The Theory of Variant Form in Russian Musicology: The Stages of Formation, the Conceptual Framework

Abstract

The article is devoted to the theory of variant form formed in Russian musicology in the 20th century, study of which makes it possible to comprehend more profoundly the broad circle of musical phenomena pertaining to various categories of folk and professional music. Three main stages of formation and elaboration of the theory of variant form are indicated, the most important categories revealing the specific features of the given phenomenon are examined and defined. The early stage (from the late 19th century through the first third of the 20th century) is marked by the introduction by Hugo Riemann – for the first time in the history of music theory – of the conception of the variant (1886), and the first generalizations about the variant form, as presented in Boris Asafiev’s monograph “Muzykal’naya forma kak protsess” [“Musical Form as a Process”] (1930), are analyzed. The second stage – the central or “classic” (from the mid-1950s to the late 1970s) – is determined by a rampant development of the theory of the variation and variant form, the appearance of the works of Leo Mazel and Victor Tsukkerman, Boris Sosnovtsev and Irina Lavrentyeva, Victor Bobrovsky and Vladimir Protopopov, Mikhail Tarakanov and other music theorists. As the result of study of compositional, depictive-dramaturgical, and intonational regular laws of vocal genres of Russian and Western European music, the theoretic foundations of variant form and its conceptual framework are formed definitively, the specific features of the variant method of development are determined. The third, contemporary period (from the late 20th century to our days) is characterized by a further expansion of the categorical apparatus, the creation of new textbooks in analysis of musical form, and research works in which the theoretical comprehension of the phenomenon of variant form, the variant method of development reflects the tendency of individualization of structures in the situation of stylistic pluralism (works by Vera Valkova, Vsevolod Zaderatsky and others). Keywords: variant, variant form, free-variant development-unfolding, variant intergrowth, method of thematically concentrated unfolding, dynamic contrast-variant form, variant integration of the highest order.