“Without setting boundaries between melody of verse and the one of music”: the concept of “sounding substance’ by Boris Asafiev and research of the “living word"
Abstract
The given article focuses on a concept of “sounding substance” by Boris Asafiev, which occupied a significant place in his theoretical heritage of postrevolutionary period. In the view of the researcher, the sounding substance accumulated the key communicative, dynamic, and semantic parameters of music that constituted its “anthropological” dimension: the organic consistency of the structure, fluidity, sensory tangibility, invocatory and suggestive features. The author puts forward a hypothesis that the given concept was largely affected by research of oral speech intonation carried out in the early 20th century under the aegis of so-called “Ohrenphilologie” (“auditory philology”). An important factor of such impact were Asafiev’s close contacts with philologists from the Institute of the Live Word, one of the leading platforms of the Ohrenphilologie in Russia of the 1910–20s. The paper establishes continuity between ideas of the specialists in Ohrenphilologie Sergey Bernstein, Boris Eichenbaum, and Victor Shklovsky on the one hand, and the concept of the sounding substance on the other.
About the Author
T. V. Bukina
Vaganova Ballet Academy
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Bukina T. V. — Dr. Habil. (Art), Ass. Prof.,
2, Rossi St., Saint-Petersburg, 191023.
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For citations:
Bukina T.V. “Without setting boundaries between melody of verse and the one of music”: the concept of “sounding substance’ by Boris Asafiev and research of the “living word". Bulletin of Vaganova Ballet Academy. 2024;(5):110-122.
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