Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: In the process of developing the method of tselostnïy analiz (holistic analysis) in the 1930s, its creators-Leo Mazel, Viktor Zuckerman, and Iosif Rïzhkin-tried to establish music analysis as an independent branch of musical knowledge, one that could lay claim to scientific objectivity (i.e., be positivist) and at the same time meet the demands of Marxist dialectical materialism.With its far-reaching consequences not just for scholarship but also music theory pedagogy, music analysis required rigorous cultivation, propagation, and defense-especially in the age of anti-formalism and socialist realism.Examining select writings of holistic analysts, and of their critics, this study illuminates the ideological and intellectual underpinnings of analysis as practiced in the Soviet Union at this time.The 1930s witnessed the full centralization of arts by the Communist Party, the rise of socialist realism, the hardening of official anti-formalism, and the terrors of Stalinism.During the same decade, Soviet music theorists attempted to establish the discipline of music analysis as a "scientific," independent branch of Soviet "musicology." 1 This project required that music scholars define themselves for and against contemporaneous music theory, theory pedagogy, and music history-both Soviet and Western.Leading the charge were three Moscow theorists, who developed tselostnïy analiz (holistic analysis)-a new analytical method that claimed a multidimensional approach to studying musical works.This study examines select writings by holistic analysts and by their critics in order to illuminate the ideological and intellectual underpinnings of music analysis as practiced in the Soviet Union in the years between the centralization of arts in 1932 and the beginning of World War II in 1941.The ideological and intellectual foundations of music analysis in the USSR have largely escaped scholarly attention, even as Anglophone scholarship on the techniques of holistic analysis has continued to 1 A note on the terminology: In Russian use, "muzïkoznaniye" (musicology) encompasses music history and theory, and either discipline (or both) could be invoked when the term is employed in the writings discussed below.When the authors want to emphasize the distinction, they tend to use "teoreticheskoye muzïkoznaniye" (theoretical musicology)."Nauka" (adjective: "nauchnïy") could be translated as "science" (literal meaning) or "scholarship."Almost without exception, holistic analysts use the term in its former denotation to stress objective inquiry, which was at the heart of their project.Throughout this study, all translations are mine.
Source: Music and Politics
Author: Daniil Zavlunov
Language: English
Subfield: Music
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W3047705020