Toward A "Global" History of Music Theory

Toward a “Global” History of Music
Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-music-theory/article-pdf/66/2/147/1800161/147martin.pdf by REED COLLEGE LIBRARY user on 10 July 2023

Theory
Nathan John Martin
Abstract The history of music theory, as it has usually been taught in the United States, has focused on
a small canon of texts written mostly in Latin, Italian, French, and German. This article advocates a more
expansive view of the subdiscipline’s remit by way of three case studies. The first considers the distinction
that Abū Naṣr Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Fārābī draws between the speculative and active parts of
music theory and its influence on the formation of the discipline in the Latin-speaking world. The second
considers entanglement between French and Chinese music theorizing in the later eighteenth century.
The third treats the international contexts of Hugo Riemann’s thought. I present these three case studies,
together with more general reflections on the possible scope of research on historical music theory, with
the aim of inviting reflection on the subdiscipline’s past, present, and future.
Keywords history of music theory, Abū Nasr Muhammad ibn al-Farakh al-Fārābī, Jean-Philippe Rameau,
musica speculativa, global history, Hugo Riemann
The reflections that follow arise less from any research agenda of my own
than from my experience of teaching historical music theory in the classroom,
though of course in a modern research university the boundary between these
two activities both is and ought to be fluid. A prefatory word is in order, therefore,
for those who teach in other national settings or in adjacent disciplines, about
how and in what contexts the history of theory is usually taught in the American
university system. At my home institution, which is typical in this regard, I give
a seminar called History of Music Theory 2 once every two or three years. The
course is a graduate seminar directed toward PhD students, though an occa
sional DMA student sticks it out, and I once even had an especially precocious
Some of the material presented here was read in preliminary versions at the 2019 Society for Music Analysis meeting in
Southampton and the 2019 IMS East Asia chapter meeting in Suzhou. I am grateful to the participants in those meetings for
their comments and criticisms. I am equally grateful for the especially thoughtful and probing criticism that I received from
anonymous reviewers on two separate occasions. No one thinks in a vacuum, and the ideas articulated here have emerged
in part from discussions held at the 2016 meeting of the Society for Music Theory’s history of music theory interest group in
Vancouver, the workshop Global Perspectives in Histories of Music Theory organized by Carmel Raz at Columbia University
in 2017, the 2017 AMS pre-conference for Instruments of Music Theory, and the ongoing activities of the Future Histories of
Music Theory working group at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt. The essays collected in vol. 15,
no. 2 (2018) of the Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie also provided much food for thought. Where they exist and are
reliable, I have used published translations, as indicated in the works cited, for the English renderings of foreign-language
quotations, though I have sometimes lightly adapted the wording. All other translations are my own.
Journal of Music Theory 66:2, October 2022

DOI 10.1215/00222909-9930876 © 2022 by Yale University 147
148 JOURNAL o f MUSIC THEORY
undergraduate. The syllabus is a received one—in this, my course is also typical—

and one that has been more or less inherited from the mid-twentieth-century Yale
curriculum that formed the model for most American music-theory programs.
In its contents, the class is something of an amalgam of sequences developed by
Claude Palisca and David Lewin, with further elements borrowed from the his
tory-of-theory-as-genealogy-of-Schenker strain promulgated by scholars such as

David Beach (and, with qualif ications, William Rothstein or Joel Lester), as well
as from those with more idiosyncratic historiographical agendas, such as Alan
Keiler or Richard Crocker. In its contents, the seminar purports to be a histori
cal survey of music theory from Zarlino through Schenker. In practice, it is more
like a great-books course, in which we read—in chronological order, but without
much other attention to matters historical—selected treatises, either in whole or
in part, by writers like Zarlino, Rameau, Kirnberger, Weber, Fétis, Hauptmann,
Riemann, or Schenker.
I have given versions of this sequence on a number of occasions, and as I
repeat it, I find myself increasingly dissatisfied with the model—for a number of
reasons, one of which I am going to discuss here. A symptom of the received curric
ulum’s malaise—one indication that something has gone wrong—is that there is lit
tle in the way of an overarching narrative: indeed, the order of the readings could be
scrambled without there being much effect on the overall profile of the class. And
this strikes me as a very odd way indeed to do something that calls itself “history.”
But to the limited and almost entirely implicit extent that there is a narrative being
spun across History of Music Theory 2 (and its predecessor, History of Theory
1), that narrative is a familiar and a conventional one: Music theory begins with
the Greeks, who noted things like the relationship between consonances and sim
ple number ratios and who developed sophisticated vocabularies for talking about
notes, scales, modes, and other such structures. This body of knowledge was then
conveniently summarized by Boethius in late antiquity. Fast-forward to ninth-cen
tury France, where the Carolingians borrowed the conceptual resources of Greek
harmonics (as mediated by Boethius) to theorize their own very different musical
practice. The advent of polyphony posed two related music-theor etical problems:
how to regulate intervallic interactions between two or more parts and how to
align these parts metrically. The first was quickly solved, at least in outline, whereas
meter remained messy well into the fourteenth century (and some would say, well
beyond). The rediscovery of Greek sources in the Italian renaissance added a third
problem: mode. All this material was worked into a grand and fairly stable syn
thesis by about Zarlino’s time. Then, with Monteverdi and the seconda prattica, all
hell broke loose. And it was only a century and then some later, with Jean-Philippe
Rameau, that conceptual control began to be reasserted. The story of music theory
in the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is then largely concerned with the
dissemination of Rameau’s ideas. And finally, at long at last—the degree of trium
phalism varying with the proclivities of the instructor—along came Schenker, who
fused what was best in the new harmonic perspective of Rameau with the old con
trapuntal thinking that he inherited by way of Fux.
Nathan John Martin Toward a “Global” History of Music Theory 149
There is much in this implicit narrative that could be criticized. But what
I want to focus on here is its hermetically sealed “Western-ness.” Apparently, the
history of music theory happened in German, French, Italian, Latin, and (maybe)
Greek—even Spanish appears to count as “exotic” in this context.1 My first and
overarching aim, in the pages that follow, will be to suggest that this view is unten
able even on its own terms. To do so, I will deploy three case studies. The first

concerns Abū Naṣr Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Fārābī’s position in medie
val Latin music theory. The second urges the (indirect) influence of Zhū Zǎiyù
(朱載堉) and Lǐ Guāngdì (李光地) on music theory in late eighteenth-century
France. The third takes Helmholtz’s use of ethnographic materials as its point
of departure and suggests that the stakes of Riemann’s universalism can only be
fully understood when it is seen against the foil of a burgeoning music-theoretical
relativism. These broad points may, at times, recede from the reader’s view in the
mass of textual detail that the case studies necessarily involve. The thickness of
my descriptions results from my conviction that the history of music theory, as it
expands its scope and methods and makes room for new techniques and perspec
tives, should nonetheless not cease to encompass what I have elsewhere called a
“philology of old theory books” (Martin 2017: 237); that, and my sympathy with
Aby Warburg’s view that “der liebe Gott steckt im Detail” (“God is in the details”)
(Curtius 1948: 43, 386; 2013: 35, 382). Readers who become impatient with the
slow unfolding of my textual exegeses can, however, skip ahead to the summary
passages at the end of each case study.
Second, and for the most part only in the article’s concluding section, I
have some provisional remarks to offer about what I think the scope and method
of an appropriately “global” history of music theory could be.2 Readers who sur
vey the entire article will no doubt be struck by a certain disconnect between the
apparent incrementalism of the case studies and the more utopian speculations
of the conclusion. There are reasons, at once practical and strategic, for this dis
connect. The practical reasons have to do with my own current capacities and
incapacities: I can read (some) Latin, but not much Arabic; French, but not as
yet enough Chinese. A reasonable response to these limitations might be to pro
pose a division of labor—that I should continue working on the sources that are
accessible to me, and leave the rest to the experts. I do stress, in the utopian sketch
at the end of this article, that an eventual global history of music theory will need
1 Consider the fact that the Spanish-language reception of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s writings has only recently been surveyed
(see Murphy and Gallardo 2020). One area where Spanish-language sources have exerted a much greater influence on the
field, though, is in the reconstruction of Renaissance practices of improvised counterpoint: for an introduction, see Schubert
2002. David Mesquita’s ongoing work, as it gradually appears in print, promises to refine the subdiscipline’s understanding
of this textual tradition considerably.
2 On global history, see in particular Conrad 2016; and, for one well-known realization of something like the project that
Conrad describes, Osterhammel 2017. I retain the scare-quotes around “global” where Conrad and Osterhammel do not,
because I am not certain that it is the best term for what I have in mind: “global” sounds uneasily like “globalization” to many
ears, and there is a forceful critique of Conrad’s and Osterhammel’s respective projects available from the perspective of post
colonial studies, one that I think Conrad (162–84) perhaps undervalues. See, among others, Chakrabarty 2007.
to be a collective, multiauthored enterprise. If the conventional “Western” his

tory of music theory is already too extensive for any one scholar to do more than
survey,3 how much more so for a history of theory that would in principle claim
to bring the whole world within its purview. But this recognition of the practical
limitations can quickly become an excuse not to look beyond what one already
knows. What I aim to show with the case studies that follow is that this position

cannot be responsibly sustained: I am addressing myself, that is, not primarily to
readers who are already converts, but to those still on the fence. For that reason,
I think it important to provide, in effect, an immanent critique: I want to show
that the received curriculum is untenable on its own terms. I undertake to do so by
showing how this received canon naturally and as it were of itself raises questions
that cannot be answered without looking beyond the texts that it comprises.
To readers already convinced of this move’s necessity, on the other hand,
my case studies may seem Fabian to the point of immobility. I would ask those
readers to reserve judgment until they reach my concluding discussion—or
to skip ahead and read that first. I may seem at first to be calling for a kind of
“Europe-plus” model, where a few “exotic” items are allowed into the canon, per
haps in the spirit of a certain tokenism, but are not by their presence permitted
to offer any fundamental challenge to the conceptual framework into which they
are allowed, so to speak, to transgress; Europe (and perhaps the United States),
that is to say, would remain the metropole, everywhere else the periphery. Now,
even this would, I think, be an improvement over how I have taught the course in
the past. But I am far from supposing that it is adequate.
A more adequate response, as I argue in the final section, will need to
come to terms with Europe’s colonial exploitation of the rest of the globe and
with that exploitation’s continuing legacies. As a slogan, one might be tempted to
assert that the history of theory curriculum must be decolonized. I am, however,
extremely skeptical that this can be done “from on high”; that is, from the privi
leged perch of a professor’s chair at a major university located at the heart of the
American empire. For me to suppose, in other words, that I am the person best
situated to conduct this work—rather than, say, to try to help facilit ate it—would
be an exercise in hubris. For, as I insist at greater length toward the end of this
article, any eventual global history of music theory must to be global not just in
scope, but also in authorship.
What I can do here, I think, is to emphasize the problem, in part by thema
tizing the gap between where the subfield currently is and where it could—and
I think ought to—be. The “toward” of my title, in other words, is meant both
seriously and with humility. It is a long way from the very modest work pre
sented in the case studies to the vision adumbrated in my conclusion. But as the
3 It is significant, in this respect, that both of the standard references—in English, the Cambridge History of Western Music
Theory (Christensen 2002); and in German, Frieder Zaminer, Thomas Ertelt, and Heinz von Loesch’s Geschichte der Musiktheorie
(Zaminer, Ertelt, and von Loesch 1980–)—are multiauthored collections. The last attempts in Europe or America at single-
authored surveys date from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: namely, Riemann 1898 and Shirlaw 1917.
Chinese proverb has it, 千里之行始於足下 (Qiān lǐ zhī xíng shǐ yú zú xià; to
begin a thousand-mile journey, take the first step). My case studies are written
with the aim of inviting even the most skeptical of readers to consider whether
they should regard the journey as entirely discretionary.

Al-Fārābī and musica speculativa
It is no exaggeration to suggest that the opposition between musica speculativa (or
theorica) and musica practica structures the basic topography of Italian musical
thought in the Renaissance. Gaffurius, for instance, wrote both a Theorica musice
(1492) and a Practica musice (1496); and in his Istitutioni harmoniche (1558),
Zarlino brought the two branches together in such a way as to present the spec
ulative as the plinth for the practical. Musica practica is typically concerned with
teaching singing and composition, including the ins and outs of musical notation.
Works titled musica speculativa (or variants thereof such as musica theorica), in
contrast, are often paraphrases, summaries, or redactions of Boethius’s De institu-
tione musica. That characterization holds exactly for Gaffurius’s Theorica musice
and approximately, perhaps, for Johannes de Muris’s Musica speculativa. To say
this is not, however, to imply that such works are merely rehashings of Boethius.
An example from Gaffurius can serve to show to just what degree the reworkings
can end up subverting their source.
In book 1, chapter 5 of his Theorica musice, Gaffurius revisits the standard
medieval distinction between cantor and musicus. Traditionally, the cantor is a
singer—a skilled practitioner—who lacks theoretical knowledge, whereas the
musicus possesses, as Aristotle might put it, the explanation and the cause (“to
dioti kai tēn aitian”) (Metaphysics, 981a28–30). Medieval writers usually make
no bones about who comes out on top: “Nam qui facit quod non sapit,” as Guido
of Arezzo puts it, “definitur bestia” (For one who acts without knowing is by
definition a beast) (Regulae rythmicae, II.10). Thus, when Gaffurius broaches
this hoary old distinction, it sounds at first as if he intends merely to recycle a
well-worn dogma: “Therefore this one is the musician, in whom the faculty of
reasoning and speculating concerning music is present, and not the one who
possesses only the practical method of singing” (Is igitur musicus est cui adest
musicae speculationis rationisque facultas non cui cantandi tantum praticabilis
inest modus).
For every art and every discipline, by the testimony of the Philosopher, naturally
holds reason as more honorable than craft exercised by the work and hand of an
artisan. Indeed craft is corporeal and attends like a servant. But reason rules like a
mistress.
Omnis nanque ars omnisque etiam disciplina teste philosopo honorabiliorem natu
raliter habet rationem quam artificium quod manu opereque artificis exercetur. Arti
ficium enim corporale quasi seruiens famulatur. Ratio uero ueluti domina imperat.
(Gaffurius 1492, I.5, sig. b iii r)
Despite the ritualized invocation of Aristotle (“the Philosopher”), the passage is

actually borrowed from Boethius, who, in book 1, chapter 34 of the De institutione
musica, draws very much the same distinction in nearly identical words.4 But as
Gaffurius continues, something rather curious happens. For he turns out to place
a higher value on practice than it initially seemed: “Apart from these,” he writes—
that is, apart from the traditional figures of the musicus and the cantor—“there is

a third who does not derive knowledge only from action, but who considers and
contemplates while in action and at work. And this figure, in whom neither spec
ulation nor activity is lacking, is rightly called a musician” (Ab iis tertius est qui
iam non scit actu solum. sed & in actu atque opera considerandi est & contemp
landi. Atque idcirco is adequate dicitur musicus cui nil & speculationis & opera
tionis defuerit) (Gaffurius 1492, I.5, fol. 15v). The highest form of musicianship,
it turns out for Gaffurius, is thus a composite that combines the traditional attri
butes of the two contrasted figures.
By Zarlino’s time, this trope had crystalized into the ideal of the “perfect
musician” (musico perfetto), who unites theoretical understanding with practical
skill:
The musician is the one who is skilled in music and has the faculty of judging, not by
sound but by reason, concerning those things that this science contains. Someone
who works at matters pertaining to practice will make his knowledge more perfect,
and he can be called a perfect musician.
Onde volendo sapere quello che sia l’uno & l’altro, diremo: Musico esser colui, che
nella Musica è perito, & hà facultà di giudicare, non per il suono: ma per ragione
quello, che in tale scienza si contiene. Il qualle se alle cose appartinenti alla prat
tica darà opera, farà la sua scienza più perfetta: & Musico perfetto si potrà chiamare.
(Zarlino 1573: 25)
Significantly, this brief characterization appears in a chapter (book 1, chapter
11) concerned with the distinction, which Zarlino ultimately finds permeable,
between musica speculativa and musica practica (the chapter is titled “Diuisione
della Musica in Speculatiua & in Prattica: per la quale si pone la differenza tra il
Musico & il Cantore”):
Into music there enters something that enters also into some other sciences:
namely, it is divided into two parts, the one called theoretical or speculative, the
other practical. That part whose end consists solely in the cognition of the truth
of those things understood by the intellect (something that is proper to every sci
ence) is called “speculative”; the other, which depends solely on training, is called
“practical.”
4 Boethius, De institutione musica, I.34: “Nunc illud est intuendum, quod omnis ars omnisque etiam disciplina honorabil-
iorem naturaliter habeat rationem quam artificium, quod manu atque opere exercetur artificis. Multo enim est maius atque
auctius scire, quod quisque faciat, quam ipsum illud efficere, quod sciat: etenim artificium corporale quas serviens famulatur,
ratio vero quasi domina imperat.”
Intraviene nella Musica quello, che suole intrauenire in alcun’ altra delle scienze:
conciosiache diuidendosi in due parti; l’una Theorica o Speculatiua; & l’altra Prat
tica vien detta. Quella il cui fine consiste nella cognitione solamente della verità delle
cose intese dall’ Intelletto (il che è proprio di ciascuna Scienza) è detta Speculatiua;
l’altra, che dall’essercitio solamente dipende, vien nominata Prattica. (25)
Zarlino cites Ptolemy’s Almagest, but the distinction seems actually to have

entered Europe by way of a somewhat different transmission from the Arabic
tradition, namely through the two twelfth-century Latin translations of Abū
Naṣr Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Fārābī’s Enumeration of the Sciences (Iḥṣā’
al-‘ulūm).5
The Enumeration was translated twice into Latin, by John of Seville and
by Gerard of Cremona, both times in the twelfth century and both at Toledo
(Farmer 1932: 575). The text was quickly absorbed into Dominicus Gundis
salinus’s De divisione philosophiae (Fidora 2003) and was read and used by
writers as various as Vincent of Beauvais, Roger Bacon, Jerome of Moravia,
Simon of Tunstede, Magister Lambertus, and Johannes de Grocheo (Farmer
1932: 589–91; Randel 1976: 173, 183–87). The work itself belongs to a late-
antique/early-Islamicate tradition of divisions and classifications of the sci
ences (Gutas 1983). Al-Fārābī proceeds from grammar and then logic, through
the mathematical sciences and the natural sciences (among which he includes
theology), to politics, ethics, jurisprudence, and rhetoric. So the curriculum is
broadly Aristotelian, but with some surprises. Music figures as expected among
the mathematical sciences, along with arithmetic, geometry, optics, astronomy,
weights, and engineering. Al-Fārābī’s celebrated discrimination of music into
“active” (or practical) and speculative parts comes right at the beginning of his
exposition of that science. In Gerard of Cremona’s Latin version, the passage
reads,
In sum, the science of music rightly embraces knowledge of the kinds of harmoniai
[i.e. melodies, modes, or scales], and of that from which they are put together, and
that for which they are put together, and in what way they are put together, and of
which are the appropriate ways, so that they might make their effect more penetrat
ingly and more comprehensively. And that which is known by this name is indeed
two sciences. Of which one is the active science of music, and the second is the spec
ulative science of music.
Scientia vero musice, comprehendit in summa cognitionem specierum armoniarum,
et illud ex quo componuntur, et illud ad quo componuntur, et qualiter componuntur,
et quibus modis oportet ut sint donec faciant operationem suam penetrabiliorem
et magis ultimam. Et illud quidem quod hoc nomine cognoscitur, est due scientie.
Quarum una est scientia musice activa, et secunda est scientia musice speculativa.
(Schupp: 80–82)
5 For this claim, see Farmer 1932, Randel 1976, and Christensen 2018. The best general introduction to the Iḥṣā’ al-‘ulūm is
perhaps Mahdi 1975, reprinted as chap. 5 of Madhi 2001.
That last sentence is, of course, the treatise’s most famous line:
One of them is the science of practical music (al-mūsīqá al-’amalīyah) and the sec
ond is the science of theoretic al music (al-mūsīqá al-naẓarīyah).
'3/875+!'10/.-,+!'*)('65&4+!-'3/),2+!'10/.-,+!'*)('&%$#" ! (Farmer 1932: 568, 572)

Al-Fārābī then goes on to delimit the range and scope of these two branches. In
brief, musica activa is concerned with producing melodies on instruments or with
the voice, whereas musica speculativa considers the melodies thus produced in
rational terms:
And indeed the speculative part gives the science of these things as objects of reason,
and it gives the causes of allthose things from which harmoniai [i.e. scale, modes, or
melodies] are put together, not according to what is in the material and is itself mate
rial, but rather absolutely and according to what is remote from every instrument
and allmaterial, and it receives this according to what is heard in common from any
instrument whatsoever and from whatever body.
Et speculativa quidem dat scientiam eorum, et sunt rationata, et dat causas totius ex
quo componuntur armonie, non secundum quod sunt in materia, et materia immo
absolute, et secundum quod sunt remota abomni instrumento et materia et accipit
ea secundum quod sunt audita secundum communitatem ex quocumque instru
mento accidat, et ex quocumque corpore accidat. (Schupp 2008: 82)
And lastly, al-Fārābī enumerates the five parts of musica speculativa, in accordance
with the order in which these parts are treated in his Kitāb al-mūsīqā al-kabīr.6
With that his short discussion of music in the Enumeration closes.
Latin readers of al-Fārābī’s De scientiis largely ignored this final five-part
division, but they seized with alacrity on the active–speculative distinction.
Jerome of Moravia, for instance, reports that al-Fārābī “divided music into first
an active and then a speculative part” (Alphorabius autem dividit musicam in
activam primo et speculativam), and he proceeds to quote, more or less ver
batim, the entire discussion from the De scientiis (Scerba 1935: 13–14). Other
writers took over al-Fārābī’s terms, but mostly evacuated the sense he had
given them—so that by the time of Johannes de Muris the traditional Boethian
curriculum could be grafted onto a new root stock called “speculative” or
“theoretical” music.
Now, someone might reasonably wonder whether al-Fārābī, in distinguish
ing between the active and the speculative parts of music, is not simply borrow
ing a distinction from Aristotle. For it is of course true that he belongs, broadly
speaking, to a tradition of commentary on Aristotle’s thought. That, after all, is
where his traditional epithet “the second teacher” comes from (Aristotle having
been the first). And Aristotle certainly distinguishes in general between “theory”
6 Randel 1976: 176–82. The five parts are “principles and rudiments,” “rudiments,” “opinions and demonstrations . . . [con-
cerning] artificial instruments,” “the various kinds of natural rhythms,” and “the composition of melod
ies in general.” See
Farmer 1932: 573–74.
(theōria) and “practice” (praxis).7 In at least one place, moreover—in the first
book of the Eudemian Ethics—Aristotle even speaks of “productive” versus “spec
ulative” sciences:
And this happens in the theoretical sciences (for nothing is characteristic of astron
omy or physic al science or geometry other than knowing and contemplating the

nature of matters subjected to those sciences . . .). But the goal of the productive sci
ences is different from science and knowledge, just as health is different from medi
cine, and good order and such things from politics.
τοῦτο δὲ ἐπὶ µὲν τῶν ἐπιστηµῶν συµβαίνɛι τῶν θɛωρητικῶν (οὐδὲν γὰρ ἕτɛρόν ἐστι
τῆς ἀστρολογίας οὐδὲ τῆς πɛρὶ φύσɛως ἐπιστήµης οὐδὲ γɛωµɛτρίας πλήν τὸ γνωρίσαι
καὶ θɛωρῆσαι τὴν φύσιν τῶν πραγµάτων τῶν ὑποκɛιµένων ταῖς ἐπιστήµαις . . .): τῶν
δὲ οιητικῶν ἐπιστηµῶν ἕτɛρον τὸ τέλος τῆς ἐπιστήµης καὶ γνώσɛως, οἷον ὑγίɛια µὲν
ἰατρικῆς, ɛὐvοµία δὲ ἤ τι τοιοῦθ᾽ ἕτɛρον τῆς πολιτικῆς. (Eudemian Ethics, 1216b11–19)
The distinction, though—and in particular the collocation poiētike epistēmē
(“productive science”)—comes as something of a surprise, given that Aristotle
is elsewhere at some pains to differentiate between epistēmē, on the one hand,
and praxis or poiēsis, on the other. In the Nicomachean Ethics, for instance, he says
that scientific knowledge (epistēmē) is a hexis apodeiktikē—a state capable of pro
viding demonstrations—and that it is accordingly subject to allthe provisions
laid out concerning demonstration in the Posterior Analytics (ἡ µὲν ἄρα ἐπιστήµη
ἐστὶν ἕξις ἀποδɛικτική, καὶ ὅσα ἄλλα προσδιοριζόµɛθα ἐν τοῖς ἀναλυτικοῖς)
(Nicomachean Ethics, 1139b31–32). That is, a science in this full-blooded sense is
a systematized body of knowledge, arranged in such a way that each theorem is
inferred from prior theorems that are themselves ultimately allled back to some
set of axioms that are presumed to be self-evident. Scientific knowledge in this
sense is reserved for things that cannot be other than they are, since the axioms
are self-evidently true and everything else follows inexorably from them (οὗ
ἁπλῶς ἔστιν ἐπιστἠµη, τοῦτ᾽ ἀδύνατον ἄλλῶς ἔχɛιν) (Posterior Analytics, 71b15–
16). (Aristotle also thinks that allof the deductions in question occur within the
syllogistic outlined in the Prior Analytics; so under the strictest sense of the word
7 And the distinction appears in other Greek texts as well. For instance, Ptolemy writes, at the very opening of the Almag-
est—the passage we have seen Zarlino invoke above—that knowledge is divided into speculative and operative parts, “and
it is also good to know that the sciences were seen to be no different, since they are divided into a specul ative part and an
operative part, which are the two parts of science.” (bonum scire fuit quod sapientibus non deviantibus visum est cum par-
tem speculationis a parte operationis diviserunt, qui sunt due sapientie partes) (Ptolemy, Almagest, I.1). Similarly, Aristides
Quintilianus writes that “music is the science of song and the properties of song. It is also defined thus: theoretical and prac
tical skill with both complete and instrumental melody” (Μουσική ἐστιν ἐπιστήµη µέλους καὶ τῶν πɛρὶ µέλος συµβαινόντων.
ὁρίζονται δ᾽ αὐτὴν καὶ ὡδί· τέχνη θɛωρητικὴ καὶ πρακτικὴ τɛλɛίου µέλους καὶ ὀργανκικοῦ.] (De musica, I.4, 18–20). And
slightly further on: “Of music as a whole, one part is called theoretical, the other practical” (Τῆς δὲ πάσης µουσικῆς τὸ µέν τι
θɛωρητικὸν καλɛῖται, τὸ δὲ πρακτικόν) (Ι.5, 8–9). Andrew Barker (1984–89, 2:392) suggests that the division is broadly Aris
totelian. For a general introduction to Aristides Quintilianus, see Mathiesen 1983. I am not sure that either of these passages
refutes the claim that the speculative-practical distinction enters the Latin west by way of al-Fārābi: Aristides Quintilianus
merely says that music as a whole has theoretical and practical parts; this seems subtly different from sciences (including
music theory) having a speculative and practical aspect.
epistēmē, Aristotle in fact offers an enormously restrictive picture of scientific

knowledge—so much so that even the science that he seems to take as his model,
namely geometry, cannot ultimately bear the weight of the epistemic responsibil
ity being placed upon it, Aristotle’s syllogistic being in fact insufficient to model
allthe modes of argument employed in Euclid’s Elements.)
In contrast to epistēmē, praxis and poiēsis treat contingent matters—things

that might or might not exist and that could well be other than they are (τοῦ
δ᾽ἐνδɛχοµένου ἅλλως ἔχɛιν ἔστι τι καὶ ποιητὸν καὶ πρακτόν) (Nicomachean Ethics,
1140a1). Productive knowledge (poiēsis) is identical with “craft” (technē), and
craft in turn is directed toward bringing about contingent ends or producing con
tingent artifacts.
For allcraft is concerned with coming into being and with crafting and thinking
about how to bring into being something that can either be or not be, and the origin
of which is in the maker and not in the thing made. For craft is neither about things
that are or arise by necessity nor about things arising by nature; for these things have
their principle in themselves.
ἔστι δὲ τέχνη πᾶσα πɛρὶ γένɛσιν καὶ τὀ τɛχνάζɛιν καὶ θɛωρɛῖν ὅπως ἄν γένηταί τι
τῶν ἐνδɛχοµένων καὶ ɛἶναι καὶ µὴ ɛἶναι, καὶ ὧν ἡ ἀρχὴ ἐν τῷ ποιοῦντι ἀλλὰ µὴ ἐν τῷ
ποιουµένῳ: οὔτɛ γὰρ τῶν ἐξ ἀνάγκης ὄντων ἤ γιγνοµένων ἡ τέχνη ἐστίν, οὔτɛ τῶν
κατὰ φύσιν: ἐν αὑτοῖς γὰρ ἔχουσι ταῦτα τὴν ἀρχήν. (Nicomachean Ethics, 1140a10–16)
(“Things that are or that arise by necessity,” as we have seen, are the objects or
potential objects of epistēmē—things like lines and circles, or musical intervals.
“Things having an internal principle of change” are natural kinds, like trees or
animals. So technē produces artifacts and other contingent things like chairs or
military victories. Aristotle is also concerned, in the Nicomachean Ethics, to dis
tinguish poiēsis sharply from praxis—the distinction being, in brief, that what
poiēsis brings about is an object distinct from the producer; whereas praxis, ethi
cal praxis in particular, induces a change of state in the actors themselves, namely
the inculcation of virtue.)
So, Aristotle, in sum, distinguishes between spec u la
tive knowl edge
(epistēmē) and practice (praxis) or production (poiēsis), and he even some
times speaks—perhaps a bit loosely—about speculative and productive sci
ences (epistēmai theōrētikai vs. epistēmai poiētikai). But this distinction—and
here is the point I wish to emphasize—is different from al-Fārābī’s. For Aristotle
is distinguishing between kinds of knowledge—and indeed, his consistent rec
ognition that different disciplines will necessarily require different evidentiary
standards is among the most attractive features of his epistemological outlook, so
that it would be as absurd to expect apodictic certainty expressed through more
geometrico arguments in politics as it would be in mathematics to accept intui
tive hunches, extrapolations from past experience, and other sorts of inferences
from insufficient evidence.8 Al-Fārābī, in contrast to Aristotle, is distinguishing
8 Good statements of this view can, e.g., be found at Nicomachean Ethics, 1098a26–1098b8, 1103b26–1104a10.
not between different kinds of disciplines but between the practical and theoret
ical parts of a single discipline. And that distinction, incidentally, is not limited to
music. Of the seven mathematic al sciences that he mentions—arithmetic, geom
etry, optics, astronomy, music, weights, and engineering—the speculative/active
distinction is explicitly applied not just to music but to arithmetic and geometry
as well (De scientiis, ed. Schupp 2008: 64, 66). (In a fourth case, namely astron

omy, al-Fārābī likewise discriminates the science into two parts—here, astrology
vs. astronomy proper—but he does not call these “active” and “speculative,” pre
sumably because his view is that astrology does not really count as a science.9) In
both arithmetic and geometry, the distinction seems to be that the speculative
side of the science considers its objects—whether numbers, on the one hand,
or points, lines, circles, and other such geometric figures, on the other—in the
abstract and in themselves (absolute, secundum quod ipsi sunt denudati in mente
a corporibus et abomni quod eis numeratur); whereas the active side considers
these things as they inhere in real entities and as they are employed for the ends
of commerce, carpentry, land surveying, or other such practical activities (66,
68). (There is surely an echo here of Aristotle’s remark on the carpenter’s and the
mathematician’s differing perspectives on right angles.10) What, more precisely,
al-Fārābī understands as falling under the speculative parts of arithmetic and
geometry and how precisely these are articulated with the active parts remains
somewhat obscure from the schematic overview of the De scientiis alone—not
least because al-Fārābī classifies what was surely the chief innovation of medieval
Arabic mathematics, I mean algebra, under neither of these disciplines, but rather
as a part of engineering (De scientiis, 86). Still, it is clear that he regards discrim
ination into active and speculative parts as a general (though not a universal)
feature of the mathematical sciences. And that is certainly not Aristotle’s position,
nor is it easy to see how, given his other committments, Aristotle could endorse
such a view.11 Finally, when Aristotle refers explicity to harmonics (hē harmonikē
9 De scientiis, 78: “But the science of stars is two sciences, of which one is the science of the stars’ indications concerning
what will happen in the future . . . And the second is the theoretical science of stars. This, therefore, is what is catalogued
in these sciences and theories. It is indeed only counted among the forces and powers by which a man is able to judge what
will happen, as in the interpretation of auguries from birds and sneezes, and things similar to these powers” (Scientia autem
stellarum est due scientie, quarum una est scientia significationum stellarum super illud quod erit in futuro . . . . Et secunda
est scientia stellarum doctrinalis, hec ergo est illa que numeratur in scientiis et in doctrinis. Illa vero, non numeratur nisi in
virtutibus, et potentiis quibus potest homo iudicare illud quod erit, sicut interpretatio visionis, et augurium in avibus et ster-
nutationibus et similia istis virtutibus).
10 See Nichomachean Ethics, 1098a28–31: “For both the carpenter and the geomet er pursue straight lines in different ways:
the one in as much as is useful for the work at hand, the other, as an observer of truths, for what and what kind of thing they
are” (καὶ γὰρ τέκτων καὶ γɛωµέτρης διαφερόντως ἐπιζητοῦσι τὴν ὀρθήν: ὅ µὲν γὰρ ἐφ᾽ ὅσον χρησίµη πρὸς τὸ ἔργον, ὅ δὲ τί
ἐστιν ἤ ποῖόν τι: θɛατὴς γὰρ τἀληθοῦς).
11 In particular, Aristotle thinks that the objects of epistēmai are both necessary and immutable. Politics and ethics, on the
one hand, and the various crafts of which there are technai, on the other, are not potential epistēmai precisely because their
objects of study are contingent and changeable. So it would seem that for a science to be at once contemplative and produc
tive, for Aristotle, its objects would have to be simultaneously necessary and not necessary, and changeable and immutable.
And it is of course hard to see how this could be the case.
technē), as at various points in the Posterior Analytics, he consistently treats it as

a science subordinated to arithmetic.12 There is no suggestion whatsoever that
it—let alone arithmetic—also includes a productive part.
On the other hand, Aristotle does sometimes say things reminiscent of
al-Fārābī’s position, particularly when he is talking about medicine or is other
wise using the figure of the doctor as a Denkfigur (i.e., a model to think with). At

the beginning of the Metaphysics, for instance, where he is concerned to distin
guish epistēmē and technē, on the one hand, from empeiria (“experience”), on the
other, Aristotle remarks that “with respect to acting, experience seems not at all
to be at variance with art, but people with experience even hit the mark better
than those having a theoretical account without experience” (πρὸς µὲν οὖν τὸ
πράττɛιν ἐµπɛιρία τέχνης ούδὲν δοκɛῖ διαφέρɛιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ µᾶλλον ἐπιτυγχάνουσιν
οἱ ἔµπɛιροι τῶν ἄνɛυ τῆς ἔµπɛιρίης λόγον έχόντων) (Metaphysics, 981a13–15).
The example he adduces is the doctor, for whom it may be more beneficial—that
is, more diagnostically and therepeutically efficacious—simply to have seen var
ious illnesses before, and to recollect what worked in the past, than to possess
detailed aetialogies of these same conditions in the abstract.
And the reason is that experience is knowledge of the particular, but art of the
universal, and allactions and productions are about the particular. For the doctor
does not heal “man,” or only incidentally, but Callias or Socrates or some other
one named in this way, who happens to be a man. And so if someone lacking
experience has the account and knowledge of the universal but does not know
the indiv idual in this, he will often miss the cure. For the one to be cured is the
indiv idual.
αἴτιον δ᾽ ὅτι ἡ µὲν ἐµπɛιρία τῶν καθ᾽ ἕκατόν ἔστι γνῶσις ἡ δὲ τέχνη τῶν καθόλου, αἱ δὲ
πράξɛις καὶ αἱ γɛνέσɛις πᾶσαι πɛρὶ τὸ καθ᾽ ἕκατόν ɛἰσιν: οὐ γὰρ ἀνθρώπον ὑγιάζɛι ὁ
ἰατρɛύων ἀλλ᾽ ἤ κατὰ συµβɛβηκός, ἀλλὰ Καλλίαν ἤ Σωκράτην ἤ τῶν ἄλλων τινὰ τῶν
οὕτω λɛγοµένων ᾧ συµβɛβηκɛν ἀνθρώπῳ ɛἶναι: ἐὰν οὖν ἄνɛυ τῆς ἐµπɛιρίας ἔχῃ τις
τὸν λόγον, καὶ τὸ καθόλου µὲν γνωρίζῃ τὸ δ᾽ ἐν τούτῳ καθ᾽ ἕκαστον ἀγνοῇ, πολλάκις
διαµαρτήσɛται τῆς θɛραπɛίας: θɛραπɛυτὸν γὰρ τὸ καθ᾽ ἕκαστον. (Metaphysics,
981a15–24)
And from the example of medicine, Aristotle then quickly generalizes to other
arts:
For which reason we also hold that master-builders are in each case more hon
orable and more skilled than laborers, in that they know the causes of the things
having been made (but these, just like even some soulless things produce without
knowing what they do, just as fire burns; and so soulless things produce each of
these by a certain nature, but laborers through habit). We hold that they are wiser
not in their being able to act, but because they possess an account and know the
causes.
12 See the discussion of this point in Barker 2007: 328–63.

διὸ καὶ τοὺς ἁρχιτέκτονας πɛρὶ ἕκαστον τιµιωτέρους καὶ µᾶλλον ɛἰδέναι νοµίζοµɛν τῶν
χɛιροτɛχνῶν καὶ σοφωτέρους, ὅτι τὰς αἰτίας τῶν ποιουµένων ἴσασιν (τοὺς δ᾽, ὥσπɛρ
καὶ τῶν ἀψύχων ἔνια ποιɛῖ µὲν, οὐκ ɛἰδότα δὲ ποιɛῖ ἃ ποιɛῖ, οἵον καίɛι τὸ πῦρ: τὰ µὲν
οὖν ἄψυχα φύσɛι τινὶ ποιɛῖν τούτων ἕκαστον τοὺς δὲ χɛιροτέχνας δι᾽ ἔθος), ὡς οὐ κατὰ
τὸ πρακτικοὺς ɛἶναι σοφωτέρους ὄντας ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὸ λόγον ἔχɛιν αὐτοὺς καὶ τὰς αἰτίας
γνωρίζɛιν. (981a31–981b7)

When al-Fārābī comes round again to the partition of music between the active
and the speculative in the Kitāb al-mūsīqī al-kabīr, he writes in a vein that clearly
tropes this Aristotelian distinction. Theorists of music, he writes there, need not
themselves engage in practice but can delegate this to musicians much as doctors
delegate to surgeons:
It is nonetheless not indispensable for him to know musical practice to the point
of being a ble to compose or perform music. He will act in in the same way as the
orists in other sciences whose the principles arise mostly from sense experience,
such as astronomy or optics or medicine. . . . The doctor does not need to perform
surgery with his own hands, nor the theor etical astronomer to make observations.
It is enough for the one to be present at the surgeon’s operations and for the other
to follow the observer who uses the instruments for him. In the same way the
theorist of music does not need to devote himself to practice; it is even preferable
that an instrumentalist play for him, and that he content himself with listening and
judging.
Il n’est cependant pas indispensable pour lui de connaître la pratique musicale au
point d’être en mesure de composer ou d’exécuter la musique. Il agira à la façon
des théoriciens dans d’autres sciences, dont les principes découlent pour la plupart
d’une expérience sensible, telles que l’astronomie ou l’optique ou la medicine. . . . Le
médecin n’a pas besoin de pratiquer de ses mains la chirurgie, ni l’astronome théoric
ien d’observer. Il suffit à l’un d’assister à l’opération du chirurgien et à l’autre de suivre
l’observateur qui se sert des instruments à son intention. De même le théoricien en
musique n’a pas besoin de s’adonner lui-même à la pratique; il est même préférable
qu’un instrumentaliste joue pour lui, et qu’il se contente d’écouter et de juger. (d’Er
langer 1930, 1:34–35)
Al-Fārābī is even prepared to admit, in this place, that the speculative music the
orist need not possess a highly developed musical ear and can simply rely on the
testimony of practitioners:
Various reputed theorists of antiquity did not have educated ears that permitted
them to recognize notes and melodies. . . . Ptolemy the mathematician, for exam
ple, avows in his book on music that he could not recognize various consonances.
To inform himself about them, he had recourse to the opinion of an accomplished
practitioner.
Divers théoriciens réputés dans l’antiquité n’avaient pas une oreille éduquée leur
permettant de reconnaître les notes et les mélodies. . . . Ptolémée le mathématicien,
par exemple, avoue dans son livre consacré à la musique ne pas reconnaître diverses
consonances. Pour s’en informer, il s’en remettait à l’avis d’un praticien exercé. (d'Er
langer 1930, 1:35–36)
Since al-Fārābī was himself by allaccounts an accomplished musician, he could

perhaps afford to be magnanimous on this point—though it does make the posi
tion that he stakes out less interesting (in my view at least) than Aristoxenos’s
contrary insistence on the musical skill prerequisite to the study of harmonics.13
And al-Fārābī’s view is certainly a very long way from Zarlino’s eventual insis
tence that the perfect musician combines practical and speculative accomplish

ment in a single person.
In the end, whether al-Fārābī’s distinction between musica speculativa and
musica practica is or is not ultimately consistent with Aristotle’s thought is not
a question that I will litigate further here. My point in broaching the issue has
merely been to suggest that these are the sorts of questions that ought to come up
in a history-of-theory seminar. And they cannot come up if the Arabic tradition
is ignored. Once introduced into European music theorizing, the speculative-
practical distinction became absolutely central to the discipline’s self-conception
in the Italian Renaissance and beyond. One possible overarching question for a
seminar to address might accordingly be to ask how, out of the Greek sources,
and with crucial mediations through both Latin and Arabic texts, the figures of
the theorist and practitioner—the musicus and cantor—came to be progressively
reconfigured in such a way that, by Zarlino’s time, they could be considered as at
least potentially inhering in a single individual, one who would display a perfect
mastery of both the speculative and the practical sides of music, with the former
provided a basis for the latter—this, indeed, is the plan on which Zarlino’s Istitu-
tioni harmoniche is erected, and the same blueprint is no less present almost two
hundred years later in the Traité de l’harmonie (1722) of Jean-Philippe Rameau.14
Even in the later part of the eighteenth century, in the entry “Musique” in the
Dictionnaire de musique, Rousseau could still stipulate that “Music is naturally
divided into theoretical or speculative music, and practical music” (la Musique se
divise naturellement en Musique théorique ou spéculative, et en Musique pratique)
(Rousseau [1768] 1995: 916). And indeed, one still finds Riemann invoking the
specul ative-practical distinction in a lecture given at the Hamburg Conservatory
in 1882 (Riemann 1882: 159; trans. Steege 2011: 65). Al-Fārābī’s famous sentence
enjoyed a long European posterity indeed.
Joseph-Marie Amiot and the Chinese origins of the basse fondamentale

It is probably fair to suggest that Jean-Joseph-Marie Amiot’s Mémoire sur la
musique des Chinois (1779) represents the first attempt in a European language
13 Aristoxenos of Tarentum, Elementa harmonica, 33.24–26: “Accuracy of perception is just about the first thing in music, for
it is not possible, if one perceives badly, to speak well about things in no way perceived” (τῷ δὲ µουσικῷ σχɛδόν ἐστιν ἀρχῆς
ἔχουσα τάξιν ἡ τῆς αἰσθήσɛως ἀκρίβɛια, οὐ γὰρ ἐνδέχɛται αύλως αἰσθανόµɛνον ɛὖ λέγɛιν πɛρὶ τούτων ὧν µηδένα τρόπον
αἰσθάνɛται). Aristoxenos’s insistence that the prerequisite for the study of harmonics is a certain basic musicianship seems
to me to echo in an interesting way Aristotle’s insistence in the Nicomachean Ethics that to profit from instruction in ethics the
students must already be in some measure virtuous. See Nicomachean Ethics, 1095b5–13.
14 On this point, see in particul ar the discussion in Waldura 2002: 198–234.
at something like a responsible account of Chinese music and musical thought.

Amiot was a French Jesuit who spent the second half of his life, from his arrival
in 1751 to his death 1793, at the Qing court in Beijing.15 He wrote widely on Chi
nese language, customs, dance, geography, and other matters: numerous con
tributions to the Mémoires concernant l’histoire, les sciences, les arts, les mœurs, les
usages, &c. des Chinois (1776–1814) are from his pen; he compiled the first Man

chu-French dictionary (Amiot 1789); and he translated 孫子’s (Sun Tzu’s) 兵法
(bīngfǎ; The Art of War) into French (Amiot 1772). But he is of interest here, of
course, primarily for his writings on music.16
At one point in his Mémoire, Amiot describes the construction of the Chi
nese gamut (十二律, shí èr lǜ) through the so-called adding and subtracting a
third (三分損益, sān fēn sǔnyì) method:
Leaving aside the figurative language of the Chinese, or reducing it to the dry and
imageless language that we [i.e., the French] use for manifesting our ideas, it results
from allthe Chinese authors’ reasoning that the fundamental sound F engenders its
fifth G, which continues the generation up until the twelfth term, or A♯.
fifth C, that this fifth, becoming a fundamental in its turn, also engenders its own
Laissant à part le langage figuré des Chinois, ou le réduisant au langage sec & sans
images que nous employons pour manifester nos idées, il résulte de tous les rai
sonnemens des Auteurs Chinois, que le son fondamental fa engendre sa quinte ut,
quinte sol, laquelle continue la génération jusqu’au douzieme terme, ou la♯. (Amiot
que cette quinte, devenue fondamental à son tour, engendre de même sa propre
1779: 129)
Readers well versed in eighteenth-century French music theory will be immedi
ately struck by Amiot’s language—notably by the appearance of the term son fonda-
mental and by the idea that a given fundamental automatically “engenders” the note
a fifth above it. Though the words were not invented by Rameau,17 the language is
nonetheless his. And indeed, Amiot makes the connection clear one page further
on, when he remarks (astonishingly) that “philosophical musicians will perhaps
discover here [i.e., in Chinese sources] the entire fundamental-bass system of the
celebrated Rameau” (les Musiciens Philosophes y découvriront peut-être tout le
systême de la basse fondamentale du célebre Rameau) (Amiot 1779: 130).18
15 The most comprehensive overview of Amiot’s life available is Hermans 2005. Amiot’s work is also surveyed in chapter one
of Irvine 2019. For more on Amiot, including an overview of the secondary literature, see my discussion in Martin 2021: 44n16.
16 In addition to the Mémoire, Amiot sent a subsequent supplement (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, fonds Bréquigny 13),
which is transcribed in Brix and Lenoir 1997. The fonds Bréquigny conserve an enormous number of mansucripts by Amiot,
many for works published in the Mémoires concernant l’histoire, les sciences, les arts, les mœurs, les usages, &c. des Chinois (1776–
1814). The Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France holds a considerable volume of his official correspondance (MS 1515–17).
Another manuscript on music by Amiot preserved in Paris is “De la musique modern des Chinois” (Bibliothèque nationale,
département de musique, Rés. Vm. Ms 14), on which see Hu forthcoming.
17 The term son fondamental is used (and was perhaps introduced) by Joseph Sauveur (1705).
18 The most comprehensive overview of Rameau’s theory available is Christensen 1993. The theory is also well surveyed in
Lester 1992.
That Amiot was inclined to see Rameau in Chinese texts has something
to do with the immediate (French) literary context of his Mémoire’s production.
Not long after arriving in Beijing, and apparently at the suggestion of his superior
Antoine Gaubil,19 Amiot threw himself into the study of Chinese music. Among
other things, he produced a French translation of Lǐ Guāngdì’s (李光地) Com-
mentaries on the Ancient Confucian Canon of Music (古樂經傳, Gǔyuè jīngzhuàn),

which he sent to Jean-Pierre de Bougainville, the secrétaire perpétuel of the
Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres. Though the manuscript has unfor
tunately gone missing (Tchen 1974: 51–53),20 a number of Amiot’s contempo
raries read his translation, including Rameau. In the long postscript to the Code
de musique pratique titled “Nouvelles réflexions sur le principe sonore,” Rameau
(1760: 189, 191–92) ventured some desultory comments on Chinese music in
the course of an elaborate conjectural history that casts Chinese and Greek music
theorizing as a pale adumbration of his own views.21
The essential construct in Rameau’s narrative is the so-called triple pro
gression—that is, the sequence of numbers 1, 3, 9, 27, 81, and so on, which he
first invoked in the Nouveau système de musique théorique (1726: 14–15, 23–29).
From that treatise on, Rameau used successive terms of the triple progression,
which are always in the ratio 1:3, to model the perfect fifth (the ratio of which
is of course actually 2:3; Rameau plays fast and loose with octave equivalence
here, as elsewhere in his writings). Crucially, for Rameau, the triple progression
does not suffice to establish the diatonic scale. For that one needs the “quintuple
progression” (1, 5, 25, 125, etc.) as well. The reason is that the ditone (64:81)
produced by tuning successive fifths (and fourths)—for example, from C up a
fifth to G, down a fourth to D, up a fifth to A, down a fourth to E—is larger
by a syntonic comma (80:81) than the just major third produced by matching
the interval’s upper note to the frequency of the fifth partial (4:5). So, Rameau’s
claim, in the epilogue to the Code de musique pratique, that the Greeks and Chi
nese produced their scales solely on the basis of the triple progression, is in fact a
criticism. In effect, Rameau holds that his ancient predecessors misheard nature.
For the tetrachord (e.g., B–C–D–E) to be tuned as Rameau thinks it should
be, the note E must be found as a just third (4:5) above C, so that the interval
between D and E is a minor (9:10) rather than a major whole tone (8:9). This is
what Rameau means when he remarks that the second of the two Chinese scales
19 Amiot 1779: 4–5; and cf. Antoine Gaubil’s correspondence in Simon 1970: 655.
20 The Chinese text of Lǐ Guāngdì’s work survives, however, including an exemplar in Paris at the Bibliothèque nationale that
Tchen (1974: 49–50) signals. See also Leydi 1992: 49; and Levy 1989: 64n3.
21 The “Nouvelles réflexions” have a complex and extremely interesting textual history. In 1757, Rameau published a pro
spectus announcing the Code to potential subscribers. Three letters to François Arnaud dating from around 1758 testify to
his progress on that work. At around the same time, Rameau was busy petitioning the Academia delle Scienze dell’ Istituto
di Bologna for its endorsement of his theory of harmony. He apparently sent an early version of the “Nouvelles réflexions” to
Bologna as part of that campaign, since a manuscript in French bearing that title (and with signific ant variants) is preserved
together with an Italian translation at the Museo international e bibliotheca della musica in that city as I.45.8–9 (for details,
Jacobi 1964).
he gives—and which he apparently found in Amiot’s manus cript translation of Lǐ

Guāngdì—“accord[s] with our scale up to the ratios of the thirds, which are out
of tune thanks to the two successive major whole tones” (Mais un autre Auteur
le donne dans celui-ci, où manquent seulement deux notes pour s’accorder avec
notre gamme, aux rapports près des tierces, qui s’y trouvent faux par les deux
Tons majeurs de suite) (Rameau 1760: 192).

Their brevity notwithstanding, Rameau’s remarks on Chinese scales man
aged to fire the imagination of at least one early reader: namely, Pierre-Joseph
Roussier, who elaborated them in his own Mémoire sur la musique des anciens
(1770). Roussier’s Mémoire, as Diderot put it in reviewing that text for the Cor-
respondance littéraire, “proposes to demonstrate that allthe ancient systems of
music emanate from the division of a string according to the triple progression 1,
3, 9, etc., and that these systems and that of the Chinese are merely the detached
pieces of another more ancient and more complete system that was invented
by another people” (l’auteur se propose de démontrer que tous les systèmes de
musique anciens sont émanés de la division d’une corde selon la progression tri
ple 1, 3, 9, etc., et que ces systèmes et celui des Chinois ne sont que des pièces
détachées d’un autre système plus ancien plus complet et inventé par un autre
peuple) (Diderot 1975: 35). That “other people,” Roussier’s book makes abun
dantly clear, were the Egyptians; and the Mémoire sur la musique des anciens pro
poses, ultimately, to reconstitute the original “Egyptian” scale system out of its
torn remnants—allegedly—in the Greek and Chinese archaeological record.22 In
this respect, Roussier’s treatise thus deserves to be read in parallel with Joseph de
Guignes’s (1759) roughly contemporaneous attempts to relate Egyptian hiero
glyphs to Chinese characters and his attendant and rather astonishing claim that
the Chinese were, in effect, a lost Egyptian tribe. It is probably superfluous to
remark that de Guignes’s views are utterly discredited, not least by refutations
written during his own lifetime by French Jesuits based in Beijing (anonymous
1773).
The triple progression, incidentally, would go on to enjoy a long career
in nineteenth- and even twentieth-century French music theory. For instance,
Auguste Barbereau, a younger contemporary of Fétis, invoked it to establish the
diatonic and chromatic scales (very much in the manner of Roussier); it likewise
shows up in d’Indy’s Cours de composition musicale; and for Auguste Gevaert it is
the vraie génératrice of the scale.23 The immediate effect of Roussier’s Mémoire,
however, was to provoke Amiot to write an exposition of his own. For as Amiot
recounts in the Discours préliminaire to his Mémoire sur la musique des Chinois, the
royal librarian Jérôme-Frédéric Bignon sent Roussier’s book to him in Beijing in
1774, and it was through Roussier’s report that he learned of the use to which
22 On this matter, and on the association more generally in eighteenth-century European minds between Egypt and China,
see Rehding 2014: 555–66.
23 I owe these details to chap. 6 of Christensen 2019.
Rameau had put his manuscript translation of Lǐ Guāngdì in the Code. To put it
mildly, Amiot was unimpressed:
Again, what a shame that M. the abbé Roussier and other European savants are
not able to draw from the Chinese sources for themselves, as they do from Egyp
tian and Greek ones! How many fine things they would discover! I have certainly

made every effort in the past to supply them somehow, by translating the work of Lǐ
Guāngdì, of which I have spoken above, to which I added everything that I was a ble
to draw for myself from ancient Chinese writers concerning the science of sound.
But to judge from the utter hash that has been made of this translation, I have
grounds for thinking that my writings, having passed through many hands, have
suffered numerous alterations that have disfigured them. Rameau himself, who
ought to have taken over only what concerned the Chinese scale system, makes
me speak of a fire that occurred, or so he implies, 2,277 years before Jesus Christ,
whereas the fire of which I spoke, or better, of which the editor of the work I was
translating spoke, was merely a private fire that consumed the house of the author,
whose writings became the prey of the flames; in a word, a fire that occurred, so
to speak, in our times. It happened in the year of y-yeou, the twenty-second in the
Chinese cycle, and the forty-third in the reign of Kangxi—that is to say, according
to our way of reckoning, in the year 1705.
Encore une fois, quel dommage que M. l’Abbé Roussier & les autres Savans d’Europe
ne puissent pas puiser par eux-mêmes dans les sources Chinoises, comme ils puisent
par eux-mêmes dans les sources Egyptiennes & Grecques ! Que de belles choses ils
découvriroient! J’ai bien fait tous mes efforts autrefois pour y suppléer en quelque
sorte, par la traduction de l’ouvrage de Ly-koang-ty, dont j’ai parlé ci-dessus, & à
laquelle j’avois joint tout ce que j’avois puisé moi-même dans divers Auteurs Chinois,
touchant la science des sons. Mais, à juger par les lambeaux epars qu’on a produits
de cette traduction, j’ai tout lieu de croire que mes ecrits ayant passé par plusiers
mains, ont souffert quantité d’altérations qui les ont défigurés. Rameau lui-même,
qui n’auroit dû prendre pour lui que ce qui concerne le systême Chinois, me fait
parler d’un incendie arrivé, à ce qu’il fait entendre, 2277 ans avant Jesus-Christ, tan
dis que l’incendie dont je parle, ou pour mieux dire, dont parle l’Editeur de l’ouvrage
que je traduisois, n’est qu’un incendie particulier, un incendie qui consuma la maison
de l’Auteur, dont les ecrits devinrent la proie des flammes; en un mot, un incendie
arrivé, pour ainsi dire, de nos jours. Sa date est de l’année y-yeou, vingt-deuxieme du
Cycle des Chinois, & la quarante-troisieme du regne de Kang-hy, c’est-à-dire, suivant
notre maniere de compter, l’an 1705. (Amiot 1779: 11–12)
Yet if Amiot was unforgiving of Rameau, he was surprisingly indulgent toward
Roussier,24 whose book he calls “one of the best and most solid . . . that could be
made of its kind” (l’un des meilleurs & des plus solides, à mon avis, qu’on puisse
faire en ce genre) (Amiot 1779: 6). This is not, I think, mere politesse. For, in fact,
Amiot was crucially influenced by Roussier’s perspective. Indeed, he takes over
Roussier’s interpretive frame—that there is a single, original and perfect musical
24 At least at first, the relationship soured when he saw the many editorial notes Roussier had added to the Mémoire sur la
musique des Chinois for its publication. See Brix and Lenoir 1995 and 1997. On Roussier’s additions, see Carter 2016.
system that has been prismatically refracted, so to speak, into allthe partial and
imperfect systems now extant—and simply revises the chronology. The origin al
model, for Amiot, is not Egyptian, but Chinese:
The Chinese have always had, or at least had much earlier than other nations, a con
tinuous system of music, connected in allits parts and founded specific ally on the

ratios that the different terms of the triple progression have among themselves . . .
[this system] is anterior to every other system of music of which I am aware. . . . Since
this system contains almost everything that the Greeks and Egyptians exploited in
theirs, and is older, it follows that the Greeks and even the Egyptians took every
thing that they said about music from the Chinese.
Que les Chinois ont eu de tout tems, ou du moins bien long-tems avant les autres
nations, un systême de musique suivi, lié dans toutes ses parties, & fondé spéciale
ment sur les rapports que les différens termes de la progression triple ont entr’eux . . .
il est antérieur à tout autre système de musique dont nous ayons connoissance . . .
ce systême renfermant à-peu-près tout ce que les Grecs & les Egyptiens ont mis en
œuvre dans les leurs, & etant plus ancien, il s’ensuit que les Grecs, & même les Egyp
tiens, ont puisé chez les Chinois tout ce qu’ils ont dit sur la Musique. (Amiot 1779:
171–72)
In this way, Amiot borrows Roussier’s diffusionist account but permutes its verti
ces. A little further in the background, one sees the outlines of an enlightenment
fixation on the origins of language—whether that original language was taken to
be Hebrew, as traditional piety decreed, or, as in secularized accounts like Rous
seau’s, an imaginary amalgam of aspects borrowed from Greek, from Arabic, and
from Chinese. Roussier could not, of course, have read Rousseau’s Essai sur l’orig-
ine des langues, which was published only in 1781, three years after its author’s
death. But he had read at least parts of Rousseau’s (1768) Dictionnaire de musique,
which he cites at various points. For Rousseau, of course, the original language
was at once speech and song—a transparent, perfectly expressive medium ideally
adapted to the unencumbered communion of souls. Chapter 19 of the Essai tells
how language fell off from this originary perfection and so was split into speech
and song. And though the discussion there ends on a despairing note, Rousseau
elsewhere held out the possibility that musico-linguistic redemption could be
achieved through an idealized model based on Italian operatic practice.25 This
is a story he tells elsewhere too: in the fall from the state of nature in the Second
Discourse and its artificial restoration, whether through the communal establish
ment of an ideal polity, as in the Social Contract, or the resurrection of the natural
man in private life as in Émile; or again, in La Nouvelle Héloïse, in the image of
recaptured Eden represented by Julie, Wolmar, and Saint-Preux’s idyllic ménage à
trois at Clarens. And behind these secularized narratives, one discerns in turn the
archetype of Christian universal history, with its drama of fall and redemption.
25 For an especially acute discussion of these matters, see the second half (which despite the book’s title is entirely about
Rousseau) of Kintzler 1983.
The diffraction of the original music, whether Egyptian as in Roussier or Chi

nese as in Amiot would have it, into its various extant fragments and shards is, as
it were, a transposition of the story of Babel onto the outline of musical history.
But the sources of Amiot’s Mémoire were not exclusively, or even primar
ily, European. His discussion is also buttressed by extensive reading in Chinese
sources and by the assistance of (alas unnamed) Chinese interlocutors. About his

written sources, Amiot provides considerable information. Immediately follow
ing the Discours préliminaire, he gives a list of the Chinese books he consulted in
preparing his Mémoire (1779: 21–25). And slightly further on, he provides some
additional bibliographic guidance:
It is from these sources, as well as the classic books and the memoirs that served for
the composition of the history of the first three dynasties, that the illustrious prince
Zhū Zǎiyù (朱載堉), of the imperial Ming family, aided by the most capable literati
of his time, drew the true system of ancient Chinese music, which he developed in
a work on the lǜ. It is from these same sources that the celebrated Lǐ Guāngdì drew
the light that illuminated him in the composition of the work that was published
during the reign of Kangxi on the same subject. And it is from the writings of these
two learned authors that I have myself taken a part of the materials from which I
composed this memoir. I have not checked their citations, because I would have to
consult books that are not found in the Imperial Library. But one can count on the
faithfulness and exactitude of these two authors.
C’est dans ces sources, ainsi que dans les Livres classiques & dans les Mémoires qui
ont servi pour la composition de l’histoire des trois premieres dynasties, que l’illus
tre Prince Tsai-yu, de la famille Impériale des Ming, aidé des plus habiles Lettrés de
son tems, puisa le vrai systême de l’ancienne Musique Chinois, qu’il a développé
dans un ouvrage sur les lu. C’est de ces mêmes sources que le célebre Ly-koang-ty
a tiré les lumieres qui l’ont eclairé dans la composition de l’ouvrage qui fut pub
lié, sous le regne de Kang-hi, sur le même sujet; & c’est dans les écrits de ces deux
savans Auteurs que j’ai pris moi-même une partie des matériaux dont j’ai composé ce
Mémoire. Je n’ai pas vérifié leurs citations, parce qu’il m’eût fallu recourir à des Livres
qui ne se trouvent guere dans le Bibliotheque Impériale; mais on peut s’en rapporter
à la fidélité & à l’exactitude de ces deux Auteurs. (Amiot 1779: 33)
So, it turns out that to understand the particular contours that the later eigh
teenth-century French reception of Rameau’s writings assumed, one should look
not just to earlier French thoroughbass writers such as Delaire and d’Anglebert, or
to speculative theorists and acousticians like Mersenne and Sauveur26—or, more
generally, to the broader tradition from which Rameau’s writings stem including,
especially, the influence on him of Zarlino’s Istitutioni harmoniche. One should
also want to know something about Chinese music theory, and about Zhū Zǎiyù
and Lǐ Guāngdì in particular. For that is the fount from which Amiot formed his
substantive portrait of early Chinese musical systems in which, thanks to Rous
sier’s prompting and his own French cultural inheritance, he could think he saw
26 The best general survey of the French background to Rameau’s thought can be found in Schneider 1972.
the image of Rameau. And Amiot’s curious amalgam became in turn the fount
for a century-long obsession with the triple progression in nineteenth-century
French music theorizing. So again, something crucial goes missing if one tries to
tell the story from the European materials alone.
More concretely: the garbled, funhouse-mirror version of the the twelve lǜ
that Rameau gives in the “Nouvelles réflexions” is clearly based on Amiot’s man

uscript translation of the Gǔyuè jīngzhuàn, which Rameau says that he read in
1754. Amiot’s French rendering has, as noted, gone missing. But the text is widely
available in Chinese. A reader with the requisite inguistic abilities could hold
Rameau’s garbled version up against the original and thus gain some purchase
on what has happened. Alas, here once again, my case study must end just as it
gets most interesting: for I am not (yet) that reader. A new generation of schol
arship, however, is beginning to make Chinese music theory more accessible to
readers of European languages.27 A particular site of interest has been the vari
ous music-theoretical exchanges that unfolded at the early Qing court, against
the general backdrop of scientific exchange between the Chinese, Islamicate,
and European worlds in Beijing during that period.28 These exchanges included
not only Amiot’s translations and paraphrases into French, but also similar ren
derings into Chinese of materials from Kircher’s Musurgia universalis and other
European sources (Chow 2017). Among the more curious of these episodes is
the long posterity that Rousseau’s proposal for a new system of musical nota
tion enjoyed—as 简谱 (jiǎn pǔ) notation—in nineteenth- through twenty-first-
century China (Na 2018). Clearly, allthis material is of enormous intrinsic inter
est. My immediate purpose in mentioning it here, though, is to point out that
a full accounting for the sources that Rameau employed in writing the Code de
musique—something that even the most gallocentric reading of Rameau would
acknowledge as a desideratum—turns out to require a reading knowledge of clas
sical Chinese.
Riemann and Helmholtz

Outside the specialist literature, Hermann von Helmholtz is not infrequently
assumed to have pursued a “reductionist” agenda concerned with relating music-
theoretical constructs back to their alleged bases in physical and physiological
acoustics. On the face of it, the assumption is certainly reasonable enough: Helm
holtz’s Lehre von der Tonempfindungen (1854) effectively laid the foundation for
modern acoustics. Among other things, it rationalized, clarified, and explained
the phenomenon of “difference tones” noted, but handled confusedly, by earlier
writers such as Pierre Estève, Giuseppe Tartini, and Francesco Antonio Vallotti.29
27 See, in particular, Hu 2019; Jia 2012; Jiang 2021; Tse 2020; and Woo 2017. I have benefited also from conversations with
Sheryl Chow and Lars Christensen.
28 For an overview, see Jami 2012.
29 On these earlier writers see Barbieri 2020; and Charrak 1997.
In the psycho-acoustic fact of “beats,” moreover—what subsequent writers call

“roughness”—Helmholtz claimed to find the explanation for the music-theoret
ical category of dissonance. And so a casual observer can be forgiven for suppos
ing that this single case would generalize.
Helmholtz’s actual position, though, is more subtle and more interesting. It
is stated explicitly in the transition to his book’s third part:

Up to this point our investigation has been purely physic al. We have analyzed the
sensations of hearing, and investigated the physical and physiological causes for
the phenomena discovered—partial tones, combinational tones, and beats. In the
whole of this research we have dealt solely with natur al phenomena, which present
themselves mechanically, without any choice, to allliving beings whose ears are con
structed on the same anatomical plan as our own . . . .
But in this third part of our inquiry into the theory of music we have to furnish
a satisfactory foundation for the elementary rules of musical composition, and here
we tread on new ground, which is no longer subject to physical laws alone.
Bis hierher ist unsere Untersuchung rein naturwissenschaftlicher Art gewesen. Wir
haben die Gehörempfindungen analysirt, wir haben die physikalischen und physi
ologischen Gründe der gefundenen Erscheinungen, der Obertöne, Combination
stöne, Schwebungen aufgesucht. In diesem ganzen Gebiete hatten wir es nur mit
Naturerscheinungen zu thun, die rein mechanisch und ohne Willkür bei allen leb
enden Wesen ebenso eintreten müssen, deren Ohr nach einem ähnlichen anato
mischen Plane construirt ist, wie das unsere . . . .
Indem wir uns in dieser dritten Abtheilung unserer Untersuchung hauptsäch
lich der Musik zuwenden, und zur Begründung der elementaren Regeln der musika
lischen Composition übergehen wollen, betreten wir einen andern Boden, der nicht
mehr rein naturwissenschaftlich ist, wenn auch die von uns gewonnene Einsicht in
das Wesen des Hörens hier noch mannigfache Anwendung finden wird. (Helmholtz
1877: 385–86; 1954: 234)
Helmholtz’s actual agenda, then, is anything but the reductionist program for
which it has sometimes been mistaken.30 The physical and physiological phe
nomena described in such painstaking detail in his treatise’s first two parts do
not, he emphatically states, suffice to explain such basic music-theoretical con
structs as scale-systems and harmonic progressions. Helmholtz is compelled to
this recognition—and this is the point I wish to underscore here—by his aware
ness of the historical and cultural variability of musical systems; of, as he puts it,
“historical and national differences of [musical] taste” (historische und nationale
Geschmacksverschiedenheiten). (Helmholtz 1877: 386; 1954: 234)
The boundary between consonances and dissonances has been frequently changed.
Similarly Scales, Modes, and their Modulations have undergone multifarious alter
nations . . . .
Hence it follows—and the proposition is not even now sufficiently present
to the minds of our musical theoreticians and historians—that the system of Scales,
30 E.g., by Parncutt 1989.

Modes, and Harmonic Tissues does not rest solely upon inalterable natural laws, but is
also, at least partly, the result of esthetical principles, which have already changed, and will
still further change, with the progressive development of humanity.31
Ebenso sind die Tonleitern, Tonarten und deren Modulationen mannigfachem
Wechsel unterworfen gewesen, nicht bloss bei ungebildeten und rohen Völkern,

sondern selbst in denjenigen Perioden der Weltgeschichte und bei denjenigen
Nationen, wo die Höchsten Blüthen menschlicher Bildung zum Aufbruch kamen.
Daraus folgt der Satz, der unseren musikalischen Theoretikern und Historik
ern noch immer nicht genügend gegenwärtig ist, dass das System der Tonleitern, der
Tonarten und deren Harmoniegewebe nicht bloss auf unveränderlichen Naturgesetzen
beruht, sondern dass es zum Theil auch die Consequenz ästhetischer Principien ist, die
mit fortschreitender Entwickelung der Menschheit einem Wechsel unterworfen gewesen
sind und ferner noch sein werden. (Helmholtz 1877: 386; 1954: 234–35)
For this reason, particular musical systems do not follow automatically and
down to their very last details from principles of acoustics—whether physical
acoustics, physiological acoustics, or some combination of the two—as, for
example, Rameau had erroneously assumed. Rather, detailed explanations of
the particular forms assumed by particular musics must reach for historic al
and cultural grounds:32 “It does not rest with natural science to character
ize the chief problem worked out by each school of art, and the elementary
principle of its style. This must be gathered from the results of historical and
esthetical inquiry” (Die Charakterisirung freilich der Hauptaufgabe, welche
jede Kunstschule verfolgt, und des Grundprincips ihres Kunststils kann
nicht Aufgabe der Naturwissenschaft sein, sondern diese muss ihr aus den
Resultaten der historischen und ästhetischen Forschungen gegeben werden)
(Helmholtz 1877: 387; 1954: 235). To explain how he sees these “aesthetic
principles” interacting with the physical and physiological acoustics outlined
in parts one and two of his treatise, Helmholtz has recourse to an analogy:
“Our diatonic major scale should no more be regarded as a natural product
than the Gothic pointed-arch” (Ebenso wenig, wie den gothischen Spitzbo
gen, müssen wir unsere Durtonleiter als Naturproduct betrachten, wenig
stens nicht in anderem Sinne, als dass beide die nothwendige und durch die
Natur der Sache bedingte Folge des gewählten Stilprincips sind) (Helmholtz
1877: 389; 1954: 236). The gothic arch depends on principles of statics for
its construction—not every imaginable arch form will stand up. But at the
same time, other arch forms are possible; as are architectural styles that do
not involve arches. One cannot, therefore, look to physics alone in explaining
the characteristics and uses of Gothic arches. The natural world places con
straints on architecture, but within these constraints, architecture develops in
31 The italic ized passage in the translation is in Sperdruck in the original.
32 As Carl Dahlhaus (1970: 49) has emphasized, Helmholtz’ relat ivism is stated even more emphatically in the book’s first
edition. The qualifications bloss (“solely”) and zum Theil auch (“at least partly”) were originally missing from the passage just
quoted.
one way or another, at particular times and places, for reasons of a different
order, and that demand a different register of explanation. So too in the case
of music:
When we proceed to explain its construction and display its consistency we must
not forget that our modern system was not developed from a natur al necessity, but

from a freely chosen principle of style; that besides it, and before it, other tonal sys
tems have been developed from other principles, and that in each such system the
highest pitch of artistic beauty has been reached, by the successful solution of more
limited problems.
This reference to the history of music was necessitated by our inability in
this case to appeal to observation and experiment for establishing our explanations,
because, educated in the modern system of music, we cannot thoroughly throw our
selves back into the condition of our ancestors, who knew nothing about what we
have been familiar with from childhood, and who had to find it allout for them
selves. The only observations and experiments, therefore, to which we can appeal,
are those which human beings themselves have undertaken in the development of
music.
In wissenschaftlicher Beziehung dagegen, wenn wir daran gehen seinen Bau zu
erklären und die Consequenz desselben aufzudecken, dürfen wir nicht vergessen,
dass das moderne System nicht aus einer Naturnothwendigkeit entwickelt ist, son
dern aus einem frei gewählten Stilprincip, dass neben ihm und vor ihm andere Ton
systeme aus anderen Principien entwickelt worden sind, in deren jedem gewisse
beschränktere Aufgaben der Kunst so gelöst worden sind, dass der höchste Grad
künstlerischer Schönheit erreicht wurde.
Die Beziehung auf die Geschichte der Musik wird in der vorliegenden Abthei
lung unseres Werkes auch deshalb nöthig, weil wir hier Beobachtung und Experi
ment zur Feststellung der von uns aufgestellten Erklärungen meist nicht anwenden
können, denn wir können uns, erzogen in der modernen Musik, nicht vollständig
zurückversetzen in den Zustand unserer Vorfahren, die das Alles nicht kannten, was
uns von Jugend auf geläufig ist, und es erst zu suchen hatten. Die einzigen Beobach
tungen und Versuche also, auf die wir uns berufen können, sind diejenigen, welche
die Menschheit in ihrem Entwickelungsgange über musikalische Dinge angestellt
hat. Wenn unsere Theorie des modernen Tonsystems richtig ist, muss dieselbe auch
die Erklärung für die früheren unvollkommeneren Stadien der Entwickelung abge
ben können. (Helmholtz 1877: 410; 1954: 249)
In pursuit of this point, Helmholtz continues, in chapter 14 of part 3, to an
elaborate comparative study of world scale-systems drawn from a survey that
encompasses most of the secondary literature available to him in European
languages—and including, not least, a survey of Arabic and Persian scale sys
tems that draws heavily on Kiesewetter’s Die Musik der Araber (Helmholtz 1877:
456; 1954: 280).33 (Incidentally, Zhū Zǎiyù also makes a brief cameo some pages
earlier, in the discussion of Chinese scales; Helmholtz 1877: 427; 1954: 258.)
I need not follow Helmholtz further into the details of his comparisons just now:
33 On Kiesewetter, see Bohlman 1987, in particular.

the point is that his treatise combines a superlatively lucid and uniquely informed
inquiry into the physical properties of sound and the physiology of human
hearing with a healthy appreciation of the impressive diversity and cultural spec
ificity of human musical practices.34
As Trevor Pearce (2008) has recently emphasized, Helmholtz’s Lehre von
der Tonempfindungen provided the indispensable context for the early elabora

tion of Hugo Riemann’s musical thought. In essence, Riemann’s early intellec
tual project consisted in substituting, for Helmholtz’s talk of Tonempfindungen
(“sensations of tone”), his own notion of Tonvorstellungen (“representations
of tone”). In so doing, Riemann aimed to transfer the disciplinary register of
music theory from physiology to psychology—if you will, from the ear to the
mind—allwhile remaining within the broadly neo-Kantian orbit of Helmholtz’s
epistemology.35 Riemann’s “musical logic” thus undertakes to offer an account
of musical hearing as mediated by categories of mind. The “logic” in question is
a psychologizing one, in so far as Riemann claims to lay bare what actually goes
on in listeners’ minds as they attentively follow the real-time unfolding of some
musical utterance.36
Now, that basic aim gets curiously entangled, in Riemann’s mind, with a
range of dubious acoustical claims regarding undertones and the like, as almost
every commentator on his writings has emphasized.37 The point I wish to retain
here, though, is that however its substantive postulates are supposed to be justi
fied, Riemann’s theory basically proposes to elucidate the mental “sieve” or “grid”
through which listeners allegedly process tonal relations in real time. A listener
who tracks a musical phrase comprehendingly is, for Riemann, attending to the
“meanings” (Bedeutungen) of the constituent notes or harmonies. And these
tonal meanings, again for Riemann, just are tonal “functions” (Funktionen).38 The
operative grid is therefore, as the subtitle of Harmony Simplified has it, Riemann’s
own “Lehre von der tonalen Funktionen der Akkorde” (theory of the tonal func
tions of chords). What precisely that theory consists in—whether the system
of Funktionszeichen first advanced in “Die Neugestaltung der Harmonielehre”
(1891)39 and then subsequently elaborated in the Vereinfachte Harmonielehre,
34 Helmholtz’s Lehre has, in recent years, been the subject of an impressive set of multidisciplinary studies, many of them
conducted by scholars affiliated in one way or another with the Max Planck Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Berlin.
See in particular Kursell 2018; Hui 2012; Steege 2012; Jackson 2006; and Hui, Kursell, and Jackson 2013. For a comprehensive
biography of Helmholtz, including excellent coverage of the Lehre, see Cahan 2018.
35 On this point, see esp. Kim 2003.
36 A modern American music theorist would thus likely say “syntax” where Riemann says “logic.” But with that adjustment
the project is in some ways not so distant from that of Lerdahl and Jackendoff 1983.
37 See, e.g., Rehding 2003, Harrison 1994, and Wason and Marvin 1992.
38 A significant open problem in the interpretation of Riemann’s thought, to which a significant secondary literature has
addressed itself, is why he chooses to call these meanings “functions.” See Hyer 2011; Lewin 2011: 175–77; Dahlhaus 1966 and
1975; and Kirsch 1928.
39 I thank Karel Lill for bringing this source to my attention.
or the so-called Schritt–Wechsel system of the Skizze einer neuen Methode der
Harmonielehre (1880),40 the cadence model (Kadenzlehre) of the early “Musi
kalische Logik” (1872), or the Tonnetz;41 or whether these are all, somehow, in
Riemann’s mind aspects of one and the same thing—that is an open problem in
Riemann scholarship. What is emphatically clear, however, is that whatever the
precise substance of Riemann’s theory of tonal functions is, that theory is meant

to describe a set of human cognitive routines that are supposed to be universally
operative. And in the preface to the Vereinfachte Harmonielehre, Riemann finds
evidence of their operation in the putative universality of the diatonic scale: “As
the foundation of rational motion in melody common to allages and allraces, the
history of music suggests the diatonic scale, the simple step succession of the natural
notes of our present system” (Als Grundlage der logisch-vernünftigen Bewegung
der Melodie giebt uns die Musik-Geschichte als allen Zeitaltern und Völkern
gemeinsam die diatonische Tonleiter an die Hand, die schlichte Stufenfolge der
Stammtöne unseres gegenwärtigen Tonsystems) (Riemann n.d., 1).
Of course, this claim is not just false but spectacularly false, and Riemann
ought to have known it from his reading of Helmholtz. It might still be tempting,
these facts notwithstanding, to take an indulgent attitude—to regard Riemann’s
claim as merely a theoretically naive and empirically underinformed generaliza
tion of his own cultural prejudices. (This might conceivably be an appropriate
attitude to take toward Rameau, to whom very little extra-European evidence
was readily available; the enduring legacy of Rousseau’s musical thought, though,
is to have diagnosed this false universalization, even on the basis of that slender
evidence.42) A wave of more recent work on Riemann’s thought, however, has
emphasized its international entanglements and positioned it against the emer
gence of serious musical ethnography in the late nineteenth century.43 And when
seen against this backdrop, something much more nefarious emerges.
Riemann, it turns out, was not only not unaware of the contemporaneous
progress of musical ethnography, notably in the work of figures associated with
the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv such as Carl Stumpf and Erich von Horn
bostel; he actively positioned his theorizing against it. It takes some time for
this backdrop to emerge unequivoc ally in Riemann’s writings. The compara
tively early Geschichte der Notenschrift (1878: 77–85), for instance, contains a
jaw-dropping passage in which Riemann claims to find his own downward gen
eration of the minor triad prefigured in Persian sources44—a detail that seems
40 See Klumpenhouwer 1994. This is an aspect of Riemann’s theorizing that American neo-Riemannian theory has particu
larly seized on. See, esp., Crans, Fiore, and Satyendra 2009.
41 Another piece of Riemann’s theorizing that has enjoyed an outsized reception in neo-Riemannian circles. See, among
others, Cohn 2012: 104; and see also Lerdahl 2001: 65.
42 See esp. Blum 1985; and Wokler 1974; as well as the reception of Wokler’s interpretation in Scott 1998.
43 See Utz 2015; Walden 2019; and Rehding 2008.
44 Riemann’s source here is Raphael Georg Kiesewetter’s Die Musik der Araber (see Kiesewetter 1842: 22–37). I again thank
Karel Lill for drawing my attention to this passage. See also Steege’s translation on Riemann 1882: 89–90n25.
mostly to confirm once more (and as if more such confirmation were needed)
Riemann’s astonishing ability to find his own ideas reflected back at him in the
writings of others, whatever those writings might seem on the face of it to be
saying.45 In the preface to his Folkloristische Tonalitätsstudien, however, Riemann
(1916: v) addresses the challenge of musical ethnography directly: “In recent
decades,” he remarks, “a ‘comparative musicology’ has emerged on the model

of ‘comparative linguistics’” (Seit ein paar Jahrzehnten [ist] eine ‘vergleichende
Musikforschung’ nach Art der ‘vergleichenden Sprachforschung’ aufgekom
men).46 And he singles out both the “Phonogramm-Archive der tonpsychol
ogischen Institut” and the “Sammlung exotischer Musikinstrumente in den
Museen für Völkerkunde” as sites for this kind of research.
What was sought was evidence of a divergent organization of the organs of hear
ing among peoples standing at lower levels of musical culture, it was believed that
such evidence had been found in the tuning of particul ar intervals that contradicted
our practice (intervals of 3/4 or 5/4 of a tone, “neutral” thirds), which appeared to
be found both in phonograms and on exotic instruments. The vexing result of this
research was, in the first instance, to shake those foundations of music theory that
had slowly emerged over thousands of years.
Was man suchte, waren Anhaltspunkte für eine abweichende Organisation des
Hörapparates bei Völkern, die auf niederer Stufe der Musikkultur stehen, und man
glaubte solche in den unseren Gewohnheiten widersprechenden Intonationen
einzelner Intervalle zu finden (Intervalle von 3/4- oder 5/4-Ganzton, “neutrale”
Terzen), wie solche sowohl in Phonogrammen als auch auf exotischen Musikinstru
menten sich zu finden schienen. Das ärgerliche Ergebnis dieser Forschungen der
vergleichenden Musikwissenschaft war zunächst eine Erschütterung der im Laufe
von Jahrtausenden langsam gewordenen Fundamente der Musiktheorie. (v–vi)
Even Helmholtz, Riemann continues, “wavered in his conviction that the foun
dations of musical hearing were in relationships given by nature” and allowed
himself to ask if musical systems were perhaps not “absolutely necessary, but
were at least partly the result of arbitrary constructions and conventions” (Selbst
Hellseher wie Helmholtz wurden wankend in ihrer Überzeugung, daß die
Grundlagen des Musikhörens natürlich gegebene Verhältnisse sind, und ließen
durchblicken, daß doch vielleicht Musiksysteme nicht naturnotwendig, son
dern wenigstens teilweise Ergebnis willkürlicher Konstruktion und Konvention
sind) (vi).
Yet Riemann’s reaction, rather than respecting the counterexample, is to
double down on his own convictions. He reiterates that musical hearing operates
with fixed conceptual categories—that it judges musical events according to the
categories (Kant) that govern “our” understanding and according to which “our”
perceptions of individual tones are ordered (ein Beurteilen der musikalischen
45 This aspect of Riemann is notorious. See Dahlhaus 1957 and Burnham 1992.
46 On this late text, see the discussion in Gelbart and Rehding 2011.
Geschehnisse nach unser Vorstellen beherrschenden Kategorien, in welche die

Einzeltonwahrnehmungen sich einordenen) (vi)—and that, for this reason, his
own doctrine of Tonvorstellungen must replace Helmholtz’s interest in Tonemp-
findungen. In short, he budges scarcely an inch from the position laid out in his
doctoral dissertation some fifty years earlier (Riemann 1874). The threat that
phonographic recordings of extra-Germanic musics posed to the whole enter

prise is precisely that, in registering Tonempfindungen in the absence of Tonvor-
stellungen, they short-circuit the whole system.47 But rather than confront the
challenge honestly, Riemann simply waves it away. And this is to regress a long
way indeed from Rousseau’s recognition, a century and a half earlier, that other
musics might contain “inflections that we call out of tune because they do not
enter into our musical system and we cannot write them down” (inflexions que
nous nommons fausses parce qu’elles n’entrent pas dans nôtre sistême et que
nous ne pouvons le noter) (Rousseau [1781] 1995: 423).
Thus, rather than mere naivety, what Riemann’s later thought evinces,
when seen in this light, is a self-consciously and explicitly reactionary attempt
to shore up the false universalization of his own musical culture’s peculiarities
not just against the threat posed by the new music (Rehding 2003), but also the
encroaching awareness of its prov inciality. Particularly galling is the clear bad
faith of much of Riemann’s argumentation, its fundamental dishonesty about its
own motivations. Riemann is a figure of fundamental importance in the gene
alogy of American music theory: when American music theorists speak, as we
have tended readily and un-self-consciously to do, about “harmonic function”
or “harmonic logic,” we are employing (whether consciously or not) terms,
metaphors, and analogies that Riemann bequeathed to us. Undoubtedly, then,
Riemann’s writings belong on a history of music theory syllabus. But I would
suggest that consideration of these legacies might be helpfully contextualized
by attending also to the cultural politics of his theorizing and to the contem
poraneous work on musical ethnography that Riemann sought to marginalize
and exclude.
Toward a global history

My hope is that these three vignettes will have sufficed at least to suggest that an
exclusively “Western” history of music theory, one that hermetically seals off from
its narrative any “extra-European” influences, and in so doing denies the actual
cultural and geographic al hybridity of its object, throws up questions that it finds
itself incapable of answering. The very books that have formed the core canon of
the history of music theory as it has traditionally been practiced, I am arguing,
pose questions that cannot be answered on the basis of those books alone. This
is what I meant, in my introduction, when I characterized my vignettes as offer
ing an immanent critique of the received disciplinary constellation: I have wanted
47 I owe this formulation to Alexander Rehding’s (n.d.) unpublished paper “Riemann am Klavier, Grieg am Grammphon.”
to emphasize how the artificial boundaries drawn by that inherited constellation

collapse as it were of their own accord. Of course, the examples should be mul
tiplied. But I suspect, on this count, that once we start looking, they will readily
proliferate.48 So what I want to do now is to shift focus and begin probing the
gap between even the expanded linguistic, geographic, and cultural compass to
which my case studies have gestured and the kind of “global” perspective that I

think it might ultimately be fitting for the history of music theory to adopt.
This eventual history, as I suggested near the beginning of this article, will
need to do much more than simply make room for the kinds of examples that
I have invoked. The issue is not merely one of opening the disciplinary bor
ders so as to allow materials from outside of western (and southern) Europe
to be integrated into the subfield’s prevailing canons. Instead, those materials
and their accompanying voices might be allowed fundamentally to challenge
the discipline’s received conception of its methods, interests, and concerns. The
received canon, in other words, could be both decentered and provincialized.49
And traditions that have been relegated to the periphery need to be allowed to
speak on their own terms. How to do this, though, poses a range of practical,
conceptual—and ultimately moral and political—problems.
Just how broad, though, do I think that the purview of an eventual global
history of music theory might be? There is an impulse, no doubt, to suppose that
such a history would be confined to “literate” musical cultures. The history of
music theory, as I indicated in my introduction, has long been practiced as a kind
of philology. And philology has, as its sine qua non, the requirement that there
be texts. My examples, indeed, have allbeen taken from the classical traditions
of highly literate cultures. Yet there is good reason to check this impulse never
theless: Some of the most exciting work on historical music theory in Europe
in the last ten to twenty years has arisen precisely by avoiding the assumption
that the study of historic al theory must focus on the written word and by find
ing ways to access orally transmitted conceptualizations of music.50 I am thinking
48 A further example that has more recently come to my attention, and that I hope to explore further in a subsequent publi
cation is this: in a striking moment in his “Système general des intervalles des sons” (1701), a work that is arguably the found-
ing document of modern physical acoustics, Joseph Sauveur ([1701?]/1705: 328–30) briefly describes “Le système des orientaux
qui est suivie par les Turcs & par les Persans.” Sauveur’s source, which is identified only as “l’Auteur Arabe du Livre Edouar” is
not the manuscript now held in the Bibliothèque nationale as ms. Arabe 2480—a sixteenth(?)-century didactic poem con-
cerned with maqāmāt by Shams al-dīn al-Ṣayḍāwī al-Dhahabī—and that both was the object of such intense interest to Marin
Mersenne and subsequently featured in the Encyclopédie’s plates. See, for this story, Shiloah and Berthier 1985. Rather, the
reference is to Ṣafī al-Dīn ‘Abd al-Mu’min’s Kitāb al-Adwār (Book of Cycles) a book that Owen Wright (1995: 455) calls “the most
influential of allArabic treatises,” and which Sauveur ([1701?]/1705: 328) claims to have read in a translation by François Petit
de la Croix (1653–1713). Shiloah’s catalogue (1979: 309–12) signals a manuscript of the Arabic text preserved in Paris (Biblio-
thèque nationale, ms. Arabe, 2864, fols. 6–23), but I have thus far not managed to find any material trace of the purported
French translation. The point, though, in the present context, is that Arabic source material appears in the founding docu
ment of French musical acoustics.
49 This need is of course not unique to the history-of-music-theory curriculum, or indeed to music departments. For dis
cussion of parallel concerns across music theory and historical musicology, see Levitz 2017; Stokes 2018; Bloechl 2020; Ewell
2020; and Walker 2020.
50 For a general discussion, see Christensen 2011.
here of work on the Neapolit an partimento tradition, on the one hand, and on
techniques of improvised counterpoint in the Renaissance, on the other.51 Both
research programs have shown us how, if imaginatively approached, nondiscur
sive music-theoretical sources testif ying to orally transmitted music-theoretical
traditions can be allowed to speak again.52 So music theory does not happen only
in theory books, even in the periods and locales that a Europe-centered history

of music theory has most closely studied.
There is clearly also a demotic potential to this recognition—a potential
to shift the subdiscipline’s focus away from elite intellectuals, or would-be intel
lectuals such as Riemann or Rameau, to the work-a-day routines of musical ped
agogy in institutions like the Neapolitan conservatories and Venitian ospedale,
in something like the manner of “history from below” (histoire vue d’en bas).53
There is also an obvious potential here for geographical and cultural broadening,
since the production of a library’s worth of specialized technical writings will not
be a condition of admission. Orally transmitted polyphonic practices, like the
Polynesian ones studied by Hugo Zemp (1979) or the implicit melodies of Java
nese music on which Marc Perlman (2004) comments, will clearly fall within the
remit of such a reconceived study: “Musical theory,” as Zemp puts it, “is not the
privilege of the ‘art music’ of the so-called ‘high civilizations’ of Europe and Asia”
(Zemp 1979: 34).
Just how broad, then, might the purview of a global history of music the
ory be? In his 1987 travelogue The Songlines, Bruce Chatwin recounts a sojourn
in the Australian outback spent charting the network of pathways traversing that
landscape and from which his book’s title is taken. He introduces the theme in
the opening chapter, in the course of an incisive pen-portrait of an interlocutor
whom he chooses to call Arkady Volchok:
It was during his time as a school-teacher that Arkady learned of the labyrinth of
invisible pathways which meander allover Australia and are known to Europeans
as “Dreaming-tracks” or “Songlines”; to the Aboriginals as the “Footprints of the
Ancestors” or the “Way of the Law.”
Aboriginal Creation myths tell of the legendary totemic beings who had wan
dered over the continent in the Dreamtime, singing out the name of everything that
51 See, as a starting point, Sanguinetti 2012 and Cumming 2013. On the historical background to such work, itself a very
interesting subject, see Aerts 2007 and Jans 2008.
52 I have in mind here particularly the kinds of partimento manuscripts—extensive sets of musical examples with little or
no explanatory commentary—that Gjerdingen, Sanguinetti, and others have studied. These sources are nondiscursive in the
sense that they do not convey their music-theoretical content through words. Rather, the Neapolitan maestri preferred to
transmit their conceptualizations viva voce. It does not follow from this state of affairs, however, that these conceptualiza
tions were therefore necessarily tacit. For all we know, musicians like Durante and Fenaroli possessed perfectly explicit and
well articulated theoretical conceptions that they simply preferred not to write down. It is, in my view, a mistake into which
the secondary literature has sometimes fallen to assume that the tradition was nondiscursive simply because its manuscript
remnants mostly are.
53 See in particular Gjerdingen 2020. On the bias of music-theoretical historiography toward elite discourses, see Holtmeier
2012. For classic examples of “history from below” (the phrase seems first to have been used by Lucien Febvre) in intellectual
history, see Ginzburg 1976.
crossed their path—birds, animals, plants, rocks, waterholes—and so singing the

world into existence.
Arkady was so struck by the beauty of this conception that he began to take
notes of everything he saw or heard, not for publication, but to satisfy his own curi
osity. At first, the Walbiri Elders mistrusted him, and their answers to his questions
were evasive. With time, once he had won their confidence, they invited him to

witness their most secret ceremonies and encouraged him to learn their songs.54
(Chatwin 1988: 2)
So are the “songlines” music theory? Does their study have a place in an expanded
panorama of the history of music theory? I think the best provisional answer is,
perhaps. If the musical inflected cosmogony of Plato’s Timaeus is music theory—
and given its influence on the history of the discipline (Hicks 2017), it surely
is—then should not this analogous cosmogony be included as well?
At this point, ethnomusicologists might reasonably feel compelled to ask,
Isn’t allthis what ethnomusicology has been doing allalong? Yes and no. Cer
tainly, most of the relevant existing work on extra-European music published in
European languages will have been done by scholars whose business cards say
“ethnomusicologist.” A prospective global history of music theory will need to be
conversant with this considerable wealth of scholarship. But I do think that there
may be a significant difference in emphasis. So, having cast the history of music
theory’s scope as widely as possible just above, I now want to narrow its remit
somewhat. For “music theory,” I think, should not be taken as synonymous with
“music” or “musical thought” in toto. Within the confines of the traditional curric
ulum, I want to be able to say, for instance, that volume 2 of Barker’s (1984–89)
Greek Musical Writings is music theory; whereas volume 1 is not. Passages in that
volume, such as the discussion of which harmoniai are suitable for the education
of the guardians in book 3 of Plato’s Republic, or Aristotle’s discussion of music
in the Politics, strike me as being primarily contributions to other discourses on
politics or pedagogy that nonetheless marshal technical music-theoretical results
toward these other aims. Texts in volume 2, on the other hand, like Aristoxenos’s
Elementa harmonica, or books 1–2 of Ptolemy’s Harmonics, are clearly music the
ory. That this boundary is both fuzzy and permeable, though, will be clear from
the fact that the Timaeus passage—which I resoundingly declared to be music
theory just above—appears in volume 1.
In sum, I think one does need some working definition—however pro
visional and subject to revision—of what counts as music theory. As a first
approximation, I might venture “technical discourse about musical materials” or
“attempts to conceptualize (musical) sound” as possible starting points—since
otherwise, it seems to me that without some attempt to delimit the object of its
inquiry, a potential global history of music theory risks trying to be about every
thing allat once. And the project’s scope is already dauntingly broad. Readers
54 For a recent response, see Nicholls 2019. Chatwin’s account draws in particular on Tonkinson 1978 and Strehlow 1971. For
a more recent study, see Bradley and Yanyuwa families 2010.
will have noticed that, with one exception, I have quoted al-Fārābī in either
Gerard of Cremona’s Latin or Rudolphe d’Erlanger’s French, and that I have
not quoted from Zhū Zǎiyù or Lǐ Guāngdì at all. This, as I have indicated, is a
function of my own linguistic (in)capacities. The list of languages an aspiring
student of historical music theory needs (at least approximately) to master was
already dauntingly long: Greek, Latin, Italian, French, and German. Expanding

that list to allthe languages that might be useful, as well as to allthe techniques
of scholarship that might be required, will quickly render it well beyond the
range of any one person.
To put the point another way, a global history of music theory will neces
sarily be a collective and a collaborative endeavor. Of course, this is already true
of the discipline as it stands. The first and last single-authored histories of music
theory produced in Europe were those of François-Joseph Fétis, Hugo Riemann,
and Matthew Shirlaw. These books are themselves now historical documents.
Their modern successors, The Cambridge History of Music Theory in English, and
the ongoing Geschichte der Musiktheorie in German, are of necessity collective
works—how much more so, then, for a publishing project that would claim in
principle to expand the subfield’s scope to allthe music theorizing that the world
has produced.
This necessary collectivity helps, I think, with the problem of defining
“music theory.” There are already subtle differences in evidence between, for
instance, Musiktheorie and “music theory”; or for that matter, even intralinguis
tically, between “music theory” in the United States and “music analysis” in
Britain—differences that have to do with variations of institutional setting and
alternate national and local practices and traditions. Formulating an umbrella
definition that encompasses not just these slight variations but also the much
larger ones that are likely to arise when taking in, say, 樂學 (yuè xué) and 律學
(lǜxué) as well as multiple other (equivalent?) terms in multiple other languages
will, I think, require additional flexibility, imaginativeness, and negotiation. The
process should be, dare I say it, dialectical—in the sense that successive con
ceptual approximations are to be held up against their intended objects so that
the inadequacies of any given formulation can emerge and be emended, in the
hope that they might converge, eventually, towards the asymptote of an adequate
definition.
The word dialectic comes, as is well known, from διαλέγοµαι, which simply
means “to discuss,” “to converse,” or just “to talk to one another.” And the project
must, in the interests of fairness and of adequate representation, range as widely
in authorship as it does in subject matter. But I nonetheless fear that utopian talk
of “dialogue” misses—or worse conceals—the fact that, in a world riven by spec
tacular inequalities, such conversation will not take place on an equal footing:
scholars with an American or European passport can (or could until recently and
will no doubt be a ble to again) simply get on a plane and go where they like;
the same is not true for a scholar from, say, Iran. Inequalities both of resources
and of access to resources, both within and across countries, further complicate
the naive picture of open dialogue between equals—as do inequalities of power.

These inequalities, many of which are the direct consequence of European (and
now American) colonialism and imperialism, are the unhappy backdrop against
which any well-meaning attempt to broaden and diversify the history of music
theory’s canons may find itself caught up short.
And there are direct cautionary precedents as well: a precondition of

Marc-André Villoteau’s discussion of Egyptian music in the Description de l’Égypte
(1809–29), was Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt. Villoteau was no idle tourist or
innocent traveler. Rather, he came to Egypt as part of Napoleon’s army, as one
of the 155 scholars attached to the expeditionary force to aid in surveying and
administering the conquered country.55 A prospective global history of music
theory clearly risks replaying this past, at least in spirit. That is, it risks being a
neo-imperialist venture run out of Chicago, Berkeley, Ann Arbor, and Frankfurt,
and it is at best a partial mitigation to insist, again, that the project should involve
contributions of scholars from across the globe, not as “native informants” but as
equal contributors. Of course, a global history of music theory needs to be global
also in its authorship. But this idealism will quickly run up against some hard geo-
politic al realities: for the richly endowed foundations and universities, with their
associated publishing arms, that could support such an endeavor are for the time
being located mostly in Europe, North America, and East Asia, and the largely
unexamined assumption (among my American colleagues at least) is probably
that the eventual work will be written in English.
How to mitigate, in so far as possible, the effects of these imbalances of
power will itself be a considerable problem for a global history of music theory.
For there is in fact another direct scholarly precedent to the project, and it is
an equally unhappy one. I am thinking of Fétis’s (1869–76) unfinished Histoire
générale de la musique,56 of which the author lived to complete only the first five
volumes. Fétis’s book is the obvious precursor to the project I have begun out
lining here: it is global in scope—its complete volumes cover music in Polyne
sia, Africa, the near East, China, and beyond—and it marshals every conceivable
kind of evidence (textual, archaeological, material, etc.) toward a comprehensive
study of the world’s tonal systems. It is also explicitly committed to the racial
theories of Joseph-Arthur de Gobineau. This is a heritage that a global history of
music theory will need to face head on and to find ways to repudiate not just in
words but in deeds. The project of a “global” history of music theory is an urgent
one. It is also one that needs to be planned and executed with considerable care.
55 Villoteau was a rather unlikely choice. He had, admittedly, studied oriental languages briefly at the Sorbonne, but he was
then ordained a priest before the revolution, and afterward became a singer in the chorus of the Opéra. Of course, a great
number of the scientists whom Napoleon brought along were equally untested: even Joseph Fourier, who was a well estab-
lished figure prior to his departure for Egypt, published his Théorie analytique de la chaleur (1822) only after the expedition.
Most of those involved, however, were at the beginnings of their careers—“many of them,” as Charles Coulston Gillispie (1989:
474) puts it, “the equival ent of undergraduates.”
56 Fétis’s Histoire seems to me to answer, in a way that is surely unintentional but that is nonetheless uncomfortably close, to
the image of a global music history outlined in Tomlinson 2007.
Otherwise, it risks simply reinscribing—whatever its good intentions—precisely

those global and structural inequalities that it should hope, in its own small way,
and within its own small academic sphere, to begin to redress.
Works Cited

Aerts, Hans. 2007. “‘Modell’ und ‘Topos’ in der deutschsprachigen Musiktheorie seit Rie
mann.” Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie 4: 143–58.
Amiot, Jean-Joseph-Marie. 1772. Art militaire des chinois, ou Recueil d’anciens traités sur la
guerre, composés avant l’ere chrétiene, par différents généraux chinois. Paris: Didot l’aîné.
Amiot, Jean-Joseph-Marie. 1779. Mémoire sur la musique des chinois. Paris: Nyon.
Amiot, Jean-Joseph-Marie. 1789. Dictionnaire tartare-mantchou-français. 3 vols. Paris: Didot
l’aîné.
Anonymous. 1773. De la langue chinoise, et la nature de leur écriture symbolique, comparée avec
celle des anciens Égyptiens. Brussels: J. L. De Boubers.
Aristides Quintilianus. De musica. Edition of reference: R. P. Winnington-Ingram, ed. Aristidis
Quintiliani De musica libri tres. Leipzig: Teubner, 1963. Translated by Andrew Barker in
Greek Musical Writings: II Harmonic and Acoustic Theory, 399–535. Cambridge: Cam
bridge University Press, 1989.
Aristotle. Eudemian Ethics. Edition of reference: R. R. Walzer and J. M. Mingay, ed. Aristo-
telis ethica Eudemia. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991. Translated by Michael Woods
as Aristotle: Eudemian Ethics, Books I, II, and VIII. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1992.
Aristotle. Metaphysics. Edition of reference: W. D. Ross, ed. Aristotle’s Metaphysics. 2 vols.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924. Translated by W. D. Ross as Metaphysics. In The Com-
plete Works of Aristotle. 2 vols. Edited by Jonat han Barnes, 2:1552–728. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1984.
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Edition of reference: Ingram Baywater, ed. Aristotelis ethica
Nicomachea. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894. Translated by Terence Irwin as Aristotle:
Nicomachean Ethics. 2nd ed. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1999.
Aristotle. Posterior Analytics. Edition of reference: W. D. Ross, ed. Aristotelis analytica priora et
posteriora. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964. Translated by Jonat han Barnes as Aristotle’s
Posterior Analytics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.
Aristoxenos of Tarentum. Elementa harmonica. Edition of reference: Henry S. Macran, ed.
Aristoxenou Harmonika stoicheia. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902. Translated by
Andrew Barker in Greek Musical Writings: II Harmonic and Acoustic Theory, 119–89.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Barbieri, Patrizio. 2020. Quarrels on Harmonic Theories in the Venetian Enlightenment. Lucca:
Libreria Musicale Italiana.
Barker, Andrew, ed. and trans. 1984–89. The Greek Musical Writings. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cam
bridge University Press.
Barker, Andrew. 2007. The Science of Harmonics in Classical Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Bloechl, Olivia. 2020. Editorial. Eighteenth-Century Music 17: 173–76.
Blum, Stephen. 1985. “Rousseau’s Concept of systême musical and the Comparative Study of
Tonalities in Nineteenth-Century France.” Journal of the American Musicological Society
38: 349–61.
Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. De institutione musica. Edition of ref e r

e nce:
Gottfried Friedlein, ed. De institutione arithmetica libri duo; De institutione musica
libri quinque; accredit geometria quae fertur Boetii. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner. English
Translation by Calvin M. Bower as Fundamentals of Music. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1989.
Bohlman, Philipp. 1987. “The Europ ean Discovery of Music in the Islamic World and the

‘Non-Western’ in Nineteenth-Century Music History.” Journal of Musicology 5:
147–63.
Bradley, John, and Yanyuwa fami l ies. 2010. Singing Saltwater Country: Journey to the Songlines
of Carpentaria. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin.
Brix, Michel, and Yves Lenoir. 1995. “Une lettre inédite du père Amiot à l’abbé Roussier
(1781).” Revue des archéologues et historiens d’art de Louvain 28: 63–74.
Brix, Michel, and Yves Lenoir. 1997. “Le supplement au Mémoire sur la musique des Chinois du
père Amiot: Édition com mentée.” Revue des archéologues et historiens d’art de Louvain
30: 79–111.
Burnham, Scott. 1992. “Method and Motivation in Hugo Riemann’s History of Harmonic
Theory.” Music Theory Spectrum 14: 1–14.
Cahan, David. 2018. Helmholtz: A Life in Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Carter, Stewart. 2016. “The Editor from Hell: Information and Misinformation on Chinese
Music in Late Eighteenth-Century France.” In Music in Eighteenth-Century Culture,
edited by Mary Sue Morrow, 23–47. Ann Arbor: Steglein.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2007. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Differ-
ence. 2nd ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Charrak, André, ed. 1997. Pierre Estève: Nouvelle découverte du principe de l’harmonie, avec un
examen de ce que M. Rameau a publié sous le titre de Démonstration de ce principe 1752.
Fontenay: ENS édition.
Chatwin, Bruce. 1988. The Songlines. New York: Penguin.
Christensen, Thomas. 1993. Rameau and Musical Thought in the Enlightenment. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Christensen, Thomas, ed. 2002. The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory. Cambridge:
Christensen, Thomas. 2011. “Fragile Texts, Hidden Theory.” Musica humana 3: 177–208.
Christensen, Thomas. 2018. “Music Theory.” In the Cambridge Companion to Medieval Music.
2 vols. Edited by Mark Everist and Thomas Forest Kelly, 1:366–67. Cambridge: Cam
bridge University Press.
Christensen, Thomas. 2019. Stories of Tonality in the Age of François-Joseph Fétis. Chicago: Uni
versity of Chicago Press.
Chow, Sheryl Man-Ying. 2017. “Remaking Music Theory: Seventeenth-Century Speculative
Music in China.” Paper read at the Annual Meeting of the American Musicological
Society, Rochester, NY, November 9–12.
Cohn, Richard. 2012. Audacious Euphony: Chromatic Harmony and the Triad’s Second Nature.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Conrad, Sebastian. 2016. What Is Global History? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
Crans, Alissa S., Thomas M. Fiore, and Ramon Satyendra. 2009. “Musical Actions of Dihedral
Groups.” American Mathematical Monthly 116: 479–95.
Cumming, Julie E. 2013. “Renaissance Improvisation and Musicology.” Music Theory Online
19, no. 2. https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.13.19.2/mto.13.19.2.cumming.php.
Curtius, Ernst Robert. 1948. Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter. Berlin: A.
Francke AG. Translated by Willard R. Trask as European Literature and the Latin Middle
Ages. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013.
Dahlhaus, Carl. 1957. “War Zarlino Dualist?” Die Musikforschung 10: 286–90.
Dahlhaus, Carl. 1966. “Über den Begriff der tonalen Funktion.” In Beiträge zur Musiktheorie
des 19. Jahrhunderts, edited by Martin Vogel, 93–102. Regensburg: Gustav Bosse.

Dahlhaus, Carl. 1970. “Hermann von Helmholtz und der Wissenschaftscharakter der Musik
theorie.” In Über Musiktheorie: Referate der Arbeitstagung 1970 in Berlin, edited by
Frieder Zaminer, 49–58. Berlin: Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung Preussischer
Kulturbesitz.
Dahlhaus, Carl. 1975. “Terminologisches zum Begriff der harmonischen Funktion.” Die
Musikforschung 28: 197–202.
d’Erlanger, Rodolphe, trans. 1930. Grand traité de la musique (Kitāb al-mūsīqī al-kabīr), by Abū
Naṣr Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Fārābī. In La musique arabe. 5 vols. Paris: Libraire
orientaliste Paul Geuthner.
Diderot, Denis. 1975–. “Mémoire sur le fondement des systèmes de musique des anciens peu
ples grecs, chinois et égyptiens. Par M. l’abbé Roussier.” In Diderot: Œuvres complètes.
24 vols. to date. Edited by Jean Varloot, 19:35–43. Paris: Hermann.
Ewell, Philip A. 2020. “Music Theory and the White Racial Frame.” Music Theory Online 26,
no. 2. https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.20.26.2/mto.20.26.2.ewell.html.
Farmer, Henry George. 1932. “The Influence of Al-Farabi’s ‘Ihsa’ al-‘ulum (‘De scientiis’) on
the Writers on Music in Western Europe.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great
Britain and Ireland 3: 561–92.
Fétis, François-Joseph. 1869–76. Histoire générale de la musique depuis les temps les plus anciens
jusqu’à nos jours. 5 vols. Paris: Firmin Didot.
Fidora, Alexander. 2003. Die Wissenschaftstheorie des Dominicus Gundissalinus: Voraussetzun-
gen und Konsequenzen des zweiten Anfangs der aristotelischen Philosophie im 12. Jahrhun-
dert. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Gaffurius, Franchinus. 1492. Theorica musice. Milan: Guillermus Le Signerre, 1492.
Gelbart, Matt hew, and Alexander Rehding. 2011. “Riemann and Melodic Analysis: Studies
in Folk-Music Tonality.” In The Oxford Handbook of Neo-Riemannian Music Theories,
edited by Edward Gollin and Alexander Rehding, 140–64. New York: Oxford Univer
sity Press.
Gillispie, Charles Coulston. 1989. “Scientific Aspects of the French Egyptian Expedition
1798–1801.” Proceedings of the American Philological Society 133: 447–74.
Ginzburg, Carlo. 1976. Il formaggio e i vermi: Il cosmo di un mugnaio del ‘500. Turin: Einaudi.
English translat ion by John and Anne C. Tedeschi as The Cheese and the Worms: The
Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.
Gjerdingen, Robert O. 2020. Child Composers in the Old Conservatories: How Orphans became
Elite Musicians. New York: Oxford University Press.
Guido of Arezzo. Regulae rythmicae in antiphonarii sui prologum prolatae. Edition of reference:
Martin Gerbert, ed. Scriptores ecclesiastici de musica sacra potissimum. 3 vols. St. Blaise:
Typis San-Blasianis, 1784. Reprinted Hildesheim: Olms, 1963. 2:25–34.
Guignes, Joseph de. 1759. Mémoire dans lequel on prouve, que les Chinois sont une colonie égyp-
tienne, lû dans l’assemblée publique de l’Académie Royale des Inscriptions & Belles-Lettres.
Paris: Desaint & Saillant.
Gutas, Dimitri. 1983. “Paul the Persian on the Classification of the Parts of Aristotle’s Philoso
phy: A Milestone between Alexandria and Bagdad.” Der Islam 60: 231–67.
Harrison, Daniel. 1994. Harmonic Function in Chromatic Music: A Renewed Dualist Theory and
an Account of Its Precedents. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Helmholtz, Hermann von. 1877. Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen, als psychologische Grund-
lage für die Theorie der Musik. 4th ed. Braunschweig: Friedrich Vieweg und Sohn. Trans
lated by Alexander J. Ellis as On the Sensations of Tone. Reprinted New York: Dover,
1954.

Hermans, Michel. 2005. “Joseph-Marie Amiot: Une figu re de la rencont re de ‘l’autre’ au temps
des Lumières.” In Les Danses rituelles chinois d’après Joseph-Marie Amiot: Aux sources
de l’ethnochorégraphie, edited by Yves Lenoir and Nicolas Standaert, 11–77. Brussels:
Éditions Lessius.
Hicks, Andrew. 2017. Composing the World: Harmony in the Medieval Platonic Cosmos. New
York: Oxford University Press.
Holtmeier, Ludwig. 2012. “Feindliche Übernahme: Gottfried Weber, Adolf Bernhard Marx
und die bürgerliche Harmonielehre des 19. Jahrhunderts.” Musik and Ästhetik 63:
5–25.
Hu, Zhuqing (Lester) S. 2019. “From Ut Re Mi to Fourteen-Tone Temperament: The Global
Acoustemologies of an Early Modern Chinese Tuning Reform.” PhD diss., University
of Chicago.
Hu, Zhuqing (Lester) S. 2021. “Chinese Ears, Delicate or Dull? Musicological Comparisons
against Extractive Imperial Ears.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 74:
501–69.
Hui, Alexandra. 2012. The Psychophysical Ear: Musical Experiments, Experimental Sounds,
1840–1910. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hui, Alexandra, Julia Kursell, and Myles W. Jackson, ed. 2013. “Music, Sound, and the Labo
ratory.” Osir is 28, no. 1: 1–11.
Hyer, Brian. 2011. “What Is a Function?” In The Oxford Handbook of Neo-Riemannian Music
Theories, edited by Edward Gollin and Alexander Rehding, 92–139. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Irvine, Thomas. 2019. Listening to China: Sound and the Sino-Western Encounter, 1770–1839.
Chicago University of Chicago Press.
Jackson, Myles W. 2006. Harmonious Triads: Physicists, Musicians, and Instrument Makers in
Nineteenth-Century Germany. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Jacobi, Erwin R. 1964. “Rameau and Padre Martini: New Letters and Documents.” Musical
Quarterly 50: 452–75.
Jami, Catherine. 2012. The Emperor’s New Mathematics: Western Learning and Imperial Author-
ity during the Kangxi Reign (1662–1722). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jans, Markus. 2008. “Zur Idee und Praxis der historischen Satzlehre an der Schola Cantorum
Basiliensis.” Basler Jahrbuch für historische Musikpraxis 32: 165–74.
Jia, Shubing. 2012. “The Dissemination of Western Music through Cathol ic Missions in High
Qing China.” PhD diss., University of Bristol.
Jiang, Qingfan. 2021. “Towards a Global Enlightenment: Music, Missionaries, and the Con
struction of a Universal History in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century China and
Europe.” PhD diss., Columbia University.
Kiesewetter, Raphael Georg. 1842. Die Musik der Araber. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel.
Kim, Youn. 2003. “Theories of Musical Hearing, 1863–1931: Helmholtz, Stumpf, Riemann,
and Kurth in Historical Context.” PhD diss., Columbia University.
Kintzler, Catherine. 1983. Jean-Philippe Rameau: Splendeur et naufrage de l’esthétique du plaisir
à l’âge classique. Paris: le sycomore.
Kirsch, Ernst. 1928. Wesen und Aufbau der Lehre von den harmonischen Funktionen: Ein Beitrag
zur Theorie der musikalische Harmonie. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel.
Klumpenhouwer, Henry. 1994. “Some Remarks on the Use of Riemann Transformations.” Music
Theory Online 0, no. 9. https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.94.0.9/mto.94.0.9.klumpenhouwer
.php.
Kursell, Julia. 2018. Epistemologie des Hörens: Helmholtz’ physiologischen Grundlegung der

Musiktheorie. Paderborn, Germany: Fink.
Lerdahl, Fred. 2001. Tonal Pitch Space. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lerdahl, Fred, and Ray Jackendoff. 1983. A Generative Theory of Tonal Music. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.
Lester, Joel. 1992. Compositional Theory in the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Levitz, Tamara. 2017. “Decolonizing the Society for American Music.” Society for American
Music Bulletin 43.
Levy, Jim. 1989. “Joseph Amiot and the Enlightenment Speculation of the Origin of Pythago
rean Tuning in China.” Theoria 4: 63–88.
Lewin, David. 2011. Generalized Musical Intervals and Transformations. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Leydi, Roberto. 1992. “L’aria cinese da Du Halde a Hindemith: Due secoli di fort une di un
errore di stampa.” In Musica colta e musica populare: Atti del Convegno promosso dalla
SIAE, Varazze, 8 e 9 giugno 1991. N.p.: Società italiana degli autori ed editori.
Lǐ Guāngdì (李光地). 1983. 古樂經傳 (gǔyuè jīngzhuàn). Taipei: Shang wu.
Mahdi, Muhsin S. 1975. “Science, Philosophy, and Religion in Alfarabi’s Enumeration of the Sci-
ences.” In The Cultural Context of Medieval Learning: Proceedings of the First International Col-
loquium on Philosophy, Science, and Theology in the Middle Ages—September 1973, edited by
John Emery Murdoch and Edith Dudley Sylla, 113–46. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1975.
Mahdi, Muhsin S. 2001. Alfarabi and the Foundations of Islamic Political Philosophy. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Martin, Nathan John. 2017. “Dahlhaus’s ‘Was heist Geschichte der Musiktheorie?’: Between
Kuhn and Weber.” Theoria 24: 127–40.
Martin, Nathan John. 2021. “Rousseau’s air chinois.” Eighteenth-Century Music 18: 41–64.
Mathiesen, Thomas J. 1983. “Aristides Quintilianus and the Harmonics of Manuel Bryennius.”
Journal of Music Theory 27: 31–49.
Murphy, Paul, and Cristóbal García Gallardo. 2020. “Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Influence on
Harmonic Theory in Spain.” Music Theory Spectrum 42: 81–104.
Na, Zhang. 2018. La pensée musicale de Jean-Jacques Rousseau en Chine. Paris: L’Harmattan.
Nicholls, Christine. 2019. “A Wild Roguery: Bruce Chatwin’s The Songlines Reconsidered.”
Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture 9: 22–49.
Osterhammel, Jürgen. 2017. The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth
Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Parncutt, Richard. 1989. Harmony: A Psychoacustical Approach. Berlin: Springer.
Pearce, Trevor. 2008. “Tonal Functions and Active Synthesis: Hugo Riemann, German Psy
chology, and Kantian Epistemology.” Intégral 22: 81–116.
Perlman, Marc. 2004. Unplayed Melodies: Javanese Gamelan and the Genesis of Music Theory.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ptolemy. Almagest. Edition of reference: Paul Kunitzsch, ed. Der Almagest: Die Syntaxis mathe-
matica des Claudius Ptolemäus in arab. -latein. Überlieferung. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz,
1974. Translated by G. J. Toomer as Ptolemy’s Almagest. New York: Springer, 1984.
Rameau, Jean-Philippe. 1726. Nouveau système de musique théorique. Paris: Ballard.

Rameau, Jean-Philippe. 1760. Code de musique pratique. Paris: Imprimerie royale.
Randel, Don M. 1976. “Al-Farabi and the Role of Arabic Music Theory in the Latin Middle
Ages.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 29: 173–88.
Rehding, Alexander. 2003. Hugo Riemann and the Birth of Modern Musical Thought. Cam
bridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rehding, Alexander. 2008. “Europäische Musiktheorie und Chinesische Musik 1800/1900.”
In Musiktheorie im kulturellen Kontext: 5. Kongress des Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie
Hamburg 2005, edited by Jan Philipp Sprick, Reinhard Bahr, and Michael von Tro
schke, 313–22. Berlin: Weidler.
Rehding, Alexander. 2014. “Music-Historical Egyptomania, 1650–1950.” Journal of the History
of Ideas 75: 545–80.
Rehding, Alexander. n.d. “Riemann am Klavier, Grieg am Grammphon.” Paper read at Hugo
Riemann: Musikforschung zwischen Universalität, Nationalismus und internationaler
Ausstrahlung, Leipzig, July 10–12, 2019.
Riemann, Hugo. 1872. “Ueber Tonalität.” Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 68: 443–44, 453–54.
Reprinted in Präludien und Studien: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Ästhetik, Theorie und Ges-
chichte der Musik. 3 vols, 3:23–30. Leipzig: Hermann Seeman, 1895–1901.
Riemann, Hugo. 1874. Ueber das musikalische Hören. Leipzig: Fr Andrä’s Nachfolger.
Riemann, Hugo. 1878. Studien zur Geschichte der Notenschrift. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel.
Riemann, Hugo. 1882. “Die Natur der Harmonik.” In Waldersee’s Sammlung musikalischer
Vorträge, 157–90. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel. Translated by Benjam in Steege as
“The Nature of Harmony.” In The Oxford Handbook of Neo-Riemannian Music Theories,
edited by Edward Gollin and Alexander Rehding, 55–91. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2011.
Riemann, Hugo. 1891. “Die Neugestaltung der Harmonielehre.” Musikalisches Wochenblatt 22
(1891): no. 40, 513–14; no. 41, 529–31; no. 42, 541–43.
Riemann, Hugo. 1898. Geschichte der Musiktheorie im IX. bis XIX. Jahrhundert. Berlin: Max
Hesse.
Riemann, Hugo. 1916. Folkloristische Tonalitätsstudien. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel.
Riemann, Hugo. n.d. Vereinfachte Harmonielehre, oder Die Lehre von den Tonalen Funktionen
der Akkorde. 2nd ed. London: Augener. Translated by Henry Bewerunge as Harmony
Simplified. London: Augener, 1895.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1768. Dictionnaire de musique. Paris: La veuve Duchesnes. Edition of
reference: Dictionnaire de musique, in Écrits sur la musique, la langue et le théâtre Vol. 5
of Œuvres complètes. Edited by Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond. 5 vols. Paris:
Pléiade, 1959–1995. Partial Translation by John T. Scott as Dictionary of Music. In Jean-
Jacques Rousseau: Essay on the Origins of Language and Writings Related to Music. Vol. 7
of The Collected Writings of Rousseau, 366–485. Hanover, NH: University Press of New
England, 1998.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. (1781) 1995. Essai sur l’origine des langues. In Écrits sur la musique, la
langue et le théâtre, vol. 5 of Œuvres complètes, edited by Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel
Raymond. Paris: Pléiade, 1995. Translated by John T. Scott as Essay on the Origin of Lan-
guages. In Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Essay on the Origins of Language and Writings Related to
Music. Vol. 7 of The Collected Writings of Rousseau, 289–332. Hanover, NH: University
Press of New England, 1998.
Sanguinetti, Giorgio. 2012. The Art of Partimento. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sauveur, Joseph. [1701?] 1705. “Système général des intervalles des sons, & son applicat ion
à tous les systèmes & à tous les instrumens de musique.” In Mémoires de l’Académie
des Sciences, 299–366. Histoire de l’Académie royale des sciences, Année MDCCI. Paris:
Charles-Estienne Hochereau, 1719.
Scerba, S. M., ed. 1935. Hieronymus de Moravia: Tractatus de musica. Freiburger Studien zur
Musikwissenschaft 2. Regensburg: Pustet.

Schneider, Herbert. 1972. Die französische Kompositionslehre in der ersten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhun-
derts. Tutzing, Germany: Schneider.
Schubert, Peter. 2002. “Counterpoint Pedagogy in the Renaissance.” In The Cambridge His-
tory of Western Music Theory, edited by Thomas Christensen, 503–33. Cambridge:
Schupp, Franz, ed. 2008. Al-Farabi: Über die Wissenschaft/De scientiis nach der lateinischen
Übersetzung Gerhards von Cremona. Hamburg: Felix Meiner.
Scott, John T. 1998. Introduction to Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Essay on the Origins of Language
and Writings Related to Music. Vol. 7 of The Collected Writings of Rousseau, xiii–xlii.
Hanover, NH: University Press of New England.
Shiloah, Amon. 1979. The Theory of Music in Arabic Writings (c. 900–1900). Répertoire inter
nat ional des source musicales: B. X. Munich: Henle.
Shiloah, Amnon, and Annie Berthier. 1985. “À propos d’un ‘petit livre arabe de musique.’”
Revue de musicologie 71: 164–77.
Shirlaw, Matt hew. 1917. The Theory of Harmony: An Inquiry into the Natural Principles of Har-
mony, with an Examination of the Chief Systems of Harmony from Rameau to the Present
Day. London: Novello.
Simon, Renée, ed. 1970. Antoine Gaubil: Correspondance de Pékin, 1722–1759. Geneva: Droz.
Steege, Benjam in. 2012. Helmholtz and the Modern Listener. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer
sity Press.
Stokes, Martin. 2018. “Notes and Queries on ‘Global Music History.’” In Studies on a Global
History of Music: A Balzan Musicology Project, edited by Reinhard Strohm, 3–17. Farn
ham, UK: Ashgate.
Strehlow, Theodore. 1971. The Songs of Central Australia. Sydney: Angus and Robertson.
Tchen, Ysia (陳燕俠) 1974. La musique Chinoise en France au XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Publications
orientalistes de France. Chinese translat ion by 耿昇 (Gěng Shēng) as 华乐西传法兰西
(Huá yuè xī chuán fǎlánxī). Beijing: 商务印书馆 (Shāngwù Yìnshūguǎn), 1998.
Tomlinson, Gary. 2007. “Monumental Musicology.” Journal of the Royal Musical Association
132: 349–74.
Tonkinson, Robert. 1978. The Mardudjara Aborigines: Living the Dream in Australia’s Desert.
New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Tse, Chun-Yan. 2020. “Erroneous Discourses on Tuning Theories between China and the
West: The Kangxi 14-Tone System.” Theoria 26.
Utz, Christ ian. 2015. “Paradoxa, Sackgassen und die ‘geschichtliche Wirklichkeit’ interkul
tureller Rezeption: Hugo Riemanns Auseinandersetzung mit der ostasiatischen Musik
im Kontext der Diskussion über eine ‘japanische Harmonik’ im Zeitraum 1900–1945.”
Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 72: 188–212.
Walden, Daniel. 2019. “The Politics of Tuning and Temperament: Transnational Exchange
and the Production of Music Theory in 19th-Century Europe, Asia, and North Amer
ica.” PhD diss., Harvard University.
Waldura, Markus. 2002. Von Rameau und Riepel zu Koch: Zum Zusammenhang zwischen theore-
tischem Ansatz, Kadenzlehre und Periodenbegriff in der Musiktheorie des 18. Jahrhunderts.
Hildesheim, Germany: Olms.
Walker, Margaret E. 2020. “Towards a Decolonized Music History Curriculum.” Journal of
Music History Pedagogy 10: 1–19.
Wason, Robert W., and Elisabeth West Marvin. 1992. “Riemann’s ‘Ideen zu einer “Lehre von

den Tonvorstellungen”’: An Annotated Translation.” Journal of Music Theory 36: 69–79.
Wright, Owen. 1995. “A Preliminary Version of the Kitāb al-adwār.” Bulletin of the School of
Oriental and African Studies 58: 455–78.
Wokler, Robert. 1974. “Rameau, Rousseau, and the Essai sur l’origine des langues.” Studies on
Voltaire and the Eighteenth-Century 117: 179–238.
Woo, Shingkwan. 2017. “The Ceremonial Music of Zhu Zaiyu.” PhD diss., Rutgers University.
Zaminer, Frieder, Thomas Ertelt, Heinz von Loesch, and Stefan Keym, ed. 1980–. Geschichte
der Musiktheorie. 15 vols. (12 vols. to date). Darmstadt, Germany: Wissenschaftliche
Büchergesellschaft.
Zarlino, Gioseffo. 1573. Istitutioni harmoniche. 3rd ed. Venice: Francesco de i Franceschi
Senese.
Zemp, Hugo. 1979. “Aspects of ‘Are‘are Musical Theory,” translated by Vida Malkus. Ethno-
musicology 23: 5–48.
Nathan John Martin is associate professor of music at the University of Michigan. A historian of
music theory specializing in the musical thought of Enlightenment France, he held the Edward T.
Cone membership in music at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton during the 2018–19
academic year.

Toward A "Global" History of Music Theory

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Toward A "Global" History of Music Theory

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Toward A "Global" History of Music Theory

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

What distinction does Al-Farabi draw between speculative and active parts of music theory?

What distinction does Al-Farabi draw between speculative and active parts of music theory?

What entanglement occurred between French and Chinese music theorizing in the late 18th century?

What entanglement occurred between French and Chinese music theorizing in the late 18th century?

Toward a “Global” History of Music

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-music-theory/article-pdf/66/2/147/1800161/147martin.pdf by REED COLLEGE LIBRARY user on 10 July 2023

Nathan John Martin

Journal of Music Theory 66:2, Octo­ber 2022

under­grad­u­ate. The syl­la­bus is a received one—in this, my course is also typ­ical—

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-music-theory/article-pdf/66/2/147/1800161/147martin.pdf by REED COLLEGE LIBRARY user on 10 July 2023

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-music-theory/article-pdf/66/2/147/1800161/147martin.pdf by REED COLLEGE LIBRARY user on 10 July 2023

to be a col­lec­tive, multiauthored enter­prise. If the con­ven­tional “Western” his­

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-music-theory/article-pdf/66/2/147/1800161/147martin.pdf by REED COLLEGE LIBRARY user on 10 July 2023

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-music-theory/article-pdf/66/2/147/1800161/147martin.pdf by REED COLLEGE LIBRARY user on 10 July 2023

Despite the rit­u­al­ized invo­ca­tion of Aristotle (“the Philosopher”), the pas­sage is

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-music-theory/article-pdf/66/2/147/1800161/147martin.pdf by REED COLLEGE LIBRARY user on 10 July 2023

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-music-theory/article-pdf/66/2/147/1800161/147martin.pdf by REED COLLEGE LIBRARY user on 10 July 2023

'3/875+!'10/.-,+!'*)('65&4+!-'3/),2+!'10/.-,+!'*)('&%$#" ! (Farmer 1932: 568, 572)

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-music-theory/article-pdf/66/2/147/1800161/147martin.pdf by REED COLLEGE LIBRARY user on 10 July 2023

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-music-theory/article-pdf/66/2/147/1800161/147martin.pdf by REED COLLEGE LIBRARY user on 10 July 2023

epistēmē, Aristotle in fact offers an enor­mously restric­tive pic­ture of sci­en­tific

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-music-theory/article-pdf/66/2/147/1800161/147martin.pdf by REED COLLEGE LIBRARY user on 10 July 2023

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-music-theory/article-pdf/66/2/147/1800161/147martin.pdf by REED COLLEGE LIBRARY user on 10 July 2023

technē), as at var­i­ous points in the Posterior Analytics, he con­sis­tently treats it as

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-music-theory/article-pdf/66/2/147/1800161/147martin.pdf by REED COLLEGE LIBRARY user on 10 July 2023

12 See the dis­cus­sion of this point in Barker 2007: 328–63.

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-music-theory/article-pdf/66/2/147/1800161/147martin.pdf by REED COLLEGE LIBRARY user on 10 July 2023

Since al-Fārābī was him­self by all­accounts an accom­plished musi­cian, he could

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-music-theory/article-pdf/66/2/147/1800161/147martin.pdf by REED COLLEGE LIBRARY user on 10 July 2023

Joseph-Marie Amiot and the Chi­nese ori­gins of the basse fondamentale

at some­thing like a respon­si­ble account of Chi­nese music and musi­cal thought.

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-music-theory/article-pdf/66/2/147/1800161/147martin.pdf by REED COLLEGE LIBRARY user on 10 July 2023

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-music-theory/article-pdf/66/2/147/1800161/147martin.pdf by REED COLLEGE LIBRARY user on 10 July 2023

he gives—and which he appar­ently found in Amiot’s man­us­ cript trans­la­tion of Lǐ

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-music-theory/article-pdf/66/2/147/1800161/147martin.pdf by REED COLLEGE LIBRARY user on 10 July 2023

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-music-theory/article-pdf/66/2/147/1800161/147martin.pdf by REED COLLEGE LIBRARY user on 10 July 2023

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-music-theory/article-pdf/66/2/147/1800161/147martin.pdf by REED COLLEGE LIBRARY user on 10 July 2023

The dif­frac­tion of the orig­i­nal music, whether Egyp­tian as in Roussier or Chi­

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-music-theory/article-pdf/66/2/147/1800161/147martin.pdf by REED COLLEGE LIBRARY user on 10 July 2023

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-music-theory/article-pdf/66/2/147/1800161/147martin.pdf by REED COLLEGE LIBRARY user on 10 July 2023

Riemann and Helmholtz

In the psy­cho-acous­tic fact of “beats,” more­over—what sub­se­quent writ­ers call

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-music-theory/article-pdf/66/2/147/1800161/147martin.pdf by REED COLLEGE LIBRARY user on 10 July 2023

30 E.g., by Parncutt 1989.

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-music-theory/article-pdf/66/2/147/1800161/147martin.pdf by REED COLLEGE LIBRARY user on 10 July 2023

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-music-theory/article-pdf/66/2/147/1800161/147martin.pdf by REED COLLEGE LIBRARY user on 10 July 2023

33 On Kiesewetter, see Bohlman 1987, in par­tic­u­lar.

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-music-theory/article-pdf/66/2/147/1800161/147martin.pdf by REED COLLEGE LIBRARY user on 10 July 2023

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-music-theory/article-pdf/66/2/147/1800161/147martin.pdf by REED COLLEGE LIBRARY user on 10 July 2023

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-music-theory/article-pdf/66/2/147/1800161/147martin.pdf by REED COLLEGE LIBRARY user on 10 July 2023

Geschehnisse nach unser Vorstellen beherrschenden Kategorien, in welche die

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-music-theory/article-pdf/66/2/147/1800161/147martin.pdf by REED COLLEGE LIBRARY user on 10 July 2023