Formation of Russian Musicology from Sacchetti to Asafyev, 1885-1931 By Olga Panteleeva A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Music in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Richard Taruskin, Chair Professor Marina Frolova-Walker Professor Mary Ann Smart Professor Jeroen Dewulf Spring 2015 Formation of Russian Musicology from Sacchetti to Asafyev, 1885-1931 Copyright 2015 by Olga Panteleeva Abstract Formation of Russian Musicology from Sacchetti to Asafyev, 1885-1931 by Olga Panteleeva Doctor of Philosophy in Music University of California, Berkeley Professor Richard Taruskin, Chair This study explores Russian thought about music in thirty-five years leading up to the establishment in 1921 of the music research department at the Institute for Art History in St Petersburg, generally considered the key event in the institutionalization of musicology as a scholarly discipline, and for a decade after that. Drawing on sources that include newspapers and articles across half a century and hitherto little-known archival materials, such as transcripts of meetings, official resolutions, and personal correspondence, I show how Russian musicology grew up in dialogue with the broader intellectual developments of the period. The temporal framework of this study bridges the “revolutionary divide,” dismantling the persistent notion of 1917 as the zero hour in the history of Russian and Soviet culture. Where existing studies have tended to conceptualize writing about music in the early Soviet era either as the voluntary acceptance of ideological directives from the State or as the total ideological crackdown on free scholarly thought, my findings reveal a volatile two-way relationship between the State and individual scholars, in which musicologists themselves exhibited a nuanced range of attitudes toward the centralized ideology and could be active agents of the sweeping ideological change. Chapters 1 and 5 deal with institutions and the thorny quest to legitimize musicology as an academic profession; Chapters 2, 3, and 4 focus on the vibrant discourse on the study of music that appeared in the press. In its earliest stage, the institutionalization of musicology was slowed by the relentless focus of the music conservatories on the social legitimization of the profession of a musician, which left no space for the advocacy of the professional scholar. During this same early period, musicological thought was being forged in the debates in the popular press over the competing claims of positivism and idealism. Where positivism upheld the idea that music scholarship should concern itself with the scientific search for universal laws governing both the historical development of music and its inner workings, the idealist camp favored the understanding of music as an ineffable art, out of reach of the rational mind. In Chapter 1 I analyze Nikolai Findeisen’s criticism of the conservatory professor Liveriy Sacchetti, an expert in European music historiography and aesthetics, and Findeisen’s nationalist vision for musicology, which was gaining momentum in the two pre-revolutionary decades. Chapter 2 presents a longitudinal study of the Russian reception of Eduard Hanslick’s influential treatise On the Musically Beautiful, which reveals two ideological shifts, first to positivism, then away from it. Chapter 3 concerns itself with an example of this positivist influx and the strong idealist opposition it elicited in certain avant-garde artistic circles of the 1910s: Emiliy Medtner’s 1 criticism of Nadezhda Bryusova’s work, rife with anti-modernism, racial anxiety, and fear of the prescriptive ambitions of science. Chapter 4 looks at the same ideological clash from a different perspective. Members of the Scriabin Society, offended by the critical stance the music critic Leonid Sabaneyev took in his monograph on the recently deceased composer, attempted to besmirch his reputation by casting him as a clueless rationalist who could not approach the true meaning of Scriabin’s music. Chapter 5 examines the increasing ideological pressure that The People's Commissariat for Education (Narkompros) put on the musicologists at the Russian Institute of Art History in the late 1920s, steeped in the infamous rhetoric of “formalism” that later informed the public denunciations of Prokofiev and Shostakovich. My focus on the personal communications between Boris Asafyev and Alexey Finagin reveals that adapting one’s convictions to the changing ideological climate often came at the cost of personal relationships. 2 To my teachers i Table of Contents Acknowledgements iii Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Liberio’s Labour Lost, or Why a German Disliked an Italian 18 for Being Not Russian Enough Chapter 2 The reception of Hanslick's On the Musically Beautiful 38 and the Shift to Positivism Chapter 3 Positivism and the Danger of Science: 74 Nadezhda Bryusova vs. Emiliy Medtner Chapter 4 Sabaneyev's Scriabin and Conflicting Epistemologies 94 of the Russian Silver Age Chapter 5 Of Friendship and Formalism: 114 Musicologists and Soviet Power in the 1920s Conclusion 145 Bibliography 151 ii Acknowledgements This project would not have come to fruition without the support of many institutions and individuals, to whom I extend my heartfelt gratitude. I deeply appreciate the financial support that made my dissertation research and writing possible: a departmental fellowship and summer grants from the Music Department of the University of California, Berkeley, the travel and summer grants from the Graduate Division at UC Berkeley, the generous travel grants from the UC Berkeley Institute of Eastern European and Eurasian Studies, and an Allan Sharlin Memorial Award from the UC Berkeley Institute of International Studies, which funded the last year of dissertation writing. I am thankful to the staff of Russian libraries and archives for their guidance and good will: to Galina Viktorovna Kopïtova and Irina Aleksandrovna Sinitsa at the Manuscript Department of the Russian Institute of Art History, to Maria Mikhailovna Perekalina at the Central State Historical Archive of St. Petersburg, to Svetlana Alekseyevna Litvinova at the Central State Archive of Literature and Art of St. Petersburg, and to the staff at the Manuscript Department of the National Library of Russia. I am forever indebted to the University of California, Berkeley and its intellectual environment, which transformed me as a scholar, a teacher, and a member of society. To my professors at Berkeley and beyond I owe more than I ever will be able to repay: to Davitt Moroney, a mentor who always kept his door open and who taught me the importance of writing, teaching, and living in a socially responsible way; to Mary Ann Smart, for bringing clarity to my thinking and writing, and for being a paragon of professionalism and a role model; to Jeroen Dewulf, whose encouragement during his course on German literature and during my preparation for the orals made more of a difference than he might have known; to Marina Frolova-Walker for her hands-on advising and incisive feedback, which left no stones unturned, and her caring support, both equally essential; and above all, to Richard Taruskin, whose scholarship inspired me long before I even dreamed of being his student, who has encouraged me to be true to myself ever since we sat down on a bench at The Hermitage and he told me to never mind them, and without whose professional and personal help I would have never reached this point. A cordial thank you to Melissa Hacker and Lisa Robinson for doing wonders to accommodate all my individual circumstances, and for guiding me through the program steadily and graciously. I am immensely grateful to my teachers Olga Manulkina, who set me on the scholarly path eleven years ago and has been helping me walk it ever since; Arkady Klimovitsky, who set the standard of integrity to live up to; and Karl Kügle, for making me apply to Berkeley and for believing in me even when I did not fully believe in myself. Warmest thanks and a hug to my friends, who have been my family during my time at Berkeley and have helped in countless ways: Rebekah Ahrendt, Nell Cloutier, Sean Curran, Barbara Dietlinger, Emily Frey, Ofer Gazit, Ian Goldstein, Melanie Gudesblatt, Jess Herdman, Margaret Jones, Beezer de Martelly, Jonathan Meci, Adeline Mueller, Tiffany Ng, Kirsten Paige, Ulrike Petersen, Bill Quillen, Sumitra Ranganathan, Emily Richmond Pollock, Ilya Rostovtsev, Danni Simon, Saraswathi Shukla, Chelsea Spangler, Rachana Vajjhala, Rachel Vandagriff, Jen Wang, Jiselle Warner, and Robert Yamasato; and those who kept me happy in other places: Lidia Ader, Katya Chernyakova, Olga Khomitsevich, Ruxandra Marinescu, and Stanislav Oporkov. Thank you to the Gusev family, without whose unwavering support and hospitality I would not iii have been able to carry out archival research for this dissertation, and to Elena Orlova for having my back when no one else could. Most heartfelt thanks to Vadim Keylin, Laura Protano-Biggs, and Anicia Timberlake, for their indispensable feedback, for proofreading my writing, and for seeing me through the last year of my Ph.D. iv Introduction [H]e who approaches the great enigma should know to take his sandals off his feet, for the place where he is standing is holy ground; he should feel the greatness of the spirit, with which he communes, and honor the highest, the inscrutable and the unfathomable in it – with