change at the conservatories, however, was dictated by the objective situation: At the conservatories, nowadays one can see a very diverse contingent of students in respect to general education. Together with a small number of students with university degrees, most other students have either no general education at all or a very superficial and insufficient …. It is obvious that for the understanding of the phenomena and the principles governing music it is ultimately insufficient to receive only the special musical education which is offered at the conservatories.219

Butskoi himself graduated from Kiev University and had the right to criticize traditional conservatory training. Everything that followed in the Soviet musical pedagogy proved that that was the case. In fact, right after the October Revolution, the leading scholars and professors from the universities came to participate in the new programs. Aleksey Losef, a famous philosopher and an expert in the Greek Classics, who is now considered the founding father of the Soviet philosophical tradition, had a chance to teach at the Moscow Conservatory. He wrote one of the most provocative books of his time, Muzyka kak Predmet Logiki [Music as the Subject of Logic],220 while teaching philosophy and aesthetics there. This was an unthinkable previously innovation, which has led to the creation of the tselostnyi analysis. Moreover, it has become a powerful and lasting tradition. In the 1960s, philosopher and expert in aesthetics, Dr. Semyon Rappoport became a full-time

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professor of aesthetics at the Moscow Conservatory. His students, including Tatyana Tcherednichenko, have become the feeding lines for the Department of Music Theory through which the most modern trends in philosophy, psychology, sociology, and art theory entered the field. This is how theorists at the conservatory learned about the Frankfurt School, Theodor Adorno, as well as phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, Gustav Shpet, Roman Ingarden, the sociodynamics of Abraham Moles, the art theory of Susanne Langer, and many other important aspects and facets of contemporary Western thought. In the late 1980s and until his untimely death in 2003, Alexander Mikhailov, a brilliant philosopher, philologist and the translator of works of Martin Heidegger, taught aesthetics at the Moscow Conservatory. This change turned Russian conservatories from vocational schools into true institutions of higher education, equal in the level of instruction to the best universities in the country. Returning to the year 1917 and its legacy, we can add a number of documents preserved at the major archives in Russia containing direct references to the new discipline of analysis of musical works and to the new method of music analysis. The Obshcheye Delo ob Upravlenii Moskovskoi Konservatoriyey [General Outline on Governance of Moscow Conservatory], a document from 1921, kept at the Tsentral’nyi Archiv Literatury i Isksstva (TsGALI)221 contains detailed recommendations related to the curriculum, content of the courses and guiding ideas. For example, although the study of forms is suggested for the third and fourth years of study, it is mentioned that “while learning harmony and form, the main direction of thrust must be the analysis of musical works.”222 Moreover, in their studies of the “elements of musical etymology and syntax, the students should receive not the dry schemes but the examples from live music,” and “the solfege must be taught not with examples of abstract exercises but with samples from real vocal works and real culture.”223 The faculty of Moscow Conservatory did a marvelous job defining the new boundaries224 of the musical profession and new directions in music scholarship. In 1921, they decided on a special curriculum for the undergraduate theory and composition majors. That program offered both a course in analysis of musical work and a course in musical form. The

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advanced majors, such as theorists, historical musicologists, composers and conductors, took both courses; other majors were offered only a course in form. This was an innovation in comparison with the nineteenth-century tradition and the idea of the integral approach to music gained new energy and support after the years of more traditional formalist conservatory training. In 1925, Butskoi became a professor at the Leningrad Conservatory. Not long before that, he had written and published a book with an unusual title: Neposredstvennyie Dannyie Muzyki: Opyt Vvedeniya v Muzyku [The Immediate Data of Music. An Essay on Introduction to Music].225 The fact that it was published in Kiev, in the city famous for having Yavorsky as a leading professor of music theory, is telling. Butskoi brought into his book the flavor of the unlimited freedom and sense of ultimate innovation, so characteristic of his teacher. The title also carries the traces of the new fashion for phenomenology promoted in Russia of that time by Gustav Shpet, a student of Edmund Husserl. Even the ideas of Wilhelm Dilthey concerning the descriptive method are perceptible in the background of Butskoi’s writings. Butskoi wished to return to the immediacy of music, bypassing the tenets of traditional Western theory. He summarized the goals for the development of a new Soviet style of analysis in the following form: Traditional music theory, represented by the series of disciplines, such as elementary theory, harmony, counterpoint, teaching of form, orchestration, aesthetics and history of music, is experiencing a deep crisis. Both musical practice and scientific thought have left it far behind. A gigantic leap which contemporary music has made in the direction of new sound capacities and forms of musical thought has interrupted the communication that music scholarship had with the musical practice, and nowadays the music theory cannot explain musical reality without artificial concepts and undesirable alterations. Facts, which appear to be very simple on the level of immediate perception, are explained as the phenomena of secondary and tertiary importance. Historical tradition and habitual points of view obstruct the unbiased approach to these musical facts. On the other hand, we are not satisfied anymore with the superficial generalizations

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and postulates that have remained at the basis of music theory, and we need more scientific rigor and deeper penetration into the nature of musical phenomena. A simple combination of practical methods, sanctified by tradition and often revealing the shades of dogmatism, can no longer satisfy anybody. Moreover, some subfields of music theory are still not united with each other organically and either ignore each other’s postulates or get into serious arguments with each other. Finally, music theory retains much of the outlived and dead material or ballast, the existence of which precludes the study of immediate data of music.226

This manifesto of new music theory seems to break up with the old teaching of form and other disciplines for the sake of a very important circumstance—the appearance of new music. It is strange that in the position of Yuri Kholopov, the oldfashioned teaching of form coexisted with the drive toward new music. Butskoi rejected this combination as being inorganic. The logical consequence out of this dilemma is the new object of musical-theoretical research, the artwork as a whole in its active relationship with the human perception: Art exists in the world in the form of works: paintings, buildings, theatrical plays, musical compositions, prose and poetic works. In this respect works are the phenomena which surround us and we must study them as such with our organs of senses. We confuse these objects for the forms of artworks themselves, thus making a fundamental error. The essence of art can be summarized as its active effect on us, a complex of impressions which we receive in the process of perceiving artistic images. The task of theory is to describe and classify these facts of art.227

It is understandable that toward the end of the previous century, certain methods of analysis and theory became somewhat mechanical and reduced in both form and function; many musicians, including Heinrich Schenker, had criticized this method. And it may very well be that the birth of integral analysis in twentieth-century Russia derives from the same critique. The target of such a critique was the nineteenth-century preferential treatment of musical form in conservatory programs. In the tradition of theory of composition à la A. B. Marx, professional study of music was expected to focus on harmony,

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counterpoint, instrumentation and, as their ultimate goal, musical form. Everything outside of these four disciplines was considered extramusical. It was this postulate that contradicted the emerging psychological, sociological, and historiographic tendencies in the late nineteenth-century human sciences that were realized, for example, in the idea of systematische Musikwissenschaft of Riemann and Adler. It took several decades to revise the traditional isolation of music theory and to enrich it with these newer aspects. Integral analysis crowns the merger of extramusical with musical proper and proclaims the equal rights of a variety of approaches. Although in Russia the Schenkerian concept did not receive the appreciation it had in the United States, some of Schenker’s aesthetic views resonate quite well with Russian integralism. In both cases, we see a critique of the restricted classical European discipline of music theory and an attempt to expand that discipline from mere compositional technique to a global doctrine. In Russia, it was not the result of Schenker’s influence, of course. Yet, the similar tendency, voiced by Hugo Riemann,228 Ernst Kurth229 and Boris Asafiev230 gave a strong impetus to the integrated method of analysis. Toward the end of the 1920s, the integrated type of analysis received its shape. It took the efforts of one of the most famous theorists of the 1930s, an excellent pianist and the lecturer on music, Viktor Tsukkerman, to establish the full and complete version of the Soviet method of analysis of a musical work. He called it tselostnyi analiz and has been its fervent promoter all his life. Ellon Carpenter provides a detailed description of this historical moment in a separate chapter “Music Analysis: A More Integrated Approach” in her Ph.D. dissertation. She brings all the pros and cons, including Dmitry Shostakovich’s remark, supporting the new discipline. She mentions that it was an attempt to “soften” the rigor of traditional theory: It is possible, then, to distinguish between “hard” theory, which utilizes only its own means and goals to uncover the theoretical significance of a composition, a group of works, a composer’s oeuvre, a method of composition or an analytical approach—what

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the Soviets call alternately “bourgeois” or “traditional” theory, which we in the West continue to promulgate and develop—and “soft” theory, theory which is used only as a means to an end, to discover the non-theoretical sides of composition, its historical significance, expressive nature, or programmatic content, which the Soviets promote based on the tenets of Marxism and Social Realism.231

An early example of the intensive discussions concerning the place of musical forms and the “hard” formalist method within the context of analysis of musical work can be found in the report of Roman Gruber and Khistophor Kushnarev at the Faculty Meeting of the State Academy of Arts (GAIS) in January of 1934. Kushnarev begins his part of the report by suggesting that historical musicologists, music theorists and philosophers must join their efforts and several lines of knowledge must cross-pollinated: I started working on my textbook in counterpoint by going over the technical aspects, which was easy enough. But then, I encountered a number of difficult questions: the musical modes, rhythm, invention, sonata development, etc. I realized that without the understanding of what was the musical image [obraz] or what was the content of the musical image it was impossible to move ahead. I had to turn for help to a historian, Roman Gruber …. We were working on the question of the content of polyphonic music of the fourteenth-fifteenth centuries. At the same time, we were working on the problem of musical image and the question of the content of a musical work.232

This is a testimony of a professional theorist. His choice of direction of research was not dictated by the ideology of the time; rather, he had a problem which he could not solve without expanding his views by means of the implementation of the categories of musical image and the content of musical work. The formalism elaborated on in Kushnarev’s writing is, beyond any doubt, of immensely high quality: however, he needed an additional element in order to finalize his formal findings. (On a side note: in the late 1990s, Valentina Kholopova and Lyudmila Kazantseva created a new subdiscipline in musicology—a theory of musical content.)

Integral, Tselostnyi Analiz

Roman Gruber continues with the same idea and adds his own reasons for the unification of theory, history, and philosophy: I have been working on my own book for three years. However, there was no specificity of music in my topics since there was no analysis of historical material as such. Now, our topics have been enriched with the specificity of music based on historical material. We are still working on the following topics: (1) the problem of compositional process and music perception; (2) the aesthetics and Marxist-Leninist analysis of the category of the beautiful; and (3) the problem of emotional content of music.233

Thus, the traditional disciplines of musical academics, the teachings of harmony, counterpoint, and form, have all experienced essential transformations in the late 1920s and early 1930s, long before the Stalinist purges have begun. The last bullet point in the plan of Gruber is especially symptomatic of the general trend: the study of musical emotions as a part of theoretical research remains in the programs at Russian conservatories even today. What Gruber planned to do in 1934 has been accomplished in 2010 by Valentina Kholopova in her monumental research Music and Emotion. In view of these slow historical changes, the evolution of the field has demonstrated a significant drift from pure formalism toward more heterogeneous styles of scholarship. The textbook Struktura Muzykal’nykh Proizvedeniy [The Structures of Musical Works] by Anatoly Butskoi, published in the ill-famous 1948, continues this line of development. Although Butskoi could not avoid the rhetoric of persecution of the formalists and does not hesitate to accuse them of “extreme individualism, narrowing of creative interests, underestimation of the ideas and content of art,”234 etc., his concept of musical work remains validated by the references to the integralist tradition. He suggests that the traditional teaching of form has been limited to descriptions of formal relationships of the respective sections of musical works and the schemes of the compositions with curtailed demonstrations of the essential grammar of musical forms.”235 The first chapter of his book is entitled “The Artwork as a Material Object of Art” and contains reasoning in favor of historical concreteness of the musical artifacts. The second chapter is

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even more unusual for a section of a textbook. It is entitled “The Nature of Musical Content.” This chapter, along with the title of the last chapter, “The Lexical Semantics of Musical Language,” endows his book with such characteristics that suggest that it may have been one of the most recent Russian achievements in musicological research. For example, the recently published book by Andrey Kudryashov is called the Teoria Muzykal’nogo Soderzhaniya [A Theory of Musical Content].236 As for musical lexical semantics, it is arguably the most important subject in contemporary Russian musicology. It was thoroughly defined and elaborated on by Mark Aranovsky, the tradition of its study has been maintained by his student Lyudmila Schaimukhametova, and so it has become a key point of study in music analysis in Russia in the 2000s. To balance the list of major publications about musical form in Chapter 3, I provide the list of major integralists’ achievements; see the Appendix to Chapter 4. Notice that the name of Richard Taruskin is included in this list. From the standpoint of Russian integralists, his work fits perfectly into the context of tselostnyi analiz. It would not be an exaggeration to suggest that Taruskin’s interpretations present integralism in the most advanced form, free of some natural deficiencies of the Soviet tradition related to political conditions. His proposal on the treatment of musical work is free of socio-political bias and reminds, as such, the texts of Asafiev and the generation of the 1910s–1920s in its complete freedom of expression. There are many other important positions presented by North American authors on quite similar topics. For example, Musical Meaning. Toward a Critical History (2002) by Lawrence Kramer tackles the same issues as current publications by integralists in Russia. For example, Chapter 1, “Hermeneutic and Musical History” resonates with both Dahlhaus/Eggebrecht concepts and those of Medushevsky, Tcherednichenko and Kholopova. Chapter 3, “Beyond Words and Music. An Essay on Songfullness” looks like the translation from Russian of one of many titles on the same topic.

Integral Analysis and the Phenomenology of a Musical Work

4.3 Integral Analysis and the Phenomenology of a Musical Work Musical work is a central category of integral analysis. However, the idea of a work, opus, presents a major problem, and the very existence of the integralist method depends on it. There are two questions contained in one—what is a work of art in general, and what is a musical work in particular? The discussion of the former invites ideas from philosophy, aesthetics, and rhetoric. The Soviet integralists were compelled to become philosophers volens nolens since the phenomenon of the work of art could not be explained solely within the musical field. Therefore, the discussions of the latter implied touching upon ontology of the artwork, its existence, identity, and unity. It is no surprise that the second generation of integralists,237 such as Valentina Kholopova, Vyacheslav Medushevsky, Yevgenyi Nazaikinsky, and Viktor Bobrovsky had to address the issues of phenomenology. The work of Roman Ingarden on the existence of a musical work had a particularly strong impact on the Soviet integralists. The critique of the ontological status of an artwork by Zofia Lissa played an important role, as well. Indirectly, but inevitably, these references evoke more fundamental discussions of the status of an artwork suggested by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. Ingarden was a devoted pupil of Husserl and an active proponent of the phenomenological method. Nonetheless, Husserl noticed a number of mistakes in Ingarden’s interpretations of an artwork concerning the possibility of transcendental aesthetics and the definition of the intentional object. The viewpoints of Heidegger did not possess these shortcomings, which explains why his famous text Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes238 was carefully studied by the integralists in the Soviet Union, in addition to Ingarden’s work. The discussion of transcendental aesthetics would be impossible without references to Immanuel Kant’s Critiques. These authors provided the necessary context for the integralists’ understanding of musical work and were often mentioned in the texts of Kholopova, Nazaikinsky, and Medushevsky.

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All the topics that Ingarden brings forth in his book The Work of Music and the Problem of Its Identity239 are of ultimate importance for the integralist analysis. Ingarden questions the very existence of the musical work, the answer to which can decide the fate of the integralist method. If from the formalist perspective there is no necessity to reopen this discussion (musical form is believed to be a relevant, well-established, and sufficient object of analysis), the integralists are constantly engaged in the questions of what is to be analyzed and where the analysis should be applied. The sound material alone does not satisfy the integralists, they inquire into the discourse, the language of description, and into the whole area of existence of a musical work beyond and above the score and the sounding subject matter. Therefore, they welcome Ingarden’s distinctions of sounding and non-sounding elements. The non-sounding elements include the “temporal or quasi-temporal structure,”240 “movement,”241 “forms,”242 and “emotional qualities.”243 The degree to which the Soviet music theorists were involved in phenomenology is indicated by the fact that the study of Ingarden’s book was a part of the curriculum at the conservatories in Moscow and Leningrad in the 1960s–1980s. It was included among the topics in the course of musical aesthetics, which was obligatory for all music theory majors.

4.4 References to Musical Semiotics and Semantics

This category, which occupies an important place in the methodology of integral analysis, presents a rich indigenous tradition. The contributions of Russian theorists into the development of semiotics in general and musical semiotics in particular are difficult to overestimate. There were many channels through which the Russian theory of language and semiotics entered the world scene. The nineteenth-century theory of the image (obraz) of Alexander Potebnya, the literary formalism of the early twentieth century, including the works of Roman Jakobson, the TartuMoscow School of Yuri Lotman, and many other groups and trends have joined this dominant concept of the twentieth century. Even the concepts of Algirdas Greimas, the founding father of

Soviet Theory of Musical Genre as a Core of Integralists Strategy

the Parisian School of Semiotics, had Russian roots. The students and the followers of Greimas, including Eero Tarasti, maintain that the beginning of the musical semiotics is related to the work of Boris Asafiev, his theory of intonatsia. Thus, Tarasti mentioned in his interview to the author, (already mentioned): “I read the works of Asafiev in English and German translations and consider him a great pioneer of the musical semiotics.”244 Asafiev’s interest toward semiotics occurred very early in his career, in his works from 1917 and 1918. Having been labeled as “subjective” and “bourgeois” by Soviet critics, they retained the fresh views and original approaches strongly influenced by the Western philosophy of the time. During the Soviet period, Asafiev revised some of his earlier ideas and retained those that pertained to the semiotics. In his monumental Musical Form as a Process, he mentions semantics twice, in Book 1 and in Book 2. There is an evident evolution: Asafiev discards his earlier understanding of this term and provides a refined definition in Book 1. Asafiev introduced the term “semantics” into music studies. It has been used ever since in both the Soviet Union and in contemporary Russia. Asafiev preferred it to a more traditional “musical symbolic.” Under the influence of the theory of Asafiev and as a result of its profound involvement with the theory of rhetorical figures and affects, the Soviet interpretation of semantics went quite far in understanding the profound relationship between music and speech. This relationship has been elaborated on by one of the most prominent Soviet and Russian semioticians, Mark Aranovsky. He was very active and insistent: he lectured around in Moscow and Leningrad, nurtured a school of prominent students and, ultimately, left a significant mark on Soviet music theory. It is difficult to imagine a Russian theorist who does not use Aranovsky’s terms, one way or another.

4.5 Soviet Theory of Musical Genre as a Core of Integralists Strategy

All Soviet music theorists were very sensitive to the category of genre. Unlike the current Anglo-Saxon tradition that denies

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the role for genre within the rigorous neopositivist discourse of music theory, Russian and Soviet colleagues never hesitated to use the category of genre on par with that of form. In that, they borrowed some terminology from German sociology of music. In particular, Arnold Sokhor, in his 1971 article, “Teoria Muzykal’nykh Zhanrov: Tseli i Perspektivy” [The Theory of Musical Genres: Goals and Perspectives], relied upon the book by Heinrich Besseler Das Musikalisches Hören der Neuzeit (1959). The Soviet system of genre includes such advanced categories as primary and secondary genre (for example, original waltz and ländler as they were danced in Austria and waltz as a concert composition or a part of a larger musical work). There is also a genre transformation (changing of the genre’s role), or genre synthesis (fusion of two or more genres in one composition). Genre contrast is equal in importance with the thematic-motivic contrast. In general, the category of genre deserves a better place in contemporary music theory. It is also a conductor of all integralist ideas, from the earliest to Asafiev’s intonatsia and Mazel’ and Tsukkerman’s expressive means of music [выразительные средства музыки]. Needless to say, without the category of genre Medushevsky’s ideas on intonatsia and fabula and Kholopova’s musical content would not have existed. The ultimate case of discussion of genre was the series of debates, before and after World War II of the problem of symphonicism [проблема симфонизма]. This topic is not specific to Soviet music theory; it comes from the reasoning of Paul Bekker in his famous treatise The Symphony from Haydn to Mahler (1918). Yet, Asafiev’s early article “On Symphonicism” and Mark Aranovsky’s treatise on the same topic Symphonicheskiye Iskaniya: Problema Genra Symphonii v Sovetskoi Muzyke 1960­ 1975kh Godov [Симфонические Искания: Проблема Жанра Симфонии в Советской Музыке 1960–1975х годов] delineate the time of continuous and heated debates on what is symphony and what is its place in twentieth-century music. The idea, in a nutshell, is that symphonic orchestra is not just many instruments playing together. The multiplicity of voices that orchestral music provides is similar to the multiplicity of voices in the social milieu and in the inner world of a subject.

The Crowning Category of Integralism: Intonatsia of Yavorsky and Asafiev

4.6 The Crowning Category of Integralism: Intonatsia of Yavorsky and Asafiev The legacy of the Russian theorists of the early twentieth century, the term intonatsia lies at the foundation of the conceptual apparatus of integral analysis. It functions as a transmitter of the earlier archetypal ideas of Russian music theory (described in Chapters 2 and 3) into the twentieth century. The term intonatsia is crucial for understanding the main strategy of integral analysis and its separation from the classical teaching of form. The very possibility of a connection between the intramusical and the extramusical domains is secured by the meaning of Asafiev’s term, and the whole idea of integral analysis hinges on Asafiev’s thinking, which was germinated in the very specific atmosphere of the Russian 1910s and 1920s. That time was characterized by the enormous degree of social unrest. It was also the time of an unprecedented (for Russia) freedom of expression, and a very specific approach to the standards of scholarly research. As a result, neither the linguistic aspect of the term intonatsia nor its theoretical interpretation could satisfy the present-day rigorous requirements. Many of Asafiev’s contemporaries did not understand the meaning of intonatsia either. Two famous anecdotes are related to Asafiev’s funeral, when the leading theorists of Russia gathered in mourning for the great theorist. One of them said: “Alas, he died, and did not explain, what the intonatsia is”; another is shorter: “Musical form is, indeed, a process” (in the Soviet Union the court trial of the dissidents was called the prozess). One can add that the term intonatsia has never been properly translated into other languages. Yet it is commonly used in all Russian conservatories and has become a cornerstone for integral analysis, music history, aesthetics, and even folk music studies. It is worth mentioning that the term intonatsia was first introduced by Boleslav Yavorsky in his The Design of Musical Speech245 written in the last decade of the nineteenth century and published in 1908. His use of this term is different from that of Asafiev; it also refers to the idea of musical speech (as seen in the title), but his is a narrow and precise technical definition.

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Yavorsky’s intonatsia is akin to Riemann’s motive: it has the light and heavy parts and carries one strong beat in a system of tritonal equilibrium—a central category of Yavorsky’ theory. Part II of this treatise is titled: “Systemnuye i Ladovuye Tyagotenia vo Vremeni: Intonatsia (Oborot) [Systemic and Lad Gravitation in Time: Intonatsia (A Cycle)],” where lad gravitation is tension of unstable elements (momentum) toward the stable and the oborot is a cyclical pattern, for example, a part of harmonic progression. Boris Asafiev started working on similar ideas in the late 1910s, in particular, in his articles for Melos. For example, it is not difficult to establish the connection with Yavorsky’s definition of the following passage from Asafiev’s article, published in 1917: If the main impulse of musical motion stems from a very simple urge: to restore the constantly violated balance, and if a living musical fabric is nothing but linkage of the row: balance—violation of balance—restoration of balance, then the essence of symphonic development will also include constant innovation and addition of qualitative element of otherness, and not just the affirmation of the previously existent balance.246

Even the word “stsepleniye” (linkage) resonates with Yavorsky’s “sopryazhenie” (buckling) and is used in the same way. Asafiev, undoubtedly, was familiar with Yavorsky’s teaching and, very probably, borrowed from it the aspects of his definition of intonatsia. He expanded the interdisciplinary scope of intonatsia and elaborated on its facets that were suggested by Yavorsky. Thus, the role of a motive, or a theme, in creation of musical meaning has become a major point in Asafiev’s musical semantics. The idea of motion, incited by the small source of energy, is seen in Asafiev’s idea of musical form as a process and in his famous triad initium-motus-terminus (IMT). Intonatsia is by nature a dynamic and constantly changing entity.

4.7 The Language of Description: a Major Requirement of the Integral Analysis

One of the strongest arguments of integralists against formalists was their suggestion of the specialized language of description for music analysis. Mazel’ and Tsukkerman devoted large parts

The Language of Description

of their texts to this problem. Music should be analyzed in terms maximally close to the artistic languages, such as languages of poetry, fiction, and drama. Otherwise, the result of analysis will come into jarring dissonance with the essence of a musical work. And this is the weakest point of formalism of any kind, especially of methods that rely heavily on vocabulary and discourse borrowed from natural sciences. A simple transfer of this language, the so-called metalanguage of sciences, into humanities is destined to fail. This applies, in the first place, to a great number of quasi-mathematical methods of music theory. It is clearly seen in the characteristics of the desired results—for sciences, the primary requirement is the elimination of the subject from the equation. If any kind of subjectivity contaminates the experiment, its results are considered invalid. In music, the situation is the opposite. If there is no presence of the subject (the figure of composer, performer, or listener), the results of music analysis become superfluous, to say the least. Another category that is rigorously defined in natural sciences is the method of verification. According to Karl Popper,247 scientific truth is such not because someone proved that it is true but because it is impossible to falsify it. In music analysis, only the limited corpus of textbook definitions can carry such characteristics. Every composer takes licenses that become, in a course of time, new techniques of composition. Consequently, the object of music analysis is the score together with the history of its reception, the events in the biographies of composers and performers, and a slew of psychological aspects that accompany any musical utterance. Hanslick’s slogan of depsychologization of music theory is virtually irrelevant. It happened to be inapplicable to music and overall impractical. In order to describe a musical work as a whole, an integralist engages the languages of several professional fields. For example, in the description of musical rhetoric, a musicologist of this conviction enters the discourse of literary studies. In the discussion of musical dramaturgy, the terminology of stage arts seems to be appropriate. The language of integralist analysis is eclectic by default. Unlike the professional talk of a formalist, it manages to unite not only the languages of humanities, but also some terminology from natural sciences and medicine.

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Since the language of the musical composition is poetic in nature, the requirement to use the poetic analytical language is the most conspicuous feature of integral analysis. The problem of language of description becomes even more important if one considers that the integralists did not abandon the criterion of scholarly rigor of the analytical procedure. Leo Mazel’ raises the question of language in the following way: What is the best way to present scientific creative results of analysis, the results of perceptions and reflections of a scholar, musician, scientist? Naturally, this is done by means of words. However, not by such words that, being formally correct, are capable to repel the fine ideas that they are called to express. To put it differently, words should not present the rough device that can destroy or deform the properties of the subject that they intend to describe (as it happens in situations that are all too familiar to physicists). After all, the analysis of the phenomena of art appeals not only to scientific thinking but also to creative perception, on which it relies and, above all, to which it “refers” (obviously or implicitly). Therefore, even if it is not always possible to demand of a statement of the analysis to present a genuine literary or creative figurativeness, it is possible to avoid such analytical statements that contain something anti-creative, insipid, and coming into conflict with the task of studying the phenomenon of art.248

In other words, the verbal reflection on music can be either mundane and prosaic or vivid and poignant. Not all expressions fit into the specialized discourse on music. It is reasonable to extend this to issues of the relevance of visual representations, schematic depictions, algebraic language and other tools and special systems of representation in analysis. These topics were actively discussed within the Soviet theoretical tradition. The difference between descriptive and prescriptive types of the language, used in analysis, has also been pondered in the Soviet period. The philosophical concept of descriptive language, proposed by Wilhelm Dilthey, was among the themes circulating in the scholarly community in the 1980s. Apparently from the books on music theory, Russian authors did not shy away from the prescriptive paradigm. Properly theoretical reasoning has always been in high demand in Russia, the same as in Germany.

The Language of Description

Both formalists and integralists used the prescriptive style of governing principles, categories and concepts that were proposed as obligatory for practical implementation. Even today, Russian theoretical writing remains prescriptive. The Russian theoretical prose has retained some strange aspects, left from the early communication with the German prose of the nineteenth century. For example, it is very common to see the double definitions in the titles, such as, for example, khudozhstvenno-smyslovoe (Russ. literally, artistic-meaningbearing). It is very difficult to grasp precise meaning of these combinations of the terms, each of which needs a thorough commentary. These double adjectives have become cliché and, perhaps, need to be rooted out. Instead of the genre of the abstract, Russian theorists use the bullet-points, dubbed thesisy. In author’s opinion, the Russian theorists could have benefited from adoption of the abstract as a primary genre. Its complete literary form reflects the content of a paper or an article much better than the bullet-points. The author has given a number of seminars on abstract writing at Moscow Conservatory, Gnesin’s Academy of Music, Kazan Federal University and Bashkirian Academy of Sciences; these attempts proved to be useful and rewarding. Russian scholarly prose is filled with overrun sentences. English counterpart could benefit from a more elaborate structure and allowance of a less straightforward narration. Russian style often uses impersonal forms or a passive voice (for example, “kak bylo dokazano” [as it has been proven]). In general, it would be a great project to exchange the most successful aspects of scholarly style between the Russian and English-speaking theorists. A good example of the Russian prose that combines the rigor of a scholarly discourse (in both historic and theoretical dimensions) with the flavor of language, comparable to the pages of well-known Russian literary works, is Viktor Tsukkerman’s writing. In a small book entitled Franz Liszt’s Sonata B Minor, Victor Tsukkerman has demonstrated the beauty of the analytical prose, perhaps, unprecedented in Russian literature on music. Here is a sample of his style, an analysis of Liszt’s Introduction theme:

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The beginning of action is preceded by an image, which is brief but significant. In the form of the whole, it functions as a theme of introduction. Its role in future development is important: it will sound not very often, but only at the most significant moments, coinciding with the turning points in the unfolding of action. Therefore, we have the right to consider it as an image of some superior force, a realization and even the determinant of human fate …. In the sonata-symphonic music of the nineteenth century, some themes play an exclusive, determinant role. The approaches to such themes can be seen in Beethoven’s, as well as in Schubert’s and Tchaikovsky’s symphonies. They are not leitmotivs (like those of Harold in Berlioz, or of Manfred in Tchaikovsky, referring to the personality of a protagonist). These themes are different in that they are above the action. They determine the fate of a hero (fatum in Tchaikovsky’s terms). In the realization of these themes one can see the unity of musical form and content: they both demonstrate the stages of development of an idea and mark the segments of the form. In the conditions of complex image-theme interaction, these themes regulate the development and clarify the form …. They usually appear in the critical moments of the content (during the peripeteia in classical sense, as a sudden break, trope, or a complication in the plot); they often serve as a kind of screen, on which, due to the transformation of a theme, one can see the features of the next segment of form. Exactly such is a ‘supertheme’ which is used in Liszt’s B minor sonata in the beginning and at the end …. The theme has two elements. The first is introduced three times and presents a double combination of abrupt-sounding octaves, placed very low, dimmed to sotto voce, and taken between the main beats of a measure, outside of metric pulse. A combination of all these characteristics creates an impression of rigor, gloom, and of mysteriousness and stealth.249

This language is very technical—it is based upon the terminology of music theory in the strict professional fashion. At the same time, it flows in the way appropriate for literary prose. Noteworthy is the use of artistic metaphors and bright analogies. Tsukkerman continues with a number of powerful metaphors:

The Language of Description

In addition to these interpretations, the fact that the motive is shackled to a single note (which will prove to be true in later entrances of the introduction theme as well) alludes to an attribute of a fatum theme, or the theme of destiny …. The second element of the theme of Introduction is a descending seven-note scale. The first element is not lost here: it becomes a sustained background for the second element, adding to the latter the depth of sound. Hesitant and evenly descending motion along the minor scale in a bass tessitura, the attribute of the second element of the Introduction fatum theme, symbolizes certain inevitability, irreversibility of the events. The scales are imprisoned by the note G, they are enclosed airtight by the octave G–G from above and from below; they are submitted to these G’s as the point of departure … For the same reason, the G absorbs them. This creates an atmosphere of something unavoidable and predetermined. Noteworthy is the dotted pattern, with elongated second note at the expense of the third … This gives a slight impetus to the downward motion, together with a slight increase in the dynamics. It also hints at the dotted pattern of the Main Theme …. The character of the two scales is remarkable. The first is Phrygian minor, the grimmest sounding among all minors. It is possible that Liszt alluded to a Church mode as a symbol. The second scale brings the Hungarian national color. However, its low register indicates something more vicious, than a folk tune: instead, it has a Mephistophelian aspect. Liszt characterized himself as a Hungarian, inclined to religion, but also having demonic traits. Zu einer Hälfte Zigeuner, zur anderen Franziskaner. The theme of introduction, therefore, is somewhat autobiographical … The last feature of the Introduction is the reprise of the two octaves. The circle is thus closed. Liszt suggests that everything is predetermined; the outcome has been decided in the very beginning. Evidently, Liszt understood the Introduction theme as something that for a while was outside the peripeteia of life’s struggle and human endeavors. It stood alone but was ready for further development. Complete close of the circle in the Introduction tells us, that the theme is usable as a closing theme of the sonata as well.250

Tsukkerman was an excellent pianist; he received thorough conservatory training, yet his early career was somewhat unusual for the time: instead of starting it in the confines of the faculty

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position at the conservatory, he earned his living by providing pre-concert lectures at numerous performance venues in Moscow. This activity has left a deep imprint on Tsukkerman’s language, in both his teaching style and scholarly output. It is so bright, so artistic, that his analyses come close to musical performances. Unfortunately, not so many of his students and followers had mastered that language; a distinguishing feature of integral analysis is its truly artistic form of presentation and that remains, mostly, the achievement of a single person, the creator of this type of analysis and its most outstanding representative.

4.8 A Hybrid Graph as the Tool of Integralist Analysis of Musical Dramaturgy

Music theorists are normally not preoccupied with the deficiencies of graphic representation, while it is, perhaps, the most problematic aspect of music analysis. The formalist method offers a great number of graphic reductions and illustrations. Notation itself is an analytical tool, as shown in the recent keynote speech of Nicolas Meeùs at the EUROMAC10 in Moscow.251 While the small-scale events are easier to graph, the large-scale form remains off limits to many methods of analysis. In this respect, the Schenkerian graph is one of the most advanced and detailed in the arsenal of formalist theory. Soviet integralists have done much in this direction as well: there are many examples of graphic representations of holistic analyses of large-scale compositions. One of the first is found in Viktor Tsukkerman’s book Kamarinskaya of Glinka and the Russian Traditions (Figure 4.1).

Figure 4.1 Tsukkerman, the graph of musical dramaturgy in Glinka’s Kamarinskaya.

A Hybrid Graph as the Tool of Integralist Analysis of Musical Dramaturgy

In Figure 4.1, Intro.1 is Introduction to the whole form; Wed. is Wedding song; Tr. is transition; Int.2 is the Introduction to the Dance tune; Dance is Dance tune with variations (they fall into series of strict variations and free variations, hence Str.v. and Fr.v); Tr. is for transitions, bm.rec. is for recapitulation in B minor and ton.rec. is for tonal recapitulation. Climaxes are marked as 1a, 1b, 2a, 2b, 3b and 4b. All the climaxes, including the ones omitted on this graph, are described on pages 342–342 of Tsukkerman’s book. An interesting series of graphs of musical dramaturgy was used by Valentina Kholopova in her lectures in Analysis of Musical Works at Moscow Conservatory in the 1980s. For example, Chopin’s Ballade No. 2 is presented as two opposite forces, that of light and that of darkness, marked as alpha and beta, set on collision course (Figure 4.2).

Figure 4.2 Kholopova, graph of Chopin’s Ballade, op. 28.

The peaceful alpha returns after the presentation of the stormy beta; this time it is contaminated by the negative affect of beta and manifests the signs of unquietness. The beta returns after the second alpha; it is also contaminated. It loses its power (a quintal leap in the first pronouncement turns into the arpeggiation of the six-four chord, a much weaker gesture, in the second). Toward the end, both agents get entangled, which results in Coda and an Afterword. This elegant and simple graph compensates for the lacking mono-tonality and the absent standard form.

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The author published an analysis of Rachmaninoff’s EtudeTableau op. 39, no. 5 in the book Music of Sergei Rachmaninoff: Seven Music-Theoretic Etudes (2011), with the hybrid graph that combines the syntagmatic elements (formal structures of harmony, rhythm, motive and form) in the lower part, and the paradigmatic elements (semantic aspects of actants, actors and agents, as well as the actantial scheme of four emotional conditions that delimit the travel of the line of narrative, all taken from Greimas’s semiotic square and from Roman Jacobson’s paradigmatic analysis of a musical score) (Figure 4.3).

Figure 4.3 Khannanov, hybrid paradigmatic-syntagmatic Rachmaninoff’s Etude-Tableau op. 39, no. 5.252

graph

of

In the same book, one can find other large-scale graphs. For example, Rachmaninoff’s Etude-Tableau op. 39, no. 6, the Little Red Riding Hood, in its framing sections looks and sounds like a fairy tale: Vladimir Propp’s graphic method that covers seven characters (Princess, Villain, etc.) and 31 situation, is used in this analysis.253 The middle section of the same Etude is laid out similarly to a film scene; hence the graph of it is rendered by analogy of Eisenstein and Prokofiev collaboration on Alexander Nevsky.

Folk Song as an Artwork and as the Source of Forms

These graphs may contribute to the holistic, integral analyses of music. In addition to the elements of musical grammar, Soviet integralists venture into a new area: that of dramaturgy of an instrumental work. This topic had been thoroughly researched in the Soviet Union. Indeed, on higher levels of hierarchy, musical works manifest non-technical structures, akin to those of dramatic artforms, such as entanglement, collision, climax and dénouement. Asafiev’s ideas were processed and developed into the idea of musical dramaturgy by Viktor Bobrovsky, in his Functional Foundation of Musical Form, by Tatiana Yurievna Tchernova in her Kandidat dissertation Dramaturgy in Instrumental Music and by Vyacheslav Medushevsky in his Doctoral dissertation Intonational and Fabulaic Nature of Musical Work. Indeed, many large forms can be eloquently described as the succession of entanglement, climax and anticlimax, dénouement and catharsis. A graph of musical dramaturgy allows to grasp the structure and process of the large-scale composition. There are not so many other methods that allow to approach the monumental artworks as the whole.

4.9 Folk Song as an Artwork and as the Source of Forms

During the Meeting with the Soviet musicians at the TsK VKPb in the winter of 1948, Andrei Zhdanov provided his argument in favor of folk songs in the following way: The songs of the people, viewed as musical organisms—not the compositions of certain musical-creative talents, but the works of the whole nation—are different in every fiber of their structures. They are very different from artificial music, from the results of conscious imitations of models, from products of schools, science, routine and reflection. They are the flowers of this particular soil, spawned into the world unmediated and in their entire splendor, without the slightest idea of authorship and, therefore, having little in common with the greenhouse products of the composer’s activity.254

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This statement is not Zhdanov’s original idea. It echoes the thoughts of Alexander Serov and Vladimir Stasov. Every famous Russian poet, writer, theatrical director, playwright, composer and choreographer of the nineteenth century would sign under this statement. Glinka, Balakirev, Mussorgsky, Rimski-Korsakov, Borodin, Lyadov, Taneyev, Rachmaninoff; Pushkin, Nekrasov, Lermontov, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov would share this attitude. Ilya Vasnetsov and Ilya Repin, Marius Petipa and Mikhail Fokine would join it. The appreciation of folk song and fairy tale was unanimous in Russia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. And the country had much to offer in this respect. There were folk songs of three historic periods available in the middle of the twentieth century: the archaic, pre-Christian genres, such epic bylinas, calendar and work songs of small gambitus (oligotonic, modes within the fourth); the genres of so-called classical period, including the lyric prolonged songs (lyricheskaya protyazhnaya pesnya), and contemporary genres, such as historic songs, chastushka’s (a kind of musical limericks) and many others. The Russian folk music was surrounded by 200 other ethnic traditions within the Soviet Union. Each had its own characteristic genres and forms. For example, Bashkirian prolonged song, the so-called ozon kyi, manifests unique metric and rhythmic structure. It eludes the available binary rhythmic divisions of the five-line notation. Such is Bashkirian prolonged song “Sibai.”255 The folk singers—Bashkirian warriors, horsemen, poets, and performers on kurai (an analog of Turkish nai) develop formidable virtuosic skills. The lyrics of the songs are very elaborate. The performers know nothing about meter, rhythm, bar lines, and beats as well as about modes, intervals or pitches. They have their own terminology that does not fit into Western theoretical vocabulary. They, for example, do not play the flute kurai but “smoke” it (Bashkirian kurai tartarha). The parameters that these performers control are derived from the landscape and movement in the steps outside of any points of reference. In such movement, for example, alone on a horse back, the performer cannot measure his or her speed in regular units. The speed is measured by intensity, i.e., energy spent on

Folk Song as an Artwork and as the Source of Forms

movement. Thus, the parameters for analysis of such song are line, surface and speed.256 In the context of the discussion of integralism and its object— musical work as a whole—a folk song, as it has been mentioned in Chapter 1, presents an exception. The folk song does not have the author—or, more precisely, the original author is not known and the generations of participants in the song’s development are so numerous that it makes it impractical to trace all their contributions. In such situations, Soviet folklorists use the categories of multiplicity of variants in the absence of an invariant. In fact, folklorists who work in a limited area, say, the region of Kursk on Russian folklore, or the region of Zilair of the Bashkiria on Bashkir folk song and dances, normally deal not with the great number of songs but with hundreds of versions of a limited number of titles. Such an artwork, therefore, does not have a fixed text. Here, Dahlhaus’s reference to the “document” as the substrate of music loses any meaning. Folk songs are rather individual in their variants; however, as a category and as a title, a folk song manifests the typical more clearly than the individual.257 Working with the folk song gives the idea of how to make music in general. Folk song is a kind of laboratory of melodic means; it offers, besides its own variant and the resultant artifact, the vocabulary of smaller elements, motives, popevkas, phrases, and specific manipulations of lad centers in relation to metric grid, all worked out in the course of centuries of its evolution. Thus, a song or a dance serve as a proven prototypes for other musical works. In this sense, a folk song is more of an essential statement on form rather than of a particular work. In other words, the idea of musical form is slowly developing within folk music. In contrast, a composer cannot help himself or herself not to create an individual, authentic, idiosyncratic work of art. However, if a composer needs an appropriate form, he or she can take it either from the vocabulary of folk materials or design it from scratch. Zhdanov’s definition above states exactly that: folk song is not produced, it evolves very slowly and eventually is discovered, similarly to the objects and laws of nature. And, one may add, it becomes the prototype and the reference source for artificial composition—that which is done by means of technology, structural design, abstraction, application of Platonic ideas, etc.

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If the composer chooses a folk song as the prototype of forms (and the song offers the ready-made options: periodicity, sentence, period, rounded binary, small ternary, French rondo—all Liedformen), he or she will have to oblige and follow certain conventions. The good news is that the result is preconditioned: the listener will recognize such forms with facility. If the composer decides to “create a new form,” it will at least take some time to establish communication with the listeners. It is for this reason, it seems, that the Western classical tradition of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries developed the concept of song-forms (Liedformen). Most of the commonly used smaller forms, such as sentence, period, rounded binary, and small ternary are categorized in nineteenth-century Formenlehre as Liedformen. They come in a package: unlike the individual ideas of composers, these forms have already synthesized the harmonic progression with the succession of beats and measures, motives with phrases, and voice-leading patterns with functional syntax. All these ideas are tested in communication and prove to bring desired results. It is an undeniable fact that melodic material for J. S. Bach’s music comes from the corpus of church hymns—the collection of music of the folk origin; the symphonies of Joseph Haydn are nothing but a number of folk songs and dances of the rich Viennese context implemented in the formal designs of the higher levels. Mikhail Glinka declared that composers do not create but arrange folk music. This statement is matched by A. B. Marx: in the prefaces to the first and the third volumes of his Teaching of Musical Composition he goes at length about the relationship of Genius and Volk, such that Genius is defined as the son of the Volk. This tradition was retained in Soviet theoretical research and pedagogy. Thus, we must separate two factions within Russian formalists: those, who supported new Western music and those who taught traditional courses in musical forms. The former would reject any connection to a folk song; the latter had to admit that most of the standard forms of the ClassicRomantic period were, in fact, song-forms. As mentioned earlier, Yuri Kholopov combined his pioneering efforts on education in new music with vehement adherence to song-forms [pesennyie formy] in his teaching. The song-type melodic content

The Folk Song and Mid-Twentieth Century Musical Modernism

was an essential feature of these forms, together with references to the realm of poetry and poetic meter and dance element. One can add to that that in Germany at the same time the Nazi propaganda emphasized the use of folk song in music theory pedagogy. Ludwig Holtmeier presents it in a non-equivocal way. He quotes Paul Shenk, a theorist from Leipzig, who wrote in the time between 1941 and 1943: A systematic and intellectual structure is rejected. The starting point and the aim of all (theoretical) endeavors must be living music. In the knowledge that theory is there to serve music and not the other way around, a methodology on the basis of singing and hearing is put into practice here. At the center of methodology here is the Volkslied. The songs that are used as examples were almost exclusively from Hitlerjugend song books and [] included into elementary theory of music.258

There are political similarities with the statement of Zhdanov, quoted earlier. However, the dissimilarities outweigh them; they are essential: the Nazi’s used fake folk songs, Ersatzkultur, while Soviet theorists referred to a limited area of the well-known folk materials, primarily from the nineteenthand eighteenth-century collections. The Gehörbildung (the development of ear) in Germany and in the Soviet Union relied upon folk melodies long before World War II. It is one of the most efficient ways to train one’s ear. The folk song cannot be blamed for the development of Nazi ideology in Europe. Nazis could not and should not shift blame on folk art, Wagner, Nietzsche, Greek and Roman thought, Enlightenment, and industrialization. The root and the cause of fascism and Nazism were not related to these major cultural achievements.

4.10 The Folk Song and Mid-Twentieth Century Musical Modernism

It is worthy to mention that Bashkirian folk song is one of the objects of the most cutting-edge studies within the European discourse. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari would be very excited to learn about the songs and tunes of Bashkirs since it was exactly the art of nomads that was used as an argument by French

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philosophers of the 1960s and 1980s for the deconstruction of the Western canon.259 In a sense, we enjoy the product of their hopes and aspirations today. As for actual analysis of such songs, there is no specific approach yet, no tool, applicable to and corresponding with the musical material. Bashkirian song awaits a theorist who will be capable of creating the language of analytical description for nomadic music. Perhaps, the community of theorists can abandon logocentric sediments in analysis and revise and revive the analytical procedures that are implied by the folk terminology. This way, analysis of formal elements will constantly clean itself from the layers of mid-twenty-century logocentric stereotypes. Here, again, the folk song as a source provides the remedy from the most common problem of music analysis: reliance on pseudo-scientific, idealistic manipulations of musical materials as the objects in sync with Platonic separation of the world into the domain of the ideal and domain of the other (the Shadow in the Cave). Music analysts often take these shadows for face value. Formal strategies in music, in contrast with that, keep renovating the outlook of the form. World War I and World War II gave birth to a magnificent song culture on both sides of the Atlantic. Composers of film music and musicals, as well as jazz performers and composers, did not isolate themselves from ordinary people (this was not the case with modernists who wrote music “not for everyone”). Music has become a universe that truly united millions. We may add that the beauty and longevity of this tradition can be explained by a profound connection with the nineteenth-century song culture in general and Liedform as a category in particular. In the fall of 2022, the Society for Music Theory hosted an annual meeting in New Orleans and one rather provocative panel of short talks was dedicated to the question of folk music in modern composition, within the framework of race and ethnicity. There were participants with well-established positions, such as Justin London and Robert Gjerdingen, and there were others who just started their careers. The latter searched for the answers to actual problems of music theory, analysis, and composition; they ventured into music of various ethnic origins, including music of Bashkirs and music of Navaho. The idea, proposed by composers

Formalism and Modernism

of ethnic renaissance of the nineteenth century, suddenly returned in the first third of the twenty first.

4.11 Formalism and Modernism

Thus, the question at hand is more theoretical and universal. It may be formulated as the opposition of realism to modernism, and, more precisely, the problematic status of a modernist artist. How he or she sees the possibility to create art without any connection to other people, to the land, the sea, the rivers, forests, mountains, to historic traditions and culture, by just following the technical innovations, general principles, and abstract ideas? Is it possible to create the art “from scratch” (from ground zero, as Le Corbusier suggested)? Here, Platonic reliance on the shadows of consciousness proves to be ultimately misleading. Platonic idea—εἶδος—may seem a plausible tool for creation. It is abstract and not predetermined by material objects or real events. Of course, without such ideas contemporary natural sciences would have not existed. Aristotelian μῑ́μησις is another tool of learning of the material world. Abstraction, generalization though the category of kind—these instruments were used extensively by scientists. Quasi-scientific vocabulary is commonly applied—or, more precisely, is attempted to be applied, to arts. In humanities, though, the rules are different. The ontology of arts is specific: it includes the subject that cannot be eliminated even for the sake of the analytical convenience. Yet, modernism is obsessed with abstract, non-referential ideas, borrowed from sciences. There had been some important achievements in modernist architecture. For example, the Glass House of Phillip Johnson, or geodesic dome in Oklahoma City. They present aesthetically pleasing abstract shapes. However, these buildings proved to be unlivable and impractical. Musical modernism, represented by, say, Le Marteau sans maître, has become a historic artifact today. Fred Lerdahl insisted upon impenetrable character of composer’s grammar and the necessity of listener’s grammar that is independent from the former. Lerdahl suggested that music of Boulez is cognitively opaque.260 In general, the question can be set forth on an even higher level: what is the capability of an artist? Can he or she create

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from ground zero by using sheer power of an intellect to knowing precisely what is going on in such creation without the help of God, nature, or tradition? Obviously, the question belongs to philosophy and theology; it is related to René Descartes’ motto cogito ergo sum and the reaction to it by Baruch Spinoza.261 On the one hand, Friedrich Nietzsche announced the death of God,262 and that gave a strong impetus for modernism in arts and politics of the twentieth century. His slogan was very convincing, and generations of creators took it for the face value. To counter that, one may remember that Plato expelled poets from the ideal state for a reason: he doubted their actual abilities and feared that they would act as demiurges, thus trying to eclipse gods. These collisions in philosophical positions caused the divide of art theorists into formalists and integralists. Formalism outside of traditional musical form, as a set of aesthetic judgements, despite a very sophisticated look, is often a sign of weakness. It makes an impression of something more advanced than realism, but, upon closer examination, it appears to be lacking the depth and wisdom of the popular art, for the reason, mentioned above: it is created by a single individual on limited resources.

4.12 Soviet Events of 1936 and 1948 as the Struggle with Formalism and Modernism

On this background, the position of some members of the Soviet Composer’s Union in Moscow and Leningrad in 1936 and 1948 acquires some unexpected characteristics, with their rejection of the style based on a folk song and rather anachronistic interest in the intriguing complexity of German atonality. Even the works positioned as formalist were often not such upon a closer examination. For example, the score of one of the stigmatized formalists Vano Muradely’s Druzhba Narodov does not provide any traces of formalism of which it has been accused. In fact, it is a rather weak compilation of Rimsky-Korsakov’s and Rachmaninoff’s harmonic language, overlaid by a fictitious “contemporary” musical gadget, diluted with endless and formless recitatives and undefined harmonic progressions. A fragment of the recording of this opera can be found on the website classic-online.ru.263

Soviet Events of 1936 and 1948 as the Struggle with Formalism and Modernism

The irritation with Muradely and labeling him as a “formalist” composer was, however, not without foundation. The problem was not his modernist compositional technique but the eclectic style lacking the personal integrity of the author (a feature that is indispensable for creating an operatic masterpiece). His second opera Oktyabr’ (1954)264 contains the following passage, a manifestation of ultimately convoluted harmony and form (Example 4.1).

Example 4.1 Vano Muradely. Opera Oktyabr’. The elements of formalism.

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This example represents the style commonly used by Soviet composers before and after World War II. Although it does not appear very avant-garde, it bears all the features of what had been labeled as a “formalist” style. First, one can see the obsessive use of ostinato—an apparent homage to the great music of Shostakovich—but, in this case, a completely meaningless gesture. This ostinato is given in such an artificial, made-up way (Russ. narochitoye, iskusstvennoye), that its primary significance as consistent motion or beauty of static space is lost to the mechanistic repetition. It is done only with the intention “to make something look like advanced contemporary musical language.” Its harmonic language is even more pretentious. Although it is obvious that the composer did not have the slightest clue about various textures and techniques of modern music, and his presentation hardly exceeds the schoolbook four-part chorale voice leading, he still is trying to deform it in any way possible, just to appear and sound “contemporary.” Besides the three sharps, nothing indicates that this music is written in a given key. Very strange, undefined chords contain unnecessary chromatic contradictions, such as the cross-relation E natural and E flat in the first chord. If this chord is meaningful in any way—and indeed, it is a simple diminished seventh chord—the presence of the regular scale step 2 and its lowered version in a single verticality does not make any sense. In the nineteenth-century harmonic language, a split scale step 2 in the dominant was quite common, but Muradely’s version does not fit into this paradigm. Strange, unwieldy chords form progressions that are even more awkward. If this is supposed to be “free atonality,” then it should have been compared with Schoenberg’s ideas of the 1910s and the comparison would be not in favor of Muradely. And what can be a final point in this argument, Muradely composed several magnificent popular songs. For example, his “And the apple trees will blossom on Mars” on the lyrics by Dobrokhotov had become a top hit after Yuri Gagarin’s space flight in the spring of 1961.265 The problem with harmony would not have mattered as much, but it is exacerbated by the ultimately awkward melodic line.

Soviet Events of 1936 and 1948 as the Struggle with Formalism and Modernism

The vocal part either enters with an almost comical effect on the wrong beats or climbs up at the end of the phrase through a grueling “passus duriusculus.” It is neither a recitative nor an arioso melodic line. Thus, this howling vocal writing continues, propped by an even more unpolished orchestration for the entire three acts and eight scenes of the opera. In fact, this “atonality” is nothing but a joke, a job done in a slipshod manner (Russ. spustya rukava), that is, done carelessly (Russ. formal’no, formally, just for the check mark in the list of things done). It is, indeed, formalistic in the worse sense of the word. Considering that by that time a completely developed theory of intonatsia was publicly available and Soviet listeners had a perfect command of folk music (old and new) this page represents nothing but a slap in the face for all Soviet listeners. The Russian word “formalism” bears connotations of something done without appropriate attention, something which satisfies superficial requirements (formal’nye trebovaniya) but is simply fake. It seems that Muradely was perfectly satisfied with his compliance with the generalized “Western” criterion circulating among his colleagues, but did not give it a second thought when writing a musical work intended to exist in a certain culture. Nothing is clear in this score, except the annoying idea of emancipation of a dissonance. Atonality is implemented here with such carelessness that it caricaturizes the tragic efforts of Schoenberg to organize his musical material in his earlier atonal works. And, unlike Schoenberg’s George Lieder, Erwartung or Piano Pieces op. 11, this example of atonal music bears no traces of style. Yet, Muradely did not hesitate to receive a luscious honorarium for this score, as well as for a number of other compositions. Formalism is a side effect of the search for a new paradigm. It is meaningless as such but necessary as an intermediary step. The great composers who sacrificed themselves in the stormy 1930s and 1940s did so with full consciousness; they knew that the formalist aspect in their compositions existed as a necessary element. Both Prokofiev and Shostakovitch understood that they were moving through the unknown territory and the search for a new paradigm would be costly.

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The collision of aesthetic views of composers in 1948 was the result of something more profound and substantial—the discrepancy in the understanding of the essence of music and the method of its analysis by music theorists. The debates of February 1948 over “formalism,” although intended to be about composers and their musical styles, jumped in and out of theoretical domain. Thus, Tikhon Khrennikov in his statement entitled “Za Tvorchestvo, Dostoinoye Sovetskogo Naroda” [For the Art, Worthy of the Soviet People] started with quotation from a book by Leonid Sabaneyev: Music is not ideology, but pure sound organization …. Music does not express ideas … it has its own musical world of ideas. Therefore, no most contemporary ideology can generate contemporary music (1924).266

This was viewed by Tikhon Khrennikov as a manifestation of formalism in music theory. He suggested that “the modernism of Western art had strongly influenced the conservatories in 1910–1912, the Moscow Conservatory, and especially, the St. Petersburg Conservatory.” Khrennikov also mentioned the names of a number of theorists and musicologists: “The most consistent apologists of the composers of formalist trend were musicologists Shlifshtein, Martynov, Zhitomirsky, Mazel’, Belza and Tsytovich.”267 Interestingly enough, Leo Mazel’, who was, along with Viktor Tsukkerman, the creator of the Soviet method of analysis of musical works, was listed among the supporters of formalism. The discussion continued with a statement from Mikhail Gnesin: “In the West the music of Prokofiev and Shostakovich is not labeled as formalist; rather, it is defined as eclectic.”268 This is an interesting attempt to defend the two great Soviet composers from the accusations of formalism. It is also the prediction of what could have happened to both if they stayed in the West. And it happens to be very adequate, indeed, as Geoffrey Chew writes in his article quoted earlier that: “modernist music of the East came to be dismissed in the West as pure propaganda.”269 The next statement in the debates came from Sergey Sergeyevich Skrebkov:

Soviet Events of 1936 and 1948 as the Struggle with Formalism and Modernism

The inappropriate condition depended not only on musicologists—it was commonly perceived that the creative process should be elemental, completely unconscious …. At the Moscow Conservatory, students were not instructed to respect theoretical culture. The Conservatory prepares not musicians but narrow-minded craftsmen. The cancellation of the course of analysis of a musical work recommended by Alexey Ogolevets would have led to even more enhanced craftsmen’s formalism.270

Sergey Skrebkov was one of the most important music theorists of the Soviet period. It is impossible to label him as an uneducated communist barbarian. His statement reflects a real problem, which has been exacerbated by the political conditions of 1948, but was also caused by a more substantial dilemma within the professional field. Indeed, the conservatory training of professional musicians—this gem of Russian musical culture and the source of its success—has become a routine discipline of schooling according to the old Western textbooks. The reverence toward Johann Christian Lobe (whose book was translated by Tchaikovsky) and Ludwig Bussler (whose textbook on musical form was translated by Taneyev) subsided to a great degree by the 1930s. Therefore, Ogolevets’ call to abandon the new Soviet method of analysis of musical works (i.e., tselostnyi analysis) in favor of old teaching of form was met with ultimate skepticism. It was simply too late to suggest returning to that nineteenthcentury tradition. Viktor Tsukkerman had not left this challenge unanswered as well: A very symptomatic case is presented by the alliance of the Moscow Conservatory with the creator of a formalist theory Alexey Ogolevets. You could have seen this for yourselves upon listening to the awkward appeal of Ogolevets to cancel the course in analysis of musical works. This course has not reached a state of perfection yet. However, it reaches far beyond the craftsmenformalist teaching methods of Moscow Conservatory.271

The concept of craftsmanship—a word, which in English language has no negative connotations—is charged with an overtone of negativity in Russian. It is a very old tradition that comes from Russian poetry of the times of Alexander Pushkin,

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in which the sublime art of poetry had always been opposed to the craftsmanship [Russ. remeslennichestvo] as something that lacks a transcendental and sublime meaning. In fact, Russian poets, musicians and artists have always accused the West of exaggeration of the technical aspects in artworks at the expense of sublime spiritual content. This is one of the most common postulates of Russian art, and it contributed to the dramatic unfolding of the events of 1948 in Soviet music. In conclusion to this sad topic, the author could add the great demand of time (Russ. veleniye vremeni) in the 1940s; this demand has been to write music enrooted in the melodic culture of folk origins. Some composers had demonstratively sabotaged it; others, such as Tikhon Khrennikov, had tried, but failed to implement the folk song in an organic fashion. Aaron Copland’s use of Shaker melodies has been successful, although it took a great deal of balancing and fine-tuning. The same can be said about Ralph Vaughan Williams or John Rutter. It appears that folk music implementation in academic forms and genres is a necessary and important task for any style and period, but it requires careful consideration and free will on the side of composers. The failure of the members of the Composers’ Union to realize this important project was the result of both aggressive coercion from government officials and composers' lack of understanding of its importance. And, paradoxically, the ideas from the other side of the barricades in 1948—music based on folk songs, expressivity of human voice and vocal line, music which signifies human suffering and joy of victory, even tonal music—emerge now here and there in both the West and Russia. Contemporary Russian neofolklorist composers, such as Valery Kikta and Valery Gavrilin, do not force Western harmony on their music, as did RimskyKorsakov. Instead, they use real recordings of folksongs and their academic transcriptions (rasshifrovki) and present folk music in its full splendor, unmediated by nineteenth-century textbook harmony and form (see Example 4.2, an excerpt from Kikta’s score “Bylinnyie Zvukoryady” [Epic Scales] for harp).

Soviet Events of 1936 and 1948 as the Struggle with Formalism and Modernism

Example 4.2 Valery Kikta. Bylinnyie Zvukoryady, a sample of neo-folkloristic approach.

The music of Alfred Schnittke, although not related to folklore, uses the sound of the styles of the past as the metaphor of humanity. He often adds the sound of the amplified harpsichord to his atonal music, which pierces through the thick orchestral texture as a sounding metaphor of the Baroque (e.g., this is the case in his 5th Symphony). Apparently, for Schnittke the human aspect of Baroque music represented the universal human values (Russ. obshchechelovecheskiye tsennosti), with the aid of which he used to confront the totalitarian regime. So, in this case, the non-modernist aesthetics was used not by the Soviet government but by a composer who dedicated his life to struggling against it. The music of Arvo Pärt since the 1970s manifests an energetic and fearless break-up with formalism. His turn toward church music tradition of the past (both Western and Eastern) and engagement with simpler harmonic textures (tintinnabuli) could have become an alternative model for the Soviet formalists—an excellent example of independent creative thinking. Pärt studied music at the Children’s Music School and Tallinn Conservatory in the Soviet Union. He retained his original attitude to music and did not fall for either Soviet social determinism or Western modernism.

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In the West, fewer composers now write purely modernist music, while the deficit of meaning in music—serious, existential meaning, human emotion, and the eternal values of life—remains actual. The Vers une symphonie fleuve by Wolfgang Rihm and Soliloque by George Rochberg support integralist aesthetics. A composition by Donnacha Dennehy entitled “One Hundred Goodbyes” (Cèad Slán) implements, in a very organic way, the field recordings of Irish folk music of the 1920s with the minimalist accompaniment of a string quartet. His approach recreates the context for the dialogue of times and vital connection with the tradition of the past. The conclusion to this chapter follows the logic of the events during the unquiet decades in the Soviet Union: music analysis can become balanced and complete only with the introduction of the ideas of human determinism, national identity, and individual psychological content. Again, as with Chapter 2 on formalism, this one offers such a smorgasbord of ideas of heterogenous order that it makes the two chapters non-correlative. And the old idea of autonomy of music fails to confront integralism; the latter is too diverse and rich to be thematized and annihilated by the critique from the opposite camp. The inclusion of the extramusical is not only legitimate: music proves again and again its unstoppable power of reference. Ingardens’ interpretation of the musical work as a core (notational substrate) and infinite periphery (work in the history of its performance and reception) suggests solid ontological status to musical work and to integral analysis. Therefore, instead of trying to cancel the flow of references, an analyst may put his or her skills to great use by learning how to work with this flow. Analysis will not become less rigorous by synthesizing the emotional aspects with the cerebral. There is a large corpus of materials on musical emotions that has been published recently; various societies for musical semiotics, musical meaning, and musical sociology unite thousands of members. The language of description of music is the core problem of musicology of any trend. Mazel’ and Tsukkerman developed a fusion of poetic language (equivalent

Soviet Events of 1936 and 1948 as the Struggle with Formalism and Modernism

of artistic expression in music) with the rigorous academic discourse, akin to “science of music.” Much has been done in the area of music as a semiotic object. The aspects of music that have been intentionally avoided by formalists, such as musical genre, dramaturgy and intonatsia, have become the parts of common vocabulary of music analysis in the Soviet Union and in Russia. Folk music was returned into discussion of academic composition by integralists. Today it has become actual again in the West. In this sense, integralist analysis happened to follow the global tendency toward equity, diversity and inclusion.

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Chapter 5

Late Soviet and Post-Soviet Developments of the Opposition Form vs. Work During the late Soviet and post-Soviet periods, the harsh arguments between formalists and integralists did not subside; yet, the proponents on both sides settled at the conservatories and research institutions. At least, there were no trials anymore. These decades brought in the hope for reconciliation, or, if not that, the synthesis of sorts. It happened and was realized in the higher-level discourse of the 1960s–80s, more scientifically enhanced and better informed.

5.1 The Thaw

The historical exigency to be on par with the West—something which has moved Russia forward for centuries—caused the change in politics and the arts after the death of Stalin. In 1953, a class of young musicians graduated from the pre-conservatory colleges and entered the Moscow and Leningrad Conservatories. This class was so compact and unique in its destiny that very soon the students, including Edison Denisov, Sofia Gubaidulina, Valentina Kholopova, Yuri Kholopov and several others, organized an alternative “Composers’ Union.” Form vs. Work: A Major Antinomy of Music Theory and Analysis Ildar D. Khannanov

Copyright © 2024 Jenny Stanford Publishing Pte. Ltd.

ISBN 978-981-5129-01-4 (Hardcover), 978-1-032-69416-0 (eBook) www.jennystanford.com

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The slogan of this tight-knit group could very well be “The Path to New Music.” One can say that these words were repeated more often than others by Yuri Kholopov and his classmates. The vulgar social-determinist theory yielded its place to a more sophisticated form of analysis. Music theorists established a close relationship with colleagues from Moscow University and other leading universities and institutes. Thus, Kholopov engaged in a fruitful intellectual relationship with Alexei Losef, and since that time music theory at the Moscow Conservatory included noble references to ancient Greek culture, as well as the classical Greek and Hellenic concepts of harmony and form. Kholopov secretly attended meetings and informal lessons with Phillip Herschkowitz (his surname was transcribed into Russian as “Gershkovich”)—a student of Anton Webern and a modest librarian at one of the Moscow’s suburban uchilishe’s. Most of the knowledge of new music came from this source, along with many Herschkowitz’ great jokes and humorous remarks that have become secret signs of the community of his followers. Herschkowitz was also a source of knowledge of Western teaching of form according to Schoenberg’s method. On the other hand, simultaneously with the resistance of the shestidesyatniks (the people who were active during the 1960s) to the Khrushchev and the Brezhnev administrations, there was another line of desperate defense, that which involved the older-generation proponents of Soviet analysis, the creators of the tselostnyi method, Mazel’ and Tsukkerman. The overall enthusiasm for this typically Soviet method had somewhat faded. One of the two of its creators, Lev Abramovich Mazel’, left the Conservatory and spent the final decades of his professional life at the Institute of the Theory of Arts. Valentina Kholopova—a student of Mazel’, who defended her Kandidat Dissertation under his supervision—once mentioned in a private conversation with the author of this book that “unfortunately, under the pretext of resistance to the government’s campaign against formalism, the opposite side, the integralist analysis has been subsequently unjustifiably dismissed.” Indeed, if the 1930s and 1940s presented a victory for the integralists, in the late 1950s and the 1960s the formalists managed to return on the wave of Khrushchev’s “Thaw.”

The Coexistence of Both Doctrines in the Conservatory Programs

5.2

The Coexistence of Both Doctrines in the Conservatory Programs

While the contrast between form analysis and integral analysis lies at the foundation of Russian music theory, it is difficult to separate these two concepts institutionally. After the turbulent events of 1936 and 1948, when the integralists were on the winning side (although, as it could be seen from a number of documents, Mazel’ had been labeled as formalist as well), and the easing of tensions during the “Thaw” of the early 1960s, during which the formalists had regained some of the positions they had lost earlier, by the 1970s and 1980s both the formalists and the integralists had to settle down and work at the same conservatories in Moscow and Leningrad and some forty other conservatories of the USSR, taking the leadership from one another at different times. Most of the new formalists, Yuri Kholopov among them, had some experience in the method of instruction of musical form which was established before World War II. Some of their professors of the old school who had inherited the preRevolutionary theory of musical form continued teaching according to the nineteenth-century Russian tradition. For example, an important role was played by Khristofor Kushnarev, a professor of counterpoint at the Leningrad Conservatory, who had left extensive memories of the teaching methods at the St. Petersburg Conservatory under the rectorship of Alexander Glazunov.272 Georgyi Catoire and Georgy Conus had been the leading professors at the Moscow Conservatory in the 1920s and 1930s and the memory of their work lasted well into the 1960s. The texts of Taneyev, Puzyrevsky, Kashkin and Arensky were commonly available. It is interesting to trace the evolution of both disciplines before and after the unquiet periods of Soviet history. As mentioned earlier, one of the first-class curriculums designed for the Moscow Conservatory after the October Revolution in 1921 proposes that students should study “the etymology and syntax of real music, and not the dead compositional schemes.”273 Similar conditions existed at the Petrograd (Leningrad Conservatory). Zinaida Evald, a student of Boris Asafiev, taught a course in

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“Analysis of Musical Works in the Process of their Scientific Understanding” for the fourth-year theory majors in 1928–1929.274 Yuri Kholopov, a fervent opponent of the “Soviet course in analysis of musical work,” nevertheless, had to create the program particularly for that kind of course himself and it is counted among his publications. Its title is Analiz Muzykal’nykh Proisvedenii. Programma dlya Muzykal’nykh Uchilish’ [Analysis of Musical Works. A Program for the Musical Uchilishe (i.e., College)] and it was approved by the Ministry of Culture of the USSR.275 Even today there are two courses taught at the Moscow Conservatory simultaneously. The discipline of musical form is taught to all students, while a course in Analysis of Musical Works is offered in the fourth year of study, and Dr. Alexander Sokolov, the Rector of the Conservatory, reads it only for the undergraduate students majoring in music theory. And, considering the indelible impact of the events of the twentieth century, today the course in musical form contains some elements of the integralist approach. The integralist views are strong and persistent, and some of them are generally accepted by the formalists. Subsequently, the initial concept of integral analysis expanded in several directions, so that it currently looks absolutely unlike the original rigid mandatory discipline of social determinism. In the late 1950s and 1960s, music theory in the Soviet Union had developed into a large field. There were other types of music theorists, beyond the opposition of the integralists and the formalists, and their role was much more significant than merely standing on the sidelines. For example, Yuri Nikolayevich Tyulin, a leading figure at the Leningrad Conservatory, would not share exactly the positions of either Mazel’ or Kholopov. In his book Stroyenie Muzykal’noi Rechi [The Design of Musical Speech], published in 1962, he makes a distinction, that of musical speech and the structure of the musical work as a whole: The structure of musical speech (by this name we call the area of musical form, in distinction from the structure of the musical work as a whole) takes up much space in a number of traditional music theory textbooks. This obviously positive aspect has its negative side as well. Indeed, often a school-type

The Coexistence of Both Doctrines in the Conservatory Programs

analysis is commonly reduced to the observation of music on a very small level (the most difficult of which is motivic analysis), which obstructs the view of the musical work as a whole. The analysis thus becomes detached from the larger picture presenting itself as being overly dry and ultimately formalistic (emphasis is mine I. Kh.). The structure of musical speech is offered in these textbooks in the exceedingly narrow framework of the standard Classical forms and all the musical elements are forced into this framework, with very few exceptions. For example, such deficiencies are present in the textbook by Georgy Catoire.276 As a result, truly inexhaustible variety of musical speech remains off limits for music theorists, and the theory appears to be dogmatic and detached from artistic practice …. If we are to caution the analyst against excessive use of such an approach at the expense of tselostnyi analiz and of the structure of musical speech (this mostly applies to motivic analysis), we may still suggest, instead, that specialized research in this area is very productive. For example, the structure of musical speech is closely related to melody which presents an independent field of research. Significant achievements in this field were reached by Leo Mazel’ in his book O Melodii [On Melody], published in 1952.277

This rather cold and unbiased estimate of the state of affairs is given by the leading theorist of the Leningrad School. As someone who belonged to a tradition which has been an arch-rival to that of the Moscow School since the nineteenth century, Tyulin retains the balance of an outsider, or an arbiter. The judgments of Tyulin reveal a very objective and rational approach to the controversy of form vs. work. Indeed, one significant drawback of the formalist approach has always been a mechanical analysis of form and harmony on a very local level. In a paradoxical way, the Leningrad school of music theory seems to be much closer (than the Moscow school) to Schenkerian critique of the myopic character of nineteenthcentury traditional tonal theory. Another distinguishing feature of the Leningrad School is its practical tendency; both Tyulin and his student Tatyana Bershadskaya stay away from abstract topics that were courageously tackled by the Moscow music theorists of both the integralist and the formalist

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upbringing. The textbook of the Brigade from Leningrad, Muzykal’naya Forma [Musical Form] presents a sobering mixture of both methods. Tyulin’s contribution to this book is the chapter in which he begins with his distinction of musical form as a whole and musical speech, but ends with unexpected apology for the formalist method: A one-part form is used in music as both a subordinate unit and as an independent form, especially in vocal music.278 Meanwhile, our traditional teachings of form do not pay any attention to this form. A well-developed one-part form is never considered as such but always conflated with the period form. This situation must be clarified. While in musical practice the one-part form and the period act as similar phenomena, as theoretical notions of theory they are quite different. If the period is a part of musical speech, the one-part form belongs to a different category, to that of musical form as a whole.279 In general, the form of a musical work may be analyzed either as a structure of musical speech or as a component of the musical content. For example, the simplest strophic form is not always comprised of a period; often the simplest one presents a sentence (phrase), while a more developed one can exceed the period. Moreover, the structure, similar in its thematic development, may contain the features of two- and even three-part forms. The conflation of these two categories often leads to misunderstanding in the analysis of musical work. When analyzing musical form, we have the right to consider it not from an all-encompassing, but from a single concrete point of view (emphasis is mine—I. Kh). This means, that we can analyze a form as a one-part form, leaving outside the considerations of its speech structure. This reasonable abstraction facilitates the analysis of one-part forms.280

This quite unexpected sway away from the integralist method and toward the formalist practical exigency reveals the inborn deficiency of integral analysis. Very often in the practice of theoretical investigation of a piece of music, it is important to root out many aspects for the sake of focusing on one. Such focus allows for both deep penetration into the essence of music and, paradoxically, for making far-reaching conclusions on its meaning as a whole.

The Coexistence of Both Doctrines in the Conservatory Programs

In the present day, the integralism allows Russian theorists to incorporate a variety of new doctrines, ranging from postmodernist philosophy to the new Russian Orthodox Christian musicology. These newest trends inherited the tradition of the openness and daring scientific persistence of the integralists of the 1970s and 1980s. The integralists that emerged in that period, such as Vyacheslav Medushevsky and Yevgenyi Nazaikinsky, have earned the respect of the theoretical community by their uninhibited journeys into neurobiology, linguistics, and formal logic. Medushevsky defended his first dissertation (Kandidat) The Structure of Musical Work in Its Directedness at the Listener in 1971. The bibliography reveals his profound knowledge of the cutting-edge sources, such as works of Eero Tarasti and Vladimir Karbusicky in musical semiotics, Peter Kivy on musical philosophy and many others. In the Soviet Union in 1971 information of this sort was available to a very limited number of scholars. The second dissertation entitled IntonatsionnoFabul’naya Priroda Muzykal’noi Formy [The Intonational-Fabulaic Nature of Musical Form] was defended in 1984. The author, as a student at the Conservatory, witnessed this defense. The topic and the level of discussion were unprecedented for that time and, very probably, would be perceived as such today in the West. Medushevsky surprised the audience with his binary opposition of intonatsia to fabula as to primary methods of composition. He also introduced the idea of functional ambivalence of the brain (right-brain and left-brain periods in music history) and many other outstanding ideas. Yevgenyi Nazaikinsky, a student of Sergei Skrebkov (just as Medushevsky) had become a leading theorist at the Moscow Conservatory. His books, The Psychology of Music Perception (Kandidat dissertation) of 1972 and The Logic of Musical Composition (1982) have become the staple of Soviet advanced interdisciplinary musicology. Valentina Kholopova, a student of Leo Mazel’, wrote the Kandidat dissertation Problems of Rhythm in Music of the Composers of the Twentieth Century, in which she formulated the principles of meter and rhythm for Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Stravinsky. It has been met with great enthusiasm by Peter C. van den Toorn, Stephen Walsh and many other Western experts in rhythm and meter. Kholopova’s work on Russian Musical Rhythmic has earned

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her the Prize of the Government of Moscow in 2017. Her articles, such as “On Prototypes of Functions of Classical Form” have become major contributions into currently discussed topics of formal functions. In particular, this article connects formal functions with the parts of rhetorical disposition—something that remains yet to be discovered in the West. Although Yuri Kholopov declared himself a formalist, the opponent of integral analysis, he was rather adequately perceived by the scholarly community as the leading theorist of the country for several decades. He wrote his Diploma thesis under the supervision of Igor Sposobin on harmony of Prokofiev’s ballet Cinderella in 1954, which was one of the most advanced harmonic analyses of the time. His dissertation entitled The Questions of Harmony of Prokovief (1968) was so advanced for his time that he could not defend it for eight years after it has been published as a book The Modern Aspects of Harmony of Prokoviev in 1967. Kholopov’s enthusiasm for new music was overwhelming: he introduced the second Viennese school into the Soviet music theory. Fluent in Greek and Latin, Kholopov taught courses in harmony and musicaltheoretical systems for a select group of students, majoring in music theory, musicology and composition. In a sense, despite old grievances, integralists and formalists were engaged in highlevel intellectual dialogue, which was connected to philosophy, sociology, natural sciences, psychology, history and new music. Moscow Conservatory was not alone in this cutting-edge development of research and pedagogy. Gnesin’s Institute of Music (currently, Russian Academy of Music) had its own stellar faculty. Natalya Gulyanitskaya’s work on contemporary music and harmony stands out as an exciting alternative to Kholopov’s interpretations. Tatiana Bershadskaya and Ekaterina Rutchievskaya at the Leningrad Conservatory have created an entirely independent branch of music theory, labeled as “Leningrad school.” There were many interesting developments at other conservatories, for example, in Novosibirsk, Gorky, Petrozavodsk, as well as Minsk, Kyiv, Yerevan, Tbilisi, Baku, Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius and many others. It is also true that the integralists have never rejected the close connection with nineteenth-century music analysis. They merely tried to renew some of its principles. However, since the events of 1991, the formalist approach has received a carte blanche and it offered greater opportunities

One More Round of Struggle in the 1960s and 1980s

to its followers. Nowadays, the course at the Conservatory has returned its original title, “analysis of form,” and a series of the most recent textbooks have the word “form” in their titles.

5.3 One More Round of Struggle in the 1960s and 1980s

The controversy and the intrigue in relationship of the integralist and the formalist trends continued as late as the 1960s and 1980s, despite the necessity to coexist at the workplace. The journal Sovetskaya Muzyka [Soviet Music], famous for publishing the materials of the trials of 1936 and 1948, continued the trend of fight against technologization. At the end of 1967 and 1976, the journal summoned round tables on the subject of “Music Scholarship as Social and Humanitarian Science.” Its pathos, voiced primarily by Valentina Konen and Daniel Zhytominrsky, was directed at Yuri Kholopov, although the culprit was not given an opportunity to defend himself (that happened only ten years later). Nobody was left untouched by the urgency of the issue. For example, Inna Barsova contributed to this discussion: The whole formation of their teachers grew up without hearing

the music of Wagner, Mahler, Debussy, Ravel and Stravinsky.

In fact, in 1928–29 there was a State Coup prepared by the

ruling clan of Stalinists and carried out in their ill-famous

publications. In the 1940s, as a result of their intrigues, the disciplines of music theory and music history of music were

separated.281

This alarming evaluation describes the situation with music history and theory. Music historians were concerned with the situation and were trying to amend the status quo. Valentina Konen published an article “Zadachi Pervostepennoi Vazhnosti” [The Tasks of Ultimate Importance] in Soviet Music, 1977, no. 5 with the calls to return music studies into the field of humanities. Yuri Kholopov took the opposing side and published a rebuttal in Soviet Music, 1988, no. 9: The journal Sovetskaya Muzyka has made several claims

against “technologization” in favor of “wider involvement with

humanities.” At the end of 1967 and in the beginning of 1976, it

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argued on behalf of “defense of historical musicology,” but who is attacking it? Valentina Konen writes that “the music theorists are busy studying marching themes in the music of Beethoven and Schubert.” Are we really doing this? She suggests going beyond the realm of music. Humanities are extra-musical. What does she find lacking in what we do? Music? No, she does not! ... The real plague of music theory is that it has become the technology of endlessly spreading sentimental descriptions of feelings. It supplants, parasitically, theory with a musical worldview. This is theory, but the theory of what? The theorists of our days treat music theory as a secondary technological discipline. In fact, music theory is a musical science.282

Kholopov formulates the problem of the position of his opponents and offers his approach to analysis: Those who consider the love for technique to present a sign of low craftsmanship [Russ. nizmennogo remeslennichstva—I. Kh.], who try to set up an opposition between technique and poetics, technique and inspiration, technique and flight of thought, have never studied our art or have studied it in vain, having been deprived of an organ which can perceive the beauty of music.283

As an example of such a musician, Kholopov brings up the name of Leo Mazel’. He accuses his rival in the misinterpretation of the Primary theme of Prokofiev’s 7th Piano Sonata as based upon the opposition of two keys. He suggests that the beauty of this theme is the result of its firmness and stability within a single key. He also offers his understanding of musical beauty as presenting a kallistic quality. In fact, Kholopov frequently referred in his lectures to the aesthetic principle of music as being kallistic in the ancient Greek interpretation of this term (using common Greek phrase “καλλός, οὖ δε κακός”). He proposes that technical approach to music is also related to Greek understanding of the term τέχνη as art. Therefore, Kholopov deflects the accusation of his method as being narrow and technical. As a solution, Kholopov suggests replacing the term tselostnyi analiz (holistic analysis) with tstennostnyi analiz (evaluative analysis). Needless to say, this innovation has received its thorough development in the works of Kholopov’s students after 1991 and after his untimely death in 2003.

Formalism as the Way of Re-Integration into the Western Tradition

5.4 1991 Until 2014: Formalism as the Way of Re-Integration into the Western Tradition The agon of analytical methodologies in Soviet music theory lasted for many decades, and its ultimate outcome is yet to be seen. The contrast between the formalist and the integralist approaches still indicates the greatest division in music theory and alludes to the profound discord that existed in Soviet society. As has been demonstrated, its origins are not exclusively political. The question of the appropriate analytical method is an organic part of music scholarship in all periods of time and national traditions. The competition between the two methods of analysis—the formalist and the integralist—continued with the same passion and high stakes in post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s. Yuri Kholopov inherited the platform of Ogolevets and Sposobin. He also wanted to eliminate the course in the analysis of musical works! On the other side of the barricades, Mazel’ and Tsukkerman, if they were alive, would be proud to see their students developing the method of integral analysis further. The Russian theoretical tradition poses fundamental questions and reminds us of the importance of a deeper reflection on the essence of tonal music. There was a period, the first half of the twentieth century, when music theorists and composers dreamt of a complete departure from the gravitation of tonality. However, the tonal center, tonal-harmonic function and tonal form have proved to be more important than merely a historical phenomenon. As the prominent Russian theorist, Alexander Sokolov writes in his book Muzykal’naya Kompositsiya Dvadtsatogo Veka: Dialektika Tvorchestva [Musical Composition in the Twentieth Century: Dialectics of Art], summarizing the results of the twentieth century, “Our generation has overturned once again the hourglass with which mankind measures the periods of its history … The century, which used to be called ‘technocratic,’ towards the very end of it has shifted heavily toward humanism.”

Tonal music as the representative of centuries of humanism is in great demand now. Fortunately, Russia has retained a complete

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arsenal of the tonal tradition, including the research tools, the methods of analysis, and a formidable pedagogic system. Presently it can be and should be used for the benefit of restoring the principles that were seriously shaken in the West after two devastating wars. In the early 1990s, Yuri Kholopov’s legacy became universally accepted at the Moscow Conservatory. After his sudden death in 2003, which caused an irreparable loss for the theoretical standing of the Moscow Conservatory and the country, his students and followers have been carefully restoring his private archive and publishing his manuscripts, containing invaluable texts. Most notably, they published a volume of the socalled Muzykal’no-Teoreticheskiye Sistemy [Musical-Theoretical Systems]284—an analogue of the course in History of Music Theory which had been taught for decades at the Conservatory without a published textbook. Another important publication is Kholopov’s treatise Vvedeniye v Muzykal’nuyu Formu [Introduction into Musical Form] with an introductory chapter which contains Kholopov’s essential concept of form as the realized number. The Doctoral Dissertation of Tatyana Kyuregyan Muzykal’nyye Formy Pervoi Poloviny XVIII-Pervoi Poloviny XX Vekov [The Musical Forms of the eighteenth-first half of the twentieth Centuries] has complemented this publication by Kholopov. During the 1990s, significant work was done among the Russian formalists in the direction of reunification with the Western tradition. Natalyia Vlasova published a translation of Arnold Schoenberg’s book Style and Idea,285 while Elena Dolenko (a student of Yuri Kholopov) translated and published Schoenberg’s Fundamentals of Musical Composition.286 An important contribution to the development of knowledge of the formalist trend has been made by Marina Liypishko in her publication of the texts by Philip Herskowitz.287 One of the most important books, published after Kholopov’s death, was the book by Valeriya Tsenova Tchislovyie Idei Muzyki Sofii Gubaidulinoi [Numeric Ideas in Music of Sofia Gubaidulina].288 Kholopov’s legacy, a perspective of music as a divine agency expressed in numbers, was clearly continued in this book. Significant work in the direction of the study of the twentiethcentury Western theory has been done at the Russian Gnesins’ Academy of Music. Professor of Music Theory at this

Formalism as the Way of Re-Integration into the Western Tradition

Academy, Tatyana Tsaregradskaya is an energetic proponent of contemporary Anglo-Saxon music theory and the concepts of post-World War Two avant-garde. Her publications are dedicated, among other topics, to the music of Iannis Xenakis. Levon Hakobian, the leading theorist at the Institute of Art Theory in Moscow, is, probably, the most adequate liaison between the indigenous Soviet and Armenian traditions and the most current Western musical thought. All these important figures and their publications, as well as serious, intensive instruction at the Conservatory, proved that Soviet music theory has finally received a chance to reunite with the current Western tradition. This reunion is not yet complete due to the fact that there is still a language barrier and, quite reasonably, some reservations regarding the music theory from English-speaking countries. For generations Russian theorists used to rely upon German music scholarship and the recent shift in activity from Europe to the United States has not been yet well-received by some Russian theorists. Kholopov, however, was quite aware of this shift. He told the author on many occasions that North American theory has become a leading force and that German professors are presently looking over to the American side. While the formalists had time to celebrate their victory in the 1990s, the integralists experienced several unpleasant moments, including those of being removed and alienated from the center of events. This, however, had not affected the resolve of the generation of integralists to continue their triumphant movement toward new discoveries. Valentina Kholopova has created a new field in Russian musicology—the theory of musical content. Tatyana Tchernova continues developing her field of study—the dramaturgy of instrumental music, and now entered the uncharted territory of Russian Orthodox Christian musicology, pioneered by Vyacheslav Medushevsky. Yevgenia Tchigaryeva has been working on republication of the works of her late husband, Viktor Bobrovsky, and of her own works on the typical and individual aspects of musical work, on the example of Mozart’s musical style. Vyacheslav Medushevsky has turned a page in his musicological activities and started anew with the idea of the so-called “ontological musicology.” In an interview with the author, on December 29, 2010, Dr. Medushevsky had

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derided the idea of a search for the topos of Russianness. He said: “What is there to search for? Russianness had existed for a millennium, and nothing has been able to shake it. It is the Russian belief in God!” This has become a point of departure for Medushevsky and for many of his followers in Moscow and, especially, in the provinces, such as Rostov-on-Don and Nizhny Novgorod. He has completely renounced his previous work (including the method of semiotics in his dissertations for the degrees of Kandidat of Arts and Doctor of Arts). His idea of two types of semiotics—the secular and the sacred, as well as the two types of musical content—divine and mortal—has a great potential for further development. It is possible to assert that the field of Russian Orthodox Christian musicology has been virtually unknown previously and it can present an eye-opener for the Western reader. Vyacheslav Medushevsky went ahead of his time again, just as he did in the 1960s, when he introduced the contemporary semiotic method into Soviet musicology. This interesting direction is shared, albeit in a very different way, by Roman Nassonov, with his reliance on Western Protestant tradition and an in-depth study of music of J. S. Bach. Valentina Kholopova’s theory of musical content, realized in a number of her publications, including her seminal study Muzyka kak Vid Iskusstva [Music as an Art Form] and in a book by her student Andrey Kudryashov Teoriya Muzykal’nogo Soderzhaniya [The Theory of Musical Content], presents another formidable step forward and away not only from traditional Soviet music theory but also from the Western postulates of form and content. In fact, she offers something which can be only compared to the writings of the New Musicologists. She offers a non-binary view of musical content. She writes: “It is time to part with the old-fashioned opposition of form and content.”289 She suggests that musical content presents a “mono-category” and that it does not require coupling with form. Her theory of musical content has been echoed in the theories of Lyudmila Kazantseva from the Rostov Academy of Music and Lyudmila Shaimukhametova from the Ufa Academy of Arts.290 It is, undoubtedly, a continuation of the ancient Russian tradition of integralism. However, it is quite different from the old tselostnyi analysis, and many of the postulates of Tsukkerman and Mazel’

New Paradigms in lieu of an Old One

are not pertinent in this new theory anymore. The latest achievement of Kholopova is her book Musical Emotions, published in 2010. It presents perhaps the most complete, comprehensive treatise on musical emotions from both theoretical point of view and historical perspective of the six main periods in Western music history.

5.5 2014: New Paradigms in lieu of an Old One

The events in Ukraine have changed the political map of Europe. They triggered other cascading changes in the world. The term Western music is going through a complete overhaul nowadays, together with many others that used to be basic and unshakable. A new generation of music theorists emerges from this new context. The author of this book had the honor of being a reviewer for the dissertation of Ukrainian music scholar, ethnomusicologist Dr. Anastasia Mazurenko. Her dissertation Цифрові акустичні вимірювання виконавської звуковисотності в українському пісенному фольклорі [Digital Acoustic Measurements of Performance Pitch in Ukrainian Song Folklore] has been defended in Ukrainian language. The scope of literature and the conceptual framework of this dissertation is cardinally distinct from the genre that has been in place in Eastern Europe in the earlier decades. Dr. Mazurenko acknowledges the generations of Russian folk music studies, including those by Yevgeniya Lineva, Kliment Kvitka, and Anna Rudneva. However, the essential thrust of her thesis is based upon Western concepts, such as the distinction between emic and etic, the ideas of Charles Seegers and other prominent scholars. Rather elegant and noteworthy is her application of technology: it is in folk music that is created outside the learned context and beyond the limitations of notation that most essential parameters evade the five-line pitch and binary rhythm registration. New methods of computerized visualization prove to be groundbreaking for the study of the venerable tradition of Ukrainian folk music. This example is only one out of many new promising cases of the studies—articles and dissertations—that contain both Soviet and Western vocabulary and retain the local identity that is unique and absent in these both geopolitical generalizations.

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As for the universal antinomy of form vs. work, it remains actual in this context as well. First of all, etic and emic express the facets of the same antinomy. Emic is specific and individual—just as the category of musical form. Etic is closer to the universalia of music, such as form and structure. And the innovation introduced by Anastasia Mazurenko into the study of pitch notation of folk tunes is related to the antinomy discussed in this book. Remarkably, Nikolas Meeûs offered, among other concepts, the idea that notation suggests a certain analytical method. Therefore, if folk music was notated, since Brentano’s Knabe’s Wunderhorn and L’vov and Prach’s collections, in a regular fiveline system, that notation had ties to the idea of form. A more comprehensive system of computer graphics, suggested by Mazurenko, shifts our perception from the general principles to the infinitely detailed presentation of folk masterpieces in all their complexity. In general, the tradition of music theory in Russia and its former satellites has not yielded to the despair and neglect of the 1990s, when the institutions of higher education experienced financial and ideological crisis. It has survived and has come out stronger than ever. The tragic events of 2022, which this book did not cover since its main text was written in 2003–2020, will change the course of history. However, the two approaches to music will probably keep developing in parallel to each other. So far, the two trends had not merged with each other and neither of the two has died out. It is a sign that they are sure to continue unfolding, each in its own original way, by and for future generations of practitioners in various ethnic and geographic contexts.

Chapter 6

Sample Analyses: Formalist, Integralist and Mixed After the discussion of two methods of analysis in Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5, it is essential to provide the demonstration of each method on examples that have become classical in Russian and Soviet tradition. The first sample—the fragments from Yuri Kholopov’s article “The Concert Form in Music of J. S. Bach” offers a highly developed case of formalist method. Another sample—a fragment from Viktor Tsukkerman’s monumental monograph on overture Kamarinskaya by Mikhail Glinka—summoned to demonstrate the integralist method. And the last analysis—the product of collaboration of the author with Yuri Kholopov, with further addition of the takes on the same composition by integralists Viktor Bobrovsky and Valentina Kholopova—is offered in order to demonstrate the disagreements and the possible synthesis of two methods.

6.1 A Sample of Yuri Kholopov’s Formalist Analysis

Yuri Kholopov occupies the most principled position among the supporters of analysis of form in Russia. His article “The Concerto Form vs. Work: A Major Antinomy of Music Theory and Analysis Ildar D. Khannanov

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Form in the Music of J. S. Bach,” published in the beginning of his career in 1974, played a crucial role in the revival of the tradition of analysis of form after several decades of its decline. The main features of nineteenth-century Russian form analysis are combined in it with several contributions of his own. The Russian theorists of the formalist tradition consciously derived their methodology from Western ideas. The German music theorists and German models are cited frequently and faithfully. On the very first page of Kholopov’s article refers to the texts of German and Austrian scholars. These citations reflect the reverence to the European theory of music, more generally a characteristic of Russian formalism. In stark contrast to the greater openness of the integralists toward related disciplines, Kholopov confines himself to the nineteenth-century treatises on composition by Marx and Riemann. His objective is to create a style of analysis that would combine rigor with elegance. For Kholopov, analysis must have the same characteristics as the musical work itself. If music is structured in a system of well-proportioned elements, then the method of analysis must also be structured in a systematic way. A certain “tightness” of structure and logic may be found in Bach’s compositions, which is reflected in Kholopov’s interpretation. Interdisciplinary terminology is sacrificed, and only a few aspects of Classical philosophy and aesthetics are admitted. The goal of achieving a “tight system of views” (Russ. stroinaya systema vzglyadov) precludes the incorporation of any psychological, socio-political and general scientific references. This might seem too much of a retreat for many critics, yet homogeneity makes it possible to reach beneath the surface of the music and touch its deeper meanings. The system is the most fundamental aspect of formalist analysis. Each analysis offers one single idea that clarifies the structure of the whole. For example, Marx proposes the idea of relationship between the stable and unstable formal elements (der Satz and der Gang consecutively). Marx’s derivation of musical form as the pattern of “rest-motion-rest” is well known to historians of music theory. Scott Burnham describes this simple formula in his book Beethoven the Hero. He explains:

A Sample of Yuri Kholopov’s Formalist Analysis

For Marx, the basis of all musical form is its dynamic impulse of rest-motion-rest, a configuration that affects all levels of form, from a simple phrase to an entire movement in sonata form.291

Kholopov takes this idea and applies it to the Baroque concerto form. Marx’s formula works as well with Baroque forms as it does with Beethoven. Notwithstanding the variety of compositional designs in Bach’s concertos, there are always two distinct types of texture—the theme and the episode. The themes present areas of rest, while the episodes imply motion. The concerto form is one of the most frequently encountered structures in the music of Bach. Its recurring compositional design is as typical as most of the Viennese Classical forms. This allows Kholopov to include the Baroque concerto form in the system of typical Classical forms, along with sonata form, rondo and variations. Kholopov is preoccupied with the implementation of the concerto form “in our textbooks and courses of music analysis.”292 As usual, Kholopov’s analysis is concise (taking up only 27 pages), although it contains a great number of musical examples and covers an extensive amount of repertoire. He begins the description of Bach’s themes by introducing the concept of the “generalized representation of genre.” This concept is well known to Russian scholars. It is based upon the observation that genre is adjustable to specific compositional purposes. For example, in the slow movements of Bach’s concerti, the features of genre (zhanrovuie kharakteristiki) are obvious. Kholopov points out that they are easily recognizable in slow movements, as well as in the dance rhythms of the Siciliana movements.293 However, in the opening movements (in Allegri), the genre is given through mediation in a generalized form (v obobshennoi forme).294 Kholopov’s next step is to define the inner structure of Bach’s themes. Most of Bach’s themes in his non-fugal compositions make use of the same principle of contrast between the “nucleus” and its “unfolding” as those written in the contrapuntal manner. Kholopov demonstrates this principle in the example of the opening theme of Brandenburg Concerto No. 1, where the “nucleus” and “unfolding,” given in this example one after

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another, sound simultaneously from the very beginning (Example 6.1).

Example 6.1 Nucleus and unfolding.

Kholopov suggests that this kind of disposition distinguishes the non-fugal themes from the themes of fugues. Another example of such a structure is found in the third movement of the Third Sonata for Violin and Keyboard. Kholopov describes more complex thematic structures (mastabno-tematicheskie structuru). In the third movement of the First Concerto for Harpsichord there are three contrasting motives connected contrapuntally as well as consecutively (Example 6.2). Kholopov suggests that this theme develops from three contrasting motives—a, b, and c (see his inscriptions in Example 6.2). Rhythm d is common for both motive a and motive c, which makes a and c function similarly to the nucleus and its unfolding in the theme of a fugue. Kholopov insists that the themes in the Baroque concerto forms are based upon the interaction of motives. He refers to Marx’s metaphor of “motivation” of form with its double meaning of “building from motives” and “possessing the motivation to develop.”295 The sheer density of connections among the motives makes Bach’s themes comparable to those of Beethoven and Mozart.

A Sample of Yuri Kholopov’s Formalist Analysis

Example 6.2 Thematic structure of proportional sizes (“scale-thematic structures”).

Kholopov continues with the idea that some of these themes resemble parallel periods, for example, in the first movement of the 2nd Brandenburg Concerto, mm. 1–8. The main theme of the 5th Harpsichord Concerto in F Minor is based on a structure that was well-described in Russian theory as the “fragmentation with circling” (the motive lengths being, respectively, 4+4+2+2+4+2+2+4 measures).

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Another division with circling (droblenie s zamykaniem) is evident in the first movement of the Concerto for Two Harpsichords in C minor—2+2+1+1+2. These motivic scalethematic proportions (translated by Vladimir Radonjic as “thematic dimensions”) play an important role in the Viennese Classical forms. Their presence in the music of Bach is an important indication of development toward the future motivic principles of classicism. For example, the main theme of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata op. 2, No. 1 contains the same thematic structure—2+2+1+1+2—as Bach’s theme of the C Minor Concerto for Two Harpsichords. However, there are a number of discrepancies between the Baroque and Classical forms. The comparison of the forms of the themes leads Kholopov to a significant conclusion; “in Bach’s Italian Concerto, the theme is homophonic, but not the same way as in Viennese Classicism.”296 Using the example of the theme of the first movement of the Italian Concerto, Kholopov lists the features that separate Bach’s theme from the themes of compositions in the Viennese Classical style: (1) in Bach’s theme, there is no cadence at the end (only a cadence-like progression in m. 14); (2) the consequent phrase is not proportional to the antecedent; and (3) in the metric structure of the consequent phrase there are only three “heavy measures” (Kholopov uses Riemannian terminology, commonly accepted in Russia), while the heavy time of the last cadential bar has to fall on Measure 16. The following pedal point on the dominant (mm. 15–24) is not the b section (which would be expected from a typical Viennese Classical theme), but a tremendous expansion of the cadential dominant harmony. To summarize, Kholopov defines the theme of the Italian Concerto as a three-part form in which “the first contains the exposition, the second is the pedal point on the dominant, and the third segment is the cadence.”297 Thus Kholopov shows the difference between Bach’s homophonic theme and the typical binary form of the Viennese Classical themes. After examining the thematic structure, Kholopov continues with analysis of the formal function of the episode, that is, of the

A Sample of Yuri Kholopov’s Formalist Analysis

intermediate segment that separates the two presentations of the theme. Here, Kholopov distinguishes between the Vivaldi concerto with the regular “theme played by the tutti and episodes played by the solo” sequence and Bach’s concerto form. In Bach’s music, this common principle of the concerto grosso is not followed through; the sequence of “tutti themes- solo episodes” is often disrupted. This applies specifically to Bach’s sonatas, which are not concertos by definition and, therefore, written in a different texture. The main contrast between the tutti and solo passages in Bach’s concerto form is achieved at the end of the first theme. This effect is marked by a cadence and a deep caesura. Kholopov describes the episode (or interlude) as similar to the episode of a fugue. Consequently, it is built upon either the motives from the theme or upon contrasting material (as in the first movement of the 5th Brandenburg Concerto). Kholopov suggests that “sometimes, instead of a regular episode, Bach introduces a new theme” (as in the same Concerto in mm. 71–101). Kholopov uses simple notation for the functions of the theme and the episode. The theme is given the sign Т, an enlarged Cyrillic letter “t.” The episode is marked as И, an enlarged Cyrillic letter “I,” for intermediya. Kholopov discovers at least three types of schemes—the alternating form, the type of form with development, and the Da Capo scheme. Below are examples of the three types of compositional schemes presented in Kholopov’s article (Figure 6.1). Kholopov distinguishes three types of forms, the alternating, developmental and symmetrical, each one corresponding to the major compositional strategy. In the first case, the form is built as presenting intermittent statements of the theme and intermedia (episode). In the second type, the power of harmonic development overrides the boundaries of symmetry. The last type is commonly known as the Da Capo scheme. All three forms are based on alternations of the statements of themes and the episodic passage (Russ. tema i khod) and present an interplay of stable and unstable musical segments.

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Figure 6.1 The types of forms.

A Sample of Yuri Kholopov’s Formalist Analysis

In contrast to the harmonic stability (ustoi) of the theme, the episode often contains strong modulatory development. The non-stability (neustoichivost’) and the tonal imbalance of the episode in contrast with the harmonically sturdy theme, adds the necessary shapeliness to the form of the composition.298 Kholopov finds remarkable elements of symmetry and proportion in these schemes. The compositional schemes in Bach’s non-fugal compositions are more diverse than in the Viennese Classical compositions. Kholopov relates this to the pre-Classical condition of art.299 In Viennese Classical music, the optimal types of form recur in full detail—for example, the correlation of the rhythmically elaborated main theme with the lyrical, song-like subsidiary them—das Gesangthema, the requirement to move from tonic to dominant in major tonalities, and from tonic to mediant in minor tonalities, and even the same contours and proportions of form in a number of sonatas by different composers. In the case of Bach’s concerti, preludes and sonatas, “we cannot find a common compositional scheme.” At this point, Kholopov touches upon the same subject as Viktor Tsukkerman does in his analysis of Glinka’s Kamarinskaya. (See chapter “The Mastery of Form” in Part Two of this book.) It is important how the integralists and the formalists interpret the difference between the compositional scheme and form. Whereas for Tsukkerman the form is, essentially, the compositional scheme, Kholopov provides a different explanation. He writes that even if the general scheme for all the concerto forms does not exist, “the form as a type of structure (postroyenie) of the musical work is present in all of them.”300 Kholopov suggests that the differences among the types of Bach’s non-fugal compositions can be reconciled “not by looking into their compositional schemes, but by considering the variety of their characteristics of genre.”301 The established form-defining principle of Bach’s concertos is the tutti-solo opposition at the end of the theme. However, the composer’s preludes are defined as improvisatory works and, as such, contain a more flowing type of development. The sonatas have a distinct “chamber music” quality, and “the transitions from the themes to the episodes coincide with the exchange of motivic

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material between performers that leads to a more polyphonic, imitative texture.”302 This diversity of genres explains the variety of compositional schemes. In other words, Kholopov does not want to dismiss the universal principle of form (the concerto form based on two functions), despite the fact that there is a great variety of compositional designs and no common “optimal” scheme. Kholopov’s adherence to a single definition of form manifests the opposition to the synthetic treatment of musical work by the integralists. This comparison provides the key to understanding the disagreements between the two main theoretical traditions in Russia. The integralists would sacrifice the Classical definition of form if the material shows signs of heterogeneity. In fact, Bach’s concerto forms are as resistant to universal definitions as Glinka’s symphonic compositions analyzed by Tsukkerman; therefore, Tsukkerman faces the same “difficult and unusual” musical material in his analysis of the Kamarinskaya as Kholopov does in his analysis of the Baroque concerto form. However, Kholopov (along with a number of “formalists,” such as Tyulin and Sposobin) would still maintain the general definition as being functional, with only some additional consideration given to the complexity of the material. Tsukkerman would come up with a series of different definitions for each genre of the non-fugal repertoire in Bach, or at least with one synthetic definition alluding to the “form of the second plan,” the “duality of formal functions,” etc. It is true that analysis of musical form leaves out a substantial aspect that depends on cognition of music. No terminology derived from psychology, modern philosophy, sociology, or politics can enter the formalist discourse. The problem of interaction with other sciences is suspended, even sacrificed, for the sake of the purity of the conceptual apparatus. Even when adding some newer forms, Kholopov is careful with the heritage of nineteenthcentury music theory. Obviously, the idea of the two formal functions, that of the theme and of the episode, strongly points to the analogy with the main functions in Marx’s classification of the rondo form. Der Hauptsatz and der Gang are clearly the

A Sample of Yuri Kholopov’s Formalist Analysis

prototypes of the two functions that Kholopov finds in the Baroque concerto form. It seems that Kholopov is not willing to overcome the limitations of nineteenth-century music scholarship and even tends not to notice the obvious historical specificity of the Baroque style. His resilience pays off when it comes to explanations of problems of a more or less universal character. Paradoxically, as a result of its restrictions, form analysis reaches a high degree of integrity—the quality that integral analysis claims to possess exclusively. Some of the claims of the integralists remain only in words; for example, Kholopov noticed a trivial error in the definition of form in Tsukkerman’s analysis. Tsukkerman provides as a possibility in the Kamarinskaya the “sonata form without the development.” The tonal plan of the composition does not support this definition. However, in the exposition the main theme is in D minor, and the subsidiary theme is in D major; in the recapitulation the main theme is transposed to F major, and the subsidiary theme remains in D major. Instead of a harmonic reconciliation of the themes in the recapitulation, the Kamarinskaya demonstrates their separation that contradicts the very essence of sonata form. The only true definition of this form, according to Kholopov, is the double variation. To summarize, the formalist approach in Yuri Kholopov’s Baroque Concerto Form presents a powerful tool of analysis that is capable of a great degree of integrity. This is partially due to the rich tradition which it derives from, but it is also the essential character of the systematic concept itself. This example of analysis is formal in a general sense, yet it is not similar to the formalism suggested by most American analytical techniques. American formalism is based upon philosophical positivism and bears similarities to the natural sciences; it treats nineteenth-century composition as the “given theory.” Russian formalism is, on the contrary, alien to scientific positivism and based upon specific musical terminology from the nineteenth century. Therefore, the Russian formalist tradition is unique, notwithstanding the fact that it is derived from common European Classical roots.

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6.2 Viktor Tsukkerman’s Sample of Integral Analysis Tsukkerman’s book, Glinka’s Kamarinskaya and Its Traditions in Russian Music,303 is a 500-page analysis of a single score by Michail Glinka. In a manner entirely appropriate for tselostnyi analysis, it starts with the description of the history of the creation of Kamarinskaya and its premiere performance, and then it proceeds to elaborate on its “folk-song nature.” Following that, Tsukkerman provides an overview of the Russian musical tradition preceding Glinka’s masterpiece. The proper analysis of the form of the Kamarinskaya occurs so late in Tsukkerman’s book (starting only on p. 363) that it appears not as important as the previous text. This placement of the analysis of form at the end of the book is an open disregard for the established tradition of such books and the manifesto of integral analysis. Tsukkerman has already touched upon a number of subjects and disciplines, but we have not heard a word about the form of the Kamarinskaya as if the discussion of the musical form was the least important part of the musical work and its analysis! Tsukkerman clearly states the main idea of integral analysis—the central position of the musical work and the secondary position of the musical form. Tsukkerman defines the “form in a narrow sense” as a “compositional scheme.”304 This is another way to assert that the analysis of the form is not the priority for integral analysis. In the beginning of the subchapter, “The Mastery of Form,” Tsukkerman introduces some Russian modifications of Western musicological terms that make his analysis profound and also difficult to relate to a Western reader. For example, he mentions the “twin form,” which combines two songs. There are two folk songs in Glinka’s masterpiece, the dance tune Kamarinskaya and a wedding song, both of which undergo simultaneous intensive development. Tsukkerman defines the method of development in the Kamarinskaya as the inner variedness (Russ. vnutrennyaya variatsionnost’). Here we stumble upon a linguistic obstacle as a result of a specific derivation of terms.

Viktor Tsukkerman’s Sample of Integral Analysis

Russian scientific terminology employs some morphological devices that are not as popular in the West. Russian musicologists often tend to turn an adjective into a noun, or a specific noun into a generic noun ending on “-ness.” For example, “varied” becomes the basis for “variedness,” and “reprise” becomes “repriseness.” This strategy is akin to Plato’s treatment of words when he turns “a horse” into “horse-ness,” which means the essence of horse—its universal idea. Tsukkerman elaborates on the principle of the reprise or recapitulation, but his choice of the grammatical form is lost in such a translation. In fact, the Russian term literally means the “principle of reprise-ness,” which refers to the character of the reprise that can be found in any section of the form. Thereby, Tsukkerman transforms specific objects (reprise, variation, symphony, and sonata) into attributes or universal qualities (reprise-ness, variedness, symphonicism, and sonate-ness). This style of theorizing is intended for a profound penetration into the area of ideas and not for simple quantitative descriptions of the musical surface. In the Kamarinskaya, the double repetition (i.e., the repetition of two songs), combined with the principle of variedness and parallel development of a “twin form,” creates a specific compositional scheme that has no analogy in Western musical literature. The form of repeated contrast usually occurs in small-scale, as well as in large-scale compositions. Tsukkerman writes that the form of the Kamarinskaya is customarily defined in Russian theory as a “sonata without development.” “On the surface, the Kamarinskaya presents, indeed, a sonata form without a development, in which the themes of the primary theme group and the subsidiary theme group are written in the form of variations.”305 Incidentally, I must mention that the possibility of the sonata allegro form without a development section has always been an “apple of dissent” in Soviet music theory. Skeptics argued that the development section is the most substantial part of a sonata allegro and without it the sonata form cannot exist. Supporters of the concept of this form pointed to a number of slow movements in the music of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, in which intensive development occurs in the outer sections. These movements have modulations in the expositions and recapitulations (for example, already mentioned Mozart’s Piano

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Sonata in E-flat major K. 282), which makes it unnecessary to include a separate development section. This kind of form can be appropriately analyzed as sonata allegro. The case of the Kamarinskaya is indicative of such a specific design because the exposition of the two song themes incorporates the form of variations. The Kamarinskaya tune entails seven characteristic variations as a part of its exposition; the wedding song theme is exposed in a series of three variations. There is no reason to write a separate development section, because the themes have already undergone intensive changes in the exposition. Yet, Tsukkerman has reservations about the sonata allegro form without a recapitulation in Kamarinskaya as a single definition. He describes Glinka’s compositional design as a general disposition of the sonata allegro form in which the principle of double variations plays a more important role. Tsukkerman prefers ascribing the variations principle to this work, because it is characteristic of folk music. The umbilical connection of the forms of artistic music with the form-defining principles of folk music is a prominent idea in the entire history of Russian music theory. It is the credo of integral analysis as well. I shall discuss the phenomenon of the influence of folk music on composers later in this chapter. Here it is sufficient to state that I do not intend to dismiss this connection. Tsukkerman notices that the form of the double variations was very popular in Western music of the eighteenth century, but in the nineteenth century, due to the higher level of contrast, there was no necessity to combine two contrasting strains of variations. He claims that Glinka’s attention to this form in the nineteenth century revived it in “a new, democratic fashion”306 [in this context the term “democratic” means “based on folk music, on the art of the masses”—I. Kh.]. Immediately after defining the form of the Kamarinskaya as double variations, Tsukkerman again voices his concern about this definition. He writes: “The definition that I just have provided remains schematic and does not grasp the multifaceted character of the form of the Kamarinskaya.”307 This statement tells more about the essence of integral analysis than any abstract formulations of its principles. Here, using the example of a Russian symphonic masterpiece, we are able to witness integral analysis in action. The form definitions taken from the existent

Viktor Tsukkerman’s Sample of Integral Analysis

classifications are not sufficient to describe the form of the actual musical work. In each case when we deal with masterpieces, their form is multifaceted. Precision in the definition of the form in music, which is the main idea of formal analysis, does not always work in complex musical works, such as in the form of the Kamarinskaya. The relationship of the two song themes, one of which is a lyric song and the other a dance melody, is essential for the form of the Kamarinskaya (Example 6.3).

Example 6.3 Two song themes.

This relationship includes what Tsukkerman calls the “intersong variation,” that is, a gradual change of the genre of one song toward that of another song in the course of the variations. The dance tune becomes closer to a wedding song; it acquires the harmonic, stylistic, and genre features of a wedding song. On the other hand, the position of the wedding song, always preceding the sets of variations on the dance theme, makes it sound like an introduction (Example 6.4).

Example 6.4 Gradual change of genre.

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The thesis of duality of the functions of the sections of the musical form is not the discovery of this particular analysis; it is a landmark of Russian music analysis in its entirety. In a number of their analytical texts, the Russian theorists elaborate on the form of the second plan and the double function of the segments of form. These considerations led Tsukkerman to understand the multifaceted form in the Kamarinskaya as an expression of the diversity of its content. He writes: It is obvious that the multifaceted form is the reflection of the richness of the content of the Kamarinskaya. The binarity of the form [once again, a specific usage of terminology, the same substantiation of the adjective, as mentioned above!—I. Kh.] is the effect of the contrast of the two main images; the variedness of the form reflects a step-by-step unfolding of the multiple aspects of the complex images; the reprise-ness is, in fact, the second entrance of the characters, very similar to the second act of an opera; the inter-song variation is an aspect of the form that is responsible for the unity of the two themes; finally, the subsidiary role of the meditative wedding song creates a contrast with the joyful and active character of the dance tune. All these connections show how distant the form of the Kamarinskaya is from any traditional definitions and how strong the influence of its content is on the form.308

The idea, that form is determined by content, lies at the core of Soviet Russian integral music analysis. In recent Western literature, this idea received a distinctly negative response. Most critics in the West suspect that this kind of determinism presents a falsification of art, as in the case of socialist realism. They accuse Russian theory of falling into the trap of social determinism, while it is commonly accepted that the high purpose of art is the personal freedom of an artist. In many cases in music theory in the USSR, especially in the 1930s, the idea of musical content as a part of the social milieu was distorted to a point beyond recognition. The Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM) and other organizations alike, led by inept revolutionary concept-makers, claimed that musical content is reducible to the most straightforward exigencies of the moment, such as the material urges of the proletariat and

Viktor Tsukkerman’s Sample of Integral Analysis

peasantry. The failure of these claims overshadowed the relevance of the content/form discussion. The Western opposition to the RAPM seems problematic as well; the idea of total freedom of art from social life—the slogan of the era of modernism—did not advance any further than the concept of socialist realism. Both contained dubiously simple answers to difficult questions. Viktor Tsukkerman’s analysis of the Kamarinskaya provides a clear example of the determination of the musical form by its musical content. Glinka’s grand project of writing the first Russian large-scale symphonic composition, based on the musical images of its land and people, determined the choice of its specific form. This form happened to be different from any given scheme from the Classical textbooks. The material at hand was essentially different from Western music. Glinka had two folk tunes and a few known methods of their development derived from the folk tradition (such as folk variations, ostinato, and strophic form). This is not to say that Western musical material comes “from outer space” and does not relate to folk music. It has undergone professional polishing during the three centuries that separate us from the times of elemental development of secular music in the Italian, French, Dutch, German, and British folk traditions, to mention just a few. If the Western musical material of the nineteenth century does not sound like Russian (Polish, Hungarian) folk tunes, it is only because the folk origins of this material have been forgotten by the tradition, and their sources have remained undocumented. Nevertheless, we can trace the folk tradition in German Classical music. This idea is clearly stated in the introduction to the Kompositionslehre by A. B. Marx. He writes that Classical music is the result of a close relationship between the Genius and the People (Das Volk). Marx claims the same relationship between the Composer and the People as does Glinka; in other words, the people create music, composers only arrange it. Of course, the outcome of this principle depends on the degree of its implementation, and it is easy to abuse it. However, within certain limits, it is true that the folk tradition contains most of the approaches and methods of musical development that composers use as their own. (Essentially, this is

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a kind of primary appropriation by individual composers of formal structures that are available in the public domain). To demonstrate this point, Tsukkerman describes the way Glinka assembles the folk musical material together into a single musical form of high integrity. Tsukkerman mentions that the forms inherent in folk music are usually intended for smallscale compositions and not for symphonic scores of great dimensions. This makes the composition of the Kamarinskaya problematic, because it is built upon the principle of ostinato common to folk music. Tsukkerman distinguishes between two functions of ostinato. On the surface level, ostinato articulates a type of form that makes its divisions clearly perceptible. But on a higher level, when repetition becomes the main principle of a large-scale form, it creates the opposite effect, that of integrity and homogeneity. “The ostinato becomes the common factor and, by transpiring through all the parts of the form, becomes the unifying principle.”309 Needless to say, wholesomeness of a musical work is of primary concern for integral analysis, and Tsukkerman tries to find the proof of it in the Kamarinskaya. After reading Tsukkerman, it becomes obvious that Glinka was preoccupied with the problem of folk music used in symphonic composition on all levels. In the middle ground, the folk variation principle implies a number of short variations that would easily chop the large form into slices. Russian terminology reflects these slight differences by labeling the form of variation of folk music as “the variant form.” What is varied here is not a full-fledged theme but a short phrase, with very little differentiation in its tonal and rhythmic aspects. This narrows down to simple repetition of variants, which is, by itself, static, and fragmentary. The problem of unity becomes urgent, and fortunately within the folk tradition itself there is a solution—coupling of variations. Tsukkerman uses a specific term splochenie that means “bringing together,” “making one body,” or “aligning.” Indeed, the threebar phrase of the Kamarinskaya does not have a well-formed cadence at the end and can be seamlessly spliced with its own repetition (see, Example 6.5).

Viktor Tsukkerman’s Sample of Integral Analysis

Example 6.5 Aligning.

This phenomenon of coupling is thoroughly described in textbooks on integral analysis (see, for example, Analysis of Musical Works310 by Viktor Tsukkerman and Leo Mazel’). It is called “grouping of periodicities” and is one of the most common principles of thematic structure in both Viennese Classical music and the folk music of Western and Eastern Europe. Here we can see the proof of the derivation of the formal principle of serious Classical music from folk music. In folk music, the principle of the “group of periodicities” translates into “first repeat as is, then repeat and renew.”311 Tsukkerman describes several types of integration of variants into larger forms. In his analysis of the Kamarinskaya, Tsukkerman reveals the elements of through composition or through development (German Durchkomponierung, Russian skvoznoye razvitie) based on finding common features in two variations, connecting the two variations to each other, fusing them with each other, and applying the method of subvariation to them. (The latter presents a variation of a separate motive on a local level.) In addition, there are connections at a distance, arches and cross connections. All these elements create the effect of continuation and diminish the power of fragmentation. Analysis of the Kamarinskaya examined above requires further explanation and commentary. Some of Tsukkerman’s notions are not introduced reflectively. Rather, they enter his text by the force of habit taken from the common vocabulary of the Soviet theory prevalent at that time. For example, what is implied by the term “content” remains unclear in this particular text, but this term plays a significant role in Tsukkerman’s assertions about form. The idea that music has content that affects its form is ordinarily dismissed in Western musicology precisely because of the elusive character of the musical content. Are the moods

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and feelings inherent in the music a part of the “content”? If so, all our discussions of form related to these “feelings” become superficial. Professional music theory maintains a certain level of rigor, and at least a fraction of the strict discipline of the natural sciences. If we delve into discussions of moods and feelings, let alone associations of music with “real life,” our discourse will turn into recollections of a journalist at best. However, it is clear from Tsukkerman’s analysis that he means something a great deal more tangible when he discusses the content of Glinka’s music. The content of this composition is reducible to a number of referential sources, including the Russian folk song, its development and its form-building principles, as well as Glinka’s use of Western techniques and methods of composition current in his time. It becomes clear that the term “content” refers not to the elusive and infinite psychological reactions, but to a number of formal attributes of other genres and styles of music incorporated into the compositional scheme of the Kamarinskaya.

6.3 A Sample of Analysis Using Both Integralist and Formalist Methods

The following is an example of analysis in which both methods are applied to the same work: Kholopov’s (formalist) vs. Bobrovsky’s (integralist) approach to Tchaikovsky’s Overture-Fantasy Romeo and Juliet. In fact, the competition between the integralists and the formalists reached points of ultimate disagreement in a number of landmark analyses. Following the controversy over Viktor Tsukkerman’s interpretation of musical form in Glinka’s Kamarinskaya and Leo Mazel’s analysis of Chopin’s F Minor Fantasy, the publication of Viktor Bobrovsky’s book The Functional Foundations of Musical Form has sparked a new round of debates, this time over Tchaikovsky’s forms. Simultaneously with the integralists, Kholopov developed his own theory of Tchaikovsky’s forms, which he published in a number of articles and oral presentations. In his view, Tchaikovsky’s compositional language presents a continuation of the German tradition.

A Sample of Analysis Using Both Integralist and Formalist Methods

Bobrovsky, on the contrary, suggested a radical interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s forms; he introduced the idea of “compositional modulation,” that is, of a change of the compositional scheme in the process of its unfolding. As an example of such a transforming compositional scheme, Bobrovsky mentioned the Subsidiary from the Overture-Fantasy Romeo and Juliet, which is often called in Russia “The Theme of Love.” Indeed, in the beginning the form of the theme appears to be a small ternary but in the recapitulation it overgrows its limits and receives the contours of the large ternary form. The interpretation suggested by Bobrovsky is shown in Figure 6.2.

Figure 6.2 Viktor Bobrovsky, compositional scheme of the Subsidiary Theme Group of Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet.

This unusual scheme312 does not fit into the tradition of the Formenlehre and, obviously, cannot be accepted by the formalists. However, the alternative interpretation proposed by the adherents of the formalist trend is also very unusual. Kholopov calls the first pronouncement of the “Theme of Love” a “predictus” (i.e., the anticipation theme, similar to the function of anticipation as a non-chord tone). This interpretation makes it possible to exclude the first appearance of the “Theme of Love” from the compositional formal scheme, similar to the reduction of the non-chord tones in the Roman numeral analysis. Following that, the true beginning of the Subsidiary theme of makes its appearance in the oscillation in D-flat major (Figure 6.3). predictus a small ternary form

b

a

Figure 6.3 Yuri Kholopov’s compositional scheme of the Subsidiary Theme Group.

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Sample Analyses: Formalist, Integralist and Mixed

Even labeling the “Theme of Love” becomes problematic; indeed, this particular example attenuates impropriety of giving any labels to the second (in order, not in significance!) theme in a sonata allegro form. Tchaikovsky’s melody escapes such labeling, because it has borrowed little from the main theme (therefore, it is not “subsidized” by the Primary theme), although some parallels in the Gestalt of both the first and second theme are obvious (see Example 6.6).

Example 6.6 Motivic kinship of the Primary and Subsidiary Theme Groups.

This motivic connection is comfortably Beethovenesque, i.e., it is carried out “by the book.” (Dahlhaus’ critique of the Russian symphony as lacking integrity and organic unity thus misses the target.) Still, the second theme is not a weak, obedient child of the Primary theme. Tchaikovsky’s melody is so unique in its emotional truth that it almost drowns the first theme. Everything appears unanticipated in the form and content of the “Theme of Love.” For example, it is difficult to pinpoint the

A Sample of Analysis Using Both Integralist and Formalist Methods

beginning or the end of the theme. Starting at measure 184, its first pronouncement in the exposition lasts eight measures (which presents homage to Riemann’s achttaktige Satz). However, if we start counting from the first complete measure, as required by the rules of the Formenlehre,313 we should identify the beginning of the theme in m. 185, with the anacrusis (A flat) in m. 184. In that case, our Riemannian analogy collapses; now the theme becomes seven measures long (or, does it, if there is a similar problem of identifying the end of the melody?). The melodic voice is interrupted in m. 191 by a half-cadence, which seems reasonable for the first phrase of the theme, and the consequent is expected to follow (Example 6.7).

Example 6.7 The beginning and the end of the Love Theme.

This half-cadence in the melody is accompanied by the perfect authentic cadence in the harmony; there is a strong resolution in the tonic in m. 192. Is this the theme or, in the last count,

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Sample Analyses: Formalist, Integralist and Mixed

an antecedent phrase of an unfinished parallel period or the sentence form? This type of displacement of melody in respect to harmony is so important in Tchaikovsky’s music that we must abstain from the Schenkerian diagonal reduction that brings the chords to their “correct” positions under the “right” notes.314 In our example, the duality between the melodic and harmonic ending of the “Theme of Love” is obvious and presents a necessary element in the dramaturgy of the overture. The tonic harmony in m. 192 can be seen as the end of the “Theme of Love” (being virtually left unfinished in the melody led by the English horn, but supported by the overshadowing violas con sordine). It might as well be the beginning of the b section, which also starts with the anacrusis, and we must decide, once again, whether or not to count this incomplete measure as the beginning. This makes it unclear where the theme begins and ends. It appears as a ghost, from the dominant seventh chord in D major (which is expected to be the key of the second theme), unexpectedly resolving as the German augmented sixth chord in D-flat major. This particular example alone has led Russian theorists to term this chord as “Tchaikovsky’s chord” and continue to label it this way up to the present day. For this reason, Tchaikovsky was labeled as a “Westerner” and even had drawn critique from the “Mighty Handful” for allegedly imitating the harmonic language of Western European composers. The fact that the “Theme of Love” is written in D-flat major is telling. First of all, this is the key of Romantic revelation, having been used in a number of Romantic compositions, including Chopin’s famous Nocturne and the 15th Prelude, and a number of arias in operas of the nineteenth century. Whether it was a pure coincidence on the part of Tchaikovsky to incorporate this tonality or a conscious contribution to the development of triadic tonality is difficult to tell, but, one way or another, the D-flat major (along with A-flat major in some instances) has become a symbolic “noble” key. The “Theme of Love” could not have possibly been written in D major or in F-sharp major (as implied by the main key of the Overture). The only explanation for the strange key relationship in Romeo and Juliet (b minor – D-flat major in the exposition and b minor and D major in the recapitulation) is this symbolic character of the D-flat major.315

A Sample of Analysis Using Both Integralist and Formalist Methods

This specific choice of keys indicates that the form here is related to the “outside criterion,” that is, the specific formal and harmonic solutions in the “Theme of Love” were strongly influenced by the programmatic demands that Tchaikovsky kept a secret. Russian musicologists tend to distinguish between two types of programs in music: the literal types (as in Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique) and so-called “philosophical” types, as presented in Liszt’s tone poems, and here, in Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet. Even if there was no clearly presented narrative to control the thematic process, there are reasonable extramusical features present in the final solution of the form of this composition. In other words, formalist analysis here stumbles at the “wrong key relationships”; the integral analysis gets the ideal object to demonstrate its validity. The beginning of the theme has two separate elements: the harmonic and the melodic. The harmony presents the beginning of the theme on a tonic 6/4 chord in m. 184. Whether this is a “tonic” 6/4 or simply a double suspension to a dominant triad remains an open question. Of course, it is easy to prove that any tonic 6/4 followed by the dominant chord is a double suspension. (Here all the treatises in figured bass present a solid proof.) However, are we required to apply in such a direct manner the rules of figured bass (representing the early eighteenth-century German paradigm) to the music of a lateRomantic Russian composer? Some structures may look familiar, but they function quite differently. For example, the placement of this cadential element at the very beginning of the theme brings about some strong reservations about its harmonic function. The fact that the tonic 6/4 chord had served as a non-harmonic sonority in the eighteenth century does not mean that Tchaikovsky had in mind precisely a tonic 6/4 chord as a double suspension to the dominant; rather, it was the suspension of tonality as a whole—the Aufhebung of the tonal center. The idea of Love theme is unearthly, ephemeral, and heavenly. It is the aesthetic of endless soaring above the earth, akin to Wagnerian endless unconsummated love. (Leaning on 6/4 chord is a staple of the “soaring” style of Puccini; there is much done in this direction in Jazz, in the form of block-chord harmonizations).

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Sample Analyses: Formalist, Integralist and Mixed

The entrance of the melodic voice is delayed by a half-measure. The melodic note is, on one hand, an anacrusis to m. 185 (if we decide upon this interpretation, then, we have to conclude that the melody starts in m. 185). On the other hand, we must bear in mind that this note is too heavy for a regular anacrusis; it occurs on beat 3 in a four/four measure, while a regular anacrusis must start either on beat 2 or on beat 4 (Here one can see Riemann’s theory of heavy measures and heavy beats in action!). The body of the melody keeps this delay on a half-measure (Table 6.1). Table 6.1 Melody and harmony in counterphase

H

M

H

M

H

M

H

M

H

Note: H is for harmonic change, M is for melodic motion.

M

H

M

(H)

This pattern continues until the end of the a and the beginning of the b section. (The idea of metric shift of the complete harmonic accompaniment in relation to melodic structure is borrowed by Tchaikovsky from his most influential predecessor, Robert Schumann, from the first piece of Kreisleriana, in particular). The question of what type of cadence is employed here is a difficult one. Melodically it presents a half-cadence; there is no tonic note at the end of the melodic line, nor is one even implied. The end of the antecedent phrase is implied here, as well as the possibility of a consequent phrase with the similar beginning. It is possible to imagine the presence of a second consequent phrase, as shown in Example 6.8. For those who are trained in a hybrid contemporary style, in which harmony is counterpoint (since counterpoint is harmony in the context of scale step theory), my analytical approach might seem an attempt to divorce harmony from melody; however, it is simply an analytical assumption, which in itself does not presume that harmony and melody must actually be “divorced.” It is easy to disregard and reduce this discrepancy. However, it contributes to the musical idea which depicts soaring endless Love. It is exactly this syncopation of the harmonic support of the

A Sample of Analysis Using Both Integralist and Formalist Methods

melodic notes that creates the effect of gliding high through the sky. Here, again, starting with formalist analysis, we end up with integralist conclusions.

Example 6.8 Possible Consequent Phrase of the Love Theme.

Thereby, there is a discrepancy of the melodic form with the form suggested by the harmony (Table 6.2). Table 6.2 Discrepancy of melody and harmony Melody Harmony

V-----------------------V (HC)

I – (V)-------------------------------I (PAC)

The harmonic language that Western music has provided to support some of the aspects of melody helps to clarify the essence of melodicism. Melody does produce harmony as well as many

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Sample Analyses: Formalist, Integralist and Mixed

other aspects of a musical work, including its form and its perception. However, there is also a third element present, namely, rhythm, which plays a decisive role in the relationship of harmony and melody. It is important to know that the tonic note in a melody is supported by a tonic chord, as a rule. But it is also important to know that there are some temporal conditions of their interaction, their actual alignment or displacement at certain beats, bar lines and accents. Melody often tends to develop in a relatively independent manner from the verticalities, and sometimes even in contrast to them. Such textural aspects present an essential element in form building. The harmonic progression underlying the Theme of Love (see Figure 6.4) involves a tonic 6/4 chord in the beginning. Figure 6.4 Harmonic progression of the Love theme.

This harmonic progression is misaligned with the melodic notes, which alone creates a dynamic oscillation, the sense of motion. From a harmonic perspective, the “Theme of Love” is built around the dominant. This occurrence of the mode, centered on the dominant, was not singular in Russian music: Shostakovich often writes periods in this fashion, avoiding the tonic note throughout the entire form. This reinterpretation of tonal centers is labeled by Yuri Kholopov as the dominantovui lad (“dominant mode”). What is the tonal idea in the first appearance of the “Theme of Love”? Is it a predictus (a prelude to the theme, an anticipation of its further entry), or is it a proper sentence form in the dominant mode? The answer to this question which we shall come up with will determine the form of the subsidiary theme of the Overture. If the “Theme of Love” in its first entrance is just a predictus, then the true subsidiary theme group will present the set of two themes (the D-flat major oscillation and the “theme of Love” in its second statement). The multi-thematic subsidiary group (mnogotemnaya pobochnaya partia—Russian) is hardly a new phenomenon: Beethoven and Mozart each wrote plenty of works with several themes in the subsidiary theme group.

A Sample of Analysis Using Both Integralist and Formalist Methods

But in this case, we must interpret our former b section as an independent theme, as the a section of a larger form (see, Figure 6.5).

Figure 6.5 Formalist interpretation of the form of Love theme.

If we agree to consider the first entrance of the “Theme of Love” as a legitimate initial section of the form of the Subsidiary, then we arrive toward the following no-less unusual compositional scheme (see Figure 6.6).

Figure 6.6 Integralist interpretation of the form of Love theme.

The first scheme would satisfy the Russian formalists, while the second scheme was suggested by the Soviet integralists. The latter would argue that this “expanding form” fits perfectly into the dramaturgic idea of the Overture. Likewise, the subsidiary theme group can be seen as being of loose structure, not necessarily written in the form of a parallel period or rounded binary with stable tonic harmony. The “Theme of Love” in its first appearance definitely stirs the structure of the entire overture. Under the influence of its unusual harmonic, metric, and schematic features, the rest of this composition structured in sonata allegro form changes its usual outline. If the first entrance of the “Theme of Love” is centered around the dominant harmony, possesses a loose formal structure (locker, to use Schoenberg’s terminology) and is in a sentence form, then the following b section acquires the opposite features, since it must exhibit the contrast with the a section: it is centered around the tonic, is in a tight-knit form, presents two

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periods, the second of which modulates, reminding of many of Primary themes and Transitions in Beethoven’s early sonatas (Example 6.9).

Example 6.9 Typical beginning of the Transition, identical with the Primary Theme, in Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 6, op. 10, No. 2.

This b section is as unusual as the a section. As soon as the irregularity begins in the a section, it becomes difficult to stop it, and it spreads to the following section. To be more precise, fast oscillations around a single triad are not uncommon in the b sections, but they are never anchored in tonic. There is a rule of the Kompositionslehre: when the melody of the a section is harmonically mobile, the b section has the possibility simply to stand on the dominant. This rule is turned upside down in the subsidiary theme of the Overture. Therefore, the biggest flaw in the integralist scheme is the tonal plan (Figure 6.7).

A Sample of Analysis Using Both Integralist and Formalist Methods

Figure 6.7 Tonal plan of the Subsidiary.

The b section presents two non-parallel periods (in Schoenbergian terminology, sentence forms). The second period is the repetition of the first with the modulating passage in its second half. So, functionally, our b section does not fit in the place it occupies. The recapitulation of the Subsidiary in the exposition is itself written in a small ternary form. The “Theme of Love” here receives a continuation (m. 220), a more organically developed b section. Unlike the preceding D-flat major oscillation, this b section manifests the ascending motion, following the dynamic character of the a section. This continuation demonstrates one of Tchaikovsky’s strongest talents. It does not use any of the standard techniques (such as a pedal on the dominant harmony or a sequence). It presents a sequence, but its links are not identical, which makes it less mechanical. In summary, this b section expresses the idea of organic unity and growth. It is unpredictable in its development, yet very persuasive in its logic, presenting a brilliant example of developing variation (see Example 6.10). Famous Russian musicologist Arnold Alschwang describes this mastery of Tchaikovsky’s motivic work in the following terms: We will not err if we ascribe the astonishing effect of this songful theme to the great artistry with which Tchaikovsky introduces the new motivic links, different from the preceding intonatsia’s, yet constructed in a sequence.316

This renders the critique of Tchaikovsky’s music defined as “inorganic” by both Dahlhaus and Zajaczkowski null and void, resembling an unexplainable bout of rage. Critics of Tchaikovsky’s

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Sample Analyses: Formalist, Integralist and Mixed

Example 6.10 The b section of the Subsidiary’s recapitulation in the Exposition.

musical legacy had often overlooked the most organic features in his scores and attacked the music of this great composer simply because it allowed itself to be attacked. It is a strange state of events that even second-rate Western composers, such as Hans Pfitzner, have never attracted direct harsh criticism, but in the case of Tchaikovsky there is always the assumption of flaws preceding any serious analysis of his compositions. Russian music theory makes an important terminological distinction between the theme and the functional area of the form. For example, the Subsidiary (which in English is called simply “a theme”) is often a group of themes, a complex of musical structures. This begs for a different term. Traditionally, Russian theorists have used the term “party” to denote “theme group;” for example, glavnaya partia means primary theme group, literally, the “main party.” The subsidiary theme group, with all the thematic elements involved in it, is called pobochnaya partia. Russian theory assigns the status of a

A Sample of Analysis Using Both Integralist and Formalist Methods

separate “party” to the transition (svyazuyushaya partia) and to the closing (zaklyuchitel’naya partia). Thereby, the exposition contains four distinct parties: the “Main Party,” the “Connecting Party” (i.e., the Transition), the “Side Party” (i.e., the Subsidiary), and “Concluding Party” (i.e., the Closing). Since the Introduction is often considered to be a part of the exposition, at certain times Russian theorists use the term “Introductory Party” (i.e., partia vstuplenia). Along with the two modulatory passages, the first in the Transition and the second within the Subsidiary (often appearing as a sudden break [Russ. perelom]), all these elements comprise the Russian rendition of the theoretical concept of the exposition in the sonata allegro. It is evidently quite different from the terminology accepted in both Great Britain and the United States. The reason of such terminological distinctions stems from the functional foundation of musical form. It is a common conviction among Russian theorists that musical form is built not upon periodic structure, but upon the functions of themes. A particular function may be fulfilled by a single theme or by a group of themes. Sometimes the function is fulfilled by a structure that is smaller than a theme. The function of an element defines its role in a musical composition. It is a particular function, and nothing else, which determines all partitioning and segmentation in a musical form. Neither melodic articulation nor a contrapuntal structure in Schenkerian terms can be responsible alone for segmentation. All these elements put together play a certain role—a function, which itself is determined by the exigencies of a musical composition. The latter are common in literature, the visual arts and musical compositions; they may be related to the rules of rhetoric. There is a type of rhetoric of verbal presentation, as well as types of rhetoric of painting, architectural compositions, choreographic narratives, and musical works. Although the particulars may differ, the main compositional functions are similar for all these forms of art. Valentina Kholopova, in her recently published book The Forms of Musical Works, suggests a parallel reading of the functions of the parts of rhetorical disposition and of sonata allegro form (Table 6.3).317

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Sample Analyses: Formalist, Integralist and Mixed

Table 6.3 Valentina Kholopova’s definitions of sonata allegro terms Rhetoric disposition

Sonata exposition

Introduction (exordium)

Introduction

Narration (narratio)

(continuation of the introduction)

Definition of the theme (propositio)

Main theme (main party)

Counterargument (confirmatio)

Break in the Subsidiary theme

Subdivision (partitio)

Objection (confutatio) Digression (digressio)

Conflusion (conclusio)

Transition (connecting party) Subsidiary (side party) Element of closing

Closing theme or its end

According to this concept, the compositional scheme of the Overture will be as follows (see Table 6.4). Table 6.4 The terms of sonata allegro, according to Valentina Kholopova Functions

Themes & Motives

Key Areas

Intro

a,b

f#

Side Party

b,a,B or, a,b,A

V/Db Db

Main Party

Connecting Party Closing Party

Development Party Main Party

Connecting Party Side Party

Closing Party Coda

a,b,a a a

M.P., Intro & S.P. fragm a,b,a a

a,B or, b,A a

a

b

Db b

D B

The idea of compositional modulation suggested by Bobrovsky in the “Side Party” in the Exposition may seem to not fit into the scheme, especially if we look at the form of the whole and at the functional distribution of parts. The role of the opening 8-bar (b) section is not clear from the standpoint of the Classical

A Sample of Analysis Using Both Integralist and Formalist Methods

Formenlehre. Is it imperative, therefore, that we evaluate Tchaikovsky’s compositional technique in this particular example as “weak,” should we accuse the greatest Russian composer of an inability of building musical form, of a “temporal incongruence of parts?” Would not this be a weak attempt in itself, a vain desire to denigrate one of the brightest musical stars of the last two centuries? In opposition to the cries of a veritable army of Tchaikovsky’s critics, I assert that his music is still very much alive and, as any work of genius, is constantly reinterpreted and rejuvenated in live performances. All that is left to the critics is to try to understand its essence. Whether it would come in line with the Schenkerian principles demanding integrity in the form of the unfolding of the tonic triad, or whether the critics alter their criteria to any other format, the music is still there, actively performed and in great demand. In general, not a single theorist or musicologist today is capable of total dismissal of the musical legacy of a well-established nineteenth-century composer. We live in a different historical period and our objectives should be not to overwrite history but to serve it and study it as best as we can. Tchaikovsky’s introduction of this (b) section, in particular, has probably served as the foundation for the designs unprecedented in other compositions written in the standard instrumental sonata form. The inclusions of principles from different art forms (such as literature, cinema, theater, painting, etc.) became common in the music of the twentieth century. In Russia, Denisov, Gubaidulina and Schnittke wrote music that is impossible to analyze solely according to the principles of the Classical instrumental forms. The idea of dramaturgy and musical characters has been actively discussed among the Russian integralists, beginning with Viktor Tsukkerman and including Viktor Bobrovsky, Maria Lobanova, Tatyana Tchernova and Valentina Kholopova. Although Tchaikovsky avoids including a literal program, there are few episodes of literary narration by musical means in the plot of Romeo and Juliet. One of these episodes is the “Theme of Love” in the exposition. It was important for Tchaikovsky to devise a special way of introducing the “Theme of Love.” There is little doubt that the (b) section did not present a flaw of the formal structure but rather demonstrated a conscious formal solution.

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Sample Analyses: Formalist, Integralist and Mixed

The new spin that the form of the Overture receives from the “theme of Love” is precisely representative of the idea of structural growth; thus, the standard sonata form, essentially presenting a trivial scheme that was already virtually exhausted in the eighteenth century, becomes a veritable smorgasbord of formal innovations in Tchaikovsky’s Overture. The essence to the sonata allegro form in the Overture appears as returning to the same stage (presenting a sort of eternal return), but each time on a higher level, depicting a spiral movement, akin to Hegelian dialectics (see Figure 6.8).

Figure 6.8 Valentina Kholopova, dialectic development in sonata allegro.

This type of ascending spiral is supported by the growing density of orchestration, increasing melodic extensions, and constantly intensifying polyphonic development. However, it becomes easy to observe that it all starts with the impetus resulting from the unusual incorporation of the predictus (b), the first pronouncement of the “Theme of Love” in the exposition. The following presents a script of the telephone interview with Yuri Kholopov on the subject of Romeo and Juliet and the controversy in regard to the integralist approach to music theory (recorded on June 1, 2002):



A Sample of Analysis Using Both Integralist and Formalist Methods

I. Kh. What is your interpretation of the subsidiary theme in the exposition of Romeo and Juliet?

Yu. Kh. Here were meet again with the problematic aspect of Soviet analysis [i.e., integralist analysis—I. Kh.], which does not always treat the thematic side of music adequately. They do not understand that the Subsidiary theme is, in truth, a transformed version of the Primary theme, which must be treated correspondingly. They try to look at the form of the Subsidiary theme as a separate and independent entity, while in a Classical sonata form one should not think about the form of the Subsidiary theme apart from the Primary theme and the entire exposition. One may surely consider the form of the Primary theme as such, but not the form of the Subsidiary theme or any other consequent theme. This is an essential error on the part of Bobrovsky, who tried to convince us that the Subsidiary theme group in Romeo and Juliet is written in a large ternary form. I. Kh. What about the eight-measure opening of the Subsidiary theme, the first appearance of the “Theme of Love”? How would you interpret it in the context of the form of the Subsidiary theme?

Yu. Kh. Indeed, the first appearance of the theme presents a peculiar formal solution, which Tchaikovsky himself called “the introductory theme” (Russ. vvodnaya tema); it has been mentioned in Tchaikovsky’s letters and Sin’kovskaya’s monograph. In our terminology it would be called the “predictus function,” that is a leading function (Russ. prediktovaya funktsia). This does not present anything new in a Classical sonata form. For example, the first movement of Beethoven’s Third symphony has this particular scheme in the Subsidiary theme area. This same material is used in the Duet of Romeo and Juliet, written by Tchaikovsky first, and then transformed into the overture-fantasia. The theme starts on the cadential 6/4, and then, after going through the circle of fifth-related chords, returns to the dominant and ends there. I. Kh. In Schenkerian terms it would be called the “prolongation of the dominant.”

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Sample Analyses: Formalist, Integralist and Mixed

Yu. Kh. Yes, true. This is a result of the dissonant tonality present here. It is also true, that in the music of Tchaikovsky one can find a number of instances of a musical form which grows, that is, in which the reprise overgrows its normal size. This, however, is not the case in the Subsidiary theme of the Romeo and Juliet. The Subsidiary theme does not have to be written in an integral form. Only in the music of Prokofiev, in his piano sonatas, we often see the well-rounded form of the Subsidiary theme. For example, in the first movement of his 7th Piano Sonata Prokofiev created a lyrical rounded form functioning as an island of serenity. However, that was dictated by a specific type of symphonic dramaturgy. Compare it with the 6th Piano Sonata, in which the Subsidiary theme is torn apart by the stormy development. Returning to Romeo and Juliet, I should mention the concept of the “second modulation.” In the tradition of the Formenlehre, in the exposition we see three transitory passages (Russ. khods): the Primary theme to the Subsidiary theme, moving from the tonic to a different key. The second is usually present inside the Subsidiary theme and it expresses the motion from the dominant ... to the dominant! It is such an unusual modulation! It results not so much in a change of harmony, as in a change of the musical image (obrzanaya modulatsia). Thus, the first entrance of the “Theme of Love” may be considered a “second passage.” I. Kh. Does this all make the Subsidiary multi-thematic?

Yu. Kh. Yes, it does. There are two themes within the Subsidiary theme (Russ. v pobochnoi partii) [see, my earlier discussion of the term “party”—I. Kh.]. It would be difficult to interpret them otherwise, because the theme, which comes in after the first entrance of the “Theme of Love,” the oscillation on the D-flat triad, cannot be the b section. The b section should be unstable, it never circumscribes the tonic. Here, in Romeo and Juliet, the “Theme of Love” is on the dominant, while the following theme is in the tonic. It is impossible for a ternary form to present the a section in the dominant, and the b section in tonic; it would be in reverse order and would contradict the very logic of ternary form. And here Bobrovsky made a mistake; he simply looked at the

A Sample of Analysis Using Both Integralist and Formalist Methods

thematic structure and ignored the tonal development that underlies it.

I. Kh. This is the case, despite the fact that the D-flat major oscillation looks like the b section, that is, it is built texturally as a b section. Only its tonal position defies such an interpretation …. And in the recapitulation, the eight-measure predictus of the “Theme of Love” disappears, contributing to our idea of the multithematic Subsidiary theme. Yu. Kh. Oh, yes, in the recapitulation very different things are happening ….

The figures presented in these three samples—Tsukkerman, Kholopov, Bobrovsky, Kholopova—have always stood out as the leaders in analytical methodology and the masters of analysis. Without a doubt, all four are excellent storytellers, experienced in oral presentations; the published text retains just a fraction of the brilliance of their rhetoric. Tsukkerman is revered today by the majority of Russian theorists as he was during his lifetime; Bobrovsky is remembered as the most revolutionary analyst of his times; Kholopov’s untimely demise in 2003 has left the field orphaned and Russian theory is still trying to recuperate from that loss. Kholopova continues her journey in the direction laid out by her teachers Tsukkerman and Mazel’ and her constant progress impresses and inspires generations of her students and colleagues. It goes without saying that their work behind the Iron Curtain is the time of lost opportunities—regrettable inability to communicate with the colleagues in the West. The idea of comparing their approaches to analysis with those that are present today—in particular, in the publications of William Caplin and James Hepokoski—remains the goal for the author of this book. Perhaps, direct connections on the level of terminology and techniques require other venues, while this book is intended for just the first step.

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In Lieu of Conclusion: Contemplation on the Categories of the Whole, Logos and Theory 7.1

The Whole

The drama and the antinomy of form and work have been followed in the text of the six chapters above, on the level of facts, terminology, and historical narratives. However, the issue does not seem to be closed at this point: it requires further elaboration. Perhaps, this will leave the book unfinished, turning it into a kind of open structure that leaves the desire to continue. Among the unfinished topics, ultimately, the question of what the whole is lingers without proper illumination. Two others stem from this one: the problem of logos of music and the status of music theory. The Russian context, as exotic and intellectually challenging as it is, cannot limit the scope of the questions at hand. The point of writing this book was, to a great degree, the urgency and importance of the subject, for which the Russian context could have provided one clarifying argument among many. In this sense, it is remarkable how hesitant were Mazel’ and Tsukkerman to accept the cartesian model of analysis. If analysis implies the division of a kind—and, say, Eggebrecht translates Form vs. Work: A Major Antinomy of Music Theory and Analysis Ildar D. Khannanov

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the Greek term ἀνάλουσις as Auflösung, that is “dissolution,”— then the goal of two Russian scholars, namely, the musical whole, tseloye, is compromised. Tselostnyi analiz—one of the two methods discussed in the book—is, in fact, an oxymoron. The Russian word tseloye—the whole—suggests not only the integrity of parts but the original wholeness, being untouched, unused, wholesome, virgin, original and organic. For example, tseloye yabloko is a whole apple; it would be unreasonable to expect this apple to be restored to its original completeness after an intrusive bite of an analyst. Analysis, as a norm, destroys the whole. The only true holistic experience in music is, therefore, composition-performance-listening, desirably all three in one person. If all three strive to become a single whole, what is the whole as such? The whole, le tout, tutto, das Ganze, tseloye, zhonga, kamil, totum, το ὃλον, is difficult to squeeze into a single definition (it should be undefinable by its nature). However, Zeno of Chitteum, an ancient Greek stoic philosopher, managed to put it into words: “δοκεῖ δ’αὐτοῖς ἀρχὰς εἶναι τῶν ὅλων δύο, τὸ ποιοῦν καὶ τὸ πάσχον. τὸ μὲν οὖν πάσχον εἶναι τὴν ἄποιον οὐσίαν τὴν ὓλην˙ τὸ δὲ ποιοῦν τὸν ἐν αυτή λόγον τόν θεόν.” “The causes of the whole are two: active and passive; the passive is the unmade essence of clay; the active—the words of gods.” This can be interpreted as follows: the formalists deal with raw materials of music, hule; integralists apply logos. Hence the situation of Moses and Aaron. It remains unclear if these two were friendly to each other. One was tongue-tied; another— eloquent. One generated prescriptions; another used his social skills to describe them.

7.2 Logos

As shown in Section 3.15 of Chapter 3, “Formalism and Integralism as Reflections of Conservatory vs. University Training Systems,” the difference between formalism and integralism is related and, to a great degree, produced by the difference between these two types of training. Early conservatories—orphanages with musical programs—did not offer a comprehensive education in

Logos

humanities. Giorgio Sanguinetti emphasized one aspect of training in partimento tradition: it was non-verbal.318 This tradition offered pages upon pages of exercises with very little instruction presented in the form of continuous verbal text. In contrast with this, the primary goal of learning at the university is mastering the word (the terminal degree of Ph.D.—Philosophy Doctor— confirms the ability of the holder to produce and publish written texts). If musical formalism was born at the conservatories and integralism came in later at the universities, that places our antinomy again into the relationship of Moses and Aaron. In other words, our antinomy reveals a larger issue: that of the relation of music to logos. If Heraclitus complained that people do not understand logos and live their lives as if they were always asleep, it only points to the fact that there must be areas of life that do not submit to the universal signifier of the word, Logos the Father. Musical meaning seems to be able to exist independently of verbal faculty. In terms of Gilles Deleuze, music exists au dela du logos.319 Much of what sciences can offer in terms of hard link between the signifiers and signified—the criterion of tangibility—fail to produce meaning for musical art. Music is structured differently; it requires its own language of description (something that Mazel’ and Tsukkerman sensed as urgently needed). Indeed, if harmonic function is not a verbalizable concept but a skill and cognitive mechanism, musical form is the realized number in neo-Platonic interpretation, and lad is the category that unites the incompatible elements, there is no room for logos as a scientific (or, in Heidegger’s term, onto-teleological) strategy. Tension-resolution patterns of harmony deal with preverbal (preverbitum) factors, exchange of kinetic and potential states of energy and corporeal manifestations of gesture and breathing; the number understood in Plotinus’ and Proclus’ term also works against logos since it is said to precede the word. It is very common for a musical academic to hear scornful remarks from practicing musicians, composers, and performers alike regarding the usefulness of music theory. Composers and performers often view the achievements of theorists as something either impertinent to music or, in the best cases, incomplete. Theory is incomplete by nature and the integralist approach is intended to compensate for such deficiency. However, upon

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closer examination, it appears that the integralists do not live up to these claims either. Integralism cannot be complete for a simple reason: it has the tendency to exclude a substantial part of music, the musical form; very often, it rejects even the analysis of the musical score. In contrast, the formal exercises in harmonization of unfigured melody and writing a fugue exposition in Chapter 3 of this book may have provided some revelations of holistic nature. Returning to the opening statements in Chapter 1, I can suggest some corrections to my previous likening formalist object of analysis to Kantian noumen. If in other fields of human endeavor, say, in natural or social sciences, noumen is expressed in words and phenomenon is contemplated non-verbally, in music theory these figures change places. Musical noumen is a Ding an sich (in Kantian terms); it is tacit: in the words of Lao Zsu, it is a silent Dao. Or, as one of the leading philosophers and philologists of the last decades of the Soviet Union, Alexander Mikhailov voiced it, music theory deals with the unspoken (neskazannoye). In particular, he emphasized the preverbal condition of the word and inaudible sphere of music: Music spreads far into the sphere of the inaudible, just as the word extends into the space of illegible and unpronounceable, where it precedes and follows the naturalness of the word that is available to us.320

The integralists tried to compensate for that and provided the opposite—endless proliferation of speeches about music, either in languages of sciences or, often, in the plain words of everyday life. They had the point, though: we should not speak about music; yet it is our destiny, as humans submitted to logos, to speak about it. Both positions manifest a kind of stoicism: the formalists take pride in not talking about music in extramusical terms and keeping the musicality of music tacit; the integralists show heroic efforts in attempts to accomplish the impossible: to conquer the unspoken and to bring it to the circle of life and the horizon of time.

Logos

The horizon of time (a term of Edmund Husserl) and the circle of life are two major parameters that are given to each of us. These are not the parameters that circumscribe physical time and space—they are the limits of an individual human life. And these two parameters are controlled by logos; more precisely, by Father Logos (we should not confuse a Greek common word with the philosophical category; one can replace it also by Lad). The statement “Ἔν ἀρχή ἣν ὁ Λόγος” (John 1:1) exceeds any religious denomination: it is a summary of history of thought as such. Among other things, Logos forms the cosmos out of chaos and establishes the rules of coexistence, harmony, and euphony. It establishes a dialogue between the “I” and le petit a (in terms of Jacques Lacan) within a subject. Nothing should escape the power of logos: two primary meanings of the Greek verb λέγω are “to speak” and “to gather.” Thus, Logos gathers everything and nothing remains outside its overwhelming control (on a side note: this is a good question for Deleuze). In this respect, integralists observe the phenomena—they experience aisthesis, which is, simply, the perception of the outer world. They insist that the facts can speak for themselves. Hermann Kretzschmar, Viktor Tsukkerman, Richard Taruskin and Valentina Kholopova offer a smorgasbord of facts, presented in an eloquent musicological discourse. It is the factology—the logos of facts. Formalists, Eduard Hanslick, Heinrich Schenker, Pieter Van den Toorn and Yuri Kholopov try to explain a small selection of facts; they rely on their noumenal capacity; they also speak a language—the specialized language of music theory that nobody understands, a kind of esoteric, tacit or tongue-tied logos of ideas that needs an interpreter. Ultimately, they both have to say something about music and the composer-performerlistener expects to hear from them something reasonable. Musical work—the source of all facts—remains an unconquerable mountain peak for human words. Its holistic nature resists analysis. In contrast with it, the form is easier to ex-plain—to subtract a cartesian plane, a surface, a straight line, a point from music. It offers itself to analysis. However, the products of such activity—pure analytical extraction—are often horribly impertinent.

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The Divine Logos—that which is capable of verbalization of a musical work as a whole, undoubtedly, exists, but it is also clear that it is unavailable to humans at present. Perception is deceiving. Greeks noticed that in using the metaphor ἐσθήτι λαμπρά—perception, aisthesis, is likened to nothing but “shining clothes.321 As Dionysius Areopagite suggested, the Heavens are not the pleroma (the Kingdom of Light); for the mortals, the Heavens are imperceptible, dark and obscure. Still, the Divine Logos, as we believe, should be absolutely clear for itself and in itself; and we have to aim at such clarity too: “But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil” (Matthew 5:37, King James translation). This is, however, only a dream. The facts of factology do not have a fixed vocabulary of meanings. They are polysemic and incoherent. Work is not limited to a given text; it is endlessly intertextual. Musical surface is, in principle, obscure and elusive to the greatest degree. Roman Ingarden has demonstrated the ultimate variability of meanings of a musical work; Arthur Schopenhauer allotted a niche for music as something completely detached from the world of representation.

7.3 Theory

Whether music exists in a silent ivory tower or on a noisy marketplace, is a different question. There are many questions, such as content, autonomy, authenticity, absolute music and alike, that can lead this discussion astray. The antinomy of form vs. work brings us, with inevitability, to the unsolvable yet urgent need for creation of the musical whole. The argument of integralists—namely, that we should take into account all the facts—does not consider the problem of creation. In order for the patterns, partimenti, schemata, historically informed tricks and gimmicks to see the light of day, someone had to create them in complete perfection, as the whole and at once. The principle, by which humans can create music this way requires, in ideal, seeing the invisible. Theory is exactly that kind of vision (Greek θεόν + ὁραάω, theon+horao, observation of the deeds of gods). The results may appear unartistic and not wholesome. Such

Theory

accusations were directed at Zarlino, Rameau and Riemann. Yet, someone had to discover the logic and the syntax of music that go before pattern memorization, manipulating the texture and figuration and decorating everything with lines and embellishments. As shown in Chapter 3, the regole is based upon harmonization of unfigured melody that uses the principle of fundamental bass and tonal-functional syntax. Not recycling and processing the already existent harmonic progressions but creating the new ones using the new design of chords, functional logic, and the sense of syntax. There is improvisation, but there is also the process of writing music. Writing precedes the voice—the remark of Jacques Derrida that is difficult to argue with. A theorist must take the role of a demiurge. Plato would have objected, but it is inevitable. Before the musical work is finalized, its form is created. It happens silently for the outsiders, in the mind of a composer, a theorist, or both in one person. Good news is that this creation is not, in fact, production of something from scratch. Creation of musical form is more of a process of discovery. Two major achievements of the eighteenth century in music theory were the theory of harmony (Rameau) and the theory of form (Mattheson). They both were discovered by observant and inquisitive minds. Toward the nineteenth century, chord, function, motive, metro-rhythm, tonality (including the Russian lad), and harmonic progression settled in form and usage. Not much, if one considers the effort and time invested. Yet, the results of these discoveries have blossomed into three hundred years of tonal music in large forms. The form is not sustainable and, yes, it is partial. It does not consider all the facts that will go into the complete work. It is unrealistic to present the work of a human as perfection: humans are imperfect. A theorist produces concepts that are, mostly, incomplete. At this point, the reader is perhaps waiting for the solution to the problem. However, the antinomy of form vs. work is so heavy, so massive and so rooted in the millennial evolution of music theory that any suggestion on its solution will probably not leave even a scratch on its surface. Just as any individual is taken off guard by the natural language and can only play along

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with it, the issue of whether to focus on a small fraction or to try to grasp the whole has been there in the world long before any intelligent human being was born and became ready to question it. This ultimate antinomy preexist any act of will and will persist regardless of the individual attempts to solve it. Perhaps, even putting down the pen, the metaphor of conclusion,322 is impertinent and inconsequential at this point; this page cannot become the last because the supporters of each of the two methods continue riding the see-saw of enchanted dialectics. Instead of relaxing at the end, let us remember Albert Camus, his joyful description of the work of Sysiphus: “All is well: one must imagine Sysiphus happy.”323

Appendixes Appendix to Chapter 3 Arensky, Anton Stepanovich. Rukovodstvo po Izucheniyu Form Instrumental’noi i Vokal’noi Muzyki [A Guide to the Study of Forms of Instrumental and Vocal Music]. This is a very simple practical guide that covers several disciplines. It discusses counterpoint, harmony, and form in one context. As with many textbooks of that time, the most valuable aspect of it is a number of exercises based upon the musical materials of the time. Proponents of partimento find the exercises in harmonic progressions similar to Italian exercises. Asafiev, Boris Vladimirovich. Muzykal’naya Forma kak Protsess [Musical Form as a Process]. This one is not a textbook in musical form: it is one of the few true treatises on music, in the style and genre of Renaissance books. It covers several themes of ultimately abstract, philosophical character, among them, Asafiev’s views on intonatsia and musical form as it unfolds in time. Bobrovsky, Viktor Petrovich. Funktsional’nyie Osnovy Muzykal’noi Formy [The Functional Foundations of Musical Form]. This is a second-generation treatise on formal functions. It is a unique publication in the sense that it moves forward the previously established systems of formal functions of Asafiev (elaborations on his initium-motus-terminus paradigm) and Igor Sposobin’s six formal functions, together with functional systems of several other Soviet theorists, such as Tyulin and Skrebkov. Form vs. Work: A Major Antinomy of Music Theory and Analysis Ildar D. Khannanov

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Bobrovsky ventures into the integralist sphere by introducing the ideas on musical dramaturgy. It is one of many texts that synthesize formalist and integralist approaches. Butskoi, Anatoly Konstantinovich. Struktura Muzykal’nykh Proizvedenii. Teoreticheskiye Osnovy Analiza Muzykal’nykh Proizvedenii [The Structure of Musical Work. Theoretical Foundations of Analysis of Musical Works]. This book is among the rare items even in the libraries of the Russian conservatories. Its remarkable characteristic is related to the fact that it was written right after the 1917 October Socialist Revolution and carries all the fervor and freedom of its ideas. Together with other publications of the last three years of the 1910s and the decade of the 1920s, it is distinct in its absolute freedom of expression, lacking any censorship, either external or internal. Catoire, Grigoryi L’vovich. Muzykal’naya Forma. Chast’ 1. Metrika [Musical Form. Part 1. Metrics]. This author was a devoted follower of Riemann. He simply copied the metric theory of Riemann, and for that, he has been criticized by his colleagues. Yet, this book, together with his treatise on harmony, presents interest as examples of early stages of the formation of the Soviet style in teaching harmony and form. Conus, Georgi Eduardovich. Kak Issleduyet Formy Muzykal’nykh Organizmov Metrotektonicheskii Metod [How the Metrotectonic Method is Applied to Study of the Forms of Musical Organisms]. This book, as well as an unbridled fantasy of the author in regard to other themes, (some of them never existed before, like, say a pulse wave in music), deserves to be placed in modern cognitive studies. Reading through the notes of the faculty meetings at the Moscow Conservatory, one can assume that his theories were treated as strange and auxiliary. Yet, today, when the analysis of metric hierarchy has become common, Conus’s theory of metrotectonic blocks in the music of Beethoven would fit into current discussions without any hesitation. Darcy, Warren and James Hepokoski. The Elements of Sonata Theory. Inclusion of this book into the list of Russian Formenlehre may rise brows in the West. However, the major point of Darcy/Hepokoski correlates with the achievements of Russian colleagues in the most convincing way. First of all, the idea of deformation is borrowed from Russian literary formalists;

Appendix to Chapter 3

the point of returning rhetoric to discussion of sonata form is, essentially, how the Russian teachers of form viewed it. For example, Valentina Kholopova’s discussed the rhetorical prototypes for the formal functions in her article The Prototypes of Functions of Classical Forms.324 Diletsky, Nikolai. Idea Grammatiki Musikiiskoi [An Idea of Music’s Grammar].This treatise, carefully restored and published under the supervision of Mstislav Keldysh, is the primary source on harmony and counterpoint, perhaps, the only one of a kind published in the second half of the seventeenth century. Rarity that suffers from Cyrillic imprisonment (by the term of contemporary Russian theorists), this treatise should be included in the Western history of music theory. There are many aspects that anticipate Rameau’s work on harmony. Kholopov, Yuri Niklolayevich. “Forma” [Form]. In: Sovetskaya Muzykal’naya Entsiklopediya [Soviet Musical Encyclopedia]. Yuri Kholopov’s definitions of form are anything but simple technical descriptions. He delves into neo-Platonic theology and philosophy and brings up definitions from all over the world. For him, musical form is a vessel that holds together all aspects of musical expression; form is beautiful; form is realized number. Kholopov, Yuri Niklolayevich. Vvedeniye v Muzykal’nuyu Formu [Introduction into the Musical Form]. A large textbook intended for specialized courses (seminars for students majoring in theory), it exceeds its genre and presents, in fact, a treatise on musical form in its theoretical and historical perspectives. Together with his texts on harmony and the theory of musical-theoretical systems, this book forms the ultimate collection that represents the state of affairs in Soviet music theory of the 1970–1990s. Kholopova, Valentina Nikolayevna. Formy Muzykal’nykh Proizvedenii. Uchebnik [Forms of Musical Works]. This book should be larger two or three times; Professor Kholopova taught the course for theorists and composers (at the Department of Theory and Composition) at Moscow Conservatory for more than 30 years. The course is designed for four semesters (!) and the second year is dedicated to the historiography of musical forms. It manages to combine the integralist methodology with the most rigorous, Germanic, presentation of Classical and Romantic forms. It is also split into two parts: the Formenlehre

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and the historiography of musical forms, including the period of monodic chant. Kholopova, Valentina Nikolayevna. “O Prototipakh Funktsii Muzykal’noi Formy” [On the Prototypes of Functions of the Musical Form]. In: Problemy Muzykal’noi Nauki [Problems of Musical Science]. This seminal article offers the source of the Russian concept of formal functions as derived from the parts of rhetorical disposition. It clarifies the reference for Igor Sposobin’s description of six formal functions. Sposobin did not document the sources for his concept; Kholopova laid the ground for the understanding of the formal function that is quite different from Schoenberg-RatzCaplin’s model. Kuregyan, Tatiana Surenovna. Forma v Muzyke XVII-XX Vekov [Form in Music of the seventeenth-twentieth Centuries]. The student of Yuri Kholopov and, currently, the professor of form at Moscow Conservatory, she wrote a dissertation on classical forms as they were viewed in the 1970–80. As such, it is a document of the highest stage in development of Soviet music analysis. Losef, Aleksei Fyodorovich. Dialektika Tchisla u Plotina [The Dialectics of Number in Plotinus].This great Russian philosopher, an expert in ancient Greek language, a student of Gustav Shpet, has contributed so much to the theory of music in the Soviet Union that even today, the leading scholars keep slowly reading his mysterious texts. The Dialictic of Number in Plotinus has become a foundation for Kholopov’s understanding of musical form and musical composition in general. This text is a successful attempt to translate book 6 of Enneads by Plotinus, that which was omitted in two recent English translations “due to obscurity of mathematics.” Another well-known treatise, Music as the Object of Logic, is also a necessary reading in order to understand the Russian musical thought at its core. Mazel’, Leo Abramovich and Viktor Abramovich Tsukkerman. Analiz Muzykal’nykh Proizvedenii. Elementy Muszyki i Metodika Analiza Malykh Form [Analysis of Musical Works. Elements of Music and Methodic of Analysis of Smaller Forms]. This is one of two main textbooks, suggested by the Ministry of Culture of the USSR for the conservatory courses (another is Musical Form by Igor Sposobin). It presents a unique combination of the manifesto of integralism and the in-depth discussion of

Appendix to Chapter 3

Classical musical form. The size of 600 pages makes it a comprehensive guide to the forms and formal strategies of musical compositions. Medushevsky, Vyacheslav Vyacheslavovich. Stroyenie Muzykal’nogo Proizvedeniya v Svyazi s Yego Napravlennosti na Slushatelya [The Structure of a Musical Work in Concern with its Directedness at the Listener]. (See comments on p. 286). Medushevsky, Vyacheslav Vyacheslavovich. IntonatsionnoFabul’naya Priroda Muzykal’noi Formy [The Intonational-Fabulaic Nature of Musical Form]. (See comment on p. 287). Nazaikinsky, Yevgenyi Vladimirovich. Logika Muzykal’noi Kompozitsii [The Logic of Musical Composition]. The colleague of Medushevsky, Yevgeni Nazaikinsky brought the traditional subjects of music theory to the highest level of university scholarship. Together with Psychology of Music Perception, this text stands out as the ultimate manifestation of the integral method. It also provides the scientific foundation for the postulates of Formenlhere. Rutchyevskaya, Ekaterina Alexandrovna. Klassicheskaya Muzykal’naya Forma [Classical Musical Form]. Ekaterina Rutchyevskaya is the leading theorist of the Leningrad school of music theory. Her research on the role of the theme in musical composition is a very specific inquiry into the essence of Classical form. Skrebkov, Sergei Sergeyevich. Analiz Muzykal’nykh Proizvedenii [Analysis of Musical Works]. This author is a part of the group of main theorists of form in the Soviet Union. He adds a great deal of philosophy and reasoning on adjacent topics. His version of the theory of formal functions circulates in the field on par with those by Sposobin and Bobrovsky. Sokolov, Alexander Sergeyevich. Muzykal’naya Kompositsiya Dvadtsatogo Veka: Dialektika Tvorchestva [Musical Composition in the Twentieth Century: Dialectic of Art]. A student of Yevgenyi Nazaikinsky, Alexander Sokoloff is the unanimous leader of the field of music theory; his work on the styles and techniques of the music of the twentieth century is remarkable in its depth and interdisciplinary references. Sposobin, Igor Vladimirovich. Muzykal’naya Forma [Musical Form]. This book is, undoubtedly, the core of Russian and Soviet Formenlehre. Noteworthy is his teaching of six formal functions

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and five types of their presentation. The book is used as a textbook and as a manifesto of Soviet formalism as a method. Tchernova, Tatiana Yur’evna. Dramaturgiya v Instrumental’noi Muzyke [Dramaturgy in Instrumental Music]. This is a very unusual new field of the study of form. It is rooted in the writings of Asafiev, Bobrovsky, Tarakanov and others. The effectiveness of the study and graphing of the musical dramaturgy for performers is truly difficult to overestimate. Tsukkerman, Viktor Abramovich. Analiz Muzykal’nykh Proizvedenii. Sostavnyie Formy [Analysis of Musical Works. Compound Forms]. A collection of short books by Tsukkerman forms the detailed corpus of knowledge on various forms. The area of compound or individual forms is an exciting topic; it is well-studied in Russian Formenlehre and Tsukkerman is, perhaps, the best source of this knowledge. Tsukkerman, Viktor Abramovich. Analiz Muzykal’nykh Proizvedenii. Obshchiye Printsipy Razvitiya i Formoobrazovaniya v Muzyke. Prostyie Formy [Analysis of Musical Works. General Principles of Development and Form-building in Music. The Smaller Forms]. This book deals with the smaller forms, which seems to be an arguable area in modern Western Formenlehre. Even more valuable are the first 100 pages, on which Tsukkerman discusses the principles of development of musical materials and offers an outstanding hierarchy of types of contrast, including derived contrast and conflict. Tyulin, Yuri Nikolayevich, Tatiana Sergeyevna Berschadskaya, Iosif Yakovlevich Pustylnik, Alexander Abramovich Pen, Tigran Georgievich Ter-Martyrosyan, and Alfred Garrievich Schnittke. Muzykal’naya Forma [Musical Form]. There is a Brigade textbook in harmony; somewhat lesser known is the Brigade textbook in form by the theorists of the Leningrad school, led by Yuri Tyulin. It is a difficult task to judge the status of Moscow and Leningrad schools, yet the closeness to Asafiev’s home base is clearly seen in razor-sharp logic and some critical assessment of the Soviet concepts by the group of distinguished scholars from Leningrad. Tyulin, Yuri Nikolayevich. Stroyenie Muzykal’noi Rechi [The Design of Musical Speech]. Tyulin’s masterpiece; together with his Teaching of Musical Texture and Figuration, this book

Appendix to Chapter 4

is inscribed into Russian tradition as one of the most profound accounts of Classical form and its essential characteristics. Yavorsky, Boleslav Leopol’dovich. Stroyenie Muzykal’noi Rechi [The Design of Musical Speech]. This book is placed right after Tyulin’s for a reason. Both carry the same title! Yavorsky failed to publish his main treatise in an appropriate form, by any stretch of the imagination. Its genre fits, not without the problems, into some “notes and materials.” Yet, after reading it together with the unpublished archival materials, one can understand that Yavorsky did not just lay out the musicaltheoretical discourse for the future generations; he gave these generations the language. Yuri Kholopov and many others “speak Yavorsky.” The Design of Musical Speech can be interpreted as the first complete theory of music of the twentieth century.

Appendix to Chapter 4

Aranovsky, Mark Genrikhovich. Symphonicheskiye Iskaniya. Problema Genra Symphonii v Sovetskoi Muzyke 1960–1975kh Godov. [In Search of Symphony. The Problem of Genre of the Soviet Symphony of the 1960–1975s] (1979). This book summarizes the decades of rather energetic discussion of symphonicism that started by Asafiev and went through a number of meetings at the composers’ unions of Moscow and Leningrad, faculty meetings and journal publications. “--------”. Syntaksicheskaya Structura Melodii [Syntactic Structure of Melody] (1991). There are several treatises and sections of books on Soviet music theory that are dedicated to melody. Yuri Kremlev published a small book on the topic; Valentina Kholopova contributed to this genre as well. Mazel’ and Tsukkerman wrote extensively on melody. Aranovsky’s approach is based upon semiotic analysis of melody; it is rather specific and methodologically narrow. “--------”. Myzykal'nyi Tekst. Struktura i Kharakteristiki [Musical Text. The Structure and Characteristics] (1998). This is, perhaps, the most important book by Aranovsky. It contains a theory of musical text and provides the original terminology that is in use by most of the integralist theorists. The methodology is based on

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assimilation of some categories of semiotics, as well as the input from the literary theories of French and German origin. Asafiev, Boris Vladimirovich. “Put’ v Budushcheye” [The Path to Future]. In: Melos, (1917). “--------”. “Soblazny i Preodoleniya” [Challenges and Overcoming] (1917). These early articles of Asafiev present the elements of his theories in the most unrestricted way. They were criticized for “subjectivity and idealism” by the Soviet establishment. Yet, they contain the concepts in the most complete and not edited form. “--------”. Introduction to the Russian translation of Paul Bekker’s Simfonia ot Betkhovena do Malera [The Symphony from Beethoven to Mahler] (1926). This profound study refers to the symphony cycle as the stages of one’s life. It ushers the problem of symphony as a genre, form and a type of expression that has been elaborated on by several generations of Soviet music theorists. The translation is also remarkable, since the book now belongs to rarities and is not commonly cited in current literature. “--------”. Muzykal’naya Forma kak Protsess [Musical Form as a Process] (1971). This edition combines two books, that of 1930 and of 1947, with the preface by Elena Orlova. As a main text of Soviet tradition, it deserves a new edition and significant archival research. Belyayev, Viktor Mikhailovich. Igor Stravinsky’s Les Noces. An Outline (1923). Yuri Kholopov suggested to the author this book as the first complete example of integral analysis. It has been translated into English. However, the analysis and the method deserve a new take by the contemporary researchers of methodology of analysis. Bobrovsky, Viktor Petrovich. Funktsional’nyie Osnovy Muzykal’noi Formy [The Functional Foundations of Musical Form] (1978). This book is an important stage in the development of Asafiev’s views on musical form. In particular, the initiummovere-terminus modes of Asafiev are turned into an elaborate hierarchical system. Even more important is the contribution of Bobrovsky to the theory of formal functions. If Sposobin’s

Appendix to Chapter 4

description of six functions, introduced in 1947, can be labeled as the first stage, Bobrovsky’s highly developed theory forms the second stage. In other words, the theory of formal functions has been implemented in research and pedagogy for decades and Bobrovsky took it to the next level. His name is highly revered today at the conservatories. Again, the Functional Foundations of Musical Form is worthy of English translation and commentary. It can significantly enrich the current views on functions of the segments of musical form. “--------”. Tematizm kak Faktor Muzykal’nogo Myshleniya. Ocherki: Chaikovskii, Musorgskii, Skriabin, Rakhmaninov, Debussi [Thematicism as a Factor of Musical Thought. Essays: Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, Debussy] (2007). As it often happens, the main treatise provided the core of method and theory; Bobrovsky has published a number of books with analyses and applications of his methods. The breadth of his interests is impressive. This particular study is dedicated to the problem of thematicism. Butskoi, Anatolyi Konstantinovich. Struktura Muzykal’nykh Proizvedenii. Teoreticheskiye Osnovy Analiza Muzykal’nykh Proizvedenii [The Structure of Musical Work. Theoretical Foundations of Analysis of Musical Works] (1948). “--------”. Neposredstvennyie Dannyie Muzyki [Opyt Vvedeniya v Muzyku] (1925). Anatoly Butskoi belongs to the theorists that were not at the center of attention, in comparison with Tsukkerman or Sposobin. Yet, the ideas of Butskoi, described in this chapter, may contribute a great deal to the discussion of the main topics of Soviet music theory. Druskin, Yakov Semyonovich. O Ritoricheskikh Priyomakh v Muzyke I. S. Bakha [On the Rhetorical Means in the Music of J. S. Bach] (2005). Yakov Druskin’s book on rhetoric in the music of Bach is significant since rhetoric has been always a part of methodology of analysis in the Soviet Union. Yavorsky wrote a book on rhetorical figures and references to Lutheran chorales in Bach’s keyboard suites; there has been a tradition of using rhetoric in research of music for organ. Olga Ivanovna Zakharova, a student of Valentina Kholopova, wrote a dissertation Ritorika v Zapadnoyevropeiskoy Muzyke XVII-Pervoi Poloviny

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XVIII Veka [Rhetoric in Western European Music of the Seventeenth and First Half of the Eighteenth Centuries] in 1983, which has become an authoritative source in musical rhetoric. Marina Lyupishko, among contemporary researchers, specializes in rhetoric in Soviet music theory. Khannanov, Ildar Damirovich. “Aspekty Muzykal’nogo Soderzhaniya v Trudakh Amerikanskikh i Zapadnoyevropeiskikh Teoretikov 1990-2000-kh Godov” [Aspects of Musical Content in the Works of American and Western-European Theorists of the 1990–2000s]. Problemy Muzykal’noi Nauki/ Music Scholarship (2008). This is an overview of current Western theories that can be compared with the Russian integralist trend. The article was commissioned by Valentina Kholopova. It covers most prominent concepts and ideas in North American musicology and music theory, analogous to Soviet integralist literature. In particular, Valentina Kholopova suggested focusing on theories of musical content. Kholopova, Valentina Nikolayevna. “Muzykal’noye Soderzhaniye: Zov Kul’tury—Nauka—Pedagogika” [Musical Content: the Call of Culture—Science—Pedagogy]. Muzykal’naya Akademiya, no. 3 (2002). “--------”. Muzyka kak Vid Iskusstva. In 2 volumes (1991). “--------”. Muzykal’nyye Emotsii. [Musical Emotions] (2010). “--------”. Oblast’ Bessoznatel’nogo v Vospriyatii Muzykal’nogo Soderzhaniya [The Sphere of the Unconsciousness in the Perception of Musical Content] (2002). “--------”. Spetsial’noie i Nespetsial’noie Muzykal’noye Soderzhaniye [Specialized and Non-Specialized Musical Content] (2002). “--------”. Fenomen Muzyki [Phenomenon of Music] (Moscow: Direct-Media, 2014). These publications are the most recent. They belong to the new style of Kholopova’s theorizing. She became the leading theorist in the 1960–80s. The books and articles—and she is, perhaps, the most prolific writer in the Soviet and Russian tradition—are listed on her website, www.kholopova.ru. Of special interest are her books on rhythm, smaller books on melody, texture (factura), thematicism and rhythm. Monumental monographs on the music of Anton Webern, Alfred Schnittke and Sofia Gubaidulina are simply obligatory to read for any scholar who wishes to delve into these topics.

Appendix to Chapter 4

Konen, Valentina Josefovna. “Samosoznaniye i Samoopredeleniye Istorii Muzyki” [Self-consciousness and Selfdefinition of Music History]. Sovetskaya Muzyka No. 9 (1988). Valentina Konen grew up in the United States, studied at Julliard School of Music and moved to the Soviet Union together with her family. She had been an ultimate expert in American music, in Jazz and history of Western music. In this article, she formulated the necessity for the history of music to become a part of humanities. Her position was shared by most of the integralists; Yuri Kholopov had become her major opponent. Kudryashov, Andrei Yur’evich. Teoriya Muzykal’nogo Soderzhaniya. Khudozhestvennyie Idei Yevropeiskoi Muzyki XVII– XX Vekov [The Theory of Musical Content. The Artistic Ideas of European Music of the Seventeenth–Twentieth Centuries] (2006). The author studied with Dr. Kudryashov in the same years at the Moscow Conservatory. A brilliant musicologist, the son of theorist Yuri Kudryashov (an expert in New Viennese music), a pianist from Minsk, Dr. Kudryashov worked in the field that has been essential for the Moscow Conservatory tradition: he studied the history and theory of performance related to the topics in music history and theory. His book, written with collaboration of Valentina Kholopova, represents the theory of musical content in the most musical way, closely tied with the practice of Russian performance tradition. Mazel’, Leo Abramovich and Viktor Abramovich Tsukkerman. Analiz Muzykal’nykh Proizvedenii. Elementy Muzyki i Metodika Analiza Malykh Form [Analysis of Musical Works. Elements of Music and Methodic of Analysis of Smaller Forms] (1967). This book was the main textbook in music analysis for the students at the conservatories, majoring in musicology and theory of music. Mazel’, Leo Abramovich. Fantasia F-moll Shopena. Opyt Analiza [Fantasy in F Minor by Chopin. The Essay in Analysis]. (1937). This is a masterpiece of integralist analysis. It combines a thorough formal study with the wealth of interdisciplinary information. This book is quoted by Mieczysław Tomaszewski and his students in Poland—a sign of unequivocal recognition of its value.

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“--------”. “V. A. Tsukkerman i Problemy Analiza” [V. A. Tsukkerman and the Problems of Analysis]. O Muzyke. Problemy Analiza [On Music. Problems of Analysis] (1974). “--------”. O Prirode i Sredstvakh Muzyki [On the Nature and the Means of Music] (1983). “--------”. Voprosy Muzykal’nogo Analiza. Opyt Soyedineniya Teoreticheskogo Muzykoznaniya s Estetikoi [Questions of Music Analysis. Essay in Connecting Theoretical Musicology with Aesthetics] (1978). These publications of Leo Mazel’ represent the method of tselostnyi analiz in depth and in the all-embracing fashion. Medushevsky, Vyacheslav Vyacheslavovich. Stroyenie Muzykal’nogo Proizvedeniya v Svyazi s Yego Napravlennosti na Slushatelya [The Structure of a Musical Work in Concern with its Directedness at the Listener]. Kandidat dissertation (1970). This first dissertation (Kandidat degree) by Medushevsky already strikes as cutting-edge research. In 1971, there were not many colleagues who could quote the books by Eero Tarasti, Vladimir Karbusicky and Peter Kivy. Medushevsky had connections with colleagues at Moscow University and other prominent institutions of higher education. “--------”. “Dvoistvennost’ Muzykal’noi Formy i Vospriyatiye Muzyki” [The Duality of Musical Form and Music Perception]. Vospriyatiye Muzyki. Sbornik Statey [Music Perception. A Collection of Articles] (1980). “--------”. “K Probleme Sushchnosti, Evolutsii i Tipologii Muzikalnykh Stilei” [Concerning the Problem of Essence, Evolution and Typology of Musical Styles. Style and Modernity]. Muzykal’nyi Sovremennik [Musical Contemporary] (1984). “--------”. “O Dinamicheskom Kontraste v Muzyke” [On Dynamic Contrast in Music]. Esteticheskiye Ocherki [Essays in Aesthetics] (1980). The books on evolution of styles and on dynamic contrast in music were on the reading lists for students at all conservatories in the country. Meduschevsky represented the cutting-edge knowledge in the Soviet Union and enjoyed indisputable authority in the most advanced forms of music theory and analysis. “--------”. “O Metode Muzykovedeniya” [On the Method of Musicology]. Metodologicheskiye Problemy Muzykoznaniya [Methodological Problems of Musicology]. (1987).

Appendix to Chapter 4

“--------”. Intonatsionno-Fabul’naya Priroda Muzykal’noi Formy [The Intonational-Fabulaic Nature of Musical Form]. Doctoral Dissertation (1984). This dissertation of Medushevsky presents the unreachable peak of development of Soviet music theory as a part of humanities. It involves the ideas of Russian literary formalists, such as sujet and fabula, and moves Asafiev’s idea of intonatsia miles ahead. This text presents, undoubtedly, a well of discoveries, awaiting its Western researcher. “--------”. The Spiritual Analysis of Music (2014). This is a new Medushevsky, a theorist of the Orthodox Christian tradition. Many postulates of his dissertation, his entanglement with psychology and neurobiology, are left behind. Nazaikinsky, Yevgenyi Vladimirovich. Logika Muzykal’noi Kompozitsii [The Logic of Musical Composition] (1982). This is a major scholarly treatise on the logic of musical composition by Dr. Nazaikinsky. “--------”. O Psikhologii Muzykal’nogo Vospriatiya [On Psychology of Music Perception] (1972). This is his doctoral dissertation. It has become a major treatise on musical psychology in the Soviet Union. “--------”. Stil’ i Zhanr v Muzyke [Style and Genre in Music]. (2003). “--------”. “Muzykal’noye Vospriyaiye kak Problema Muzykoznaniya [Musical Perception as A Problem of Musicology]”. Vospriyatiye Muzyki. [Music Perception.] (1980). Dr. Nazaikinsky formulated the main principles of music theory as they were related to social sciences and humanities. His work is defined with ultimate academic rigor and precision. Serov, Alexander Nikolayevich. Russkaya Narodnaya Pesnya kak Predmet Nauki [Russian Folk Song as a Scientific Object] (1952). In addition to the text discussed earlier, this one lays the ground for Soviet approaches to folk song. “--------”. Tematizm Uvertyury “Leonora”. Etyud o Betkhovene [Thematicism of the Ouverture Leonore III. An Essay on Beethoven] (1861). Tarakanov, Mikhail Alexandrovich. “O Metodologii Analiza Muzykal’nogo Proizvedeniya (K Probleme Sootnosheniya Tipologicheskogo i Individual’nogo)” [On the Methodology of Analysis of a Musical Work (To the Question of Balance of the Typical and the Individual. Metodologicheskiye Problemy

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Muzykoznaniya [Methodological Problems of Musicology] (1987). Professor Tarakanov was the leading expert in Soviet music. This particular publication raises the question of balance of the individual and the typical in musical expression. As with many Soviet musicologists, Tarakanov’s style of scholarship manifested ultimate erudition in interdisciplinary areas with profound professional musicianship. Tsukkerman, Viktor Abramovich. “Nekotoryie Printsipy Formoobrazovaniya” [Some Principles of Form Building]. Muzykal’no-Teoreticheskiye Issledovaniya i Etyudy [MusicalTheoretical Sketches and Etudes] (1975). “--------”. “O Dvukh Protivopolozhnykh Printsipakh Slushatel’skogo Raskrytiya Musykal’noi Formy” [On Two Opposite Principles of Revealing of the Musical Form by the Listener]. Teoreticheskiye Problemy Musykal’nykh Form i Zhanrov [Theoretical Problems of Musical Forms and Genres] (1971). Most valuable information in Soviet music theory is distributed through smaller books and collections of articles. Tsukkerman was the master of the smaller genre. Cumulatively, his publication present both the tselostnyi analiz and the model for musicology in general. “--------”. Tsukkerman, Viktor Abramovich. Sonata Lista Si Minor [Sonata in B Minor by Liszt] (1984). This smaller book is an example of tselostnyi analiz in action. It is rich in references to German literature and contains truly artistic revelations on the music of Liszt from the performer’s point of view. Tsukkerman, Viktor Abramovich. Kamarinskaya Glinki i yeyo Traditsii v Russkoi Muzyke [Glinka’s Kamarinskaya and Its Traditions in Russian Music] (1957). A 500-page in-depth study of the first major large-scale orchestral composition in Russian music. The discussion of musical form—rather informed and rigorous—occurs on p. 360. It is preceded by a monumental description of all that came before and followed by the historical significance and influence on Russian music after Kamarinsakaya. The music lasts for nine minutes.

Notes 1. Reneé Descartes, Discours dela méthode suivi des Méditations (Paris: Union Générale d’Éditions, 1951), p. 46.

2. Ian Bent. Music Analysis in the Nineteenth Century, vol. II. “Hermeneutic approaches” (Cambridge, New York, Madrid: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 3. Joseph Kerman, “How We Got into Analysis, and How to Get Out, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Winter, 1980), pp. 311–331.

4. Kofi Agawu, “How We Got out of Analysis, and How to Get Back in Again,” Music Analysis, Vol. 23, No. 2/3 (Jul.–Oct., 2004), pp. 267–286. 5. These distinctions, conceived in the works of Aristotle and brought to fruition in Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas, may as well form a theme for a separate study of work vs. form antinomy. An accident is an attribute that cannot exist by itself and applies to the substance as something that modifies it. The essence is the attribute of a thing that exists by itself and forms its core.

6. The ascending type of hierarchy, that which brings about a new quality (quale novum) is thoroughly studied in philosophy of sciences. The collections of articles, published recently, include Emergence (Cambridge: MIT, 2008) and The Re-Emergence of Emergence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

7. For example, the Rector of the Synodal College, Stepan Vladimirovich Smolensky, in his 1909 book Ob Ukazaniyakh Ottenkov Ispolneniya i Ukazaniyakh Muzykal’no-Pevcheskikh Form Tserkovkykh Pesnopenii v Kryukovom Pis’me [Concerning the Indications of the Nuances of Performance and the Indications of Vocal Musical Forms of Church Chants in the Kryuk Writing] (Kiev, S. Kul’zhenko, 1909) places the concept of musical form in the context of the Znamennyi chant: “the neumatic Kryuk notation appears to be a rather complex and sophisticated system when its detail serves not only the sightreading of the melody of the chant but also the interpretation of nuances of performance and the explanation of the plan of its form,” p. 7. This is an interesting aspect of ancient Russian monodic chant tradition. Despite the common misconception about “the lack of music theory” before the middle of the nineteenth century, there is the evidence of the presence of the idea form in its early stages—a sign of a well-developed theoretical tradition.

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8. In the existent literature on the topic, authors commonly use the term “integrated analysis.” Although it may convey the idea of integration, its direct translation into Russian will be obyedinennyi, объединенный, which is closer in meaning to “united” or “unified.” This term, however, does not convey the essence of the original Russian term tselostnyi, целостный, which is related to something which is not the result of combining something but has always been whole (tsel’nyi) from its inception. It may be possible to translate tselostnyi as “holistic,” but since the latter is fraught with connotations from other fields of knowledge our preference goes to “integral.”

9. All the translations in this book are mine, unless the name of a translator is specified—I.Kh. 10. Unfortunately, this is the case for the Russian reader. The impressions of the events of 1937 and 1948 are indelible in the cultural memory of the nation, and the term “formalism” immediately brings associations with persecutions of the intelligentsia in the Stalinist period. However, it was essential for our study to present an appropriate definition for the position of the theorists who advocated the teaching of musical form in their debates with the integralists. Their belonging to the formalist trend is undeniable, and it is difficult to imagine that any of them would object to this definition, at least, in its Western interpretation. 11. The term noumenon is defined by Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 1781), as a part of the transcendental aesthetics.

12. Apperception is also a category of Kantian transcendental aesthetics.

13. Hugo Riemann, Grundriß der Musikwissenschaft (Leipzig: Quelle und Meyer Verlag, 1908), p. 7.

14. Ibid, p. 9.

15. Karl Bühler, Ausdruckstheorie. Das System an der Geschichte aufgezeigt (Jena: Verlag Gustav Fischer, 1933).

16. Peter Kivy, Antithetical Arts (Oxford: Calrendon Press, 2009), pp. vii–viii. 17. Ibid.

18. Lydia Goehr, The Quest for Voice: On Music, Politics and Philosophy (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 19.

19. Roman Ingarden, The Work of Music and the Problem of Its Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).

Notes

20. This idea was presented by Rolland Barthes in the article “The Death of the Author” (Aspen, 1967) published in English, and also in French “La mort de l’auteur” (Mantéia, 1968).

21. Yevgeniya Chigareva, Organization of Expressive Means as the Foundation of Individuality of Musical Work; Kandidat dissertation (Moscow Conservatory, 1975) and Mozart’s Operas in the Context of His Time: Artistic Individuality, Semantics; Doctoral Dissertation (Moscow Conservatory, 1998. 22. See, for example, Mikhail Tarakanov, “To the Question of Balance of the Typical and the Individual,” Methodological Problems of Musicology (Moscow: Muzyka, 1987). 23. Gérard Genette, The Work of Art Immanence and Transcendence (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1997), p. 4.

24. Alexander Mezenets, Izveshchenyie Zhelayushchim Uchit’sya Peniyu (1670) [The Information for Those Who Wish to Study Singing] (Chelyabinsk: Bi, 1996) and Nikolai Diletsky, Idea Grammatiki Musikiiskoi [An Idea of Music’s Grammar] (1679) (Moscow: State Publisher Muzyka, 1979). 25. Valentina Kholopova, Formy Muzykal’nykh Proizvedenii. Uchebnik [Forms of Musical Works]. A Textbook (Moscow: Lan’, 2001).

26. Yuri Kholopov, Analiz Muzykal’nykh Proizvedenii. Programma dlya Muzykal’nykh Uchilish. [Analysis of Musical Works. A Program for Musical Colleges] (Moscow: Ministry of Culture of the USSR, 1966).

27. A Schenkerian theorist may object by saying that the voice-leading graph represents the unfolding as a process. Russian theory maintains the idea that the middle and the end of a musical work is partially preconditioned by the character of the initial motive (a group of characteristic submotivic features), the rest depends on the dialectic and dramaturgy of relationship of the elements (keys, themes, metric-rhythmic changes, modulations, and performing solutions). This approach is somewhat similar to Schoenberg’s. It relies on the hidden (implicit) qualities of the basic idea. 28. Adolf Bernhard Marx, Die Lehre von der musikalischen Komposition, praktisch und theoretisch (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1851–1858).

29. Ludwig Bussler, Uchebnik Form Instrumental’noi Muzyki, Izlozhennyi v 33 Zadachakh [Textbook of Forms of Instrumental Music, in 33 Assignments]. Transl. from German into Russian by Nikolai Kashkin and Sergei Taneyev (Moscow: Jurgenson, 1884).

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30. I shall refer later to the works of Dahlhaus and to the article by James Hepokoski, “The Dahlhaus Project and Its Extra-musicological Sources,” published in: Nineteenth Century Music. Here I limit myself by a quote of Hepokoski’s summary of Dahlhaus’ approach: “His principal strategy was, first, to insist that as concrete musical works, they [compositions from Beethoven to Schoenberg] were conceived primarily under category of aesthetic autonomy…as a type of socially functionless, nonauthoritarian discourse… In search for the alternatives to unreflective positivism… Dahlhaus was in a dialogue with two extra-musicological constellations of thought… “materialist-sociological” [Marxist]…and “empirical-hermeneuticphenomenological,” p. 222. 31. Carl Dahlhaus, Analysis and Value Judgment (New York: Pendragon Press, 1982), pp. 9–10. 32. Nicole Grimes, Introduction to Rethinking Hanslick. Music, Formalism, Expression (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2013), p. 31.

33. In this sense, the criticism of Dahlhaus by Susan McClary seems to miss the target. This is evident in Nicole Grimes’ account, in her Introduction: “Susan McClary was one of Dahlhaus’s sharpest critics, observing a disparity in his output. In The Idea of Absolute Music, she writes, Dahlhaus painstakingly delineates a history whereby a social discourse was appropriated and redefined first by romantic mystics and then by objectivists. Yet in his Nineteenth Century Music, she claims, he continues to respect the prohibitions of that tradition of objectivity, in that “he practices only structural analysis of instrumental music and scorns those who would venture into hermeneutic studies of symphonies.” McClary ascribes this disparity to a philosophy that in 1993 still regulated “much of musicology, blocking all but the most formalistic approaches to criticism.’” Nicole Grimes, op. cit., p. 33.

34. Musical semiotics occupies the position of an auxiliary subfield in music theory. Formalists take a defensive stance against it, and they have reasons to be suspicious: musical semiotics implies the referential capacity of music, its connectivity with the extra-musical domains. However, it would be a mistake to treat it as something superfluous: semiotics is an old and venerable field of knowledge, therefore it should be an integral part of music theory. Eero Tarasti relates his work to Parisian school of semiotics established by Algirdas Greimas and, to a degree, to the Russian, initiated by Boris Asafiev. The roots of semiotics are stretching back centuries: its terms were coined by ancient Greek stoics.

Notes

35. William Caplin, “What are Formal Functions?” Musical Form, Forms and Formenlehre. Three Methodological Reflections, Ed. Pieter Bergé (Leuven: University of Leuven Press, 2010), p. 21. 36. Pieter Bergé, Prologue to Musical Form, Forms and Formenlehre (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2009), p. 11.

37. Quoted by Nicole Grimes, Introduction to Rethinking Hanslick. Music, Formalism, Expression (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2013), p. 32. 38. Jean Molino, J A. Underwood, and Craig Ayrey, “Musical Fact and the Semiology of Music” Music Analysis, Vol. 9, No. 2 (July 1990), p. 106.

39. “Wir wollen also freie Kunstwerke herforbringen lernen. Hier weiss nun Jeder, dass es Kunstwerke der verschiedensten Form giebt. Selbst der oberflächlichste Beobachter kann leicht inne werden, dass ein Tanz oder Marsch sich von einer Sonate oder Fuge schon der äussern Gestaltung nach bestimmt unterscheidet, und dass wiedeum alle Märsche, oder alle Walzer unter einander, so vie alle Fugen under einander, trotz aller Abwiechungen im Einzelnen, im Allgemeinen eine gewisse Aehnlichkeit, eine gewisse Uebereinstimmung der Form zeigen. Wir haben nur einige allgemein bekannte und leicht unterscheidbare Formen genannt. Aber man sicht leicht, dass jedes Kunstwerk seine Form haben muss. Denn jedes Kunstwerk hat nothwendig seinen Anfang und sein Ende, also seinen Umfang es ist aus Theilen verschiedner Art, verschiedner Zahl, —in verschiedner Weise zusammengesetzt. Der Inbegriff aller dieser Merkmale heisst eben die Form des Kunstwerks; Form is die Weise, wie der Inhalt des Werks—die Empfindung, Vorstellung, Idee des Komponisten— äusserlich, Gestalt worden ist, und man hat die Form des Kunstwerks näher un bestimmter als die Aeusserung, als das Aeusserlich— Gestaltwerden seines Inhalts zu bezeichen.” A. B. Marx, Die Lehre von der musikalischen Komposition, vol. 2 (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Hartel, 1856), p. 4.

40. Here Sposobin uses the term stroyeniye that is different from struktura; it has been first used in the title of Boleslav Yavorsky’s treatise Stroyeniye muzykal’noi rechi in 1908. It makes sense to translate it not as structure but as design—not a crystal but a process.

41. Igor Sposobin, Muzykal’naya Forma [Musical Form] (1947) (Moscow: Muzyka, 1984), p. 9.

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42. This aspect is shared by North American and Russian theorists since the publication of William Caplin’s treatise in 1998. However, prior to that functional view of form was subdued by Schenkerian understanding. 43. Yuri Kholopov, “Printsipy Klassifikatsii Muzykal’nykh Form” [The Principles of Classification of Musical Forms] in: Teoreticheskiye Problemy Muzykal’nykh Form i Zhanrov [Theoretical Problems of Musical Forms and Genres] (Moscow: Muzyka, 1971), p. 67. 44. Op. cit., p. 69.

45. Leo Mazel’ and Viktor Tsukkerman, Analiz Muzykal’nykh Proizvedenii [The Analysis of Musical Works] (Moscow: Muzyka, 1967), p. 36.

46. Yavorsky’s terminology seems to be overwhelming in the middle of the twentieth century in Russia. 47. Op. cit., p. 7.

48. Ibid.

49. Op. cit. p. 12.

50. Ludwig Holtmeier, “From ‘Musiktheorie’ to ‘Tonsatz’: National Socialism and Music Theory after 1945,” in: Music Analysis (23/ii–iii, 2004), p. 247.

51. Dahlhaus was in the focus of attention of many Soviet music theorists of the 1980s. Yuri Kholopov knew Dahlhaus personally; Tatiana Tcherednichenko published a number of articles on Dahlhaus, including “Karl Dalkhauz: Filosofsko-Metodologicheskaya Refleksia Istorii Muzyki” [Carl Dahlhaus: Philosophical-Methodological Reflection on History of Music] in: Questions of Philosophy (Moscow, 1999, No. 9), pp. 121–138. Mikhail Pylayev remains the leading expert on Dahlhaus in Russia today. See, for example, his article “K. Dalkhauz ob Analyticheskikh Kriteriyakh Esteticheskoi Otsenki Muzyki” [C. Dahlhaus on Analytical Criteria of Aesthetic Evaluation of Music (After Music and Value Judgment)] in Culturology (Moscow 2011), pp. 66–70.

52. Mieczysław Tomaszewski “Chopin’s Music Read Anew,” a paper read at the International Chopin Symposium, in February 2010 in Warsaw; manuscript, p. 1. See, also, Muzyka Chopina na Nowo Odczytana (Krakow: Akademia Muzychna, 2010).

53. Miroslav Černý, “Problém Hudebního Díla, yeho Podstati, Identity a Forem Existence,” in: Estetika XI (Praha, 1974, nr. 11/3–4), pp. 164– 182 and 193–211.

54. Jiří Vysloužil, “O Smyslu A (Ne) Smyslu Husserlových Zkoumání Hudby,” in: Opus Musicum (Brno, 2000, issue XXXII), pp. 39–42.

Notes

55. Jiří Vysloužil, “Diskurs o “Krásnu” a Hudbĕ podle Husserlových Logische Unitersuchungen” (1913), pp. 52–55, in: Estetika XXIV (Praha, 1987, nr. 1), pp. 51–56. 56. Jiranek, Jaroslav. “Teoria Intonatsii Asafieva v Svete Sovremennogo Marksistskogo Podkhoda k Semanticheskomy Analizy Muzyki” [Theory of Intonatsia of Asafiev in Light of Contemporary Marxist Approach to Semantic Analysis of Music] in: Metodologicheskiye Problemy Muzykoznaniya [Methodological Problems of Musicology] (Moscow: Muzyka, 1987), pp. 72–87.

57. Ildar Khannanov, “Soviet Music Theory in the Geopolitics of Eastern Europe between the World Wars,” in: Proceedings of the International Musicological Colloquium—“New Music in the New Europe 1918–1938” in Brno, 2003 (Prague: Koniash Latin Press, 2007). 58. In early Kondakarnyi chant the notation is so-called ekphonetic (diacritical signs are scarce; they simply amplify the natural trajectories of pronunciation of the verbal text); later chants carry more elaborate notation; both, however, are attached to the words. Thus chant notation is diacritical in nature.

59. The term introduced by Yuri Nikolayevich Tyulin in his book Ucheniye o Muzykal’noi Fakture i Melodicheskoi Figuratsii; Muzykal’naya Faktura [The Teaching on Musical Texture and Melodic Figuration; Musical Texture] (Moscow: Muzyka, 1976) and widely used in Russian music theory. 60. The term used by Yuri Nikolayevich Kholopov and many other Russian theorists. It can be translated roughly as “meaning-bearing value.”

61. The author plans to publish a translation of this book into Russian.

62. The earliest notation of the Russian church music is presented in the Ostromir Gospels, compiled in 1056. Since this notation is comprehensive and integrated, it implies the existence of a system of music theory, albeit in oral form, characteristic of these earlier stages of its development.

63. Here is a classification of all the various types of chants, presented in chronological order: Putevoi chant, Kondakarnyi chant, Bolshoi Znamennyi, Malyi Znamennyi, Kievskii, Kazanskii, Bolgarskii, Demestvennyi and Troestrochnyi. Each type contains hundreds of chants, hymns, vespers, canons, and other genres of church music. Presented here is the list of the most famous chanters (rospevshiks) and

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developers of chant: Khristophor of the Kievo-Belozerskyi monastery, Varlaam and Savva Rogov from Novgorod, Theodor Christianin, Stephen Golush and Isaya Lukoshko from Vladimir and many more.

64. Maxim Viktorovich Brazhnikov, Drevnerusskaya Teoriya Muzyki [Ancient Russian Music Theory] (Leningrad: Muzyka, 1972), p. 40.

65. A more detailed description of the history of Russian paleography may be found in the article by G. A. Nikishov at the electronic resource http://www.belcanto.ru/paleografia.html. 66. It is remarkable, however, that the Greater Perfect system (two separated octaves with two overlapping tetrachords in each)—the one that has become the model for the Western systems of modes and, later, for tonality—bears no similarities with the obikhod scale. Moreover, the Greater Perfect system allows for octave equivalence and, with two separated tetrachords in the middle, for the precedence of the perfect fifth (the lower note in one tetrachord forms an interval of a perfect fifth with the lower note in the other). This is not the case in obikhod scale (and in the Lesser Perfect System). Since the Russian system is built upon overlapping perfect fourths or, to put it differently, upon separated trichords, there is no precedence of the perfect fifth. The perfect fifth simply does not exist in Russian church monody. The octave is also absent in the obikhod scale for the same reason. This has far-reaching consequences for understanding the specificity of Russian music theory and Russian music in general. For example, when Sergei Rachmaninoff uses the perfect fifth and the tonic triad, it should be interpreted as borrowing from the Western compositional techniques, while his melodic and harmonic language is based upon the plagal system. For a more detailed discussion of this phenomenon, see my book Muzyka Sergeya Rachmaninova: Sem’ Muzykal’no-Teoreticheskikh Etudov [Music of Sergei Rachmaninoff: Seven Musical-Theoretical Etudes] (Moscow: Kompozitor, 2011).

67. And, of course, the ultimate governing and unifying principle of Byzantine and Russian Orthodox music in relationship to harmony and form comes from the structure of the Greek Orthodox liturgy, the model of which has been laid out by St. John Chrysostom. 68. Very early in history, under the influence from the Western tradition, the Byzantine echoi were altered into the modal species. The Russian Osmoglasie, on the other hand, remained unchanged. It still presents the collection of patterns rather than the system of modal species. Both Byzantine and Russian systems were derived from ancient Greek understanding of mode as both nomos and

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ethos, the former pointing to the law of intervals, while the latter emphasized the melodic patterns used by tradition.

69. According to Protohierei Boris Nikolayev, see Protohierei Boris Nikolayev, Znamennyi Raspev i Kryukovaya Notatsia kak Osnova Russkogo Pravoslavnogo Pevcheskogo Iskusstva [Znamennyii Chant and Kryuk Notation as the Basis of Russian Orthodox Church Singing], electronic resource: http://www.klikovo.ru/db/book/head/4259. Also: Moscow: Nauchnaya Kniga, 1995.

70. “Upon analyzing musical structure of melodies of the one of the eight ikhoses, I discovered that the melodies of each ikhos are based on a certain number of formulae [melodic shapes] that characterize the lad [mode]. In other words, the “scale” was not the basis of composition in the early Byzantine and Christian hymnography but a number of formulae that determined the material for each mode.” Egon Welesz, History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), p. 71. 71. Tatiana Vladyshevskaia, “Ancient Russian Znamennyi Chant Notation as a Semiotic System,” in: Proceedings of the Worldwide Music Conference 2021 (Sham: Springer Verlag, 2021), p. 66.

72. “Protohierei Archpriest Boris Nikolayev, Znamennyi Raspev i Kryukovaya Notatsia kak Osnova Russkogo Pravoslavnogo Pevcheskogo Iskusstva [Znamennyii Chant and Kryuk Notation as the Basis of Russian Orthodox Church Singing], electronic resource: http://www.klikovo.ru/db/book/head/4259. Also: (Moscow: Nauchnaya Kniga, 1995).

73. “The note refers to a single pitch and a single duration. The neume refers to: (a) a relative pitch (a multiple number of contextual choices was given to each neume), (b) a relative duration (non­ proportional and subject to change), (c) the direction of melodic motion (two notes up, two notes down, etc.), (d) a type of rhythmic motion, specified by the context and the shape of the neume, (e) melodic patterns, presented in abbreviation (not all the information is given in a neume), (f) the character of performance, indicated in the name of the neume, such as Rozseka (“dissected”) — requiring rhythmic separation of notes; Skameiitsa (“a bench”) — requiring a low-chest voice, Golubchik tikhii i borzui (“Little Dove”) — requiring a full-throated voice, etc.,” Quoted from the article “Kryuki” in Riemann’s Lexicon, Translation into Russian with Added Supplementary Material, Ed. Veimarn, Preobrazhensky, Findeizen, Engel, and Yurgenson (Moscow and Leipzig: P. Yurgenson, 1896), p. 701.

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74. This fundamental difference in artistic thinking between the Russian tradition and its Western counterpart has been noted by Dr. Lawrence Zbikowsky. In a thought-provoking conversation with the author during the International Conference in Music and Emotion at Durham University, Great Britain, in 2009, he suggested the idea that Russian artists think in terms of icons, while the musicians in the West prefer to work with indexes. The icons are expensive to produce and cheap to develop, while the indexes are cheap to produce, but quite expensive to develop. This is the root of the problem of composition and form in the Russian tradition, as perceived by Dr. Zbikowsky. He referred to the book by Terence Deacon, The Symbolic Species: the Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997). 75. The Azbuka (“Alphabet”) was the main genre of Russian music theory books used before and during the seventeenth century; they contained the essential teaching of chant, its brief history, the list of all the neumes and their meanings, questions of pedagogy, theory and divine interpretation. Besides the book by Mezenets, there are earlier azbukas in existence, e.g., by monk Khristophor entitled The Names of the Popevkas (1604).

76. Mstislav Vsevolodovich Keldysh, Istoriya Russkoi Muzyki [The History of Russian Music], vol. 1, “Drevnyaya Rus’, XI–XVII Veka” [Ancient Russ, 11th-seventeenth Centuries] (Moscow: State Publisher Muzyka, 1983), p. 215. 77. Since one of the distinguishing features of Western European theory is its elaborate theories of rhythm, which originated in the mensural notation of the eleventh century and elaborated more fully later in the fourteenth century, in the ars nova hierarchical system of rhythmic values, it is worthwhile mentioning that the Russian Orthodox chant theory had possessed its own original method of defining the rhythmic values, although the rhythmic values were not systematized in a mechanistic geometrical fashion. This topic is covered in the article by Zivar Makhmudovna Gusseinova (the Dean of Research at St. Petersburg Conservatory and the leading scholar of Russian Orthodox chants) entitled “The Rhythmic Properties of the Znamennaya Notation according to the Azbuka’s of the Sixteenth-Seventeenth Centuries.” She suggests that the theoretical discussion of longer and shorter durations in the Azbuka’s were given in the form of verbal metaphors. Thus, the shorter rhythmic values were described by the verbs “to take, to say, to crack, to flip, to turn, to fold, to break and to step,” while the

Notes

longer durations were associated with the verbs “to hold, to stay, and to pull,” p. 134. This is, of course, quite different from the much more simplified approach to rhythmic divisions in Western European theory, in which all the complexity of musical rhythm has been reduced to the simple binary and ternary divisions.

78. This might seem very strange to a Western European musician, but in the early raspev pitch played a less important role than the melodic shape. There were no signs marking the pitch, so that most of the manuscripts from before the seventeenth century are quite difficult to transcribe. Only with the introduction of the “cinnabar signs” (the analogues of clefs) by Ivan Shaidurov adequate transcription into five-line staff notation became possible.

79. The reciprocal influence of Russian folk music and the Znamennyi chant has been highlighted in a number of studies. Thus, Yelena Alexandrovna Zaitseva suggests a number of ways both traditions had interacted in the past. Her paper “The Realization of Religious Views and Beliefs in the Contemporary Russian Folk Song,” published in the Proceedings of the 12th International Conference “Slavic Traditional Culture and the Contemporary World; The Soviet Society and Folklore (Moscow: State Center for Russian Folklore, 1998), pp. 171–177), points at the traces of this interaction in the recently-made field recordings. An article by Anna Vasil’evna Rudneva, “The Obikhod Scale in Russian Folk Music,” published in her book Russkoye Narodnoye Muzykal’noye Iskusstvo [Russian Folk Musical Art] (Moscow: Kompozitor, 1994), presumes the theoretical basis for the use of the Obikhod scale as stemming from Russian folk music. 80. Mstislav Vsevolodovich Keldysh, op. cit., p. 126.

81. Keldysh, op. cit., p. 167.

82. This matter is discussed in Vladimir Protopopov’s article “Nikolai Diletsky and His Idea of Music’s Grammar” by Vladimir Protopopov, as well as in Nikolai Diletsky’s, Ideya Musikiiskoi Grammatiki [An Idea of Music’s Grammar] (Moscow: ‘Muzyka’ State Edition, 1979).

83. Ioanniky Korenyev, Musikia (Moscow, 1671); quoted in Nikolai Diletsky, An Idea Music’s Grammar, p. 7.

84. The collections of folk songs made by Vasily Fyodorovich Trutovsky, Sobraniye Prostykh Russkikh Pesen s Notami [Collection of Simple Russian Songs with Music] (1778) and Nikolai Alexandrovich L’vov and Ivan Pratch, Sobraniye Russkikh Narodnykh Pesen s

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Golosami [Collection of the Russian Folk Songs with Parts] were the first publications of folk music with melodies ever. Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1805)—the German collection of folklore compiled by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano—was comprised of folk poems with sparse inclusions of musical material.

85. Philip Ewell, “On the Russian Concept of Lād, 1830–1945,” Music Theory Online (Vol. 25, No. 4, December 2019), url: https://www. mtosmt.org/issues/mto.19.25.4/mto.19.25.4.ewell.html.

86. Maximilian Rezvoi, Introduction to Practical Guide to Composing Music, a translation of the treatise of Leopold Fuchs (St. Petersburg: Karl Krai, 1830), p. v. 87. Adolf Bernhard Marx, Die Lehre von der musikalischen Komposition, 5th Ed., Vol. 1 (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1897), p. 21.

88. Yuri Tyulin, Kratkii Teoreticheskii Kurs Garmonii [Brief Theoretical Course in Harmony] (S. Petersburg: Kompozitor, 2004), p. 9. 89. Tyulin, ibid.

90. Yuri Kholopov, Garmonia. Teoreticheskii Kurs [Harmony. Theoretical Course] (Moscow: Muzyka, 1988), p. 28.

91. Russian usage of lad in the 18th century (given without the translation into English): “Согласие в звучании; стройность, гармония, такт (о музыке, стихах). Риѳма в Стихѣ, какова Рода, и каков бы Стих ни был, состоит токмо в ладѣ звона. // Но я в трагедии комедии не вижу. Умолкни тот пѣвец, кому не свойствен лад. // Лад, равногласие, согласие двух голосов в музыкѣ. // В лад. 1) Созвучно. Риѳмою токмо на концѣ в лад гудущая. Не в лад поют. 2) В такт, ритмично. Зрел ли ты, Певец Тииский! Как в лугу весной .. Пляшут девушки Российски Под свирелью пастушка? Как, склонясь главами, ходят, Башмаками в лад стучат?// Вольно нам вмѣсто: плясать в лад, говорить: танцовать в такту.



3. Строй (музыки, стиха), особенности звучания, склада. Автор, с недоѣдков кой чуть волочит мощи, .. Мало почитает вкусным Геликонский лад. // На какой лад. Сват Квинтинович , метры гречески Перестроивши на латинский лад, Как Кистрин будто, взял бессмертие! Львов Поэты XVIII в. II 232. И выбрав древнюю побаску Скропал из ней смѣшную сказку; По новому совсем одѣл; .. На новой лад в стихах запѣл. Оспв Енеида I 7. | О самой музыке, стихе. Снизходишь Ты на лирный лад; Поэзия Тебѣ любезна, Приятна, сладостна, полезна, Как лѣтом вкусный лимонад” Slovar’ Russkogo Yazyka XVIII veka [Vocabulary of Russian Language of the 18th Century], Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Url: http://feb-web.ru/feb/sl18/slov-abc/.

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92. “7. обычно мн. Муз. Поперечные деления, перевязки на грифе некоторых музыкальных инструментов. Лады у лютни. // Навязать на балалайку лады. //У цѣвницы, или у дудки струн нѣт, хотя поэзия и имѣет вольность называть лады струнами, а струны ладами. Ibid. 93. Maximilian Rezvoi, Introduction to Practical Guide to Composing Music, a translation of the treatise of Leopold Fuchs (St. Petersburg: Karl Krai, 1830), p. v. 94. Poundie Bustein, “Schenker, Schenkerian Analysis, and Other Strange Bedfellows,” keynote speech, EUROMAC10, Timothy Jackson, “The “Our God” [“Боже наш”] Motive and the Quest for #3 in Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto: its Formal and Tonal Implications,” paper, EUROMAC10, Moscow Conservatory, September 2021.

95. Ellen Bakulina, The Problem of Tonal Disunity in Sergei Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil, op. 37, Doctoral Thesis, 2015, p. 209.

96. For example, alternating current in Russian is peremennyi tok, the rain that stops and goes—peremennyie dozhdi. The translation of intermittent into Russian перемежающийся, прерывистый—that which shifts position and interrupts its flow. An attempt to translate peremenyi as mutable does not reach the goal: as Tyulin suggested, there is no act of modulation or alteration; the lad simply shifts its orientation without any warning, changing, or teleology.

97. Yuri Tyulin, Kratkii Teoreticheskii Kurs Garmonii [Brief Theoretical Course in Harmony] (St. Petersburg: Kompozitor, 2004), p. 206. 98. Yuri Kholopov, op. cit., p. 174.

99. Gene H. Anderson, “LA GAMME DU SI: A Chapter in the History of Solmization,” Indiana Theory Review, Vol. 3, No. 1 (FALL 1979), p. 40. 100. Anderson, op. cit.

101. Yuri Kholopov. Harmony Theoretical Course (Moscow: Muzyka, 1988), pp. 385–397. 102. Edmund Husserl, Texte zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewußtsein (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1985), p. 85. See, also Ildar Khannanov, “Line Surface and Speed: Nomadic Features of Melody,” in: Sounding the Virtual: Gilles Deleuze and the Philosophy and Theory of Music (London: Ashgate, 2011), p. 258.

103. Tatiana Vladyshevskaia, “Ancient Russian Znamennyi Chant Notation as a Semiotic System,” in: Proceedings of the Worldwide Music Conference, 2021 (Heidelberg: Springer Verlag, 2021), p. 66.

104. Quoted from: “Symmetrichnye Lady v Teoreticheskikh Sistemakh Yavorskogo I Messiana” [The Symmetric Modes in the Theoretical

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Systems of Yavorsky and Messiaen], url: http://www.kholopov.ru/ smtr/index.html.

105. Ildar Khannanov, “The Unknown Yavorsky,” Preface to the translation of The Design of Musical Speech (Mosow: Kompositor, 2022), p. 68.

106. This view was voiced, for example, by Yuri Kholopov. Of course, the content of Diletsky’s book is specific and not related directly to the concept of harmony. The idea of an Eastern-European counterpart of Rameau’s concept requires further research. 107. Nikolai Diletsky, The Idea of Music’s Grammar (Moscow: Muzyka, 1979), p. 271.

108. “Однако b-mi в простом тоне появляется как секста, когда не с него начинается пьеса, если же начинается с него, то при задавании тона (“раздаянии гласов”) необходима диезная система,” Diletsky, op. cit., p. 334.

109. Here, we see the word “glas” in the original, seventeenth-century text of Diletsky. This is another proof that the idea of lad did not appear in 1830 after the translation of Leonard Fuchs’s term Tonart by Modest Rezvoi, as maintained by Philip Ewell. The term glas is borrowed by Diletsky from the vocabulary of monodic Znamennyii chant and used for the description of modern tonality (key), such as G major, B minor or B major.

110. Diletsky, op. cit., p. 355. 111. Diletsky, ibid.

112. Diletsky, p. 357.

113. Diletsky, op. cit., p. 356.

114. Raphaëlle Legrand, Rameau et le pouvoir de l’harmonie (Paris : Cité de la musique, 2007), p. 159.

115. Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, “Heraklitus,” B10. 116. Philip Ewell, Theoria 26/2020, p. 81.

117. Raphaelle Legrand, Rameau et le pouvoir de l’harmonie (Paris : Cité de la musique, 2007), p. 71.

118. Yuri Kholopov, Harmony: A Theoretical Course (Moscow: Lan’, 2003), p. 294.

119. Diletsky, op. cit., p. 304. The word glas is the synonym of music in many Slavic languages. Thus, in Croatian language music is glazba. 120. Op. cit., p. 261.

121. Katherine Kintzler, Jean-Philippe Rameau: Splendeur et naugrage de l’esthétique du plaisir à l’âge classique (Paris : Minevre, 2011), p. 52.

Notes

122. Nina Alexandrovna Gerasimova-Persidskaya, Russkaya Muzyka XVII Veka: Vstrecha Dvukh Epokh [Russian Music of the Seventeenth Century: the Meeting of Two Epochs] (Moscow: Muzyka, 1994).

123. Yevgenyiii Vladimirovich Nazaikinsky, The Logic of Musical Composition, quoted in: Nina Alexandrovna Gerasimova-Persidskaya, Russian Music of the Seventeenth Century: the Meeting of Two Epochs (Moscow: Muzyka, 1994), p. 41.

124. Example is taken from: Natalia Yurievna Plotnikova, Russian Partes Polyphony of the End of the Seventeenth and the Middle of the Eighteenth Centuries. Manuscript Studies, History and Theory (Moscow: Institute of Theory of Arts, 2015). 125. Op. cit., p. 42. 126. Op. cit., p. 48.

127. “Ne solamente si titrouvano due suoni tra loro distanti per il grave et pe l’acuto, che consuonino: ma tali suoni anco si odono molte fiate tramezati da altri suoni, che rendeno soave concento, come è manifesto; et sono contenuti la più proportioni; pero li Musici chiamano tal compositione Harmonia. Onde si dè auertire, che l’Harmonia si ritrova di due sorti, l’una delle quali chiamaremo Propia et l’altre non propia. La propia è quella, che descrive Lattantio Firmiano, in quello dell’ Opera di Dio dicendo; I Musici nominano propiamente Harmonia il concento di chorde, o di voci consonanti nelli lor modi, senza offesa alcuna delle orecchie.” Gioseffo Zarlino, Le institutioni harmonishe (Venetia, 1557), Book II, Chapter 12, pp. 79–80. 128. Yuri Kholopov, Harmonia. Teoreticheskii Kurs [Harmony. Theoretical Course] (Moscow: Muzyka, 1988), p. 46.

129. Rameau, op. cit., p. 141.

130. More on this, see Ildar Khannanov, “Rameau and the Sciences: The Impact of Scientific Discoveries of the Lumières on Rameau’s Theory of Harmony,” in Proceedings of the Worldwide Music Conference 2021 (Sham: Springer Verlag, 2021).

131. See, again, Ildar Khannanov, “Rameau and the Sciences: The Impact of Scientific Discoveries of the Lumières on Rameau’s Theory of Harmony.”

132. André Charrak, Raison et perception fonder l’harmonie au XVIIIme siecle (Paris : Vrin, 2001), p. 7.

133. Raphaëlle Legrand, Rameau et le pouvoir de l’harmonie (Paris : Cité de la musique, 2007), p. 31.

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134. Nikolai Roslavets introduced the idea of Synthetakkord—a verticalized form of serial technique, as early as 1914 (See his Five Pieces for Piano). Yuri Kholopov discusses this in many places; among others, in his article “Kto Isobrel 12-Tonovuyu Muzyku?” [Who Invented the 12-Tone Music], in Problems of History of Austro-German Music (Moscow: Gnesin Institute, 1983), p. 49. 135. Sergei Protopopov, The Elements of Design of Musical Speech, Ed. Yavorsky (Moscow: Muzgiz, 1930–1931).

136. Yuri Kholopov, Harmony. Theoretical Course (St. Petersburg: Lan’, 2003), p. 431. 137. Op. cit., p. 435.

138. Quoted from Ildar Khannanov, Music of Sergei Rachmaninoff: Seven Musical-Theoretical Etudes (St.: Kompozitor, 2011).

139. William Caplin, “Theories of Musical Rhythm in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” in Cambridge Western Music Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 684.

140. Ildar Khannanov, “Beethoven’s Theme of the Slow Movement of Piano Sonata op. 13: Phrasing, Functional Cycles, Metre and Dramaturgy,” in Res Musica (Tallinn: Academy of Music and Theater, 2021). 141. Leo Mazel’, Problemy Klassicheskoi Garmonii [The Problems of Classical Harmony] (Moscow: Muzyka, 1962).

142. “On appelle Dominante le premier des deux Nottes qui dans la Basse forment la cadence parfaite, parce qu’elle doit précéder toujours la Notte-finale, et par conséquent la domine”. Jean Philippe Rameau, Traité de l’harmonie (Paris: Ballard, 1722), p. 56.

143. Hugo Riemann, Muzykal’nyi Slovar’ [Musiklexikon] (Moscow: Jurgenson, 1901), p. 849. 144. Ildar Khannanov, “Scriabin and the Classical Tradition,” Demystifying Scriabin London: Boydell & Brewer, 2022).

145. Dubovsky, Iosif, Igor Sposobin, Sergey Yevseyev and Vladimir Sokolov, Uchebnik Garmonii [Textbook Harmony] (1937), the 9th Ed. (Moscow: Muzyka, 1984). Also, translated into Chinese language by Min Chen (Beijing: People’s Music Publishing House, 1990, 2008 and 2018).

146. Noteworthy is the Russian conservatory method of teaching by a brigade of professors. Usually, one of them gives lectures, while others take students into smaller groups or teach them the materials of the lectures individually. In a course of time, the younger colleagues gain invaluable experience and become lecturing professors, with the knowledge of the brand.

Notes

147. Nikolai Diletsky, The Idea of Music’s Grammar (Moscow: Muzyka, 1979), pp. 450–451.

148. Diletsky, op. cit., p. 382.

149. Alexander Pushkin, The Stone Guest: “Из наслаждений жизни, одной любви музыка уступает; но и любовь—мелодия…,” Collection of Works in Ten Volumes, Vol. 3 (Moscow: State Publisher, 1959), Part Two, Scene 2. 150. Jean-Philippe Rameau, Traité de l’harmonie réduite à ces principes naturels (Paris: J. B. C. Ballard, 1722). 151. Rameau, op. cit., p. 142.

152. Dubovsky, Iosif, Igor Sposobin, Sergey Yevseyev and Vladimir Sokolov, Uchebnik Garmonii [Textbook Harmony] (1937), the 9th Ed. (Moscow: Muzyka, 1984), p. 254. 153. Op. cit., p. 255. 154. Ibid.

155. Op. cit., p. 258. 156. Op. cit., p. 257.

157. Semyon Maximov, Uprazhneniya po Garmonii na Fortepiano [Exercises in Harmony at the Keyboard] (Moscow: Muzyka, 1968), Vol. 2, p. 214.

158. Raphaëlle Legrand, op. cit, p. 95.

159. Quoted from Ildar Khannanov, Music of Sergei Rachmaninoff. Seven Musical-Theoretic Etudes (Moscow: Kompozitor, 2011), p. 50.

160. Arnold Schoenberg, Theory of Harmony, transl. by Roy E. Carter (Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1983), p. 14.

161. Boleslav Yavorsky, fund 146, archival unit 4272/2 of Russian National Museum of Music, Special Collections. Quoted by Ildar Khannanov, The Unknown Yavorsky (Moscow: Kompozitor, 2022), p. 490. 162. Hermann Grabner, Generalbassübungen (Lippstadt: Kistner and Siegel, 1936).

163. By the way, in many exercises in Fenaroli, Durante and others, the order of chords in harmonization of the octave is rather problematic; it is very difficult to avoid grave errors in syntax, such as resolving the dominant into subdominant, if the teacher fails to explain the clear functional logic and relies on the rules of the thumb.

164. This example is a courtesy of Giorgio Sanguinetti, which he provided in a private message.

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165. The first definition of motive was introduced by Sébastien de Brossard in 1705.

166. Motif. f. m. Ce mot francifié de l’Italien motivo n’est guère employé dans le sens technique que par les Compositeurs. Il signifie l’idée primitive et principale sur laquelle le Compositeur détermine son sujet et arrange son dessein. C’est le motif qui, pour ainsi dire, lui met la plume à la main pour jeter sur le papier telle chose et non pas telle autre. Dans ce sens le motif principal doit être toujours présent à l’esprit du Compositeur, et il doit faire en sorte qu’il le aussi toujours à l’esprit des Auditeurs. On dit qu’un Auteur bat la compagne lorsqu’il perd son motif de vue, et coud des Accords ou des Chants qu’aucun sens commun n’unit entr’eux.



Outre ce motif, qui n’est que l’idée principale de la Pièce, il y a des motifs particuliers, qui sont les idées déterminantes de la modulation, des entrelacements, des textures harmoniques, et sur ces idées, que l’on pressent dans l’exécution, l’on juge l’Auteur a bien suivi des motifs, ou s’il a pris le change, comme il arrive souvent à ceux qui procédent Note après Note, et qui manquent de savoir ou d’invention. C’est dans cette acception qu’on dit motif de Fugue, motif de Cadence, motif de changement de Mode, etc. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Dictionnaire de musique (Chez la Veuve Duchesne, Paris 1768) Motif, p. 302.

167. Heinrich Schenker, Free Composition (Der freie Satz, 1935), Volume III of New Musical Theories and Fantasies (New York and London: Longman, 1979), p. 26. 168. Boleslav Yavorsky, archival materials to The Design of Musical Speech, fund 146, folder 243, p. 12. 169. Yuri Kholopov, Introduction into Musical Form (Moscow, Moscow Conservatory: 2008), p. 282.

170. Joseph Riepel, Anfangsgründe zur musikalischen Setskunst, Vol. 1, “Rhythmopoeia oder Taktordnung” (Wien und Regensburg: Emerich Felix Bader Buchladen, 1752). 171. Boleslav Yavorsky, archival materials for The Design of Musical Speech, fund 146, folder 248, p. 25.

172. Georgi Conus, How the Metrotectonic Method is Applied to Study of the Forms of Musical Organisms (Moscow: State Musical Publisher, 1933). 173. Valentina Kholopova (Moscow: Soviet Composer, 1983).

174. For more detailed discussion of this, see, Ildar Khannanov, “Beethoven’s Theme of the Slow Movement of Piano Sonata op. 13:

Notes

Phrasing, Functional Cycles, Metre and Dramaturgy,” Res Musica (Tallinn, Estonian Academy of Theater and Music, 2022).

175. Valentina Kholopova, Questions of Rhythm in Music of Composers of the Twentieth Century (Moscow: Muzyka, 1971), pp. 198–212.

176. “Eine solche Tongestalt,—eine Gruppe von zwei, drei oder mehr Tönen,—um eine grössere Tonreihe nach ihrem Vorbilde zu gestalten, die gleichsam ein Keim oder Trieb ist, aus dem die grössere Tonreihe erwächst, nenne wir Motiv.” Adolf Bernhard Marx, Die Lehre von der musikalishen Komposition (…), Vol. 1, p. 33. 177. Ildar Khannanov, “Hierarchical Structure in Music Theory before Schenker,” Res musica No. 3 (2011), p. 107.

178. It makes sense to speculate, in this respect, that most Russian theorists adhere to German music theory which comes from Berlin and Leipzig. Many fewer ties had been established between Russian theory and the theoretical tradition of Vienna. In general, Leipzig and Berlin (with their major publishing houses and compositional tradition of learned music from Bach to Mendelssohn) deserve to be called the “theory towns” to a greater extent than the shiny and dançant atmosphere of Vienna. The fact that Schenker and Schoenberg grew up in Vienna does not change much in this perception because both of these theorists lived outside the period of common-practice—traditional European tonal music. 179. Fyodor Georgievich Arzamanov, Sergei Taneyev—Prepodavatel’ Kursa Muzykal’nykh Form [Sergey Taneyev—The Teacher of the Course of Musical Forms] (Moscow: Muzyka, 1984), p. 7. 180. Op. cit., p. 16.

181. Joseph Jasser, Moye obsheniye s Rachmaninovym [My communication with Rachmaninoff] (https://senar.ru/memoirs/Yasser/). Jasser carefully suggests the possibility to move to “new hybrid types of tonality.” Rachmaninoff’s response in not difficult to anticipate: “When I think that this hybridity produces dirt in music, I start doubting the path chosen by the new music, as well as sincerity of its representatives.”

182. “Tchaikovsky, whose irresistible rise as a symphonist should not obscure the fact that he was primarily a composer of operas and ballets. The stylistic pretensions raised by Tсhaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony in F minor, Op. 36 (l878), are unfounded сlеarly enough in the first movement by the horn and trumpet theme. The character and tempo (andante sostеnuto) of this theme makes it seem like an introduction even though it rесurs at every

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juncture of the form at the beginning of the development, recapitulation, and coda and thus at least partially serves the function of a main theme. The actual main theme, however, with an urgent Pathos curiously held in сhесk by its meter (!) and tеmpo (in movimento di valse), is hardly suitable, at least by Bееthovеnian standards, for establishing a symphoniс movement spanning hundreds of measures.” Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music (Berkeley: University of California Press, c1989), p. 266. Dahlhaus attempted to deride and ridicule Tchaikovsky. However, he accidentally falls into the trap of his own poor musical education. He did not know that the three-theme sonata allegro was introduced by Haydn and developed to the highest standard by Beethoven. It is his design of the Sonata Pathétique op. 13, with the theme of Introduction that overwhelms both Primary and Subsidiary, that has become a model for Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony. In both, the introduction theme is the one that truly develops, transforms, and experiences dramatic changes. As for Tchaikovsky’s Primary in a ternary meter, Dahlhaus did not have a good ear, otherwise he would have detected that the theme of Beethoven’s Eroica is written in 3/4.

183. “As a Russian, Scriabin lacked traditional models. The sonata form has always been conspicuously absent from Russian music.” Faubion Bowers, The New Scriabin: The Enigma and the New Answers (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973), p. 173.

184. “‘Inorganic structure’. The prevailing critical ethos in roughly the first half of the present century did not admit of the view that musical structure that progress by leaps and bounds could have much intrinsic merit. As to Tchaikovsky, his work certainly did not display the Germanic style of measured, methodical movement referred by the commentators. … the overriding impression of his music is, indeed, of distinctly perceptible sections, sewn together, rather than the smooth, seemingly effortlessly spun kind of structure at which Brahms, for example, was so adept.” Henry Zajaczkowski, Tchaikovsky’s Musical Style (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1987), p. 1. Also: “lack of models,” and “low brow music” by Dahlhaus and Bowers, Zajaczkowski and Gerald Abraham saying that Tchaikovsky melody is “Bellini-with-a-Russian accent.” Op. cit., p. 2.

185. Yuri Kholopov, “Chto zhe Delat’ s Muzykal’nymi Formami Tchaikovskogo?” [What Can We Do with Musical Forms of Tchaikovsky?], Tchaikovsky: Toward the 100-Year Since His Death, Vol. 12 (Moscow: Moscow Conservatory, 1995), pp. 54–64.

Notes

186. Hugo Riemann, Catechism of Musical Aesthetics (London: Augener, n.d.), p. 23.

187. Anatoly Pavlovich Milka, Teoreticheskiye Osnovy Funktsional’nosti v Muzyke [The Theoretical Foundations of Functionality in Music] (Leningrad: Muzyka, 1982).

188. Valentina Kholopova, “O Prototypakh Funktsii Muzykal’noi Formy” [On the Prototypes of Functions of the Musical Form], Problemy Muzykal’noi Nauki [Problems of Musical Science], Vol. 4 (Moscow: Composer, 1979), pp. 4–23. 189. Alexey Fyodorovich Losef, Mif, Tchislo, Syshchnost’ [Myth, Number, Essence], in: Mif, Tchislo, Sushchnost’ [Myth, Number, Essence]. Selected Works (Moscow: Mysl’, 1994), p. 520.

190. The presence of the word “form” in this list explains Kholopov’s interest in Losef’s reasoning. Everything that Losef says about the eidos applies to musical form.

191. Yuri Nikolayevich Kholopov, Vvedeniye v Muzykal’nuyu Formy [Introduction to Musical Form], p. 11.

192. Ibid.

193. Alexey Fyodorovich Losef, “O Dialektike Tchisla u Plotina” [On Dialectics of Number in Plotinus], in: Mif, Tchislo, Sushchnost’ [Myth, Number, Essence], Selected Works (Moscow: Mysl’, 1994), p. 719.

194. Here, one can find the true meaning of the Russian word tselostnyi, which, ironically, has been used by the opponents of Kholopov, the representatives of tselostnyi analyz, or integral analysis. This is the evidence of the seriousness of the discussion presented in this book. It was not merely a courtroom litigation concerning the well-being of Soviet composers. The point was much more philosophical: what is the warrant of tselostnost’ of a musical work? Is it contained in its inner numeric harmony or its ability to unite extra-musical content in harmony with its intra-musical content?

195. This is probably the most puzzling statement in Plotinus. It would disrupt the work of any contemporary computer, perhaps, with the exception of a quantum processor, which works with the data presented in q-bits. On the other hand, psychology and cognitive constraints work in a way in which multiplicity is always captured by the brain as unity, as an object and, thus, the part is always perceived in the same way as the whole. Here, by a paradoxical connection, the latest discussion on the SMT-mailing list of the question “Is music recursive?” comes to mind. The idea of recursive replication of a small-scale structure on a large scale belongs to the

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same phenomenon as the one described by Plotinus and explicated by Losef. Multiplicity recursively replicates unity in its structure.

196. Op. cit., pp. 720–721.

197. This statement presents a strong response to the theory of infinite sets developed by Georg Cantor, which has been received with ultimate suspicion by some of the leading mathematicians, including Henry Poincaré. Both the concept of infinite sets and that of finite sets seem to be inapplicable to music from the point of view of Plotinus. Again, the ontological status of the set, or collection, as an instrument of analysis, let alone the main attribute of musical structure per se, remains rather questionable.

198. Op. cit., p. 723. This statement is crucial to the understanding Kholopov’s quest for the essence of music. He, as well as many of his colleagues, including Yevgenyii Nazaikinsky, Valentina Kholopova, and Valeria Tsenova, was looking for the realization of this principle everywhere in music, from the Znamennyi chant to the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen. Tsenova’s book on numerology in the music of Gubaidulina is not merely an exercise in presenting an additional exotic principle in music, but an attempt to connect the ends in a universal picture of music as a realized number.

199. Op. cit., p. 768. It remains unclear, whether Losef had any knowledge of the writings of Ernst Kurth, or if there were interactions between these two prominent thinkers. However, this analogy with Kurth’s concept of energetics, notwithstanding the close connection with it, does not create the precedent of plagiarism. The intellectual paths of the two thinkers cross somewhere in the books and concepts of Aristotle, whose ideas of the psyche are based upon the concept of energy.

200. Ibid.

201. Op. cit., p. 814.

202. Konstantin Zenkin, Music—Eidos—Time. A. F. Losef and Horizons of Modern Scholarship on Music (Moscow: Progress-Traditsia, 2015).

203. Viktor Maximovich Zhirmunsky, Voprosy Teorii Literatury [Problems of Theory of Literature] (Leningrad: Academia, 1928). 204. This is an interesting association; Zhirmunsky identifies poetics as the formal structure of literature.

205. Zhirmunsky does not hesitate to label Herder as “the first formalist!”

206. These statements strongly remind of Kholopov’s method of research and pedagogy. He followed formalism in two directions—as a type

Notes

of intuitive recognition of classical forms and as a goal of creating new art based on the symbolic intuition of an artist. In addition, he used the method of model composition and taught music of remote historical periods and styles by analogy with more accessible music. His famous two-year undergraduate course in music theory for theorists and composers did not resemble any other theory sequence anywhere; it was, in fact, a course of composition, or learning by composing, based upon very difficult weekly compositional assignments on given stylistic models and thematic elements.

207. Op. cit., p. 10. 208. Op. cit., p. 12.

209. Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, Band 54, Nos. 10, 11, 12, and 13.

210. Alexander Nikolayevich Serov, Tematizm Uvertyury “Leonora.” Etyud o Betkhovene [Thematicism of the Ouverture Leonore III. An Essay on Beethoven] (1861) (Moscow: Muzgiz, 1954), p. 3.

211. Fragt es sich nun, was mit diesem Tonmaterial ausgedrückt warden soll, so lautet die Antwort: Musikalische Ideen. Eine vollständig zur Erscheinung gebrachte musikalische Idee aber ist bereits selbständiges Schöne, ist Selbstzweck und keineswegs erst wieder Mittle und Material zur Darstellung von Gefühlen und Gedanken, wenn sie gleich in hohem Grade jene symbolische, die großem Weltgesetze wiederspiegelnde Bedeutsamkeit besitzen kann, welche wir in jedem Kunstschonen vorfinden. Tönend bewegte Formen sind einzig und allein Inhalt und Gegenstand der Musik.“ Eduard Hanslick, Vom Musikalisch-Schone, Leipzig 1854, p. 32, quoted in: Carl Dahlhaus, Gesammelte Shriften, Vol. 1, Allgemeine Theorie der Musik, “Musikästhetik,” (Laaberverlag: Laaber, 2000) p. 491.

212. “Der Streit um den Formalismus. Fragt es sich nun, was mit diesem Tonmaterial ausgedrückt werden soll, so lautet die Antwort: Musikalische Ideen. Eine vollständig zur Erscheinung gebrachte musikalische Idee aber ist bereits selbständiges Schöne, ist Selbstzweck und keineswegs erst wieder Mittel und Material zur Darstellung von Gefühlen und Gedanken, wenn sie gleich in hohem Grade jene symbolische, die großem Weltgesetze wiederspiegelnde Bedeutsamkeit besitzen kann, welche wir in jedem Kunstschönen vorfinden. Tönend bewegte Formen sind einzig und allein Inhalt und Gegenstand der Musik.“ Carl Dahlhaus, Op. Cit., p. 491. 213. Boleslav Yavorsky, folder 146, archive of National Museum of Music (former Glinka’s Museum), Moscow.

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214. Ildar Khannanov, The Unknown Yavorsky (Moscow: Kompozitor, 2022), p. 92. 215. Viktor Mikhailovich Belyayev, Igor Stravinsky’s Les Noces. An Outline (1923), transl. from Russian by S. W. Pring (London: Oxford University Press, 1928), p. 2.

216. Op. cit., p. 4.

217. Op. cit., p. 33.

218. Anatoly Konstantinovich Butskoi, “Sovremennyie Studencheskiye Organizatsii v Russkikh Konservatoriyakh” [Contemporary Student Organizations in Russian Conservatories], in: Melos, Book One, Edited by Igor Glebov and Peter Suvtchinsky (St. Petersburg: Synodal Typography, 1917), p. 115. 219. Op. cit., p. 117.

220. Aleksei Fyodorovich Losef, Muzyka kak Predmet Logiki [Music as the Subject of Logic] (Moscow: Author, Typography of Ivanov in Sergiev Posad, 1927).

221. TsGALI, Fond 298, opis’ 1, list 40. 222. Ibid.

223. Ibid.

224. There is a striking resemblance of this innovation of curriculum in Russia in 1921 with the similar task that North American academia is dealing with in 2021.

225. Anatoly Konstantinovich Butskoi, Neposredstvennyie Dannyie Muzyki (Opyt Vvedeniya v Muzyku) [Immediate Data of Music (Essay in Introduction into Music)] (Kharkov: Ukrainian State Publisher, 1925).

226. Butskoi, op. cit., pp. 3–4. 227. Op. cit., p. 6.

228. Hugo Riemann, Grudnriß der Musikwissenschaft, Vierte Auflage (Leipzig: Verlag Quelle & Meyer, 1928).

229. Ernst Kurth had exerted the main influence on Asafiev, as is shown in many recent studies. Kurth‘s musical psychology determines Asafiev’s view on musical motion and the content of the musical work. The ideas that combine psychology and all kinds of extramusical structures with form, harmony and counterpoint were first introduced by Asafiev. For detailed reference on the Kurth-Asafiev connection, see the dissertation by James Robert Tull, Vol. 1, pp. 166–172.

230. See. Boris Vladimirovich Asafiev, “Put’ v Budushcheye” [Path to the Future], in: Melos, Book Two, Edited by Igor Glebov and Peter

Notes

Suvtchinsky (St. Petersburg: Synodal Typography, 1917) and “Soblazny i Preodoleniya” [Challenges and Overcoming], in: Melos, Book One, Ed. Igor Glebov and Peter Suvtchinsky (St. Petersburg: State Typography, 1918).

231. Ellon Carpenter, The Theory of Music in Russia and in the Soviet Union, ca. 1650–1950, Ph.D. Dissertation (University of Pennsylvania, 1988), p. 983. 232. TsGALI, fond 82, opis’ 3, delo 67. 233. Ibid.

234. Anatoly Butskoi, Struktura Muzykal’nykh Proizvedenii. Teoreticheskiye Osnovy Analiza Muzykal’nykh Proizvedenii [The Structure of Musical a Work. Theoretical Foundations of Analysis of Musical Works] (Leningrad and Moscow: State Music Publisher, 1948), p. 4.

235. Butskoi, op. cit., p. 9.

236. Andrei Yur’evich Kudryashov, Teoriya Muzykal’nogo Soderzhaniya. Khudozhestvennyie Idei Yevropeiskoi Muzyki XVII–XX Vekov [Theory of Musical Content. Artistic Ideas of the European Music of the seventeenth-twentieth Centuries] (St. Petersburg: Lan’, 2006).

237. The first generation, Ryzhkin, Mazel’ and Tsukkerman, were applying, more than anything else, Marxist philosophy to their concepts of musical work. This is understandable in view of the peculiarity of their time. 238. Martin Heidegger, Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes (Stuttgart: P. Reclam, 1960). 239. Roman Ingarden, The Work of Music and the Problem of Its Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986). 240. Ingarden, op. cit., p. 89. 241. Op. cit., p. 90. 242. Op. cit., 94. 243. Op. cit., 97.

244. Ildar Khannanov, “Znaki i Znacheniya. Mezhdunarodnyi Kongress po Muzykal’nomy Oznacheniyu: Intervyu s Eero Tarasti” [Signs and Meanings. International Congress on Musical Signification: an Overview and the Interview with Eero Tarasti], in: Muzykal’naya Akademia (Musical Academy Quarterly), Moscow, Spring 2007/2.

245. Boleslav Yavorsky, Stroyenie Muzykal’noi Rechi [The Structure of Musical Speech] (Moscow: Yurgenson, 1908).

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246. Boris Asafiev, “Soblazny i Preodoleniya” [Challenges and Overcoming],” Melos, 1, (Moscow, 1917), p. 6.

247. This famous Popper’s Falsification Principle was introduced in his book Logik der Forschung in 1935.

248. Leo Mazel’, “V. A. Tsukkerman i Problemy Analiza” [V. A. Tsukkerman and the Problems of Analysis], in: O Muzyke. Problemy Analiza [On Music. Problems of Analysis] (Moscow: Soviet Composer, 1974), pp. 6–7. 249. Viktor Abramovich Tsukkerman, Sonata Lista Si Minor [Sonata in B Minor by Liszt] (Moscow: Muzyka, 1984), p. 13. 250. Op. cit., p. 17.

251. Nicolas Meeùs. Notation as Analysis. Keynote speech at EUROMAC10, Moscow, September 2021.

252. Ildar Khannanov, Muzyka Sergeia Rakhmaninova: Sem’ Muzykal’noTeoreticheskikh Etudov [Music of Sergei Rachmaninoff: Seven MusicTheoretical Etudes] (Moscow: Kompozitor, 2011), p. 39.

253. Ildar Khannanov, op. cit., pp. 150–151.

254. Andrey Nikolayevich Zhdanov, “Vystuplenie na Soveshchanii Deyateley Sovetskoi Muzyki v TsK VKPb v yanvare 1948go goda” [Appearance at the Meeting of the Workers of Soviet Music in January of 1948], in: Sovetskaya Muzyka [Soviet Music] (February 1948), p. 19. 255. Folk song “Sibai”: video recording, url: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=EYWwwF7-FwM.

256. More on this subject, see: Ildar Khannanov, “Line, surface and speed: nomadic aspects of melody,” in: Sounding the Virtual: Gilles Deleuze and the Philosophy and Theory of Music (London: Ashgate, 2011).

257. The proportion of typical and individual was in the center of interest of Soviet integralists. Mikhail Tarakanov published an article on this subject; Yevgeniya Tchigareva wrote a Kandidat dissertation. 258. Ludwig Holtmeier, op. cit., p. 255.

259. The distinction into sedentary, striated and nomadic is central in Mille Plateau of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1980); in particular, Chapter 12, Traité de nomadologie, discusses these distinctions.

260. “Boulez’s Le Marteau sans Maȋtre (1954) was widely hailed as a masterpiece of post-war serialism. Yet nobody could figure out, much less hear, how the piece was serial. From hints in Boulez (1963), Koblyakov (1977) at last determined that it was indeed serial, though in an idiosyncratic way. In the interim listeners made what sense

Notes

they could of the piece in ways unrelated to its construction. Nor has Koblyakov’s decipherment subsequently changed how the piece is heard. Meanwhile most composers have discarded serialism, with the result that Koblyakov’s contribution has caused barely a ripple of professional interest. The serial organization of Le Marteau would appear, 30 years later, to be irrelevant.” Fred Lerdahl, “Cognitive Constraints on Compositional Systems” in: Generative Processes in Music (Oxford, 1988) p. 231.

261. René Descartes, Principia philosophia (1644), part 1, article 7; Baruch Spinoza, Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrate (1674).

262. Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra (Paris, St. Petersburg, Turin, Milan, London and New York: Chemniz, 1883). 263. Electronic resource: http://classic-online.ru/ru/production/19929.

264. Vano Muradely, Oktyabr’ [October] (1950), Popular Heroic Opera in Three Acts, Eight Scene with the Prologue, Vocal Score, Libretto by V. Lugovskoi, Ed. V. Vinnikov (Moscow: State Publisher Muzyka, 1967).

265. Vano Muradely, “Y na Marse budut yabloni zvesti [The apple trees will blossom on Mars],” url:https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=xzfnIlU8MdA.

266. Soviet Music (February 1948), p. 59. 267. Ibid., p. 60. 268. Ibid., p. 80.

269. Geoffrey Chew, “Introduction: The Geography of Modernism: Reflections on the Theme “New Music for a New Europe”, in: New Music in the New Europe, 1918–1938. Ideology, Theory, and Practice, Ed. Geoffrey Chew (Praha: KLP, 2007), p. 10. 270. Soviet Music (February 1948), p. 59. 271. Soviet Music (February 1948), p. 94.

272. Khristofor Kushnarev, “Gody v Petrogradskoi i Leningradskoi Konservatorii” [Years at the Pertograd and Lenigrad Conservatory], in: Stat’i, Vospominaniya, Materialy [Articles, Memoirs, Materials] (Leningrad: Muzyka, 1967). 273. TsGALI, Fond 298, opis’ 1, list 40.

274. TsGALI, fond 298, opis’ 1, delo 199.

275. Yuri Kholopov, Analiz Muzykal’nykh Proizvedenii [Analysis of Musical] A Program for the Musical Uchilishe, 1966.

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276. Here, Tyulin reiterates a common attitude to Catoire as an epigonic and secondary figure. This view was common at the conservatories in the 1970s and 1980s. Ellon Carpenter and Philip Ewell exaggerated the status of Catoire in Russian music theory for the unknown reason.

277. Yuri Nikolayevich Tyulin, Stroyenie Muzykal’noi Rechi [The Structure of Musical Speech] (Leningrad: State Music Publisher, 1962), pp. 3–4.

278. This one-part form has been a distinguishing element of Leningrad School of teaching form. It was not commonly used by the Moscow theorists, although Kholopov has always referred to it in his interpretation of A. B. Marx, as a one-part rondo form, or the “first type of rondo form”. 279. The distinction of musical structures into two categories—that of musical speech and of the articulation of form of the whole—is crucial for the understanding of classical forms. In English terminology, the phrase as a combination of motives and the phrase as a part of the period are expressed without any distinguishing markers. This creates a great amount of confusion. In German, Russian and French musical terminology, the parts of a period are called “sentences.” The author of this book suggests an even more informative term, the clause. It should refer to the antecedent and consequent clauses, but this may imply a longer or a shorter phrase. A phrase is a part of musical speech, while a clause is the articulation of the form of the whole. Another analogy which works perfectly well here is the linguistic parallel: the phrase is a part of speech, similar to a verb phrase, while an antecedent clause is a syntactic function. The difference is as clear, as the difference between, for instance, a noun and a subject.

280. Yuri Nikolayevich Tyulin, Tatyana Sergeyevna Berschadskaya, Iosif Yakovlevich Pustylnik, Alexander Abramovich Pen, Tigran Georgievich Ter-Martyrosyan, and Alfred Garrievich Schnittke. Muzykal’naya Forma [Musical Form] (Moscow: Muzyka, 1974), fn. 109.

281. Valentina Josefovna Konen, “Samosoznaniye i Samoopredeleniye Istorii Muzyki” [Self-consciousness and Self-definition of Music History], in: Sovetskaya Muzyka [Soviet Music] No. 9 (1988), p. 68.

282. Yuri Nikolayevich Kholopov, “Teoreticheskoye Muzykoznaniye kak Humanitarnaya Nauka: Problemy Analiza Muzyki” [Theoretical Musicology as a Humanitarian Science: the Problems of Analysis of Music], in: Sovetskaya Muzyka [Soviet Music] No. 9 (1988), pp. 74–79.

Notes

283. Op. cit., p. 93.

284. Yuri Nikolayevich Kholopov, Muzykal’no-Teoreticheskiye Sistemy. Uchebnik [Musical Theoretical Systems. Textbook] (Moscow: Kompozitor, 2006). 285. Natalya Olegovna Vlasova, Stil’ i Mysl’. Stat’i i Materialy [Style and Idea. Articles and Materials], Compiled, Translated and Commented by Natalya Vlasova and Olga Loseva, (Moscow: Kompozitor, 2006).

286. Elena Akeksandrovna Dolenko, Osnovy Muzykal’noi Kompozitsii Fundamentals of Musical Composition]. Translated, commentary and the Introduction by Yelena Dolenko (Moscow: Moscow Conservatory Press, 2000).

287. Marina Liupishko, A Pupil of Webern in the USSR: F. M. Herschkowitz’s Teaching of Form and Harmony, Master’s Thesis (University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 1998). 288. Valeriya Stephanovna Tsenova, Tchisloviye Tainy Muzyki Sofii Gubaidulinoi [Numeric Secrets of Music of Sofia Gubaidulina] Doctoral Dissertation, (Moscow: Moscow Conservatory Press, 2000).

289. Valentina Nikolayevna Kholopova, Muzyka kak Vid Iskusstva. Chast’ 2. Soderzhaniye Muzykal’nogo Proizvedeniya [Music as a Form of Art. Part 2. The Content of a Musical Work] (Moscow: Moscow Conservatory Press, 1991), p. 8. See, also, my article “A Watershed in Analytical Tradition: Valentina Kholopova’s Theory of Musical Content.”

290. More on this topic is published in my chapter “A Watershed in Analytical Tradition: Valentina Kholopova’s Theory of Musical Content” in L’Analyse musicale aujourd’hui (Delatour: Paris, 2014). 291. Scott Burnam, Beethoven the Hero (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1995), p. 70.

292. Yuri Nikolayevich Kholopov, “Kontsertnaya Forma v Muzyke I. S. Bakha” [The Concerto Form in Music of J.S. Bach], in: O Muzyke. Problemy Analiza [On Music. Problems of Analysis], Collection of Articles toward the Commemoration of the 70th Anniversary of Viktor Tsukkerman (Moscow: Soviet Composer, 1974), p. 119. 293. Op. cit., p. 120.

294. There exists a separate theory of genre in Russian music theory that divides all the genres into the primary and the secondary (or mediated), and this theory claims that the “genre transformations” play an important role in the compositional techniques of common practice (see Example 6.1).

317

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Notes

295. Kholopov, op. cit., p. 124. 296. Op. cit., p. 129. 297. Op. cit., p. 131.

298. As a side note, the terms ustoi and neustoi, which are often translated into English as “stable and unstable notes,” play an exclusive role in Russian music theory. They apply to both harmony and rhythm. They are used very often as the essential characteristics of form, harmony and rhythm, and they relate to the primary category of Russian music theory, which is function. Function is, in essence, the gravitation of the unstable elements to the stable elements. For more detail, see my analysis of Boleslav Yavorsky’s theory in this book.

299. Kholopov, op. cit., p. 136. 300. Kholopov, op. cit., p. 136. 301. Ibid. 302. Ibid.

303. Viktor Abramovich Tsukkerman, Kamarinskaya Glinki i Yeyo Traditsii v Russkoi Muzyke [Glinka’s Kamarinskaya and Its Traditions in Russian Music] (Moscow: Muzyka State Edition, 1957). 304. Op. cit., p. 363. 305. Op. cit., p. 364. 306. Ibid.

307. Ibid., 363.

308. Op. cit., p. 365. 309. Op. cit., p. 366.

310. Recommended by the Ministry of Culture of the USSR as the textbook for theory majors at musical institutions of higher education. A mandatory textbook at the conservatories in the 1960s and 1970s. Leo Mazel’ and Viktor Tsukkerman, Analysis of Musical Works. The Elements of Music and the Method of Analysis of Smaller Forms (Moscow: Muzyka State Edition, 1967). 311. Viktor Tsukkerman, The Kamarinskaya, p. 367.

312. Viktor Bobrovsky, Functional Foundation of Musical Form (Moscow: Muzyka, 1978).

313. There are two rules in Russian music theory: (1) an incomplete measure cannot mark the beginning of the theme; (2) if the last note of the theme is on the strong beat of a measure, this entire measure must be counted as the part of the theme.

Notes

314. This does not present an attempt to criticize Schenker; rather it is a suggestion of a different approach. In his analyses the diagonal connections of note heads present an example of analytical achievement. The same technique can be interpreted as a case of analytical convenience. The notes set against each other diagonally, then, do not show the way they should have been written, but the way they are already written. The notes are “misaligned” for a reason. Our analysis focuses on the compositional motivation behind the diagonally placed notes. This strategy is contrary to the technique of reduction. 315. In fact, it was Balakirev’s suggestion. However, the aesthetic underpinning of this choice is more important.

316. Arnold Alexandrovich Alschwang, P. I. Chaikovsky [P. I. Tchaikovsky] (Moscow: Muzyka State Edition Music Publisher, 1959), p. 267.

317. Valentina Nikolayevna Kholopova, Formy Muzykal’nykh Proizvedenii. Uchebnik [Forms of Musical Works. Textbook] (Moscow: Lan’, 2001), p. 319.

318. Giorgio Sanguinetti, The Art of Partimenti (New York: Oxford University press, 2012). See, Chapter 2, entitled “The non-verbal theory.”

319. More on this topic, see Ildar Khannanov Then Non-Verbal Specificity of Music: Beyond Logos (Moscow: Logos, 2019).

320. Alexander Michailov, lecture “Word and Music. Music as an Event in History of Word” (at Moscow Conservatory, 1993), quoted in Yevgenia Tchigaryeva, “Aleksandr V. Mikhailov and the Issue of the Word and Music,” Vestnik of Kemerov State University (38:2017), p. 94. 321. Novum Testamentum Greace (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1964), p. 84.

322. As did Pimen, a monk from Pushkin’s Boris Godunov: “One more, a last legend, and my manuscript is over.”

323. Albert Camus, “Le Mythe de Sysiphe,” Les Essais XII (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1942).

324. Valentina Kholopova, “O Prototypakh Funktsii Muzykal’noi Formy” [On the Prototypes of Functions of the Musical Form], Problemy Muzykal’noi Nauki/ [Problems of Musical Science], Vol. 4 (Moscow: Composer, 1979).

319

Index

absolute binary unity 79

absolute unity of Rachmaninoff’s harmony 75

Adler, Guido 10

aesthetics 12, 17–19, 72, 151,

160, 171–173, 177, 179,

183, 228

musical 10, 18, 28–29, 84, 90,

153, 180

transcendental 179

allegro 79, 96, 239–240, 248,

255, 259, 262

American music 2

anacrusis 249–250, 252

regular 252

analysis of musical works 8, 17,

27, 35–36, 103, 146, 148,

172, 176, 191, 204–205,

214, 216, 221

ancient Greece 103–104

Arabic music 128

Arabic traditions 40–41, 43

ars nova 9, 46–47, 127

art theory 12–13, 172, 223

artifacts, musical 4, 177

Asafiev, Boris 24, 40, 53, 96, 134,

149, 167–169, 175, 178,

181–184, 213

atonal works 203

atonality 203

Austro-Italian style 68

autonomy 11, 156–157, 159,

208, 272

Bach, J. S. 9, 111, 115, 140, 145,

196, 224, 227–230,

232–233, 235–236

Baroque concerto form 229–230, 236–237 Baroque music 207 Bashkirian prolonged song 194 Beethoven 9, 13, 24, 29, 96, 131,

134, 136, 139, 142, 149,

167, 169, 188, 220,

228–230, 232, 239, 254, 256

Belyayev, Viktor 169–170 Berezovsky, Maxim 62, 68 Bobrovsky, Viktor 148, 179, 193,

223, 246–247, 260–261, 263–265 British musicologists 142 Bryusov, Valery 156 Byzantine chant 45, 51, 53 Byzantine music 53 Byzantine tradition 50, 62–63 Caplin, William 27–28, 98, 100,

149, 265

chamber music 235

chant 6, 17, 45, 48, 52–59,

69–70, 77, 80, 87, 90–91

Charrak, André 96–97

Chinese court music 70

Chopin 9, 38–39, 127, 191, 246,

250

322

Index

chord connection 84, 129

chord progression 65, 94 chords diminished seventh 98, 121,

202

dominant seventh 97, 250

first 102, 202

modulating 118, 120

church music 58, 71, 78

ancient 70

church music tradition 207

classic-romantic musical form

31, 33

Classical homophonic-harmonic

texture 68 Classical music 78, 243, 245

Classical musical form 149

Classical sonata form 263

coherence, linear 61

complete harmonization 114 components

intramusical 15

philosophical 45, 59 composers, nineteenth-century

136, 261

composition

contemporary 144

metric 138

non-fugal 229, 235

composition theory 155 connections

functional chord 130

non-functional voice-leading 95

conservatories 10, 12, 37,

140–144, 147, 149,

171–172, 180, 190,

204–205, 211–214,

217–219, 222–223,

268–269

conservatory programs 174,

213, 215, 217

Conus, Georgi 136, 147

cycles

functional 68, 83, 101, 108,

113, 120, 130

tonal-functional 102, 113, 120,

123

tonal-harmonic 103

Czech musicologists 39 Dahlhaus, Carl 13, 24–25, 27, 36,

38, 40, 65, 79, 136, 146, 151,

165–166, 257

dénouement 193

Diletsky, Nikolai 17, 66–67,

70–71, 75, 83–86, 88–89,

91, 111

discrepancy of melody and harmony 253

dissonant intervals 127 Divine Logos 272 dual function of motive 138–139 ear 7, 80, 92, 100–101, 112, 119,

128–129, 197

musical 53, 136

ear training 101, 110, 142, 144

East Germany, Marxist musicology of 26

Eastern European

chant 61

contributions 38–39

music 81

musicians 61

musicologists 39

theory of modes 62

traditions 6

elements

extramusical 15

musical 42, 54, 56, 72, 167, 215

Index

English-speaking theorists 187 ethnomusicologist 225 European musical semiotics 168 European theory 26, 166, 228 extramusical 7, 15, 169, 175, 208 extramusical components 42 extramusical domains 8, 183 extramusical features 251 extramusicological 26 feelings 6, 15, 35, 158, 164–165, 220, 246 field extramusical 11, 15 intramusical 15

musical 179

film music 198 folk music 12, 48, 58–60, 67, 75, 109, 195–196, 198, 203, 206, 209, 225–226, 240, 243–245 nineteenth-century 14 folk song and mid-twentieth century musical modernism 197 folk songs 9, 13, 45, 58–59, 193–198, 200, 206, 238 folk tunes 189, 226, 243 form, classical definition 30–31, 236 formal functions 34, 65, 148–149, 160, 218, 232, 236 theory of 32, 149 formal strategies in music 198 formalism 3, 5–6, 10–11, 15, 18, 26, 28–29, 37, 41, 63, 65, 87, 104, 143–145, 155, 159, 161, 164–166, 176–177, 185, 199–209, 212, 221, 223, 237, 268

literary 66, 155, 160, 180 musical 11, 42, 140, 146, 159, 161, 269 formalist composer 142, 201 formalist methods 176, 190, 216, 227, 246–247, 249–265 formalist music theory 36 formalist strategies 122–123, 125, 127, 129, 131 formalist theory 190 formalists 2, 5–6, 8, 11, 15–18, 20–22, 27, 30–32, 39, 69, 78–80, 103, 127, 138, 144–146, 159, 168, 177, 184–185, 187, 200, 204, 209, 211–216, 218, 221, 223, 227–260, 270–271 French theory of harmony 131 fugue 30, 71, 125, 132, 230, 233 fugue exposition 123, 270 three-part 123–124 Gerasimova-Persidskaya, Nina 90 German literature on Russian/ Soviet theory 39 German music theorists 228 German music theory 37, 165 German musical aesthetics 11 German musicologists 142 German theorists 27, 102, 141 German theory 36–37, 141 eighteenth-century 33, 155 Germany 31, 38, 135, 186, 197 Glinka, Mikhail 152, 170, 190, 194, 196, 235, 240, 243–244, 246 Grabner, Hermann 37, 129–130 Gruber, Roman 176–177

323

324

Index

Hanslick, Eduard 11, 20, 27, 29,

31, 36, 165–166, 271

harmonic development 233 harmonic factor 117

harmonic functionalism 67, 87

harmonic language, nineteenth-

century 202

harmonic logic and hierarchy of

metric period 106 harmonic progression 32, 95,

101–102, 104–105, 107,

109, 111–112, 115, 119,

121, 123–124, 128, 135,

139, 160, 184, 196, 254, 273

harmonic reconciliation 237

harmonic reduction 92

harmonic stability 235

harmonic tension-relaxation 105 harmonic textures 132, 207 harmonic verticality 84 harmoniousness 84

harmonization 71, 87, 109–113,

115–116, 123–124, 144,

159, 270, 273

block-chord 251

keyboard 123

harmony

aesthetic 103

convoluted 201

divine 122

dominant 232, 255, 257

eighteenth-century theory of

85, 96

establishment of 122

form-building role of 62, 87,

147

functional 67, 88

keyboard 121

modern 110

musical 73

Hegelian historical discourse 29–30

Hellenic concepts of harmony and form 212

Hepokoski, James 4, 27–29, 159,

265

Heraclitus 9, 15, 79–80, 87, 269

hermeneutics 11, 38–39, 94, 178

Hungarian music 86

Husserl, Edmund 39, 78, 155,

172–173, 179, 271

Indigenous Russian category of Lad 69–79 integralism, reemergence of 163–208 integralist analysis of musical dramaturgy 190–191 intonatsia 56, 70, 133–135, 167,

169, 181–184, 203, 209,

217, 257

intramusical 7, 15, 183

Irish folk music 208

Italian music 89

Ivanov, Vyacheslav 156–157 Kazakh folk music 109 Kholopov, Yuri 17–18, 33, 47,

51, 53, 65–66, 72, 75–77,

82–83, 88, 93, 98, 103, 105,

108, 110, 117, 119, 133,

141–142, 145–147, 149,

151, 153–155, 157–158,

166–167, 174, 196,

211–214, 218–223,

227–233, 235–237,

246–247, 254, 262, 265, 271

10 conditions of tonality 77

formalist analysis 227, 229,

231, 233, 235, 237

Index

Kholopova, Valentina 17–18, 34, 77, 103, 136–138, 141, 148, 176–179, 182, 191, 211–212, 217, 223–225, 227, 259–262, 265, 271 Khrennikov, Tikhon 204, 206 Kikta, Valery 206–207 Lad 48, 53, 65, 67, 69–73, 75–84, 88, 93, 98, 129, 133, 135, 148, 160, 167, 184, 195, 269, 271, 273 Legrand, Raphaëlle 86, 88, 96–97, 122 Leningrad Conservatory 50, 173, 211, 213–214, 218 Leningrad school 215, 218 Losef, Alexei 47, 149, 151, 153, 212 Mahler, Gustav 79, 96, 145, 182, 219 Marx, A. B. 5, 10, 30–34, 63, 72, 88, 108, 141–142, 147, 154, 174, 196, 228–229, 243 Marxist music historians 26 Marx’s formula works 229 Mazel’, Leo 11, 17–18, 35–36, 38–39, 103, 146–148, 164, 169, 182, 184, 186, 204, 208, 212–215, 217, 220–221, 224, 245, 265, 267, 269 Mazurenko, Anastasia 225–226 melody 10, 36, 53, 55, 57, 60–61, 77–78, 109–115, 126–127, 129, 131–133, 215, 249–250, 252–254, 256

monotonality 75–76 Moscow Conservatory 18, 50, 103, 105, 141, 171–172, 187, 191, 204–205, 212–214, 217–218, 222 Moscow music theorists 215 Mozart 9, 13–14, 68, 149, 223, 230, 239, 254 music artificial 193 artistic 240

atonal 203, 207

choral 86

contemporary 173, 204, 218 dance 86 instrumental 49, 62, 164, 193, 223 liturgical 48, 50 live 172 modernist 159, 204, 208

nomadic 198

orchestral 182

polyphonic 122, 127, 176 pop 138 secular 55, 243 seventeenth-century 90 sonata-symphonic 188 twentieth-century 182 music analysis, nineteenthcentury 218 music theorists 20–21, 72, 133, 138–139, 152, 176, 190, 204–205, 212, 214–215, 220–221, 225 music theory 2, 4, 6, 9–10, 17–18, 24, 26, 31, 37–38, 40–41, 50, 54, 60–61, 65, 67, 79, 84, 92, 103, 130, 139, 144, 152, 154, 163–164, 166–167, 169, 172–175, 182, 185–186, 188, 198, 204, 214–215, 218,

325

326

Index

220–223, 226, 228, 242,

246, 262, 267, 269–271, 273

contemporary 182

contemporary Anglo-Saxon 223

disciplines of 10, 219

early Russian 49, 59, 61, 63

eighteenth-century 130

elementary 144

indigenous Russian 24

nineteenth-century 31, 236

traditional 173

traditional Soviet 224 musical art 3, 36, 66, 69, 155,

269

musical artwork 30, 81

musical depiction 126 musical design 117

musical dramaturgy 185,

190–191, 193

musical emotions 177, 208, 225

musical grammar 17, 66, 84, 193

musical logocentrism 80

musical modernism 199

mid-twentieth century 197

musical noumen 270

musical paleography 49–50 musical semiotics 27, 180–181,

208, 217

musical speech 82, 133, 135,

145, 148, 166–168, 183,

214–216 musical syntax 104–105, 107 musical-theoretical discourse 2

musical thought, Western 47,

223

musical works, design of 148

musicians

analytically trained Western 81

conservatory-trained 144

early Western-European 49

Russian church 60

Western 50, 56, 62 musicological discourse 271

musicology 26, 176, 208, 218

advanced interdisciplinary 217

East German 26

historical 220

new Russian Orthodox Christian 217

ontological 223

systematic 10–11

Western 245 Nazaikinsky, Yevgenyi 90, 179,

217

neumes 45–46, 49, 52, 54–58,

62, 80

North American theorists of

formalist upbringing 27 North American theory 5, 149

Ogolevets, Alexey 205 opposition 5, 8–9, 11–12, 14–15,

18, 25–26, 31, 38–39, 57,

78, 159, 199, 214, 220, 236,

261

binary 2, 12–13, 15, 31, 42, 217

perception 4, 8–10, 16, 19–20,

28, 30, 41, 72, 77, 80, 103,

173, 186, 226, 254, 271–272

pitch collection 52, 62, 69, 72,

77, 83

pitch structure 50, 69, 75, 82, 94,

101, 105, 133, 167

pivot chord 118–120, 122

diatonic 119

Index

plagal cadences 85–86 Platonic theory 7 Plotinus 149–155, 269 poetics 42, 148, 156–157, 220 musical 21 poetry 41, 73, 157–158, 185, 197, 206 polyphony 47, 57, 91, 93, 123, 125–128 Rachmaninoff, Sergey 9, 62, 73, 75, 125–126, 139, 144–145, 192, 194, 200 rhetoric, musical 185 Riemann, Hugo 10, 31, 33, 37, 62–63, 65, 67, 88, 94, 100, 105, 108–109, 116, 135, 141, 147, 151, 167, 175, 228, 249, 273 Riemann, Hugo theory of dynamic shading 100 theory of heavy measures and heavy beats 252 Rimsky-Korsakov 67, 74, 116–117, 120–121, 136, 145, 200, 206 Russia 5, 12, 14, 17, 23, 32, 39–42, 45–63, 66–68, 78, 83, 86–89, 97, 116, 119, 130, 133, 135, 141–142, 144, 159, 166, 170, 172–173, 175, 178, 183, 186, 194, 206, 209, 221, 226–227, 232, 236, 247, 261 contemporary 20, 181 early stages of integralism in 45–62 Russian and Soviet theorists 21 Russian archaic folk music 77 Russian chant 56, 58

Russian chant theorists 45, 53, 61, 63 Russian chant traditions 46, 50 Russian church music 50 Russian composers 21, 62, 132, 169 Russian conservatories 142, 171–172, 177, 183 Russian definitions of musical work 35 Russian folk music 81, 133, 194, 225 Russian folk song 58–59, 136, 246 Russian formalism 149, 228, 237 Russian formalist tradition 132, 237 Russian formalists 20, 158–159, 196, 222, 255 Russian integralism 164–165, 167, 175 Russian integralists 178, 261 Russian language 11, 48, 66, 73, 150 Russian literary formalism 155, 157, 159, 161 Russian modifications of Western musicological terms 238 Russian monodic chant theory 71 Russian music 47, 50, 60, 67, 75, 81, 87, 90–91, 133, 238, 254 early 45, 69 seventeenth-century 90 Russian music analysis 242 Russian music history 57 Russian music theory 24, 45, 47, 50, 53, 58, 60, 63, 67, 69–70, 83, 87, 89, 145, 164, 183, 213, 240, 258 Russian musical-theoretical pedagogy 141

327

328

Index

Russian musicians 17, 24, 54, 63, 67, 75, 86, 97, 140, 166 nineteenth century 140 Russian musicologists 239, 251 Russian musicology 223 contemporary 178 Russian nineteenth-century theory of form 47 Russian Orthodox chant theory 59 Russian Orthodox Church chant 46–49, 87

holistic nature of 46–47

Russian paleography 49–50 Russian-speaking theorists 187 Russian theories of harmony 83, 85, 87, 89, 91 Russian theorists 6, 33, 48, 75, 84, 87, 120, 132, 134, 139, 141, 145, 180–181, 183, 187, 217, 221, 223, 228, 242, 250, 258–259, 265 twentieth-century 53 Russian traditions 6, 31, 46, 53, 67, 98, 136, 190 Sanguinetti, Giorgio 130, 269 semantics 2, 38–39, 72, 89, 94, 178, 180–181, 184, 192 semiotics 2, 29, 80, 180–181, 224 Soviet composers 22, 202, 204 Soviet formalists 103, 166, 207 Soviet integralists 103, 147, 179, 190, 255 Soviet method of analysis of musical works 204 Soviet Music 206, 219 Soviet music analysis 165, 167

Soviet musical pedagogy 171 Soviet theorists 21, 31, 34, 39–40, 88, 90, 127, 146, 148–149, 180–181, 197 Soviet theory 43, 56, 87, 90, 141, 158, 167, 181–182, 218, 221, 223, 239, 245 Soviet Union 2, 5, 11, 13, 17, 38, 40, 108, 146, 179, 181, 183, 193–194, 197, 207–209, 214, 217, 270 Sposobin, Igor 31–32, 34–35, 83, 88, 108–109, 115, 117–120, 141, 145–148, 218, 221, 236 Stravinsky, Igor 27, 137–139, 169–170, 217, 219 Tarasti, Eero 27, 168, 181, 217 Tchaikovsky 9, 67, 81, 127, 136, 139, 141–142, 146, 164,

188, 205, 246, 250–252,

257–258, 261, 263

forms 146, 246–247

motivic work 257 music 40, 142, 146, 250, 257, 264 Tchaikovsky’s chord 250 tetrachord 51 theory of expression 11, 31 tonal-functional syntax 89, 112, 273 tonal-functional system, traditional 83 tonal-harmonic functions 24, 32, 88, 94–95, 97–98, 104–105, 107, 109, 115, 130, 221 tonal music 14, 22, 24, 28, 82, 103, 105, 108, 116, 130, 206, 221, 273

Index

tonal theory, traditional 215

tonality 25, 53, 71–72, 74,

76–77, 82–83, 85, 95, 132,

160, 221, 250–251, 273

ablated 77

dissonant 77

functional 77

hovering 77

intermittent 77

inverted 77

loose 77

oscillating 77

polytonality 77

polyvalent 77 tones, non-chord 86, 94, 128,

247

tonic chord 88, 254

tonic harmony 250, 255

Tsukkerman, Viktor 11, 17–18, 170, 175, 187, 204–205,

227, 235, 245, 261, 271

Ukrainian folk music 225 unfigured melodies 110, 113,

115–116, 119, 123, 144,

270, 273

harmonization of 109, 111,

113, 115, 159

wedding song 191, 238, 241

Western concept of harmony 88 Western European tradition 6,

39, 60, 145

Western harmony 206 Western music 196, 225, 240,

243, 253

Western music history 225 Western music theory 24–25,

27, 67, 169

Western musical literature 239 Western musical tradition 71 Western theorists 61–62

contemporary 39 Western theory 47, 53, 161, 164

critique of 45, 61, 63

traditional 173

Western traditions 53, 70,

80–81, 90, 94, 221–223

westernization 42, 60, 66 Yavorsky, Boleslav 53, 75, 83,

97–98, 108, 119, 134–135,

147, 167–168, 171, 173,

183–184

Zaremba, Nikolai 141

Zarlino, Gioseffo 92–93 Zhirmunsky, Viktor 156 Znamennyi 17, 46, 49, 53–58, 62,

Viennese classical music 86, 235,

69–71, 80–81, 87, 90–91

245

znamya 46, 55–57, 69

voice leading 92–103 Zvukoryady, Bylinnyie 206–207

329