Boris Asafiev's Intonatsia in the context of music theory of the 21st Century

Abstract

The term intonatsia has been used ubiquitously in Russian and Soviet music analysis and pedagogy since Boleslaw Yavorsky introduced it in 1908 and Boris Asafiev developed it into a universally applicable concept. It proved to be rather vague and complex because of the overwhelming range of meanings and polysemic etymology, considering that one may identify intonatsia not as a term but as a category. Today, this older term can acquire newer shades of meaning if placed in the context of latest achievements of music theory in the areas of musical semiotics, theories of topics, Satzmodelle and partimenti.