Scientific Conference «The Age of Musicology at the Russian Institute for the History of Arts: New Discoveries and Pages of History» (To the 100th anniversary of the Department of Music, Russian Institute for the History of Arts)

On Wednesday, February 19, in the Green Hall, Russian Institute for the History of Arts at 12.00 a scientific conference “The Age of Musicology in the Russian Institute for the History of Arts: New Discoveries and Pages of History” dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the music sector will be held.

On February 19, 1920, the first lecture was delivered at the Russian Institute for the History of Arts (Zubov’ Institute) in the recently opened Musical Rank by professor of the Petrograd Conservatory, composer Sergei Mikhailovich Lyapunov. The emergence of musicology in the circle of scientific disciplines studied at the Russian Institute for the History of Arts answered the intention of the first director Valentin Platonovich Zubov to turn the institute he founded from a purely “art history” center into a scientific and educational center, which ultimately brought together the best representatives of the post-revolutionary Petrograd intelligentsia. The first head of the newly formed category was Sergei Konstantinovich Bulich to be an outstanding scientist – linguist, ethnographer, composer and musicologist. However, due to health reasons, he was forced to retire, and the reins passed to Boris Vladimirovich Asafiev, in which the Department quickly became one of the leading structural units of the institute. The music sector was the only one in the institute that has never stopped its work since its inception. Scientists who linked their work with the Musical discharge in the 1920s represented various fields of musicology, including problems of theory and musical intonation (B.V. Asafiev), contemporary academic music and folklore (V.G. Karatygin), church singing and cult art (A. V Preobrazhensky), philosophical and aesthetic aspects of musical art (I. I. Lapshin). An important role in the work of the Department was played by family members of N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov: his son-in-law was composer and teacher M.O. Shteinberg and his son A. N. Rimsky-Korsakov. Among those who worked in the Department were major research scientists who made up the glory of Russian science: M. G. Aranovsky, M.V. Brazhnikov, A.A. Gosenpud, M.S. Druskin, Yu.A. Kremlev, G.A. Orlov, L.K. Raaben, etc.