ON WAGNER AND SUBSTITUTE REPRISES-HOMAGE TO VLADIMIR AXIONOV — A LECTURER OF THE HISTORY OF WESTERN MUSIC

The essay recollects personal experience of the author as one of the former students of Vladimir Axionov’s course „History of Romantic Music”. Axionov’s style of lecturing and his understanding of the discipline are exemplified by his rendition of Siegfried’s Trauermarch from Richard Wagner’s Der Götterdämmerung. It discusses Axionov’s personal magnetism in combination with his robust knowledge, overwhelming erudition, eloquence and rhetorical talent. The author addresses such prominent merits of Axionov as a lecturer as his pursuing the authenticity and precision in enunciation of musical and verbal text; historicism and an emphasis on social, cultural and aesthetical issues; the ideological aspect of his discussion; openness and professional integrity; and consideration of moral dilemmas and „forbidden” themes. Axionov’s „style of music history pedagogy” is thus viewed as one that endeavored to add new dimensions to the discipline’s profile