Francesco Sartori

Venice, Italy

RUSSIAN PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

IN THE WORKS OF A.S. KLUJEV

 

Alexander Sergeevich Klujev is a musician, philosopher, whose scientific works on music are well known in Russia and abroad. A.S. Klujev is the author of the widely recognized monographs: Music and Life: the place of musical art in the developing world (1997), The Ontology of Music (2003, 2010), The Philosophy of Music (2004, 2010), Music: the Path to the Absolute (2015), The Sum of Music (2017, 2021) [1], articles devoted to the problems of musicology, music pedagogy, music therapy.

In recent years, A.S. Klujev has been actively engaged in the study of Russian philosophical thought on music. He has written a large number of articles devoted to the views on music of Russian thinkers and philosophers (Rev. Nil Sorsky, G.S. Skovoroda, Pr. V.F. Odoevsky, F. P.A. Florensky, A.F. Losev, N.O. Lossky, I.I. Lapshin, Pr. E.N. Trubetskoy).

In 2023–2024, A. Klujev published his most interesting articles in three collections, which formed a kind of Triad:

1) 10 articles on Russian Philosophy of Music: Sb. [Materials for the course “History of Russian Philosophy”]. SPb.: Izd-vo RHGA, 2023;

2) Russian Philosophy of Music: 2010s and 2020s articles. (Transl. from Russ.). Ostrava: Tuculart Edition & European Institute for Innovation Development, 2023;

3) Russian Philosophy of Music: Articles 2010–2020. Moscow: Progress-Tradition, 2024 (the third collection is a Russian translation of the second, including new articles by the author in Italian, German, and English).

Overall, A.S. Klujev’s work is a vivid expression of the Russian philosophy of music [2]. Why? I will try to answer this question, and to do so, I will first quote Klujev’s assessment of what he thinks Russian philosophy is.

According to A. Klujev, Russian philosophy is inextricably linked to Orthodoxy, especially its mystical core – hesychasm.

The basis of hesychasm is the ascetic practice of inner (silent) prayer, called the Jesus Prayer or Conscious Prayer.

Prayer aims to obtain, preserve, and transmit the Christian’s experience of union with God. This union is a communion, an achievement of the Holy Spirit through God’s Grace. It is a Gift from God.

The Christian’s unity with God is the unity of person’s energies – the bodily-soul-spiritual (“the whole”, in the terminology of the hesychasts) – and God’s energies, which appears as the growth of person’s energies in the sequence: bodily-soul-spiritual, realized by God’s Grace.

The interaction between person’s energies and God’s energies in hesychasm is called synergy. Synergy causes person to overcome the difficulties of earthly life and even death itself. This overcoming is salvation.

According to Klujev, Russian philosophy had the closest connection with the Byzantine mystical-philosophical tradition, primarily through hesychasm. Russian philosophy constantly sought to self-determine itself in it, to find its own face in not excluding Byzantium but mastering and transforming it.

And this face proper, his “self” in Russian philosophy was predetermined by the peculiarity of Russian culture (so-called Russeness), about which G.V. Florovsky has insightfully written.

According to Florovsky, Russian culture (Russianness) is composed of two cultures, as if it were on two floors. On the lower floor is the culture coming from paganism. Florovsky calls it “night” culture. On the upper floor is the culture coming from Christianity (Orthodoxy), which the scholar calls “daytime” culture. According to Florovsky, “night” culture is manifested by excessive soulfulness, while “daytime” culture is the culture of the Spirit.

Thus, Russian philosophy found its face and identity in two stages. The first stage was to find itself at the level of “night” culture and soulfulness, and the second stage was at the level of “daytime” culture and spirituality. Klujev points out that spirituality in Russia has always been understood as a moral enterprise: serving creation and opposing destruction (annihilation).

Now, based on preliminary clarifications, Klujev expresses his opinion on Russian philosophy. According to Klujev, Russian philosophy is the solution to the moral problem of victory over death.

In his scholarly texts, A. Klujev shows that throughout its history, Russian philosophers in Russia have emphasized that music has great potential to liberate person from the misfortunes of earthly existence, from all that is temporary and finite, and thus from the power that leads to victory over death.

And indeed, Klujev writes, listening to music makes one forget about time and space, one enters another “wonderful” dimension of existence, a new world of endless beauty, majesty and nobility. This world belongs to eternal existence, to eternal life. And if so, it means that music helps us overcome earthly pains and sorrows – partially now and only in the time of musical listening – thus strengthening our faith that such overcoming is possible forever. In other words, music testifies that it is possible to overcome death! The affirmation of this conception of music is embodied in many of the scholar’s articles (“Russian philosophy of music in the flow of time”; “Russian philosophy of music: resistance to nothingness”; “Russian philosophers about music”; “Views on music by Russian philosophers. Brief description”).

It is in this context of musical interpretation that A.S. Klujev has written articles concerning the problems of musicology (“About the tetrasphere of musical language”; “Perception of music: transpersonal format”; “Game of music: how long?”; “Historical metamorphoses of music”; “Music as a subject of contemporary interdisciplinary research”), music pedagogy (“Musical upbringing, education and training in phenomenological understanding”; “The potential of music in human refinement”; “Music as a means of personal growth”), music therapy (“The task of music therapy”; “Music therapy: a trilogy of East, West, and Russia”; “Synergetic music therapy based on Russian philosophy and Orthodox tradition”). But, of course, the greatest prominence of the well-known understanding of music is presented in the author’s articles demonstrating his own philosophical model of music, called by the author “New synergetic philosophy of music”.

The model has two constituent parts: theoretical and practical.

The theoretical part is based on the conjugation of two beginnings: classical (old) synergetic and hesychasm. I will comment on this thesis.

Emerging in the 1970s, classical (old) synergetic was an interdisciplinary direction of science that studied the characteristics of self-organization of systems in the world. It was established that systems evolve in this direction from less organized (ordered, stable, reliable) – to more organized (ordered, stable, etc.). According to the confession of the founder of synergetics, German physicist Hermann Haken, he adopted the word “synergy” to name the new branch of science he proposed: “synergetics”. Having chosen the concept of “synergy” as the name of the scientific field he created, the scientist did not return to it again in his works, meanwhile, this concept is extremely capacious.

The essence of the concept of “synergy” is revealed with particular depth in Orthodoxy and, at its core, hesychasm, where it signifies the unity of person’s energies and God’s energies.

The combination of old-fashioned synergism and hesychasm allowed A.S. Klujev to declare the emergence of a new kind of synergism – the New Synergetics, according to which the world appears as a systemic-evolutionary ascension of Matter toward Spirit. As Klujev points out, this ascension can be constructed in different ways. In the author’s version, it appears as an evolutionary movement of systems: nature – society – culture – art – music. In other words, according to Klujev, music acts as the ultimate unity of Matter and Spirit, indeed, as a fusion of Matter and Spirit.

According to Klujev’s explanation, the revealed status of music gives it the ability to help a person overcome earthly suffering and difficulties.

In the practical part, A.S. Klujev starts from the belief that music helps people overcome the pains and sorrows of earthly existence, through precisely music therapy.

The author developed the technology of music therapy, which involves the performance of music with the indicated support. How is this achieved?

According to the author, person and music have a structural similarity. According to A. Klujev, both person and music consist of three mutually related levels: the first level of person corresponds to the first level of music, the second level of person to the second level of music, and the third level of person to the third level of music.

Levels of person: bodily, soulful, spiritual.

The levels of music, its bodily, soulful and spiritual levels, are called by A. Klujev, respectively, physical-acoustic (whose elements are rhythm, meter, tempo, timbre, dynamics), communicative-intonation (whose element is intonation), spiritual-value (whose elements are mode (tonality), melody and harmony).

That is, the bodily level of person corresponds to the physical-acoustic level of the sound of music (rhythm, tempo, etc.), the soulful level – to the communicative-intonation level (intonation), and the spiritual level to the spiritual-value level (mode (tonality), etc.).

Working method: in the first sessions, music is used, with the first level of music (rhythm, meter, tempo, timbre, dynamics) dominating. Such music is designed to activate a person’s body-plastic component (of course, the use of other types of sound is not excluded, but the main thing remains the material based on rhythm, meter, etc.).

In subsequent sessions, emphasis is placed first on the second musical level (based on intonation) and then on the third (based on mode (tonality), melody, and harmony), activating a person’s soul and spiritual aspects. In this way, conducted music therapy sessions stimulate a person’s body-soul-spiritual growth, opening the Higher dimension of being (“Principles of the New synergetic philosophy of music”; “On the New synergetic philosophy of music (Basic provisions)”).

There is no doubt about the importance of A.S. Klujev’s works, which reveal the immense and inexhaustible wisdom of the Russian philosophy of music [3].

 

[1] These monographs were reviewed by respected scholars from Russia, USA, Canada, Germany, Bulgaria and Ukraine.

[2] I believe that the opinion of Wolfgang Mastnak, a leading German philosopher, cultural critic and music therapist, on Klujev’s creative work is expressively very consistent with my assessment: “Aleksandr Klujev kann wohl als die zentrale Figur gegenwärtiger russischer Musikphilosophie angesehen warden” (Alexander Klujev can perhaps be considered the central figure of contemporary Russian philosophy of music. – F.S.)” (Mastnak W. Aleksandr Klujevs Synergetische Musiktherapie aus interdisziplinärer Perspektive. In: Musik-, Tanz- & Kunsttherapie. Zeitschrift für künstlerische Therapien im Bildungs-, Sozial- und Gesundheitswesen. 31. Jahrgang. 2021. Number 2. S. 193).

[3] A more complete understanding of the peculiarities of the implementation of the Russian philosophy of music in the works of A.S. Klujev can be obtained by reviewing the works of the researcher posted on his personal website: aklujev.ru.