Textological Aspects of Musicology in Russia and the Former Soviet Union

Progress-Tradition Moscow

         The writing and publication of this book was financed by the Russian Foundation for the Humanities (RGNF) and subsequently by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR), into which the RGNF was incorporated in 2016.

         This book was designated as Project No. ... by the RGNF and is registered as Project No. 16-04-17001 by the RFBR.

Tatyana Naumenko








Textological Aspects of Musicology in Russia and the Former Soviet Union

This edition is financially supported by
the Russian Foundation for Fundamental Investigations on project № 16-04-17001, not to be sold






        Tatyana Naumenko

       Textological Aspects of Musicology in Russia and the Former Soviet Union. -М.: publishers «Progress-Tradition», 2017. - 448 p.

   ISBN 978-5-89826-495-1

       In this monograph, Tatyana Naumenko, Doctor of Arts and a professor at Moscow’s Gnessin Russian Academy of Music, looks at modern Russian musicology through the prism of texts representing it. She mentions subjects addressed in musicological studies, names genres of music that scholars preference to explore, and describes modern methods of research and criteria of assessment, largely with the aim of overcoming Soviet-era dogmatism. Special consideration is given to the writing of academic degree dissertations on music in the former Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia. The Annex lists dissertations approved between 1970 and 2013.














ISBN 978-5-89826-495-1

© Tatyana Naumenko, author, 2017
                  © Progress-Tradition , 2017

Table of contents




Introduction ....................................................................15

Chapter 1
“POST”-ERA PARADOXES ............................................................23
Contemporary style in terms and notions..........................................23
Cult of innovations in epoch of nostalgia........................................30
About “Time of musicologists”....................................................39

Chapter 2
SOME HISTORICAL ASPECTS OF MUSICOLOGICAL TEXT ...................................55
Scholarly sources and parameters of musicology ..................................55
Acquisition of status............................................................67
Text and the state ..............................................................82

Chapter 3
POST-SOVIET DECONSTRUCTIONS.....................................................104
Deconstructing official prescriptions for what subjects to choose for research .104
Deconstruction of myths.........................................................116
Deconstruction of scholarly boundaries .........................................128

Chapter 4
WAYS OF RENEWAL OF TEXT ........................................................144
In search of a name ...............................................144
In search of the right genre: the problem of prefaces..............152
In search of description methods...................................163

Chapter 5
SCIENTIFIC TEXT AS INTERPRETATION:
AUTHORS’ APPROACHES ............................................................178
Spiritual music space ..........................................................178
Mozart and time.................................................................184
Again about Shostakovich........................................................190

Chapter 6
DISSERTATIONS ON CATEGORY 17.00.02
(THE ART OF MUSIC) SUBJECTS AS A FIELD OF SOVIET AND RUSSIAN MUSICOLOGY ......................................................205
The place of musicology in the system of scholarly degrees and awards.............205
Before and after 1991........................................................212
Thesis boom and parasite texts ..............................................217

Chapter 7
MUSICOLOGISTS SPEAK ON MUSICOLOGY............................................227
Levon akopyan: ‘modern musicological literature must be interesting to read’.227
Nikolai Denisov on the study of the old Russian art of church singing: ‘a church service is a synthesis of all arts with its rules, text, and singing ........246
Natalya Gulyanitskaya: ‘Research is my state of mind, my aspiration, my necessity.256
Irina Susidko: ‘Old cliches are fortunately receding into the past................260
Andreas Wehrmeyer on contemporary German musicology..........................265

Conclusion...................................................................268

Annex EXPLANATORY NOTES............................................................270



Section I
DISSERTATIONS FOR THE DEGREES OF CANDIDATE OF ARTS
AND DOCTOR OF ARTS APPROVED IN THE 1970S AND 1980S ..........................273

1970-1979....................................................................273
Genres ......................................................................273
Foreign music................................................................273
Music and other arts.........................................................276
Music of peoples of Russia...................................................276
Music of peoples of the former Soviet Union .................................276
Urban musical life and music culture ........................................279
Perception of music..........................................................279
Performance and teaching of music ...........................................279
Non-european cultures .......................................................281
Russian music................................................................281
Soviet music ................................................................283
Problems of theory ..........................................................284
Church singing culture ......................................................285
Ethnomusicology..............................................................286

1980-1990...................................................................286
Genres and styles...........................................................286
Foreign music...............................................................287
The art of church bell ringing .............................................291
Concerts ...................................................................291
Music and other arts........................................................291
Music of peoples of Russia..................................................291
Music of peoples of the former soviet union.................................292
Perception of music.........................................................297
Performance and teaching of music ..........................................297
Musicology and music criticism..............................................299
Non-european cultures ......................................................300
Russian music...............................................................301
Soviet music ...............................................................302
Problems of theory .........................................................305
The culture of church singing...............................................307
Ethnomusicology.............................................................308




Section II
DISSERTATIONS FOR THE DEGREES OF CANDIDATE AND DOCTOR OF ARTS APPROVED AFTER 1991 .................................310

ARCHIVES, MANUSCRIPT COLLECTIONS, AND OTHER SOURCES.......................................................310

GENRES .................................................................311
General problems and inter-genre interaction............................311
Opera ..................................................................311
Ballet .................................................................312
Symphonies and symphonic poems .........................................312
Instrumental genres and ensemble music..................................312
Quartets and quintets...................................................313
Choral music ...........................................................313
Chamber vocal music and song genres.....................................313
Piano...................................................................314
Organ ..................................................................314
Music for string instruments: violin ...................................315
Cello ..................................................................315
Wind instruments .......................................................315
Folk instruments .......................................................315
Mass musical events.....................................................316
Jazz and non-canonic music genres.......................................316

FOREIGN MUSIC ....................................................318

WESTERN EUROPEAN MUSIC OF THE PRE-CLASSICAL
AND EARLY CLASSICAL PERIODS ......................................318
The music of the pre-classical period in its historical evolution.318
Genres ...........................................................319
     Composers....................................................320
Baroque: trends of style and genre ...............................320
     Composers....................................................322

WESTERN EUROPEAN MUSIC OF THE CLASSICAL ERA.......................324
Style trends......................................................324
Genres ...........................................................325
     Composers....................................................325

WESTERN EUROPEAN 19TH-CENTURY MUSIC ..............................327
Style trends......................................................327
Genres ...........................................................327
     Composers....................................................328

WESTERN EUROPEAN MUSIC
OF THE LATE 19TH AND EARLY 20TH CENTURY ..........................331
Finnish music ....................................................331
French music .....................................................331
     Composers....................................................332
     American music of the 17th to the 19th century...............333

FOREIGN 19TH-CENTURY MUSIC .......................................333
Genres, styles, and forms.........................................333
     Austrian music...............................................334
     British music ...............................................335
     Bulgarian music..............................................335
     Hungarian music..............................................335
     German music ................................................336
     Italian music................................................337
     Spanish music ...............................................337
     Norwegian music .............................................337
     Polish music.................................................337
     United States................................................338
     Finnish music ...............................................339
     French music ................................................339
     Czech music..................................................340
     Swiss music .................................................340

INSTRUMENTATION AND ORGANOLOGY .......................................340

HISTORY OF MUSIC EDUCATION AND CONCERT INSTITUTIONS.............................................343

THE ART OF CHURCH BELL RINGING ......................................344

AUDIO RECORDINGS, MUSIC IN THE MEDIA, AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY...........................................345

MUSIC AND OTHER ARTS.................................................345

MUSIC OF PEOPLES OF RUSSIA ..........................................347
Muslim traditions in Russia’s culture ...............................347
Adygea...............................................................347
Bashkortostan .......................................................348
Buryatia.............................................................349
Dagestan ............................................................349
Kalmykia.............................................................349
Karachai-Cherkessia and Balkaria ....................................350
Karelia..............................................................350
Mariy El.............................................................350
Mordovia.............................................................350
Ossetia..............................................................350
North Caucasus.......................................................351
Siberia and the Russian Far East.....................................351
Tatarstan............................................................352
Tyva.................................................................354
Udmurtia.............................................................355
Chuvashia ...........................................................355
Yakutia .............................................................355

TEACHING OF MUSIC....................................................356
General points ......................................................356
Vocal music..........................................................356
Harmony .............................................................357
The teaching of children and primary education ......................357
Wind instruments ....................................................357
Musical theatre .....................................................358
Solfege and training of musical ear .................................358
String instruments...................................................358
Piano................................................................358
Choral music ........................................................359

PERCEPTION OF MUSIC .................................................359

ART OF MUSIC PERFORMANCE ..........................................................360
General aspects of interpretation..................................................360
Vocal music........................................................................360
Conducting.........................................................................361
Wind and percussion instruments ...................................................361
The art of accompaniment...........................................................362
Folk instruments ..................................................................362
String instruments.................................................................363
Piano and organ....................................................................364
Choir performance..................................................................366

REGIONAL MUSIC STUDIES AND URBAN MUSIC CULTURE ....................................366
Vyatka ............................................................................366
Russian Far East and Siberia: Barnaul, Krasnoyarsk, Novosibirsk, Tomsk, and Chita .367
Don area: Rostov-on-Don and Novocherkassk..........................................367
Yekaterinodar .....................................................................368
Kursk .............................................................................368
Volga area: Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, and Saratov ...........................368
Simbirsk...........................................................................369
Tambov.............................................................................369
Tver...............................................................................369
Urals: Yekaterinburg, Magnitogorsk, Orenburg, and Chelyabinsk......................369

CONTENT OF MUSIC ..................................................................370

MUSICOLOGY, MUSIC CRITICISM, HISTORY OF MUSIC
THEORY DOCTRINES, AND PUBLICATION
OF SCORES AND BOOKS ON MUSIC ......................................................371

NATIONAL SCHOOLS ..................................................................373
Dialogues of cultures .............................................................373
Azerbaijan ........................................................................373
Armenia............................................................................373
Belarus............................................................................374
Kazakhstan.........................................................................374
Lithuania..........................................................................374
Latvia.............................................................................374
Moldova............................................................................375
Tajikistan.........................................................................375
Turkmenistan.......................................................................375
Ukraine ...........................................................................375
Estonia............................................................................375

NON-EUROPEAN CULTURES..............................................376
Classical and modern music of Asia and the Middle East, Asian and middle Eastern music theory doctrines..........................376
Latin America (panorama) ..........................................376
Algeria............................................................376
Vietnam ...........................................................377
India .............................................................377
Indonesia .........................................................377
Iraq ..............................................................377
Iran ..............................................................378
Cambodia...........................................................378
China..............................................................378
Colombia ..........................................................379
Korea .............................................................379
Cuba ..............................................................380
Mexico ............................................................380
Mongolia ..........................................................380
Palestine .........................................................381
Sudan .............................................................381
Ecuador ...........................................................381
Japan .............................................................381

SPECIAL SUBJECTS ..................................................382

RUSSIAN MUSIC 17TH CENTURY ......................................................384

18TH CENTURY ......................................................384

19TH CENTURY ......................................................385
Opera .............................................................385
Ballet ............................................................385
Chamber vocal music................................................385
Other genres ......................................................386
     Composers.....................................................386

THE END OF THE 19TH AND EARLY DECADES
OF THE 20TH CENTURY ...............................................390
Silver Age: trends of style and contexts...........................390
Genres and their interaction ......................................391
     Composers.....................................................392

RUSSIAN POST-1917 MUSIC:
THE FIRST HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY ..............................397
Style trends of the epoch, events, facts, pages of history.......397
     Composers...................................................397

THE LATTER HALF OF THE 20TH AND THE BEGINNING
OF THE 21ST CENTURY .............................................400
Stylistic trends and poetics of styles ..........................400
Genres ..........................................................401
     Religious music.............................................401
     Choral music ...............................................401
     Opera ......................................................402
     Instrumental music .........................................402
     Reflection of folk traditions in various genres of music ...403
     Composers...................................................403

RUSSIAN EMIGRE COMPOSERS.........................................410

MEANS OF EXPRESSION .............................................410

PORTRAITS OF PERFORMERS, COMPOSERS, TEACHERS, MUSICOLOGISTS, MUSIC CRITICS,
AND PATRONS OF MUSIC ............................................410

CREATIVE PROCESS AND MUSIC TEXTOLOGY ............................413

PROBLEMS OF THEORY...............................................413
Acoustics .......................................................413
Harmony .........................................................413
Composition, principles and methods of organization..............414
Counterpoint ....................................................414
Melodics ........................................................415
Methods of analysis .............................................415
Musical thinking.................................................415
Musical language.................................................416
Rhythm and time .................................................416
Thematicism .....................................................416
Texture and colouration .........................................416
Form ............................................................416
Phrasing.........................................................417

PHENOMENA AND UNIVERSALS ......................................417

THE ART OF CHURCH SINGING .....................................420

ETHNOMUSI COLOGY ..............................................425



Section III
DISSERTATIONS IN MUSICALOGY APPROVED AT FOREIDN
HIGHER SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES IN 2010-2013 DOCTORALDISSERTATIONS IN MUSICOLOGY ...................................429
Great britain .................................................429
Germany........................................................431
Usa ...........................................................434

OTHER COUNTRIES................................................440
Australia......................................................440
Austria........................................................440
Greece ........................................................441
Spain .........................................................441
Italy .........................................................442
Canada ........................................................443
Netherlands....................................................443
France ........................................................444
Switzerland....................................................445
Sweden.........................................................445

Introduction

15







                               INTRODUCTION


                               We were motivated to write this book by a multitude of circumstances that can be summed in one word - change.
         Notions such as “new anthropology of arts” and “new cultural paradigm” have become generally understood via two-decade discussions and have been increasingly influential, affecting various fields of study and transforming practically all aspects of modern scholarly discourse. Today historians, political scientists, sociologists, philologists, philosophers - “everyone without exception”, to quote Noveishy Filosofsky Slovar (Modern Philosophical Dictionary), - write about change, arguing or agreeing with one another, and either using post-modernist terms or doing without them.¹
         Musicology has not been an obvious subject of any of these discussions,² but its entire way of development shows it to have been involved in these changes: the text of musicological works, just as the text of works on other humanities, fully reflects processes of restoration, re-interpretation, the revival of something that was forgotten, and searches for something that was lost.
         Hence these changes have affected fundamental characteristics of musicology, including its range of issues, views and concepts, methods, allusions, quotations, and factors stimulating the creation of new text. The nature of the musicological profession itself has been revised. Consequently, it becomes a key task to define musicology in its current form, a form that reflects all turns of recent history and all Russian and global trends. It is also important to comprehend the processes, logic, and historical causes of the internal reshaping of musicology.
         Today musicology, as other humanities in Russia, is looking for a new identity, and this search has brought many problems, both external and internal, to the fore. Whereas the external problems mainly amount to the place of musicology among humanities (“Is musicology the leader of the humanities or an outsider among them?”³), or among professions (“Musicologists or musicians”?⁴) the internal problems represent a vast range of matters relating to the self-assessment of musicology, from its history of emergence to the ranges of issues that it addresses, and methods and laws of writing musicological text.
         This process reveals a diversity of factors - by no means only “Soviet” - that have affected the development of Russian musicology.
         In fact, it is on a range of “post-Soviet” factors that present-day Russian musicology is based on: Russian humanities in general have undergone changes that are unprecedent-

Introduction

16 ed and unparalleled worldwide. It was not a case of a mere change of generations where some studies replace others in a natural way after a while. An entire system of values had to be overhauled with the need to revise numerous principles and interpretations.
              However, change is by no means all that has determined the nature of current Russian musicology. More precisely, change has caused Russian musicology to move on and determined the speed of this movement, exacerbating old problems and simultaneously giving rise to new ones.
              One of them, purely endemic to Russia, is that the record of Russian musicology includes not only recent studies but also a tremendous number of works that were created in the Soviet era and consequently reflect values and principles of that period. Encyclopedias and encyclopedic dictionaries, biographies of composers and descriptions of their work, numerous “histories of music” and books setting out “greater theoretical concepts,”⁵ are still widely used by scholars, albeit no longer declared to be sources of gospel truths. It would be premature, to say the least, to discard these works, if only because there are not enough alternatives.
              One more problem, in our view, is that modern Russian scholarly works differ in quality a great deal. Along with indisputably pioneering research there is a depressing amount of hollow content. While there obviously is not much in common between them, these two groups of works have the same origin - freedom from ideological diktat and censorship and accessibility of publishing facilities.
              Finally, the structure of Russian musicology is changing. Historical vs theoretical, academic vs non-academic musicology, and other usual antithetic pairs increasingly lose their classificatory monosemanticism under pressure from diverse trends in modern Russian musicology.
              All these factors, some more obvious than others, including numerous present-day contradictions and paradoxes, have become the subject matter of this study. Issues that we raise in it, e.g. today’s priorities of Russian musicology, text multiplication factors, limits of scholarly self-assessment, quests for new identities, “old/new” paradoxes and their ability to coexist, at times without noticing each other, have made us focus on mu-sicological textology.
              Hence, textology, the key word of this study, can be an indicator of the speed of present-day changes. On the one hand, textology is the name of a science that has been evolved over half a century by philologists from Boris Tomashevsky⁶ to Dmitry Likh-achev⁷ and by musicologists including Polina Vaidman, Lyudmila Korabelnikova, and Yevgeny Levashev.⁸
              Textology also has a reputation as an effective method of historical interpretation and assessment, as suggested by numerous statements, for example, “various social tendencies are reflected in changes undergone by the nature of text, and this helps to understand literature as a process and a literary work as a product of its time”⁹, or “a literary work is unimaginable outside its text while the text of a literary work cannot be understood outside its history”.¹⁰ These theses make clear that texts show what paths musicology has followed and what specifically it has acquired on them.
              On the other hand, textology is expanding its boundaries all the time by acquiring new meanings, as a while ago was the case with its nuclear concept, text as such (“the

Introduction

     world as Text”, “the Text of life”, etc.). Today the textology concept extends to fields such as the textology of advertising¹¹ and the textology of the Internet.¹² The semantic expansion of the term is strikingly rapid and is a feature of every branch of knowledge. As regards scholarly research, for instance, such processes encompass not only academic texts but also alternative and peripheral areas.
          In this study, we take account of these trends as well to the extent that the boundaries of our research make this possible.
          We are aware of the inevitably increasing metaphorical meanings of the main term that we have chosen. However, it is not only metaphorical interpretations of the term text that have determined the analytical angle of this work. In it, we treat text as a “solid”, “tangible” object, as an embodiment of musicological ideas and a means of expressing them. We approach text as a document of its time and a work of authorship. For this reason, we address Russian musicology in its historical movement and look into modern ways of dealing with musicological issues.
          Today’s Russian musicology is an influential branch of knowledge covering a vast range of subjects, from “modest textual service” to “universality with unforeseeable boundaries”, to quote Sergei Averintsev.¹³
          However, as its history makes clear, Russian musicology did not immediately acquire its present-day status and has traversed what, in a sense, has been a unique path.
          Russian musicology has a “biography” different from that of any other branch of knowledge in the country. It wasn’t born in monasteries, universities, or academies. Its history doesn’t include a medieval period of Latin-based scholarship, a school that all European sciences and humanities have been through. It wasn’t affected by the reforms of Peter the Great, when translations of books on mathematics, physics, medicine, and Roman law were published widely in Russia. Nor was it among the disciplines on which pre-revolutionary Russian universities awarded academic degrees.¹⁴ That came later.
          Yet it is a patently simplistic assumption that “musicology in our country can absolutely safely be called an achievement of Soviet scholarship”.¹⁵ Russian and Soviet musicology began to take shape long before its official recognition as a specialist branch of knowledge, although, which the paths that it had traversed were not always visible. Neither was it in the Soviet era that its basic vocabulary was formed. Many of its presentday terms, e.g. the Russian equivalents of rhythm, metre, tonality, triad, leading tone, modulation, transition, and voice leading, came into use between the late 18th century and the middle of the 19th century.¹⁶
          It was also long before the Bolshevik revolution that many of the original Russian musicological theories came into being.¹⁷
          What was happening in our country’s musicology in the latter half of the 19th and the first few decades of the 20th century may well be described in the words of Averintsev - “the universal apotheosis of scholarship”.¹⁸ In that period, Russian and Soviet musicology, following an Adlerian principle of division into a theoretical and a historical branch, produced hundreds of textbooks and manuals on the theory and history of music, harmony, musical form, counterpoint, and orchestration. Simultaneously, numerous books and sketches about the lives of composers, and books on various musical genres,

17

Introduction

18 performing styles, and opera productions were published. Musicological methodology was beginning to be systematized, with its basic principles beginning to evolve. In a word, the country’s intellectual life began to be enriched with fundamentals of a completely new branch of knowledge, musicology.
              One needs to mention the important role played in the development of our musicology by translations of Western studies. The extremely complicated work of translators and commentators, which went far beyond purely linguistic limits, helped to create musicological theories that have for many decades remained fine examples of research and valuable sources of learning.
              In the Soviet period, much of what had been achieved by pre-revolutionary musicology was either consigned to oblivion or successfully re-categorized as products of socialist cultural development. And, as we know, gratitude to predecessors was never among the virtues of Soviet civilization.
              It is not only to restore historical justice that we mention these facts and make these clarifications. Nor do we have any concerns of prestige. Our purpose is to understand what historical trends brought into being the unique multidimensional, multifaceted phenomenon that we call Russian musicology.
              The institutionalization of musicology did take place in the early years of the Soviet era, but it brought along unprecedented trends. There were several factors behind the Soviet version of Russian musicology, for example specific fields of research were prescribed, research was based on monopolized methods, and theses were written on a wide scale.
              However, all these factors have the same root - a centralized regulatory principle for musicology.
              In this study, we address some textual aspects of Soviet research, chiefly something that, for many decades, was meant as guidelines for scholarly work. However, due to its structure, this book makes practically no in-depth analysis of the Soviet period of musicology. However, the huge amount of musicological literature created in that period provides good evidence of musicology coming under ideological diktat (which was the plight of all humanities in the Soviet Union) but nevertheless being able to activate huge resources of development and display a much greater variety of methods, principles, and ideas than official institutions tried to force upon it.
              Despite its forced discreetness (caution in selecting subjects for research, compliance with biased principles, limited recourse to foreign sources, self-censorship, etc.), Soviet musicology has a record of outstanding studies that are in no way obsolete today.
              It was possibly because of being a long way from the epicentre of the state-run ideological razzmatazz that the theory of music, along with other relatively “safe” branches of musicology, produced the most impressive results. Moreover, Soviet history itself affected musicology in more than one way.
              Soviet musicology was an organic part of Soviet scholarship from the standpoint of Soviet cultural strategy. Of course, the Soviet Union had uniform postulates for all branches of scholarly research, including musicology. However, the relatively easy way musicology adopted requirements that had never been part of it was an indication that it could smoothly assimilate any kind of scholarly model.

Introduction

      For instance, typically, Soviet scholarly projects were team work and resulted 19 in multi-volume publications. That practice had obviously been borrowed from the West¹⁹ but became a priority in the Soviet Union because of Soviet ideologists’ love for grandeur and ostentation. There were multi-volume collections of works, encyclopedias, historical studies, etc.,²⁰ and musicology surely made its contribution to that wealth of literature.²¹ Just as organically, musicology became involved in the wide-scale writing of theses. Though staying within the limits of Category 17.00.02, musicologists continually put forward new proposals, and thereby expanded the “regulatory” boundaries of their genre.
      But it is not only text that has been written and published that determines the state of any branch of scholarship. Texts that were planned but have never materialized play a role no less significant. They represent failures and defeats. Given the extensive state support for scholarly research that was talked and written about so much in the Soviet Union (e.g. the opening of new research institutes or the state financing of publications), and meticulous compliance with a system of planning that purported to foresee any developments up, even what was going to happen to the Soviet humanities in the distant future, how does one explain the huge gaps in musicological research far from all of which represented “undesirable” or “banned” subjects? Surely, those gaps have begun to be filled over the past two decades, so that whole fields of research have been pulled out of oblivion. But it has to be admitted that the “post-Soviet syndrome” is at the basis of numerous modern initiatives, is dominant (which, of course, is natural and understandable), and does not always extend to ideologically neutral spheres, some of which remain unexplored. (This may partially explain such an impressive amount of something that remains “unheard” and “forgotten”.²²) It also manifests itself in the lack of reassessments of some established views and attitudes, which is largely the result of reluctance to overcome stable inertia in judgments on some common issues.
      All this means that studying musicological text involves a bunch of problems, and the chief problem for us is to analyze musicological text as the text of a scholarly discipline, taking account of all characteristics of this text as a scholarly phenomenon.
      It is important to establish a connection between theoretical observations and the trends of our times, times of perpetual transitions and terminological changes, and to trace movement from a word that names a fact to the fact itself.
      It is also necessary to highlight the main levels of description of a text, levels that make it possible to identify the sites of principal quests and locate principal meanings: subjects, the mechanism of analysis (methodology), the choice of genre.
      No less important is what can be called elements of the “technology” of text: significant elements of morphogenesis (a “name”, a list of contents, a “framework” component such as a foreword or an afterword), and the language and style of description.
      For these reasons, we have studied numerous works and statements by musicologists, and some by composers, most of them recent (although, from necessity, earlier musicological content has been studied as well).
      By studying and comparing them, one comes to know characteristics of distinctive styles of specific periods and finds out factors of internal reorganization of modern musicological text.