The Work of Music Theory

Selected Essays

Thomas Christensen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351539401
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia mondiale

This collection brings together an anthology of articles by Thomas Christensen, one of the leading historians of music theory active today. Published over the span of the past 25 years, the selected articles provide a historical conspectus about a range of vital topics in the history of music theory, focusing in particular upon writings from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Christensen examines a variety of theorists and their arguments within the intellectual and musical contexts of their time, in the process highlighting the diverse and idiosyncratic nature of the discipline of music theory itself. In the first section of the book Christensen offers general reflections on the meaning and interpretation of historical music theories, with especial attention paid to their value for music theorists today. The second section of the book contains a number of articles that consider the catalytic role of the thorough bass in the development of harmonic theory during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the final two sections of the anthology, focus turns to the writings of several individual music theorists, including Marin Mersenne, Seth Calvisius, Johann Mattheson, Johann Nicolaus Bach, Denis Diderot and Johann Nichelmann. The volume includes essays from hard-to-find publications as well as newly-translated material and the articles are prefaced by a new, wide-ranging autobiographical essay by the author that offers a broad re-assessment of his historical project. This book is essential reading for music theorists and seventeenth- and eighteenth-century musicologists.

Part One

Reflections on the History of Music Theory

CHAPTER 1

Music Theory and Its Histories

At first glance there seems to be an ineluctable dilemma inherent in any history of music theory. The dilemma arises in trying to determine the proper context for interpretation: Are we to read any given theory as a theoretical text or as a historical document? Neither choice alone seems particularly satisfying. Yet it is not immediately obvious how the two can be reconciled in any straightforward manner. If we follow the first course and consider solely the theoretical "content" of some past theory, we are presuming that this content can be extracted from—and rationally analyzed outside of—its historical and biographical contexts. Theories, simply put, make normative claims that are temporally immutable.

Such an interpretation, however, seems to deny, or at least suppress, the contextual aspects of the theory. If we choose instead to take the second course and consider the historical and biographical contingencies of the same theory, its "immutable" nature might seem to possess far less tenacity. We might find that the theory cannot be easily analyzed outside its historical boundaries; the problems the theory addresses may be culturally peculiar, its language of discourse alien to ours. There is indeed a real question as to whether the theory can be "translated" into anything meaningful to those of us living in differing musical and intellectual cultures. Yet if we accept such historical circumscription, then theory texts become reduced to mere antiquarian documents. "Historicizing" music theory conflicts in a fundamental sense with the ontological claims of theory to historical transcendence. In characteristically dialectical fashion, Carl Dahlhaus expresses this thought succinctly:

Theory... stands in an almost unavoidably discrepant relationship with history—history as a mode of thought, not as a collection of facts: musical phenomena are, as it seems, either given from nature or historically grounded; and as soon as the model of historical interpretation dominates, theory suffers a loss of its substance and fades, so to speak, to a shadow of itself. Strictly speaking, to explain theory historically means to take away the very claim upon which it as theory had been based.¹

Of course this is an intractable quandary only insofar as we hold to a strict dichotomization between history and theory. Dahlhaus, I should point out, does not ultimately accept its validity; in the pages following the excerpt I have quoted, he goes on to explore the subtle interrelationship between music theory and historical interpretation. Any residual contradictions between the two are revealed to be far less fearsome than his initial portrayal suggests, dissolving as they do under his sophisticated dialectical critique. Now in the intellectual tradition of German Musikwissenschaft, where both history and theory can be seen as related idealist constructs, Dahlhaus's dialectical resolution should be congenial. However, for contemporary American musicologists, for whom the disjunction between history and theory has traditionally been much stronger, the possibilities for mediation that Dahlhaus outlines are perhaps not as apparent.

In this essay I would like to reexamine the putative dilemma be-tween "historical" and "theoretical" readings of music theories and analyze its conceptual and empirical ramifications in practice. I will retain the basic polarity Dahlhaus sets up between theoretical and historical ontologies, but recast his arguments in terms that better address current issues in American musicology. I will call these two poles "pre- sentist" and "historicist" positions, respectively, where "presentism" corresponds roughly to the theorists' ahistorical perspective, and "his- toricism" the historians' atheoretical perspective. I concede at the outset that this inelegant formulation presents a stark and oversimplified polarization to which few American musicologists, be they historians or theorists, would subscribe. But I suggest that in practice we still often fall into the trap of writing predominantly from one side or the other without realizing the full implications of the position we have chosen. By retaining a strong distinction between presentism and historicism, we will have a useful heuristic by which to ferret out these less overt allegiances.²

Finally, in the last section of this essay I shall consider ways in which the apparent incompatibility between presentist and historicist inter-pretations of music theory can be mediated. Drawing upon Hans-Georg Gadamer's sophisticated philosophical hermeneutics, I hope to show that any discrepancy between analytical and historical modes of understanding need not constitute an irresolvable conflict. Indeed, for hermeneutics it is precisely through the tension between the presentist and historicist perspectives that real understanding can take place. But before exploring this suggestive possibility, I want to examine the individual positions separately. I shall begin by considering the presentist ideology.

The Presentist's Myopia

By "presentism" I understand any perspective whereby an object is studied in light of present knowledge and norms. Music theory is avow-edly presentist when it interprets music from the past using contemporary analytical tools and modes of classification. Much formalist and structuralist literary criticism can also be labeled as presentist, in that literary texts are treated as autonomous objects severed from their historical contexts and authorial intentions. But it is also possible to practice history in a presentist manner as, for example, when we analyze the past in terms of some ideal process or structural grid that we superimpose and measure from the present.

Perhaps the most notorious—and persistent—strain of presentist historiography is teleology, wherein the past is seen as part of some determinist process directed to, and culminating in, the present. This process is usually considered to be progressive, with the entailed judgment that the present is at a qualitatively more advanced stage of de-velopment than the past. Herbert Butterfield described such teleological history as "Whiggish" after those nineteenth-century British historians whose narrations served as glorifications of Protestant, parliamentarian democracy.³ The history of science, too, was depicted in the nineteenth century in a teleological manner. Science was seen as a fully progressive enterprise confirming the Enlightenment's optimistic faith in human reason and the never-ending advancement of knowl-edge.⁴

Since music theory has long turned to science for heuristic models, it is not surprising that the first real histories of music theory from the nineteenth century reflected the Whiggish biases of contemporaneous histories of science.⁵ Both genres were permeated with the spirit of progress. Music theory, like science, was seen as evolving inexorably toward higher levels of sophistication and truth, and—depending upon the temerity of the author—attaining its final perfection in his own writings.

In arguably the earliest bona fide history of music theory, François- Joseph Fétis sought to examine "The Principal Systems of the Generation and Classification of Chords."⁶ Inspired by the writings of Auguste Comte, Fétis depicted the history of music theory (just as he did the history of music itself) in progressive stages of evolution that culminated in his own theory of tonalité. Fétis was convinced that his recognition of tonality was a historical necessity. Concluding his survey of this progress, he confidently asserted:

The theory of harmony has reached the final limit of art and science. It is complete, and nothing more can be added. . . . I have completed it by placing it upon the unshakable base of tonality. What invincibly demonstrates the excellence [of my system] is that it is at once a history of the progress of art and the best analysis of the facts that it manifests.⁷

In a more rigorously Hegelian narration, Hugo Riemann portrayed the historical development of music theory as a relentless dialectical process. Writing in 1908, he claimed that "the development of theoretical knowledge concerning the essence of music convincingly demonstrates continuous progress up to the present standpoint— [It] reveals the gradual discovery of all the laws that are valid today."⁸ Of course Riemann believed that these "valid" laws were embodied in his own theories of functional harmony and dualism. Thus the third book of his monumental Geschichte derMusiktheorie, which details the development of harmonic theory beginning with Zarlino, reads almost like a military narrative. Riemann's story recounts an epic intellectual battle between foresighted progressives (such as Zarlino, Johann Friedrich Daube, and Moritz Hauptmann) and obstinate conservatives (including most thor-ough-bass theorists and such monists as Gottfried Weber and Ernst Richter).⁹

The idea of progress has come to ring hollow in our age. Hence it is rare to find such uncompromising faith in teleological history anymore. But if the Whiggish virus is now in remission—countered as it seems by the equally infectious strains of historicism that I will discuss in the next section—another form of presentism that has proved to be even more tenacious soon took its place: positivism. The positivist, it will be remembered, holds allegiance to universal standards of rationality and method through which any systematic theory (scientific, philosophical, or musical) can be evaluated—for example, by criteria of logical rigor, economy, empirical adequacy, or falsification. If theories cannot be confidently ordered in a strictly progressive and evolutionary process, they can at least be individually weighed according to the degree to which they meet, or fail to meet, these standards.

An example of positivist history of science that intersects at important points with music theory is the history of rational mechanics written by Clifford Truesdell.¹⁰ Truesdell has defined "rational mechanics" as the axiomatized mathematical science of elastic and flexible bodies, such as vibrating strings, bars, and membranes. It provides, then, a foundation for understanding the physics of sound production in all musical instruments and, not of less consequence, any acoustical theory of tonality.

The most significant advances of rational mechanics occurred in the course of the eighteenth century, so this is naturally the period upon which Truesdell concentrates his attention. But the full development of the mathematical tools necessary for the complete axiomatization of this science did not take place until recently. Truesdell writes his survey from the perspective of a twentieth-century scientist who already knows the answers. In an unabashedly presentist mode he translates the mathematical formulations found in the canonical treatises of eighteenth-century rational mechanics into modern scientific notation. He then proceeds to analyze and judge the results using tools and standards entirely unknown to the authors of these texts. The resultant picture he creates is highly skewed, occupied on the one side by fore-sighted scientists whose work can retrospectively be seen as coming closest to meeting the standards of contemporary rational mechanics (such as Euler and Jakob Bernoulli), and on the other side by conservatives (such as d’Alembert) who are chided by Truesdell for their nearsighted and inept work. This is not the place to analyze Truesdell’s historiography in detail, as relevant as that might be to the history of music theory.¹¹ 1 only cite it as an example, albeit an extreme one, of a bias that can be found to this day in much of the literature on the history of science.

Many music theorists today also seem to subscribe to the positivist historiography exemplified by Truesdell. For instance, Allen Forte has vigorously defended a presentist approach in the face of what he perceives to be the specious dogmas of historicism. Writes Forte:

My view ... is that a knowledge of history is totally inadequate for understanding musical documents, including musical scores as well as treatises on music. It is only now, with the development of contemporary modes of theoretical thought, that scholars are beginning to understand more fully many of the classic documents of music theory.¹²

Forte certainly would not deny that music theories have historical origins and contexts. (He has, after all, amply demonstrated knowledge of the history of theory in many of his writings.) Rather, he asserts that historical factors in and of themselves cannot provide complete understanding or logical validation of theory. This is, of course, the position of the positivist.

A "history of theory" written in a presentist mode will be a traditionalist one that recounts the genealogy of a particular structural parameter, analytical approach, or theoretical question in which the author takes an interest. The basic form of such a history is predetermined, since the goal of the narrative is already known: the present. All that remains is for the historian to work backwards and retrace the events and ideas that led up to his own time.

This points to the reverse side of the teleological coin: geneticism. Once the historian has decided that a given theoretical concept is to be reified, the search for its initial conception and earliest manifestations becomes as important as the study of its maturation. Such an approach might impel the historian to ask, like Riemann, who the first theorist was to "recognize" the inversional relation between major and minor triads. Or we might seek, along with Fétis, to discover the first composer to exploit the appellative character of the dominant seventh chord.

Among those who today approach the history of music theory in a presentist manner, Schenkerians are perhaps the most prominent. In their readings of theory texts Schenkerians frequently focus upon a limited number of theoretical traditions on which they place particular value (Figurenlehre of the seventeenth century, thorough-bass practice from the eighteenth century, techniques of harmonic reduction from the nineteenth century) at the expense of other, competing theoretical traditions (generative derivations of harmony, theories of melody and form, motivic analysis). Their "history of music theory," like those by Fétis and Riemann, discerns a teleological progression of theoretical thought—here one that culminates in Schenker’s formulations. In their crudest forms, their histories judge past theories only to the extent to which they most closely adumbrated Schenkerian ideas.

But no such tidy and directed historical narrative is without cost. The problem is not that this history is selective. (Selectivity, after all, is an essential part of writing history; one cannot say everything about the past.) The problem is that it is myopic and reductive. Presentist historians impose upon the past their parochial concerns regarding what constitutes the essential issues of music theory, whether or not in fact these issues held a commensurate position of importance or meant the same thing in their own day. The past, in other words, is interpreted so as to validate the present. And this can only lead to anachronism.

For example, Schenkerians often point to the Figurenlehre codified by the seventeenth-century composer Christoph Bernhard as constituting part of a broader tradition of diminution merging seamlessly with eighteenth-century General-Bass practice and beyond to Schenker.¹³ But in focusing upon this singular element of Bernhard’s theory—or put another way, by interpreting it solely in light of the ideal of diminution— the Schenkerians miss the rich scholastic-rhetorical tradition in which Bernhard...