Reviews
Honored ancestors include Alain Daniélou, Ivor Darreg,
W. A. Mathieu. Harmonic Experience. Rochester, Vermont: Inner
Traditions, 1997.
Reviewed by Norman Carey
The resurgence of interest over the past thirty years in spiritual-
ity and mysticism has brought in its wake a host of studies in
music, as music claims an illustrious position in esoteric studies.
The scholarly presses have, wittingly or not, eased access into the
depths of musical arcana with new translations of ancient treatises
with speculative components, including those of Ptolemy,
Boethius, and Aristides Quintilianus. Other presses, such as Inner
Traditions, Shambhala, Phanes Press, and Samuel Weiser, have
swelled the tide with reprints of many other old sources (mainly
neo-Platonic and Pythagorean treatises) and by presenting new
authors. 1 These studies largely focus on the effect that music has
upon the psyche and, correspondingly, on the musical (“harmo-
nious”) nature of the cosmos.
Studies involving the spiritual effect of music often prescribe a
strict regimen of “pure” intervals, i.e., those derived from the Qrst
several members of the overtone series. How to mold pure inter-
vals into the ideal scale is still very much an ongoing quest. Indeed,
many composers, performers, and theorists are passionately con-
cerned with matters of tuning and temperament, as journals such
as David Doty’s 1/1 and John Chalmers’s Xenharmonikon, as well
as at least one very lively online discussion group attest.2 Aside
from Chalmers and Doty, other champions of the Qeld include
Easley Blackwood, Lou Harrison, Ben Johnston, Charles Lucy,
Joel Mandelbaum, William Sethares, Ervin Wilson, and LaMonte
1For a sampling of what the Qeld offers, consult the works of its preeminent
scholar, Joscelyn Godwin: Godwin 1986, 1989, 1995.
2Online Tuning Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tuning
Young.
Adriaan Fokker, Harry Partch, Nicola Vicentino, and Joseph
Yasser.3
W. A. Mathieu—who has written about the role of music in a
number of traditional contexts, including ethos, affect, and to
some extent, cosmology—is a musician with a long and impres-
sive vita. After a stint as an arranger for the Stan Kenton and Duke
Ellington bands in the early 1960s, Mathieu has been composing
works that bring together and honor an equally impressive array
of genres and teachers, including SuQ music with Hazrat Inayat
Khan, North Indian music with Pandit Pran Nath, African music
with Hamza El Din, jazz with William Russo, and (in all likeli-
hood) a host of musical idioms with composer and theorist Easley
Blackwood. Mr. Mathieu has been on the faculties of the San
Francisco Conservatory of Music and Mills College.
Mathieu’s two previous books 4 have prepared the ground for
the present study, Harmonic Experience, a large volume of 563
pages. The work is divided into four parts: “Harmonic Purity:
Feeling The Numbers” (Chapters 1–18), “The Selective Use of
Equal Temperament” (Chapters 19–26), “The Functional Com-
mas of Equal-Tempered Tonal Harmony” (Chapters 27–34), and
“Harmonic Practice: Analysis and Review of the Theory”
(Chapters 35–44). The material in Parts Two through Four makes
striking claims regarding equal temperament to be discussed
presently. Here, it is only important to note that rather than relying
upon the methods and results of cognitive science to support his
claims, the author candidly admits that, above all, the work is a
self-examination of his experiences as a singing and listening
musician. Avowedly “subjective,” it is, in the end, less a general
theory of harmony than it is an autobiography of harmonic
experiences. Musical examples consist almost exclusively of the
3 The Huygens-Fokker Foundation has assembled a magniQcent Tuning
Bibliography as an online resource: http://www.xs4all.nl/,huygensf/doc/bib.
html
4Mathieu 1991, 1994.
122 Music Theory Spectrum
author’s own exercises and compositions. The harmonic theories
presented here tacitly, and circularly, rely upon this repertoire of
original works for their veriQcation. The few examples not of the
author’s own composition are all European music, which is some-
what disappointing given the author’s obviously broader interests.
(It would have been interesting to see how Mathieu analyzes non-
Western musics.5) Finally and perhaps most interestingly, with the
use of his own form of Tonnetz, Mathieu not only reinvents much
of neo-Riemannian theory, but also advances it with a signiQcant
new perspective.
*****
The “harmony” of the title is approached through the principle
of “resonance.” It takes some effort to uncover exactly what the
author means by this term. On page one, we read: “By resonance I
mean those specially reinforcing combinations of tones that in
their mutual resounding—their perfect in-tune-ness—evaporate
the boundary between music and musician.” The glossary offers
this: “resonance: the conventional deQnition is the reinforcement
of tones by synchronous or near-related vibration; as used in this
book, the term refers to sensible (that is, singable) combinations
of tones related by low-prime ratios” (528). There seem to be
three different deQnitions in all: one on page one, and two more in
the glossary. The deQnition “used in this book” is in fact not the
only one in play. At various points, resonance is said to accrue to
all manner of harmonies, and we learn that the effects of reso-
nance will make themselves felt even in equal temperament.6
Concatenating and extrapolating from the two glossary deQni-
tions, the idea seems to be this: when some intervals are sung, a
5Four measures of a single line taken from dictation given by Pandit Pran
Nath on p. 494 are the only exception.
6Gary Don has recently investigated the music of Debussy from a similar
perspective. Don’s study, inspired by theoretical work of Ben Johnston, con-
cerns “a method whereby just intonation and equal tempered realizations of
[passages in Debussy] can be heard side by side, providing a direct comparison
of the different structures that result from just intonation” (Don, 2001, 73).
sensible phenomenon of reinforcement occurs. This phenomenon
has a rather small bandwidth, in the midst of which stands an in-
terval whose ratio is determined by small whole numbers.
However, any interval that appears within the Qeld of tolerance is
resonant to some extent.
If this is correct, then resonance is a refashioning of a number
of theories of consonance and dissonance, although it is important
to mention that these terms are largely absent from this book.
Resonance provides the foundation for harmony. To Mathieu, har-
mony is “not simply chord progressions but the relationships of all
the notes in a piece both to the keynote and to each other” (1).
Consulting the glossary again, we Qnd: “harmony: refers primar-
ily, in this book, to events that can be quantiQed by ratio, as op-
posed to events that can be measured by interval.” The term “in-
terval” for Mathieu always signiQes unquantiQed “melodic”
distance. Harmony is two-fold: it is both “chord” as simultaneity
and also (surface) “chord progression.” Harmony is the primordial
musical experience, and rules over and regulates all others includ-
ing melody, counterpoint, and rhythm. As a result, non-harmonic
tones are vexatious to Mathieu.
*****
The Qrst part (“Harmonic Purity: Feeling the Numbers”) stands
well on its own as a teach-yourself text, whose main focus is
learning how to hear and sing intervals in just intonation. Indian
solfège syllables (sa, re, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni)7 are used in place of
Guido’s do, re, mi. The range of instruction is breathtakingly vast.
Readers begin by learning to sing unisons and octaves and, by
sticking to the program, progress on to produce a plethora of com-
mas. Along the way, Mathieu is there to extol, to challenge, to rail,
to scold, to nurture, to amuse, to encourage, to exhort, to entertain,
7The second syllable, re, is taken from rishabha, and often transliterated
ri. One also comes across re, but the pronunciation is the same. A more ac-
curate transliteration is r. s.abha, where the dots under the r and s indicate the
retroRex position of the tongue. The word indicates a bellowing, “like a
bull.”

to enlighten. Each topic is drawn in painstaking detail. The chapter
that teaches the student to sing perfect Qfths concludes with in-
structions to open the vowel “with the steadiness of the sun at mid-
day,” to drop the jaw, relax the tongue, and to stand straight (26).
The very abundance of exercises, cajolings, and meanderings
can be of great value. Students who Qnds themselves interested in
the relationship of tuning and intonation to music making will feel
a safe and friendly guide near to hand every step of the way.
Mathieu proposes that in order to center the ear and voice in the
resonances, a tonic-Qfth drone should be used. The drone takes on
great signiQcance in the modal and tonal theories that follow.
Central to Mathieu’s understanding of harmonic experience is
the role of the tonic note whose gravitational pull is, if anything,
more forceful here than in other tonal theories. The tonic is both
origin and reference point of all harmony. This is a crucial point.
The tonic is not only the “keynote” of a composition; it is also the
“generating tone.” Whereas a keynote needs only to be perceived
as referential in some respect, a generator must people its realm
with its overtones. This double burden brings Mathieu directly to
the central dilemma of harmonic dualism: Tonal systems entail re-
lationships above and below the tonic, (“overtonal” and “recipro-
cal” are Mathieu’s terms), but like a run of Biblical “begats,” the
overtones run asymmetrically, in one direction only. Where do the
reciprocals come from? Propagation metaphors falter. If the tonic
is also the generator, metaphysics must be summoned to explain
the riddle of the subdominant: “When you sing F you create C.
How can you create the creative principle? How does one go
about giving birth to a musical god? That is the work of the
Musical Mother [the syllable ma stands for the fourth degree of
the scale] . . . You who dare to sing F in the C world become the
embodiment of the creative and the sacred” (43). Similarly intri-
cate machinery is necessary to explain other notes, such as the
“reciprocal” major third below the tonic:
In order to generate A , we momentarily pretended that it was the tonic,
even though our larger context is C. We are not really in A . That is pre-
Reviews 123
cisely the trick of perception implicit in reciprocal harmony: A generates
the harmony, but C is still home—that is, A becomes the harmonic root,
but C remains the tonic (48).
The reader will see that, while portentous, this explanation
does not stand up to much scrutiny.8
The progenitors in just intonation are the primes. Each prime
establishes its own line of harmonies extending in both overtonal
and reciprocal directions, and is endowed with a distinct affect.
Indeed, “Each prime number generates its own musical universe”
(124). Much attention is given in this work to Qve-limit systems.9
There is a fair amount on seven-limit systems, but very little on
systems with larger limits. Mathieu explains, “As the primes as-
cend father from unity, they become less functional as musical
elements, less able to generate their musical worlds” (125).
In Qve-limit systems, the primes three and Qve procreate other
tones, and the octave is responsible for normalizing register.
Example 1 shows a portion of the pitch space associated with Qve-
limit just intonation. Mathieu provides a similar map with Qfths
along the x-axis, and thirds on the y-axis, and points out that this
kind of representation (in fact a Tonnetz 10) is standard in depic-
tions of Qve-limit just intonation. Mathieu’s innovation is to tilt
the plane a few degrees counterclockwise so that the points repre-
sent notes in staff notation. The student is encouraged to trace
8A comical rendering of a similar patrimony paradox is found in Joyce’s
Ulysses: “He proves by algebra that Hamlet’s grandson is Shakespeare’s grand-
father and that he himself is the ghost of his own father” (19).
9Extended just intonation tuning systems are described as p-limit systems,
where p is a prime. The unqualiQed term “just intonation” will refer to Qve-limit
just intonation.
10 Mathieu apparently believes that Alexander Ellis (in Helmholtz [1863]
1954) is the originator of the Tonnetz. While Ellis himself makes a similar
claim, Cohn (1997) awards the palm to Euler in 1739, although it might be
rightly claimed that the so-called lambda diagrams of antiquity (Archytas,
Nicole of Oresme, etc.) depicting octaves and perfect twelfths in two dimen-
sions are Tonnetze, rendering all proprietary claims moot.
124 Music Theory Spectrum

Example 1. A portion of the Qve-limit just-intonation Tonnetz with pitch classes represented by pitches in the octave of C = 1. Each cell displays
pitch-class name, ratio, and cents value. Subscripts on pitch-class names indicate syntonic commas; e.g., D-1 (10:9) is lower than D (9:8) by 80:81.

B22 F 22 C 22 G 22 D 22 A 22 E 22
(50:27) (25:18) (25:24) (25:16) (75:64) (225:128) (675:512)
1067¢ 569¢ 71¢ 773¢ 275¢ 977¢ 478¢

G21 D21 A21 E21 B21 F 21 C 21

(40:27) (10:9) (5:3) (5:4) (15:8) (45:32) (135:128)
680¢ 182¢ 884¢ 386¢ 1088¢ 590¢ 92¢

E B F C G D A
(32:27) (16:9) (4:3) (1:1) (3:2) (9:8) (27:16)
354 (or 358 )

294¢ 996¢ 498¢ 0¢ 702¢ 204¢ 906¢

C +1 G +1 D +1 A +1 E +1 B +1 F+1
(256:135) (64:45) (16:15) (8:5) (6:5) (9:5) (27:20)
1108¢ 610¢ 112¢ 814¢ 316¢ 1018¢ 520¢

A +2 E +2 B +2 F +2 C +2 G +2 D +2
(1024:675) (256:225) (128:75) (32:25) (48:25) (36:25) (27:25)
722¢ 223¢ 925¢ 427¢ 1129¢ 631¢ 133¢

3 32 (or 334 )

journeys through harmonic space upon this map, which will rein-
force and deepen the aural understanding. Mathieu’s Tonnetze re-
quire a tonic, which is the pitch-class C for the most part in this
book. The tonic is endowed with its own symbol, a sunburst.
Due to their roles as generators, perfect Qfths and major thirds
and their direct descendents have the most privileged status, and
all other intervals are “secondary.” Mathieu’s derivation of the
minor third illustrates: E , the minor third up from C, is derived by
generating G a 3:2 Qfth up from C, and then appending a 5:4 third
downward. There is no direct path from C to E . Because the
“overtonal” direction is strongly privileged here, the minor triad is
not conceived as the simple inversion of the major: C is the tonic;
G is an overtone of the tonic; E is formed reciprocally downward
from G. There is some resemblance here between Mathieu’s

explanation and Moritz Hauptmann’s “twin generator” idea of the
minor chord. 11
Mathieu’s modal and tonal theories, introduced in this section,
are a direct outgrowth of the concept of “dronality.” The glossary
deQnes “dronal,” “dronality,” and “drone” without pinning down
the central concept. It appears that the drone is called upon to act
as a disambiguating agent in the realm of tones. The drone is the
power of the tonic made immanent. The authoritarian dronal tonic
will brook no insurrection, no usurpation. (The primary discussion
about modulation does not begin until p. 306.) As Mathieu admits,
“If a drone is sufQciently assertive—that is, loud—you can put
anything above it, even a chain saw, and it will prevail as the
tonic” (234). Its disciplining power is summoned out of what
seems like uneasiness that without it, the tones will lose sight of
their rightful ruler, form unauthorized allegiances among them-
selves, or worse, form none at all. “Unambiguous” harmonic pro-
gressions are, for Mathieu, those in which there is a direct rela-
tionship between the tonic and every note of every harmony.
Dronality admits no second-order relationships. The drone insists
on direct contact with each of its subordinates.
Two examples illustrate the megalomaniacal nature of the
drone. The Qrst is Mathieu’s analysis of a jazz cadence, a pair of
parallel thirteenth chords from D down to C, shown in Example
2. Mathieu tells us that this formula is “typical to the point of
being a cliché” (384). Half step cadences are certainly common in
jazz. This variant has no particular prototypical status however,
but rather seems arrived at by a careful process of stacking the
deck. Like other jazz theorists, Mathieu assigns scales to chords,
which is here quite easy to do, since both chords are heptatonic.
While the progression can be analyzed within the context of tri-
tone substitution, this explanation is not invoked. Nor does the
smooth, all-half-step voice leading come into play. Instead,
Mathieu insists upon a Qrm anchoring of all of the tones of both
11Harrison (1994, 228–9) provides a good summary.
Reviews 125
Example 2. A jazz cadence (Mathieu’s Example 37.9)
chords to the C tonic. That is, the Qrst chord is to be understood as
C phrygian, the second as C lydian. Note the effect of this explana-
tion. What bubbles to the surface is something that routinely re-
mains submerged: the C common tone. (That its dronal companion
G also forms a common tone here can only add fuel to Mathieu’s
Qre.) A linear analysis of the cadence would have the C in the Qrst
chord acting as a dissonance needing to be resolved—to be re-
solved, indeed, into the B of the second chord. In Mathieu’s inter-
pretation, the C has the same degree of structural importance in
both chords. In other words, the cadence is not to be realized as a
lydian mode on D followed by another on C, but by two different
modes of C (384). In like fashion, Mathieu rails against hearing
any non-tonic chord as giving rise to its own scale (359).
The second example is one of the few that is not the author’s
own music. Instead, Mozart is taken to task for spelling errors.
This example splendidly demonstrates the skew that dronality ap-
plies to tonality. Example 3(a) reproduces Mathieu’s Example
15.5, taken from mm. 49–51 of the Qrst movement of the F Major
Sonata for piano, K. 332. Example 3(b) (Mathieu’s 15.6) shows
the author’s emendations to Mozart’s notation. A linear analysis
of this passage would likely depict both the D and the F as as-
cending chromatic appoggiaturas, while only the F is susceptible
to that interpretation in Example 3(b). 12 As a chromatic lower
12 I don’t think it succumbs to it, however. The fact that Mathieu leaves the
F notation unaltered has more to do with the fact that F comes on the “over-
tonal” side of C—either up six Qfths, or up two Qfths and a third—than with
any secondary relationship between G and F .
126 Music Theory Spectrum
Example 3. Rewriting Mozart K. 332, Qrst movement
(a) Mozart’s original notation (Mathieu’s Example 15.5)
(b) Mathieu’s corrections (Mathieu’s Example 15.6)
(c) “Major/minor” seventh chord
neighbor, the D assumes a leading-tone quality, a perspective
openly mocked by Mathieu:
The passage obviously does not imply the key of E minor, so the D in
Mozart’s spelling is not its diatonic major seventh . . . Nor is the D in the
key of C. Or is it? Can you (honestly) hear a D over a C drone—that is,
truly in the key of C—as a raised second without it either becoming a minor
third in your head (in which case it is E ), or modulating to E Minor? I
think the D in this harmonic context is simply a wrongness . . . a kind that
appears increasingly as equal temperament becomes the European norm.
(105–6)
While the D notation subordinates an appoggiatura to its reso-
lution, the choice of E connotes an uneasy oscillation within the
chordal third. Neither third accepts the subordinate position. The
dissonance is entirely acoustic rather than syntactic.13 Mathieu’s
explicit avowal of the identity of tonality (“truly in the key of C”)
and dronality (“over a C drone”) is very telling, however the
conceptual amalgamation comes at the expense of both idioms. It
should be noted that when modulation is discussed later on, multi-
layered levels of tonal relationships are acknowledged.
Example 4 reproduces Mathieu’s Example 38.28. We are told
that being in a key is not always sharply deQned. There are degrees
and shades of gray. In this passage, “the C is heard as the leading
tone of the 10:9 re, giving that re Reeting credibility as a tonic.”
This reading is subtler than, and inconsistent with, the Mozart
analysis. Mathieu nicely revises the analogy of scale and ladder to
include sliding rungs for notes altered by a chromatic half step
(102). Perhaps the Mozart passage is best understood in terms of a
D rung that has been slid up to be nearer to the E, than as an E rung
that slides up and down while we are standing upon it.
Mathieu makes an interesting claim in this context, namely,
that Bach never falls into Mozart’s kind of notational error. In the
given circumstances this is a claim that cannot be tested, because
the use of an unsupported 2̂ as a chromatically altered lower
neighbor to 3̂ is simply not in the Baroque language. The only way
for Mathieu to prove his case here would be to present a passage
in which Bach employs a notation such as the one in Example
3(b), eschewing that of 3(a).
I cannot leave this passage without suggesting another reason
for Mathieu’s E preference. Mathieu tells us that he Qrst came to
harmonic experience through jazz, and only later discovered
13 That dissonance has anything other than an acoustic basis is never chal-
lenged in this book. Among many works that might modify this view are
Tenney 1968 and Krumhansl 1990. Recently, William Sethares (1998) has
demonstrated the intimate connection between timbre and the perception of
consonance and dissonance.

Example 4. Weak tonicization of D minor (Mathieu’s Example 38.28)
European art music. Example 3(c) shows a common jazz/funk
chord, a “major/minor” seventh chord. In its context, this chord is
quite stable, and easily carries tonic function. (Mathieu shows one
with a dominant function on p. 355.) Neither of the thirds embel-
lishes the other, and, in fact, the sonority suggests a “bent” blues
third. The E is perfectly correct here. However, it would not be
correct to propose the chord in Example 3(c) as an idiomatic har-
monization for the Qrst measure of the Mozart melody.
The modal system presented at the end of the Qrst part is
unique, although its names are derived from the church modes and
its process of organization is somewhat akin to the Indian
melakartas. Mathieu’s modes involve a lower tetrachord begin-
ning on C, and an upper one beginning on G. There are four step
patterns allowed for the upper tetrachord: 2–2–1, 2–1–2, 1–3–1,
1–2–2, and eight for the lower: these same four, and four tritonal
variants of these that add one to the last member of each: 2–2–2,
2–1–3, 1–3–2, 1–2–3. The resultant set of thirty-two modes in-
cludes all of the “white key” modes except locrian, both harmonic
and melodic forms of the minor, and a remainder made up of
those the process admits. Mathieu also proposes a “Magic Mode”
that contains all 12 notes needed for the set of thirty-two. The ab-
sence of locrian is telling. The inRuence of dronality commands
that, by construction, all modes must have a perfect Qfth above the
Qnal. Quite reasonably we are told that locrian is a “latter-day the-
oretical construct” (234), and with respect to the usages of
European modality, this is certainly true.
Parts 2 through 4 recount the adventures of the modes and their
harmonies as they are transformed by equal temperament.
Reviews 127
Modality is given a modern triadic treatment, and harmonic pro-
gressions for Mathieu’s thirty-two modes, particularly for the
more familiar types, are suggested. Part 2 is concerned with com-
positional techniques whereby all harmonic progressions can be
mapped into a just-intonation prototype. Mathieu identiQes har-
monic ambiguity as arising from two causes: the appearance of
two versions of a single tone differing by a comma, and progres-
sions that leap over Tonnetz adjacencies. Ambiguity is avoided to
begin with by forbidding both of these. “Matchstick” harmony is
the name given to the allowable “stepwise” progressions along the
Tonnetz. 14 Ambiguity and its attendant commas are introduced
gradually, leaving matchstick harmony to do the job of harmonic
clariQcation. (As I discuss later, Mathieu is equivocal about ambi-
guity. It is “a dramatic—even dark—force in music” [349]. Part of
his difQculty comes from presuming tonality to be inherently
unambiguous.)
There are three commas that come under consideration: the
syntonic comma 81:80 (21.5¢), that represents the difference be-
tween Pythagorean ditone and just major third, the diaschisma,
2048:2025 (19.55¢) that represents the difference between an oc-
tave and the sum of a Pythagorean ditone, and two just major
thirds, and the minor diesis, 128:125 (41¢), that represents the dif-
ference between an octave and three just major thirds. Mathieu ap-
parently conRates the minor diesis and the major diesis, 648:625
(62.57¢) that is the difference between an octave and four minor
thirds. He may have overlooked this larger comma because of the
inferior status accorded to the minor third. In the beginning of
Chapter 30, describing what neo-Riemannians call a “PR” cycle,
the major diesis is achieved, but the references here are all to the
14 The Tonnetz reminds Mathieu of “the matchstick puzzles and games we
played as kids” (158). One puts a match down, connecting two points. The
match may be moved so that one end stays Qxed. For example, from C major
one can get to G major, or E minor, or A minor, or F major, or F minor, or C
minor.
128 Music Theory Spectrum
“Great Diesis,” Mathieu’s unfortunate name for the minor
diesis.15 Mathieu does not consider the Pythagorean comma,
531441:524288 (23.46¢), to be of great practical signiQcance
since there are few compositional contexts in which its presence is
felt. The schisma, 32768:32805 (1.953¢), the difference between
an octave and the sum of a just major third plus four Pythagorean
whole tones, is never mentioned, but would be, at 2¢, cognitively
irrelevant for Mathieu’s purposes.
After presenting exercises that teach the student to sing the
commas in just intonation, Mathieu goes on to track their effect in
equal temperament. There are Qne insights in this part of the book,
yet much of it remains exasperatingly elusive:
The primary concern of this book is the behavior of twelve-tone equal
temperament, and we raise a question central to it: Physiologically and
psychologically, how can we accept a musical approximation for the real
thing [i.e., just intonation]? Any answer to this question, at least at the
present state of our knowledge, must be subjective, evanescent, and non-
quantiQable. Even the terms of the question cannot be rigorously deQned.
ScientiQc method cannot save us. We do, however, have ourselves, not
only individually but also collectively. By examining deeply our own
responses to musical phenomena, we can shed light on our musical
behavior. (137–8)
Indeed, the scientiQc method cannot save us, but it might pro-
vide our inner examination with a structure that is intersubjective,
not completely evanescent, and enumerable. We may even boldly
and rigorously deQne our question. The problem with not wanting
to say anything too precisely is that of not in the end saying any-
thing at all.
15More evidence of this problem is found in Table 41.1 (473). Here the dif-
ference between four 6:5 minor thirds and an octave is equated incorrectly
with one diaschisma plus one (minor) diesis. Curiously, Mathieu posits a “su-
perdiesis” on p. 501. This is none other than the missing “major diesis,”
648:625. Here it is correctly equated with one syntonic comma plus one
(minor) diesis, and then incorrectly equated with “four pure thirds plus four
perfect Qfths.” “Plus” probably should have been “minus.”
Let us nonetheless try to understand what Mathieu is telling us
about equal temperament. The conclusion at the end of the book is
that in the simplest contexts, the sounds of equal temperament
stand unambiguously for the resonances of just intonation. This
unambiguous reference is equated with “tonality.” Then, “as ambi-
guity increases, tonality weakens, resulting Qnally in the emer-
gence of the affective force inherent but hidden in the tuning: its
symmetry and ultimate atonality” (508). The possibility of ambi-
guity being absent even at the beginning of this process is ques-
tionable; ambiguity is present ab ovo if melody and harmony are
conjoined.
Mathieu attempts to demonstrate how context can reveal the
pure intervallic prototypes for harmonies sounding in equal tem-
perament. Triads imply just intonation, and stacks of Qfths imply
Pythagorean tuning. The syntonic (“Didymic”) comma is invoked
by harmonizing E4 in two different ways: Qrst, using a C-major
triad (E = 80), and then with a stack of four perfect Qfths from C2
through E4 (E = 81). Through a kind of homeopathic view of into-
nation, Mathieu would have us believe that even in equal tempera-
ment, the comma is still operant: “[In just intonation we] hear a
small change in pitch as a large change in function. In equal tem-
perament, the pitch difference is gone, yet the harmonic effect,
washed out as it may be, is not washed away” (254).16 Any retention
of this effect is further diluted by the fact that there are often multi-
ple contexts for a single harmonic event. As Mathieu points out, the
stack-of-Qfths chord producing E = 81 is often employed in jazz
as a tonic-triad surrogate, and so clearly the E4 would need to be
modeled after the just-intonation 5:4 major third as it sits atop the
stack of 3:2 perfect Qfths. Which third is the clear prototype here?
This would be a likely place to discuss meantone tempera-
ments, but “meantone temperament” has a single entry in the
16 “Hearing” a harmonic effect in an interval that is acoustically identical to
unison is reminiscent of the passage in Plato’s Republic (VII:531) in which the
“teachers of harmony” put their ears close to the strings to see who can hear the
smallest pyknon.

index. The history of intonation presented here traces a more or
less straight shot from Qve-limit just intonation directly into equal
temperament. The reader would accordingly get the impression
that the historical tuning for the church modes was Qve-limit just
intonation, despite the clear evidence of medieval treatises (e.g.,
Dialogus in musica) explaining in great detail how to establish the
monochord in Pythagorean tuning—three-limit just intonation, if
you will.17
Mathieu is absolutely right in saying that learning to hear and
sing intervals in just intonation is a fabulously enriching, even em-
powering musical experience. It opens a door from the Ratland of
equal temperament into a multi-dimensional new world. It can be
exhilarating to the point of vertigo. It can also give new respect for
equal temperament through a deeper appreciation of what it so
elegantly accomplishes. We acknowledge with greater insight all
of the intonational conRicts it is able to quell and delight in its
own alluring duodecimal symmetries.
Furthermore, there are many circumstances in which it is pos-
sible to disambiguate the intervals that we hear in equal tempera-
ment; for example, we expect our students to spell their chords
correctly, even when they are taking dictation from the piano.
However, as earlier examples have shown, some enharmonic func-
tions have become so fused in equal temperament that it is not pos-
sible to disambiguate the harmonies without removing some of the
harmonic signiQcations. A many-to-one mapping is not reversible.
For Mathieu then, just intonation is authentic harmonic experi-
ence, but equal temperament will allow, when conditions are right,
a close replica. While this position is reasonable enough, there is
no real acknowledgement of the snake in the garden in the story of
tuning, the sinuous allure of melody unadorned. The slighting of
melodic study in this book could be easily justiQed—this is a book
about harmony, after all, and not melody. However, this masks a
more serious issue—namely, that harmony and melody are not
equal partners in the author’s view. Harmony commands and over-
17 Strunk 1965, 103–16.
Reviews 129
shadows melody. Harmony can exist without melody, but not the
other way around. This view is in direct conRict with the notion
that melody is historically prior to harmony and, arguably, con-
ceptually prior as well. Mathieu proposes a thought experiment by
way of support of his position (390). He asks us to hear a cadence
performed in Shepard tones (without calling them such). There is
no melody to speak of, but the harmonic syntax would remain
completely clear. Another hypothesis, tested and proven in fact by
Roger Shepard, suggests that the inRuence of melody is so great,
the ear would tend to create melodies out of the smallest potential
intervals of every interval class.18 If asked to sing what was heard,
some such derived melody would be the result. Thus, melody and
harmony share equally in the cadential effect. Neither can be fac-
tored out.
Melodic principles and harmonic ones generate different kinds
of tonal spaces. Curt Sachs proposed “cyclic” and “divisive” prin-
ciples of scale construction. 19 The cyclic principle is that of a gen-
erated set, while the divisive one uses arithmetic or harmonic
means in order to subdivide the octave. Melodic contexts favor the
cyclic principle, harmonic ones the divisive. The cyclic systems,
such as Pythagorean tuning, offer both a manageably low number
of step-interval types and a great range of potential tonics or
modal “Qnals,” and they also easily adapt to the challenges of
modulation. They may, however, be poorer in what Mathieu calls
resonance. The divisive systems, such as just intonation, are more
tonic speciQc, maximizing harmonic purity for the sake of the
central tone and showing less regard for the remaining ones. If
other tones are to be made into Qnals, intonational adjustments are
generally required. The number of melodic step intervals tends to
be higher in divisive tone-spaces. While enthusiasts of Qve-limit
just intonation can delight in its subtle varieties of major and
minor tone, Pythagorean tuning has at least equal pedigree, and no
such differences.
18 Shephard 1964.
19 Sachs 1948, 14 ff.
130 Music Theory Spectrum
In Mathieu’s “dronal” circumstances, vertical relationships are
all-powerful. But while much ancient and traditional music made
use of drones, this is not a musical universal. There is, for ex-
ample, no evidence that the Gregorian chant repertoire originated
with an accompanying drone. Without the drone, purely melodic
considerations take over.
There is, then, a conRict between (at least) two “natural” into-
national systems, one that rules the harmonic realm, one the
melodic. In the mythic language of love, the vertical agape, con-
necting the human and divine, would be all harmonious were it
not for a conRicting horizontal eros connecting beings of the same
kind. Dionysius’s passionate aulos discords with the rational lyre
of Apollo. The history of temperament, including equal tempera-
ment, tells of the mediation between these conRicting “natural”
claims.
That there is a difference between the intonational norms of
harmony and melody is implicit in Mathieu’s presentation of his
modal theory. After Qrst introducing the major and minor tones in
Chapter 10, the step patterns of the primary modes are illustrated
in Chapter 11 using step sizes of “1” and “1/2.” What has hap-
pened to 9:8 and 10:9? The maps depicting these modes clearly
show that they must be understood in just intonation. Even for
Mathieu, the melodic need for intervallic parsimony has tran-
scended the harmonic need for purity. (The interval labeled “1/2”
that connects leading tone to tonic is invariably 16:15 in this book.
There is virtually no mention of the smaller, more melodically ori-
ented Pythagorean half step, 256:243.)
With the strong emphasis on resonance and verticality, embel-
lishments and tones of Qguration have little chance to Rourish.
The approach is in agreement with Schoenberg’s assertion that
“non-harmonic tone” is a misnomer.20 This proposition is one that
Schoenberg ultimately found difQcult to support— at least in
20 Schoenberg [1911] 1978. See in particular Chapter 17, “Non-Harmonic
Tones,” pp. 309–44.
relation to tonal harmony—but Mathieu is willing to shore it
up at the expense of considerably problematizing melodic
composition.
Perhaps, like many others, Mathieu believes that harmony
can be taught, but melody cannot. When telling us how to Resh
out a harmonically constructed skeleton, we are reassured that,
“the tones seem to spontaneously generate melodies on their
own” (38). Similarly, “in a way these melodies write themselves.
If a harmonic progression is balanced, the melodies inside it are
eager to be awakened” (170). This is not likely to be much
consolation to beginners who cannot get their melodic kites
airborne.
There is very little information about chordal inversion in this
book, but this, too, is consistent with the view of harmony pre-
sented here. What attention the subject does get is both sketchy
and misleading. On p. 370, we are told that 63 stands for Qrst inver-
sion and 3 stands for root position, but are not told why, nor that 63
may be abbreviated to 6, nor that root position is generally abbre-
viated with no Qgure at all. On the following page, jazz-based Qg-
ures are introduced, and we are told that a 7 standing by itself al-
ways means to add a minor seventh above the bass. All of these
are true in some context, but there is no single context in which
they are all true. (Some pages later, we are informed that 65 means
Qrst inversion of a seventh chord, and 42 means third inversion. The
Qgures are never explained; nor is there ever a 43.) On the other
hand, the cadential 64 chord, although always labeled “I64 ” is lu-
cidly described as a double suspension whose content may be
tonic, but whose context is clearly dominant. He is oddly ill at
ease with the dominant seventh chord. He Qnds V with the seventh
to be more “dramatic” but no more “compelling” than it is with-
out. Monitoring his own inner responses to the chord, he reports,
“When I hear it without thinking about it, and respond to it sim-
ply, there remains a mystery at the heart of it. I get it and I don’t
get it. Maybe this mystery is the actual deQnition of tonality: the
mystery of the center” (391).

*****
Mathieu has a fresh approach to many issues that have come
under the rubric “neo-Riemannian” theory. Diatonic and chro-
matic sequences are examined very carefully throughout the sec-
ond half of the book. On p. 157, there is a description of the
Leittonwechselklang (not called such), connecting a “major triad
to its mediant” or a “minor chord and its submediant.” The various
“cycles” that have become the focus of Neo-Riemannian theory
are all present without the now conventional nomenclature. At the
beginning of Chapter 30, which deals with the minor diesis
128:125, the “PR” cycle is illustrated on p. 286. This cycle would
eventually create the major diesis, 648:625; however, as men-
tioned earlier, the major diesis is not distinguished from the minor
in this book. (His claim that “[the PR cycle] is not commonly
heard harmony” is not supported by Neo-Riemannian studies, in
which a number of examples from nineteenth-century composi-
tions are cited.) The “LP” cycle is described on p. 348, here prop-
erly illustrating the minor diesis. The “RL” cycle, evoking the
Pythagorean comma, is fully described on pp. 448–9, using an
example that might have been suggested by the Scherzo of
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.21
Whereas the cognitive claims about commas in equal tempera-
ment are perhaps questionable, Mathieu has some interesting
things to say about commas with regard to their capacity to struc-
ture and delimit Tonnetze. He describes a method he calls “posi-
tional analysis” that tracks the harmonic path of a piece along the
Tonnetz. He is especially concerned with topological issues that
cast commas in the roles of delimiters. The gist of the method is to
determine whether the excerpt in question is forced to employ an
21Measures 132–71. Again, the dearth of examples from the literature is un-
fortunate. Mathieu shows us that while the bass moves down by minor and
major thirds alternately (with some upward sixths for registral normalization),
each of the three upper voices travels in one of the three different octatonic
scales. This elegant result is found also in Cohn 1991, 1992, 1997. See also
Douthett & Steinbach 1998.
Reviews 131
enharmonicism.22 Even if one travels far out in one direction along
the Tonnetz, if one returns by means of a continuous path back to
the tonic (here is where the “matchstick” approach pays off ), there
is no enharmonic legerdemain. He invents a kind of “shape note”
system for the analysis: each Qfth-based horizontal of the Tonnetz
has its own note shape. The approach, as one may expect, is com-
pletely non-mathematical, although the choice to formalize these
procedures within the strictures of transformation theory is more a
matter of style than it is of substance.
Mathieu’s analysis of the rondeau Fumeaux fume par fumée
(pp. 495–9), by the Ars Subtilior composer Solage is the most
convincing analysis of the four he presents. Without much com-
mentary, Mathieu demonstrates that, despite the extreme chro-
maticism, no comma shifts are employed and all enharmonic
debts are paid. The work does not proceed, out and back, literally
stepwise along the lattice. However, the analysis shows that the
piece may be performed within a closed region of the Tonnetz
without the need for topological “loops.”23 There is even a playful
text/music relationship drawn out of his analytical method. While
situating the piece within a triadic context is anachronistic, there
is nothing about the analysis that relies upon the conventions of
common practice-tonality. There would seem to be a great deal
of repertoire that could yield to this method, including essentially
the whole of the Renaissance, particularly the chromatic works
of either the fourteenth or sixteenth centuries. Less successful is
his positional analysis of the Qrst movement of the Beethoven
Appassionata sonata (p. 506). Its fervently chord-by-chord ap-
proach arrives at the conclusion that, counting all comma cross-
ings, the piece begins in F minor and ends in A minor.
22Brian Hyer (1995, 106) describes Riemann’s sensitivity to the pathways
along the Tonnetz for their role in determining intonation.
23In Hyer (1995, 119) the topological transformations of the Tonnetz are de-
picted as they are mapped from inQnitely extended just intonation into equal
temperament.
132 Music Theory Spectrum
*****
While clearly passionate about his topic and eager to spread
the joy of his discoveries, Mathieu is often woefully vague in the
deQnition of terms. Aside from examples already given, deQni-
tions of the terms “scale,” “mode,” and “key” are either mislead-
ing or simply uninformative. Like many autodidacts, Mathieu can
be rather desultory in recounting the histories of his topic. Neither
is he averse to casting a wide but tattered net of aspersions on
predecessors. This is perhaps the most troubling aspect of the
book. For example, we are told on p. 1 that “there exists no satis-
factory general theory of harmony,” and “We have no comprehen-
sive music theory today.” Later, Mathieu writes: “Over the cen-
turies, classical music theory has developed a wide variety of
misleading concepts” (319). Telling music-historical tales with lit-
tle regard for precision, and having reached the Qfteenth century,
Mathieu opines, “Remember that there was no unifying viable
music theory at the time—certainly no practical one—that clariQed
procedures. (There still isn’t, unless this is it.)” (135). So what is
new? Mathieu claims that what “clariQes procedures” is deriving
the laws of harmony from resonance or from the overtone series.
While there may not be much information on the overtone series
in standard college harmony texts, it would have been well to con-
sider the contributions of some of his true predecessors in the Qeld
of harmonic theory. Taking, for example, three well-known theorists
with important things to say about harmony, Rameau, Riemann, and
Schenker, we notice that none of them Qnd their way into this book,
and yet all were at least as concerned as Mathieu to derive harmony
from the sonorities of the overtone series in some way (nor are they
unique in this respect). Rameau’s notion of the corps sonore, for ex-
ample, closely mirrors Mathieu’s “resonance.” Like Riemann and
Oettingen, Mathieu derives systems of sonorities in dualist terms
and displays them in Tonnetze. There is even a lovely recasting of
Hauptmann’s “having an overtone—being an overtone” solution to
the undertone problem (42). Furthermore, Mathieu would agree
with Hauptmann that perfect Qfths and major thirds are, along
with octaves, the only “directly intelligible intervals.” Finally,
Mathieu reveals that “harmony is form.” Summing up the main
contributions his harmonic theory makes, he writes:
The theory . . . demonstrates how elemental harmonic principles are
architectonic— that is, how their structure controls or directs other
structures— and how this active, forming energy cuts both ways across the
orders of magnitude . . . One begins to grasp . . . how the smallest ele-
ments and the largest formal shapes are mutually nourishing. (510)
A lofty vision, indeed; however, it would not have been remiss
to acknowledge the powerful manifestation of this same vision in
the work of Heinrich Schenker.
Most of all, Mathieu criticizes European music theory (“classi-
cal theory” as he calls it) for not concerning itself with affect. “I
could not Qnd—try as I might—the connection between classical
theory and the palette of feeling that its music inspires” (2). The
apparent assumption, that the feelings are caused by harmonies
themselves, is carried by the force of revelation here, and alterna-
tives to it barely merit mentioning. We are, he concludes, designed
to respond to certain harmonies in certain ways: “The forces that
govern the production of overtones govern our ears also, and our
ears’ responses” (41). In short, “pure harmony is hard-wired”
(141). Furthermore, the wiring takes the shape of “Qfth-by-third”
Tonnetze: “The ease with which we comprehend the nested geog-
raphy of music indicates that the harmonic lattice is not merely a
metaphor for musical behavior, but corresponds to a spatial geog-
raphy in the brain” (359).
This is not a book with scholarly pretenses, and so an extensive
citation of the work of others is not the point. To be sure, in the
very Qnal section entitled, “Whose Theory Is It?” he graciously ac-
knowledges a debt to his teachers, and is quick to confess that he
has not “created anything new.” Nevertheless, before we get to this
point, we have been told repeatedly that all harmonic theory up to
but not necessarily including the present opus is unsatisfactory,
misleading, and impractical.

*****
Perhaps Mathieu’s greatest unacknowledged debt is to
Moritz Hauptmann. It is quite possible that Hauptmann is un-
known to Mathieu, but he would nonetheless Qnd in Hauptmann
an ancestor worthy of his esteem. Let me recapitulate some of
the points of correspondence between the two theorists: in addi-
tion to the understanding of octaves, Qfths, and thirds as the
only “directly intelligible intervals” and the solving of the “un-
dertone” problem with the device of “having/being” an over-
tone, both employ a “twin generator” approach to the origin of
the minor chord; both are concerned with the church modes as
well as derivatives thereof in the context of just intonation; both
are guided fundamentally by dualism and committed to its
metaphysical underpinnings. Whereas the roots of Hauptmann’s
thought are found in Hegel, Mathieu himself takes an occa-
sional Hegelian turn: “We need to elevate the status of the
equal-tempered comma from that of a pun, where a single thing
stands for two incidentally related things, to that of a match-
maker, where complementary energies are conjoined and syn-
thesized into a higher meaning” (347).
There is no more exacting discipline than that of looking
within and reporting accurately on one’s Qndings. Mathieu is
brilliant in describing his own inner journey of harmonic dis-
covery. He writes with a distinct voice, and his passion for his
subject is profound and profoundly moving. It Qnally does not
matter knowing how much of his tongue may have been in his
cheek as he intones a “Hymn to the Great Diesis” (298). We in-
tone along with him. Nor can one respond with anything other
than fondness as he conjures up his alter ego, “Dr. Overtone.”
The range of encomiums on the back cover from the likes of
John Coltrane, Pete Seeger, and Ben Johnston attest to a life
lived in great devotion to his subject, a profession in the truest
sense. While problematic in the respects I have addressed, this
book has much to offer to every musician who is beguiled and
beckoned by the mystery at the center of the musical art.
Reviews 133
LIST OF WORKS CITED
Aristides Quintilianus. 1983. Aristides Quintilianus On Music In
Three Books. Translation with introduction, commentary, and
annotations by Thomas J. Mathiesen. New Haven: Yale Univer-
sity Press.
Barker, Andrew. 1989. Greek Musical Writings II: Harmonic and
Acoustic Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. 1989. Fundamentals of Mu-
sic. Translated by Calvin Bower. New Haven: Yale University
Press.
Cohn, Richard. 1991. “Properties and Generability of Transpo-
sitionally Invariant Sets.” Journal of Music Theory 35: 1–32.
———. 1992. “Dramatization of Hypermetric ConRicts in the
Scherzo of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.” 19th-Century
Music 15.3: 22–40.
———. 1997. “Neo-Riemannian Operations, Parsimonious Tri-
chords, and Their Tonnetz Representations.” Journal of Music
Theory 41: 1–66.
Daniélou, Alain. 1943. Music and the Power of Sound: The In-
Guence of Tuning and Interval on Consciousness. Revised edi-
tion of Introduction to the Study of Musical Scales. Rochester,
Vermont: Inner Traditions.
Douthett, Jack, and Peter Steinbach. 1998. “Parsimonious Graphs:
A Study in Parsimony, Contextual Transformations, and
Modes of Limited Transposition.” Journal of Music Theory 42:
241–63.
Don, Gary. 2001. “Brilliant Colors Provocatively Mixed: Over-
tone Structures in the Music of Debussy.” Music Theory
Spectrum 23: 61–73.
Godwin, Joscelyn, ed. 1986. Music, Mysticism And Magic: A
Sourcebook. New York: Arkana.
———. 1989. Cosmic Music: Musical Keys to the Interpretation of
Reality. Essays by Martius Schneider, Rudolf Haase, and Hans
Erhard Lauer. Introduction by Joscelyn Godwin. Translated by
134 Music Theory Spectrum
Marton Radkai and Joscelyn Godwin. Rochester, Vermont:
Inner Traditions.
Godwin, Joscelyn. 1995. Music and the Occult: French Musical
Philosophies, 1750–1950. Rochester, N.Y.: University of
Rochester Press.
Harrison, Daniel. 1994. Harmonic Function In Chromatic Music:
A Renewed Dualist Theory and an Account of its Precedents.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hauptmann, Moritz. [1853] 1991. The Nature Of Harmony And
Metre. Translated and edited by W. E. Heathcote. New fore-
word by Siegmund Levarie. New York: Da Capo Press.
Helmholtz, Hermann. [1863] 1954. On The Sensations of Tone.
Translated by Alexander Ellis. New York: Dover.
Hyer, Brian. 1995. “Reimag(in)ing Riemann.” Journal of Music
Theory 39: 101–38.
Krumhansl, Carol. 1990. Cognitive Foundations of Musical Pitch.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Mathiesen, Thomas. 1999. Apollo’s Lyre. Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press.
Mathieu, W. A. 1991. The Listening Book: Discovering Your Own
Music. Boston: Shambhala.
———. 1994. The Musical Life: ReGections On What It Is And
How To Live It. Boston: Shambhala.
McClain, Ernest G. 1978. The Pythagorean Plato. York Beach,
Maine: Nicolas-Hays.
Sachs, Curt. 1948. Our Musical Heritage. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice Hall.
Schoenberg, Arnold. [1911] 1978. Theory Of Harmony.
Translated by Roy E. Carter. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Sethares, William. 1998. Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale.
London: Springer.
Shepard, R. N. 1964. “Circularity in Judgments of Relative Pitch.”
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 36: 2346–53.
Strunk, W. Oliver. 1965. Source Readings In Music History:
Antiquity and the Middle Ages. New York: W. W. Norton.
Tenney, James. 1988. A History Of “Consonance” And “Disso-
nance.” New York: Excelsior.
WEB BASED SOURCES:
Huygens-Fokker Foundation, Tuning Bibliography. URL: http://
www.xs4all.nl/~huygensf/doc/bib.html
Tuning Group. URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/ group/tuning

Heinrich Schenker. The Art of Performance. Edited by Heribert
Esser. Translated by Irene Schreier Scott. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2000.
Reviewed by David Gagné and Hedi Siegel
Heinrich Schenker’s major theoretical works are widely known
today, thanks to a series of translations as well as a vast secondary
literature and numerous textbooks. Because of this dissemination
of his ideas, Schenker’s work is often perceived in purely theoreti-
cal terms. But viewing Schenker solely in relation to such con-
cepts as structural levels results in a limited and distorted picture
of this preeminent Qgure in twentieth-century music theory.
Schenker began his professional career not as a theorist, but as a
pianist, conductor, and composer. (His compositions were favor-
ably regarded by Brahms and Busoni.) Between 1891 and 1901,
Schenker was also active as an author of essays and reviews; his
subsequent theoretical work developed in part from the desire to
establish a more satisfactory basis for criticism of composition and
performance.1 Harmonielehre demonstrates that he saw himself as
an artist Qrst: when Schenker published it, the words “von einem
Künstler” (by an artist) appeared in place of his own name on the
title page.2 He remained an active practical musician and teacher
throughout his life, giving private lessons in piano and theory.
Schenker’s teaching methods went far beyond those of conven-
tional piano and theory instruction. Some of his students have
written about their lessons with him. One student, the conductor
Hans Wolf, speaks of the interest Schenker took in all aspects of
his musical life and recounts how Schenker quizzed him about the
details of performances that he had heard. Writing of the close at-
tention he received, he records Schenker as saying at the begin-
ning of a theory lesson (consulting the detailed notes he kept on
each student): “Last time I noticed that you didn’t completely un-
1 Schenker’s early writings are collected in Federhofer 1990.
2 See Schenker 1906.
Reviews 135
derstand this problem. I will explain it to you again.” He describes
how Schenker, for whom “rule and masterwork were one and the
same,” invariably illustrated theoretical rules with practical ex-
amples, which he always had at his Qngertips. 3 Another student,
the theorist and composer Felix-Eberhard von Cube, is reported as
praising “his teacher’s sense of humor, his patience, and above all
his insistence that the piece his pupil is studying be learned thor-
oughly, down to the Qnest detail, so that all of the pianist’s
resources contribute to a uniQed performance.”4
But these are second-hand reports. We are most fortunate that
Oxford University Press has published Heribert Esser’s edition of
The Art of Performance in a lucid translation by Irene Schreier
Scott. This book is a Qrst-hand account of what Schenker taught:
it permits us to eavesdrop on his lessons, so to speak, putting us in
the position of one of his students. William Rothstein commented
on the value of such piano instruction when discussing the as yet
unpublished materials—Vom Vortrag (“On Performance”) and
Entwurf einer “Lehre vom Vortrag” (“Sketch of a Theory of
Performance”)—that he consulted at the Oswald Jonas Memorial
Collection at the University of California in Riverside:
The subject of hand motions on the piano may seem an esoteric one to the
non-pianist. It is surely far from the realm of what is generally considered
music theory. Yet both Vom Vortrag and the Entwurf contain important
sections on hand motions, Qngering, and other aspects of piano technique.
Despite appearances to the contrary, there is no contradiction here: in-
deed, it is Qtting that Schenker, who saw his mission as the reuniting of
theory and practice, and who often used the lowly piano lesson as the ve-
hicle for his theoretical teaching, should have paid so much attention to
such practical matters. 5
Schenker’s theoretical and analytical approach was developed
chieRy to serve the performer—to impart an understanding of the
3Wolf 1937, 176–77.
4From William Drabkin’s summary of von Cube’s letter to his father (10
January 1924). See Drabkin 1984–85, 184.
5Rothstein 1984, 21.
136 Music Theory Spectrum
true content of the music. Many of his analytic essays conclude
with a section on performance, and his critical editions likewise
contain practical performance advice. Two early works, Ein
Beitrag zur Ornamentik (1904, revised 1908) and J. S. Bach,
Chromatische Phantasie und Fuge: Kritische Ausgabe (1910), in-
clude discussions of such topics as tempo, dynamics, touch, and
Qngering that are directly linked to his work on a separate perfor-
mance study.6
Holding the book in one’s hand and looking at the author and
title, one might think that it represents Heinrich Schenker’s com-
pletion of his long-promised monograph on performance.7 But in
fact this slim book (fewer than 100 pages of text) is a compilation
of drafts and fragments: it could have been published as an essay
called something like “Schenker’s UnQnished Theory of
Performance.” The editor and translator, however, made the deci-
sion to shape the material into a book that has the appearance of a
Qnished work, and give it Schenker’s intended title, Die Kunst des
Vortrags (The Art of Performance) even though they knew it could
“never be the ‘book’ Schenker intended to write” (xii). We think
they were right to do so, given the diverse and unQnished nature of
the manuscripts, and they have accomplished their aim to create a
practical work attractive to the performing musician. The material
is too valuable to be treated as an archival study and thus be con-
sulted mainly in libraries; it seems to demand application in the
studio and the concert hall.
The text of the book originated mainly in the two manuscripts
found in the Jonas Collection. As mentioned above, the Qrst is a
draft with the title Vom Vortrag, and consists of twelve chapters
taken down from dictation by Jeanette Schenker in the summer of
1911; the second is a gathering of fragmentary notes mainly in
6 See Schenker 1976, 44 ff., and Schenker 1984, 63 ff.
7 Statements regarding its forthcoming publication abound in Schenker’s
writings, e.g., in Beethovens neunte Sinfonie (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1912),
quoted by Esser at the beginning of his introduction (xi). See Schenker 1992, 8.
Schenker’s hand, most dating from the late 1920s. 8 Soon after her
husband’s death in 1935, Jeanette Schenker and Schenker’s stu-
dent Oswald Jonas together organized the Vortrag materials found
in Schenker’s Nachlass. Jonas was occupied with them for the rest
of his life, transcribing, compiling, and annotating the manu-
scripts, as well as lecturing and writing about his Qndings. 9 In the
1950s he worked intensively with the editor of the present vol-
ume, Heribert Esser, and, in consultation with Ernst Oster, laid the
foundation for the publication of the book which Schenker had
hoped to publish himself.10
Thus, Esser, who was asked to take over the editorial work
after Jonas’s death in 1978, has a long history of involvement with
the Vortrag project. His collaboration with Jonas perhaps led him
to edit the book very much in Jonas’s spirit. Jonas, without whose
editorial efforts many of Schenker’s works would never have be-
come widely available, edited with a free hand; his aim, under-
standable given the climate of his time, was to present Schenker’s
writings in the best possible light. 11 Adopting a similar editorial
policy, this time in the interest of practicality, Esser modiQed the
structure of Schenker’s early text and liberally interpolated the
later material contained in the sketches. Stating that he “felt
the need of handling the material with a certain amount of free-
dom,” and that it “would have been extraordinarily pedantic
to present the sources literally in every detail” (xx), he provides
little or no correlation of the text passages with the original. One
8 These are Esser’s sources A and B; see his listing of source materials
(xvii–xviii).
9Jonas 1962 discusses and quotes several important Vortrag passages.
10 The typescripts that emerged from this collaboration are listed by Esser as
sources C and D (xviii). Copies that Esser made of some of the source material
found their way into the Oster Collection of the New York Public Library,
which also houses related material.
11 Jonas issued the following new editions: Schenker 1954 (a revision and
translation of the 1906 edition), Schenker 1956 (a revision of the 1935 edition),
Schenker 1969 (a revision of the 1910 edition), and Schenker 1971–72 (a revi-
sion of the 1913–20 editions).

cannot help wishing that a way had been found to provide fuller
documentation—and even to include the original German text—
without sacriQcing the orderliness and clarity that gives the book
its wide appeal. For now, the scholar interested in tracing the text
to its sources must consult the material in the Oster and Jonas
Collections. 12
Characterized by its editor as the Qrst major publication to
come out of Schenker’s Nachlass, this book is unique among
Schenker’s writings, not only because of its focus on performance
matters, but also because it represents a reconstruction of incom-
plete and fragmentary material. One is reminded of analogous
projects in the realm of musical composition—the completion of
works left unQnished at a composer’s death.13 With his free juxta-
position of material from various sources, Esser is in a sense emu-
lating Schenker’s own procedures. The manuscripts Schenker cre-
ated with his wife, now in the Oster and Jonas Collections, often
show signs of having been literally cut and pasted together. Even
Free Composition originated in this way: in the early 1920s, as
Schenker set out to revise a version he had dictated around 1917,
he started by rearranging the original chapters and inserting new
ones. He eventually abandoned his efforts to create a composite
text; the Qnal version of Der freie Satz is based mainly on a
freshly dictated manuscript. But, in a few places, vestiges of the
earlier versions can be detected.
12 Some of the original source material may be found in Rothstein 1984.
Rothstein includes passages he translates from Vom Vortrag (the early text that
Schenker dictated, Esser’s source A), and from the Entwurf einer “Lehre vom
Vortrag,” a 38-page typescript prepared by Jonas from Schenker’s later frag-
mentary sketches (Esser’s source D). The German original (and its location in
the sources) is given for each quoted passage. We are grateful to William
Rothstein for making available to us his transcription and photocopies of the
Vortrag material he consulted at the Jonas Collection.
13 This analogy is only approximate, of course, since new material is sup-
plied in the completion of a musical work, whereas Esser reorganized
Schenker’s text without adding to it. However, given the substantial nature of
the revision, such a comparison is perhaps not misplaced.
Reviews 137
In the text of The Art of Performance it is the language of
Schenker’s more mature theory that invites detection. Even in the
chapters that seem to derive largely from the manuscript of 1911,
one Qnds interpolations or additions drawn from the later material.
These are recognizable from the use of such terms as “back-
ground” and “foreground,” familiar from Schenker’s writings be-
ginning with the Tonwille essays of the 1920s. This sometimes re-
sults in a mixture of varying stages of Schenker’s thought. Yet it
seems appropriate that the editor supplement the earlier text with
later passages such as the following fragment, rich in poetic im-
agery: “Light and spirited renditions are made possible only by an
overall view, by thinking ahead, thereby giving wings to the hand.
The ear, too, like the eye, must offer us perspective. This ability
comes from understanding the background” (73). 14 Despite the dis-
parity of the source material, the incorporation of such passages
enriches the text. A decision was made, however, to exclude ex-
amples that would require readers to be familiar with the mature
theory presented in Free Composition. 15 The editor’s desire to cre-
ate a practical rather than theoretical work is understandable; nev-
ertheless the absence of this material is to be regretted. Surely,
room could have been made for the examples in an appendix, as
was done with the two chapters of Vom Vortrag (the 1911 manu-
script) that were omitted from the main part of the book. 16
About half of the chapters, mainly those that include musical
examples, seem to derive almost entirely from the later material.
A representative illustration will demonstrate the difQculties
posed by the notes Schenker hastily jotted down on scraps of
14 Part of this passage, which is from the Entwurf, is quoted in Rothstein
1984, 25 and 28 (note 60).
15 See Esser’s introductory remarks (xv–xvi and xxi).
16 Summaries are given of these chapters, “On the Technique of the Piano in
Particular” (Appendix A), and “On the Degeneracy of the Virtuoso” (Appendix
B). We agree with the editor’s decision regarding the polemical latter chapter,
which is now mainly of historical interest. The reason given for moving and
curtailing the former chapter is enigmatic: “Its publication in full is planned in a
different context” (81).
138 Music Theory Spectrum

paper. The small collection of illustrations from the manuscripts Example 1. Schenker’s manuscript sketch (The Art of Performance,
offered in the introductory pages of the book includes a sketch we from Plate 2, xxv)
reproduce in Example 1. A transcription of the Qrst musical illus-
tration within the sketch is given in Example 2.
Schenker’s barely legible and telegraphic notes, shown in
Example 1, were transcribed and reconstructed by Jonas as follows:
Die Hand darf nicht lügen, sie muß dem Sinn der Stimmführung folgen.
Sie lügt, wenn sie gegen die Stimmführung verstößt: Mozart, A dur
Sonate, Thema [example]

also [die] Hand darf nicht die Oktave a2–a1 spielen, muß verbinden
vielmehr: [example] 17

In the book, this passage appears in the chapter entitled “The

Technique of Playing the Piano”; it expands on Schenker’s state-
ment that “the meaning of the phrase determines the position and
motion of the hands” (8):
The hand may not lie; it must conform to the meaning of the voice-
leading. It lies if in Example 3.5 [rendered here as Example 2] this is Example 2. Mozart, Sonata K. 331, Qrst movement, theme, bars
violated by playing a2–a1; the connection must be f 2 and c 2. (9)
17–18 (The Art of Performance, Example 3.5, 10)
The translation preserves Schenker’s vivid endowment of the
player’s hand with the power of speech,18 found again in the chap-
ter on Qngering: “Fingering also must be honest; the hand—like
the mouth—must speak the truth; it must correspond to the
voice-leading” (34).19
Irene Schreier Scott, the translator of Esser’s reconstruction of
Schenker’s text, is a pianist and teacher.20 As Oswald Jonas’s step-
daughter and student, she literally grew up with Schenker’s ap-
17 From the Entwurf, page 21, under the heading “Klavier Hand”; part of this proach to performance; her Qrst piano teacher was Moriz Violin,
passage is quoted in Rothstein 1984, 21 and 27 (note 47). Schenker’s close lifelong friend. Her translation of the German
18 At Qrst glance, the translation of “die Hand darf nicht lügen” as “the hand
text is generally accurate, elegant, and smooth. She provides quite
may not lie” is ambiguous; the German word “lügen” has none of the double literal translations for the terms Schenker coined, e.g., “piano
meaning of the English “to lie.” Translating the phrase as “the hand may not tell
singing” for Klaviersingen, “light-point” for Lichtstelle, and
a lie” might have removed the ambiguity.
19 See Rothstein 1984, 21 and 27 (note 47). “painting gestures” for malende Bewegungen (8–9), although the
20 Esser, a conductor, is also a performing musician; thus both the editor and German original could perhaps have been revealed in more in-
translator approached their work from a performer’s point of view. stances, as is done for the term Luftpedal, rendered as “air pedal”

with the German term given in brackets (12). She understandably
retains the German word Rahmenanschlag (literally “framing
touch”), a term Schenker invented to characterize a kind of touch
used to emphasize main notes that “frame” those of lesser impor-
tance (49–52).
In addition to the question of source identiQcation discussed
above, some minor aspects of documentation should be men-
tioned. While explanations and supplementary material supplied
by the editor are mainly relegated to the notes at the back of the
book, some commentary is included as part of the text or example
captions. Referring to Schenker by name in the midst of his own
words (33–4) can be jarring to the reader, even when this occurs
within example captions, as in Example 8.16 (50) and Example
9.20 (63). These comments would have been better as notes, espe-
cially where reference is made to modern editions or Schenker’s
other writings (note 3 to Chapter 9 is, in fact, used for just such a
purpose). Another aspect of the example captions could impede
the reader: where examples and text are placed on the same page,
it is sometimes difQcult to distinguish the captions from the text,
since they are both set in the same type size (see, for example,
p. 36). There are also formatting problems in the bibliography,
particularly in the “Related Works” list.21
Overall, however, the book is an outstanding achievement.
Surmounting considerable difQculties, the editor and translator
have created a coherent text that presents Schenker’s ideas about
performance in a style and manner consistent with his other writ-
21 There are some misprints in the bibliography (96): in lines 2–4, an article
by Oswald Jonas is erroneously included under the heading “Works of Heinrich
Schenker” (it is listed again, in the correct place, under “Related Works,”
where, in the second line, “pp. 122–129” should read “pp. 127–129”); in the
last line on the page, “vol. 7” should read “vol. 8.” For additional corrections,
the comprehensive list of the book’s misprints (that incorporates an inventory of
errata prepared by Yosef Goldenberg) is available on the smt web site; it is one
of the book errata lists included in the Virtual Poster Session managed by Dave
Headlam.
Reviews 139
ings. Its content is organized according to various aspects of per-
formance, especially on the piano, as in “The Technique of
Playing the Piano” (Chapter 3), “Legato” (Chapter 5) “Staccato”
(Chapter 6). Details of technique are presented in the context of a
larger view of the composition and in light of the performer’s role
as interpreter of the composer’s vision.
The book begins with a chapter entitled “Musical Composition
and Performance” that opens with this statement: “Basically, a
composition does not require a performance in order to exist” (3).
If a composition is performed, however, it must not be misrepre-
sented; to this end Schenker characteristically requires the per-
former to have a thorough knowledge of the laws of composition.
In addition, an understanding of the signiQcance of the notated
score is held to be crucial; this is discussed in the second chapter,
“Mode of Notation and Performance.” While Schenker afQrms
that scores should preserve the composer’s original notation, he
also states: “The author’s mode of notation does not indicate his
directions for the performance but, in a far more profound sense,
represents the effect he wishes to attain. These are two separate
things” (5). Despite his belief that great composers are “as in-
spired in their notation as they were in the actual composing” (6),
Schenker makes suggestions such as the following recommenda-
tion, found in the chapter on legato playing: “In some instances, it
proves to be appropriate in a longer series of notes to hold some
Qngers down longer than written” (22). Thus to discern the inten-
tion of a composer one must see beyond the palpable symbols of
the notation.
Schenker’s approach is both poetic and Rexible. In Chapter 8,
“Dynamics,” we read: “Pianissimo under certain circumstances
means nothing other than stillness—that particular kind of still-
ness which does not lose its character even if one or more voices
Roat through space” (40). His discussion of Qngering (Chapter 7)
is also highly evocative, as in the following comment: “The free
mobility of the ‘soul’ of a work of art ever will demand total free-
dom of Qngering” (34). His sense of Rexibility is particularly evi-
dent in Chapter 9, “Tempo and Tempo ModiQcations”: “Repeated
140 Music Theory Spectrum
notes demand hurrying on to the next downbeat . . . Neighboring
notes, chromatics, diminutions of the lowest order want expressive
treatment; without pushing ahead—holding back, this would be
impossible” (54–5). The following comments on legato playing
are characteristic of his expressive yet precise way of writing:
The identity of legato technique in violin, voice, and piano can be ob-
served in a particular type of legato. This consists of individual notes
within a group that receive pressure separately, notwithstanding a strictly
observed legato. The violinist can Qnger individual notes while continuing
to draw his bow in undulating motions without compromising the legato.
The singer, similarly, is able to emphasize individual notes within one
single breath. The same effect can be attained by the pianist if he plays
legato as described previously with strictly held keys, simultaneously mov-
ing the arm and hand in an elastic, swaying motion in order to play the fol-
lowing key from a higher point than he would otherwise. Perhaps a differ-
ent image describes this technique more suitably: it is as if the arm were
striding back and forth in the keys, which serve as its Qrm ground. (24–5)
Schenker frequently compares the piano to the orchestra (espe-
cially the strings) and to the voice. He describes the use of the
pedal by saying: “Since the piano cannot provide all sustaining
voices as the orchestra can, pedal gives it the possibility of com-
pensating for these missing parts. The damper pedal unshackles
the overtones, whose radiance substitutes for the orchestra’s sus-
taining voices” (10). He describes ways in which the hand can
create a type of “pedal” that produces orchestral effects: “hand
pedal,” a way of holding keys down to create a sustained, French-
horn-like sound, and “air pedal,” the use of an extremely short
touch to produce an effect analogous to the fading out of breath or
bow strokes. He pays particular attention to the left hand, noting,
for example: “When the bass moves in octaves, the result often is
a certain orchestral interaction of registers, as if the lower note
were played by the basses and the higher one by the cellos” (14).
While the book focuses on many practical aspects of tech-
nique, it also emphasizes Schenker’s conviction that a perfor-
mance is not a mechanical playing of notes, but comes from
within the performer and the work. One of the drafted chapters
summarized as an appendix, “On the Degeneracy of the Virtuoso,”
compares the pursuit of virtuosity for its own sake with the play-
ing of composers such as Handel, Bach, C. P. E. Bach, Mozart,
Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Brahms, who were brilliant impro-
visers and who performed a work as an integrated whole.
Technique, expression, and understanding should be fused; we
read in Chapter 12, “On Practicing”: “Technical difQculties in a
work of art can be equated with the difQculties fate brings in
life—but they must be generated by the synthesis” (77). Keeping
the entirety of a work in view is essential. Schenker observes:
“The requirement that a composition’s form not be exposed too
nakedly frequently demands considerably quicker playing where
the seam occurs . . . Played in this way, the separate sections are
pulled together, whereas without such a tempo deviation they
would fall apart needlessly, compromising the texture of the form”
(55–7). Yet ultimately he places the focus not on the composition
or its performance alone but rather “on the listener, who at all
times is the object and measure of the effect” (54).
We have quoted generously from the book in order to convey
the Ravor of its language and the nature of its content in relation to
Schenker’s theoretical writings. Despite its brevity, The Art of
Performance contains an extraordinary profusion of ideas that are
expressed in highly original terms—ideas that can potentially
have a wide audience in the musical community. They are of such
quality as to deserve that audience.
LIST OF WORKS CITED
Drabkin, William. 1984–85. “Felix-Eberhard von Cube and the
North-German Tradition of Schenkerism.” Proceedings of the
Royal Musical Association 111: 180–207.
Federhofer, Hellmut. 1990. Heinrich Schenker als Essayist und
Kritiker. Hildesheim: Olms.
Jonas, Oswald. 1962. “Die Kunst des Vortrages nach Heinrich
Schenker.” Musikerzeihung 15: 127–9.

Rothstein, William. 1984. “Heinrich Schenker as an Interpreter of
Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas.” 19th-Century Music 8: 3–28.
Schenker, Heinrich. 1906. Neue musikalische Theorien und
Phantasien, Vol. I: Harmonielehre. Stuttgart: Cotta. Reprint
edition, with a foreword by Rudolf Frisius, Vienna: Universal
Edition, 1978.
———. 1954. Harmony. Edited by Oswald Jonas. Translated by
Elisabeth Mann Borgese. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press. Reprint edition, Cambridge, Mass: mit Press, 1973.
———. 1956. Der freie Satz. Revised edition. Edited by Oswald
Jonas. Vienna: Universal Edition.
———. 1969. J. S. Bach, Chromatische Phantasie und Fuge:
Kritische Ausgabe. Revised edition. Edited by Oswald Jonas.
Vienna: Universal Edition.
Reviews 141
———. 1971–72. Beethoven, Die letzten Sonaten: Erlaüterungs-
ausgabe, of Op. 101, 109, 110, 111. Revised editions. Edited
by Oswald Jonas. Vienna: Universal Edition.
———. 1976. “A Contribution to the Study of Ornamentation.”
Translated by Hedi Siegel. In The Music Forum 4: 1–139.
———. 1984. J. S. Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue:
Critical Edition with Commentary. Translated and edited by
Hedi Siegel. New York, Longman.
———. 1992. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Translated and
edited by John Rothgeb. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Wolf, Hans. 1937. “Schenkers Persönlichkeit im Unterricht.” Der
Dreiklang 7 (October): 176–84.
142 Music Theory Spectrum
Understanding Charles Seeger, Pioneer in American Musicology.
Edited by Bell Yung and Helen Rees. Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1999.
Reviewed by Ellie M. Hisama
Understanding Charles Seeger, Pioneer in American Musicology
contributes new perspectives on the wide-ranging intellectual en-
terprises of polymath Charles Seeger. Many of Seeger’s ideas
from the 1930s through the 1970s resonate with music theorists’
present-day concerns—for example, his forward-looking insis-
tence on studying music in its contexts; his advocacy for expan-
sion of the repertoire studied by scholars to include American
music, world music, folk music, and orally transmitted music; and
his bridging of philosophical concerns with musical ones. Further,
his invention in the 1950s of the melograph, an electronic tool for
transcribing a performance or recording, anticipates work in
music theory published several decades later that examines sound
through its visual representation. 1
This collection of eight essays by theorists, musicologists, and
ethnomusicologists celebrates the variety and evolution of
Seeger’s thought while sounding common themes that emerged in
his writings over a span of some sixty years. As noted by the
book’s co-editors, Bell Yung and Helen Rees, Seeger published
approximately eighty musicological papers on topics as varied as
contemporary composition, the European art-music tradition, the
melograph, folk music, music of the Americas, applied musicol-
ogy, music education, and the philosophy of music. On p. 6, they
identify six themes in Seeger’s writings: (1) the deQnition of
music and musicology, (2) the relationship between language and
music, (3) language as the lens through which music is under-
stood, (4) theories of value, (5) the social responsibility of musi-
cians and musicologists, and (6) the social contexts of music.
1 Examples of visual representations of music are in Cogan 1984,
Clendinning 1995, Bernard 1999, Brackett 2000, and Hisama 2001.
Yung & Rees’s organization of these diverse yet interconnected
essays is exemplary. One essay Rows to the next, gracefully pick-
ing up a theme or idea. As a companion volume to Taylor Greer’s
recent book on Seeger’s philosophy of music (Greer 1998),
Understanding Charles Seeger offers theorists a number of signif-
icant and novel avenues of exploration.
In “The Dynamics of Dissonance in Seeger’s Treatise and
Crawford’s Quartet,” Greer does a superb job of writing lucidly
about the intricate web of Seeger’s ideas presented in his land-
mark treatise “Tradition and Experiment in (the New) Music”
(Seeger 1994). Seeger’s legendary prose often requires the reader
to mine the text multiple times for the idea, and Greer’s long en-
gagement with Seeger’s writing (Greer 1994 and 1998) makes
him the ideal guide to this theoretical work. Greer skillfully navi-
gates the waters of Seeger’s treatise, setting his sights upon a
single piece to illustrate the analytical application of Seeger’s
ideas, the third movement of Crawford’s String Quartet 1931.
Greer is not the Qrst scholar to apply Seeger’s ideas to Crawford’s
music—as he notes, David Nicholls, Joseph Straus, and Judith
Tick have also done so—but Greer’s reading of this quartet move-
ment through the lens of Seeger’s work in “Tradition and
Experiment” is still original and revealing.2 Greer’s explication of
Seeger’s six functions of musical experience that are divided into
two groups, tone (encompassing pitch/dynamics/timbre) and
rhythm (encompassing proportion/accent/tempo), and his applica-
tion of Seeger’s ideas about dynamics and accent to Crawford’s
quartet movement whose underlying plan the composer herself
identiQed as “heterophony of dynamics—a sort of counterpoint of
crescendi and diminuendi” (Crawford [1948] 1997, 357) is ab-
sorbing. 3 One especially interesting feature of the piece that Greer
2See Nicholls 1990, Tick 1990, and Straus 1995. Burkett 2001 also explores
the relationship between Seeger’s theories and Crawford’s music. Slottow 2001
discusses Seeger’s theories in relation to compositions by Carl Ruggles.
3Other analyses of this movement can be found in Straus 1995, 158–72,
Hisama 1995, and Hisama 2001, 12–34.

examines is the pattern of dynamic peaks in mm. 13–18 (played by
the viola, second violin, and cello on beats 1, 2, and 3), which oc-
curs a total of six times, and the completion of the pattern in m. 19
by the Qrst violin on beat 4. Although Greer notes that he hopes his
“brief discussion of the quartet [he discusses 19 of the movement’s
99 measures] serves as an initial step to help stimulate other, more
detailed analyses of the relationship between philosophical theory
and compositional method” (24), I would have liked for him to
continue; his discussion of the opening bars made me to want to
discover how he hears the subsequent passages, particularly the
striking climax and subsequent descent that contribute to the
movement’s structural fascination and dramatic power. Greer’s dis-
cussion might also have contemplated the relation of Seeger’s ideas
to Crawford’s own observation in her brief analysis of this piece
that “the melodic line grows out of this continuous increase and de-
crease; it is given, one tone at a time, to different instruments, and
each new melodic tone is brought in at the high point of a
crescendo,” as well as her accompanying sketch of a portion of this
composite melodic line (Crawford Seeger [1948] 1997, 358).
One aspect of Greer’s discussion of the quartet warrants fur-
ther discussion. His statements that “there is an overall balance of
musical functions [in Crawford’s quartet movement] whereby a
constant Rux in one function is counterbalanced by less activity
among the others” (23) and “these observations . . . suggest that
the sense of balance exhibited in Crawford’s quartet can be inter-
preted as a musical realization of . . . Seeger’s philosophical the-
ory of mediation” (23) seem at odds with his conclusion, in
which he writes: “It seems rather ironic that the one composer
who had the beneQt of studying closely Seeger’s theories about
the ideal of balance, Ruth Crawford, wrote several works that
were distinguished by the imbalance among functions” (24, em-
phasis added); the endnote to this sentence then mentions the
quartet’s third movement as well as Crawford’s Piano Study in
Mixed Accents. It is unfortunate that the reproduction of the Qrst
page of the Presser score, given in Figure 1.3, is of poor quality
in this otherwise well-produced book (22). Still, these minor
Reviews 143
points detract minimally from an effective fusing of theory and
analysis.
In “The American Composer in the 1930s: The Social Thought
of Seeger and Chávez,” Leonora Saavedra explores Seeger’s and
Carlos Chávez’s attempts to reconcile their leftist politics with
their interest in modernist music. Saavedra’s decision to place
Chávez alongside Seeger, both of whom were struggling to under-
stand the social relevance of modernist music during the 1920s
and 1930s, makes for an interesting pairing. In Saavedra’s words:
“In the course of trying to examine the links between art and soci-
ety, Seeger and Chávez came to understand music as a social
product with a social function rather than as the suprasocial cre-
ation of an individual mind” (53). Initially opposed to folk music,
which in 1934 he labeled “conventional, easy going, subservient”
(Seeger 1934), Seeger came to champion the traditional music of
the working class: “Plainly, if we are to compose for more than an
inQnitesimal fraction of the American people, we must write in an
idiom not too remote from the one most of them possess—their
own musical vernacular.” (Seeger [1939] 1994, 387). One won-
ders what Seeger would have thought of postmodernism; would
he have embraced postmodern music because it allows a com-
poser to reach a broad audience through repackaged vernacular
styles? Or would he have sided with its critics who regard post-
modern pastiche and stylistic juxtaposition as lacking in value and
content, and therefore devoid of any political meaning and efQ-
cacy? Saavedra’s essay reminds contemporary readers of the so-
cial responsibilities of composers and scholars as well as the po-
tential impact of their work on society, issues that were central to
Seeger and evident in the directions his research, teaching, and
children would take.4
4 Numerous recordings and books chronicle the musical contributions of
three of Seeger’s children, Peggy Seeger, Mike Seeger, and Pete Seeger. A sam-
pler includes Mike Seeger 1964 and 1998, Peggy Seeger 1998a and 1998b, and
Pete Seeger 1993 and 1998.
144 Music Theory Spectrum
Robert R. Grimes develops the topic of Seeger’s desire to ef-
fect positive social change in his essay “Form, Content, and Value:
Seeger and Criticism to 1940.” Grimes pinpoints Seeger’s water-
shed article “Systematic and Historical Orientations in Musicology”
(1939) as an important turning point in Seeger’s scholarly develop-
ment. What Seeger meant by “value” is, as Grimes rightly notes,
“not always clearly evident … in the context of music” (64). Grimes
does an admirable job of sorting out Seeger’s ideas on value in the
1930s by closely examining his writings, both scholarly and jour-
nalistic, during this period: “For Seeger in his early writings value is
the dynamic form of content; it is the act of valuing. Content, a
more static term, is the link between internal and external, between
the purely, intrinsically musical and the social function of music”
(79–80). Like Greer, Grimes locates inRuences on Seeger’s
thoughts in philosophy (Greer identiQes Bergson, Russell, Perry,
and Goethe as signiQcant to Seeger, while Grimes discusses the im-
pact of Georgii Plekhanov in addition to Perry). Grimes’s argument
for Seeger’s attraction to Plekhanov’s work and his contention that
Seeger was drawn to Plekhanov’s ability to connect art, society, and
economic forces are convincing, as is his conclusion that Seeger’s
concept of value was an evolving one (79).
Grimes’s statement that “[Seeger] had found that music is
something more than the luxury of an elite class” (80) is rich with
implications for music theory’s potential directions in the new mil-
lennium. While professional analytic studies still concentrate on
Western European art music, the tides are certainly shifting.
Conference program committees, publishers, and search commit-
tees are showing increased interest in music outside of the canon.5
As the categories of music we consider worthy of theoretical
scrutiny continue to change, we are also Qnding new applications
for traditionally accepted tools and developing new tools for unex-
5I discuss this development in Hisama 2000.
6Examples of analytical work that explores new repertories include Clarke
1999 and Burns 2000.
plored repertories.6 Music theorists interested in considering how
one would analyze a repertory whose structural complexity would
not be revealed by, for example, Schenkerian analysis, would do
well to revisit Seeger’s article “Versions and Variants of the Tunes
of ‘Barbara Allen’ ” (Seeger [1966] 1977). The thoroughness of
Seeger’s analysis of a traditional tune dispels preconceived notions
about the ability of American roots music to bear close study.
Co-editor Helen Rees points out in her excellent essay
“ ‘Temporary Bypaths?’ Seeger and Folk Music Research” that
“Seeger’s discovery of American folksong contributed actively,
materially, and discernibly to some of the most sophisticated and
inRuential theoretical concerns of his later years” (85). The second
half of Rees’s article is particularly relevant to music theorists. In
it, Rees explores three interrelated sets of questions crucial to any
analytical enterprise: Qrst, what constitutes the music to be stud-
ied? That is, what determines the identity of a piece when pitches,
rhythm, or other musical parameters may vary performance to
performance, as in the performance of works transmitted through
the oral tradition? Ethnomusicologists, of course, deal with these
questions routinely, but such issues force music theorists who are
trained to analyze from a Qxed score notated in the Western art
tradition to rethink the very foundations of their analytical pro-
jects. Second, what is the relationship between the oral and writ-
ten traditions, and how should we treat music for which there is no
score? Seeger’s musings on these questions some three decades
ago are still relevant today as music theorists chart the waters of
analyzing non-notated music drawn from popular music, vernacu-
lar music, and world music traditions. 7 Third, how does an analyst
acknowledge and negotiate the shortcomings of Western notation
in transcribing music? What does transcription represent?
Although Seeger’s work provides no easy answers to these inter-
locking questions, his deliberations provide the foundation for a
contemporary rethinking of these issues.
7Recent analyses of popular music and world music appear in Middleton
1990, Moore 1993, Tagg 2000, Temperley 2000, and Tenzer 2000.

Ruth Crawford’s dismissal as merely a composition student of
her teacher Charles Seeger will always best be exempliQed for me
in a comment made in 1989 by a retired musicology professor
who, upon seeing a graduate student with Crawford’s Diaphonic
Suite No. 1, exclaimed: “Those were just solutions to exercises
Charlie gave her!” Judith Tick’s quietly revolutionary essay, “Ruth
Crawford, Charles Seeger, and ‘The Music of American Folk
Songs’” encourages us to rethink the received idea that Seeger’s
ideas were embodied in Crawford’s work. Tick powerfully argues
that Seeger’s writings on folk songs have antecedents in a little-
known treatise by Crawford that she completed in 1940 entitled
“The Music of American Folk Song,” published for the Qrst time
in 2001 (Crawford Seeger 2001). 8 Tick provides example after ex-
ample, both in the body of the essay and in an appendix to it, that
Seeger’s ideas resonate with Crawford’s earlier work. For ex-
ample, Tick quotes Crawford on transcription:
A tune is a stream of sound whose variations in pitch and in time can be
represented on paper as a curving line. Figure 5 represents within a mar-
gin of error of approximately .1 second, metrical irregularities observed in
the original singing. (116; Crawford Seeger 2001, 9–10)
She then presents a strikingly similar passage in Seeger’s
“Prescriptive and Descriptive Music Writing,” initially published
in 1958.
On the one hand, let us agree, melody may be conceived . . . as a succes-
sion of separate sounds, on the other, as a single continuum of sound—as
a chain or as a stream. For the present, I am inclined to set . . . 1/10 of a
second as fair margins of accuracy for general musicological use. (116;
Seeger [1958] 1977, 169)
Tick might also have drawn a link between Crawford’s
metaphor of transcription as a skeleton, which Crawford uses in
her treatise (“. . . it is only the extent to which [city or town
8The correct title of the treatise is The Music of American Folk Song (singu-
lar), not The Music of American Folk Songs (plural).
Reviews 145
people] are, or become familiar with the idiomatic variations of
American folk singing that they can expect to put approximately
the right kind of Gesh, blood, and nerve Fbre back on this skeleton
notation” [118]) and Seeger’s discussion in 1951 of whether tran-
scriptions in three regional folksong collections “purport to be a
hypothetical or logical skeletonizing of the tunes.” (Seeger 1951,
523). In order to illustrate the analytical complexities encountered
by the transcriber of folksongs, Tick’s essay provides a brilliant
example in Crawford’s work on the tune “Choose You a Seat ‘n’
Set Down” as well as additional evidence of Crawford’s inRuence
on Seeger’s ideas published in “Versions and Variants on the
Tunes of ‘Barbara Allen.’ ”9 As Tick sagely notes, although Seeger
could have acknowledged publicly the importance of Crawford’s
contribution to the scholarship on folk music, perhaps he did not
do so because of “the entitlement of a certain kind of intellect and
a certain kind of love” (123).
In “Seeger’s Unitary Field Theory Reconsidered,” Lawrence
M. Zbikowski picks up the topic discussed by Grimes and Rees of
Seeger’s interest in the linguistic study of music. He chooses to
tackle Seeger’s thorny work on the relationship between speech
and music Qrst by examining Gilles Fauconnier’s theory of mental
spaces and later discussing what Zbikowski calls “a properly mu-
sical concept,” which he concludes to be “a cognitive structure
that can be speciFed for what we call music, leaving both ‘we’ and
‘music’ undeQned” (143). Zbikowski’s decision not to clarify the
identities of the investigator and the music to which his idea might
be applied is regrettable, as is the fact that the reference given in
the endnote that might elucidate the discussion is to an unpub-
lished paper (147 n. 8). The reader is thus left to puzzle over a
murky deQnition. Also disappointing is the lack of explanation in
the opening paragraph as to what the author precisely means by
“sound images” (“sound images are part of the central business of
9Crawford’s published transcription of “Choose You a Seat ‘n’ Set Down”
appears in Lomax & Lomax 2000.
146 Music Theory Spectrum
what we call music,” 130) and the absence of discussion about the
detailed table in Seeger’s “Toward a Unitary Field Theory for
Musicology.” These gaps are lamentable because Zbikowski offers
a number of intriguing observations worth pursuing—for ex-
ample, his revelation that “The basic notion of a properly musical
concept is inRuenced by my own experience: I can remember hav-
ing ideas and thoughts about music well before I discovered any
way of describing them to others” (141). One hopes that
Zbikowski’s important ideas will be further developed in future
Seeger scholarship.
Like Zbikowski, Nimrod Baranovitch considers Seeger’s ideas
over a span of several decades. His contribution, “Anthropology
and Music: Seeger’s Writings from 1933 to 1953,” adroitly
demonstrates that Seeger anticipated foundational ideas and
methodological issues in ethnomusicology well before the Qeld
was ofQcially established. Four of Seeger’s insights presented in
Baranovitch’s essay are particularly useful to music theorists who
are interested in taking the Qeld in new directions:
(1) Seeger’s insistence that analysis of the internal workings of
a piece of music is an incomplete project: “The inner, tech-
nical operations of the art of music cannot adequately be
studied without consideration of the outer relations of
music and the culture of which it is a part.” (158; Seeger
1940, 318)
(2) His criticism (as early as 1940) of the “great man” para-
digm in music scholarship and his promotion of the study
of the musical vernacular of “the common man,” or folk
music, which he considered a “socially molded thing, with
a deep-set cultural function expressing not so much the va-
rieties of individual experience as the norms of social ex-
perience.” (159; Seeger 1940, 321)
(3) His proposal that European art music is as socially molded
as vernacular traditions, and that it should not be regarded
as the norm against which non-European musics should be
measured. (160–62; Seeger 1941)
(4) His challenge to the assumption that “the best music is
written music.” (161; Seeger 1941, 18)
Baranovitch’s traversal of these key texts that explore music as
culture provides theorists with a useful reminder of the contempo-
rary value of Seeger’s writings from the 1940s.
The Qnal essay, a meditation on the relationship between
physics and musicology in Seeger’s work, is penned by co-editor
Bell Yung, who is well positioned to investigate such a connec-
tion, having received advanced training in both physics and music.
“From Modern Physics to Modern Musicology: Seeger and
Beyond” provides an important step toward a fuller understanding
of the foundations of Seeger’s music theories. For example, Yung
explores Seeger’s interest in “musical space-time” as follows:
Musical space refers to pitch, dynamics, and timbre, while musical time
refers to tempo, movement, and duration. In combining space and time
into a hyphenated word, he is clearly borrowing the concept from the
space-time of the special theory of relativity, implying that musical space-
time consists of six dimensions, but that these six dimensions are inher-
ently related to each other and must be treated as such, just as the four di-
mensions in physical space-time are. (179)
Yung convincingly argues for Seeger’s attraction to general
concepts in physics of the early part of the century, such as
particle-wave duality and the theory of relativity, while also show-
ing that the details of Seeger’s six-dimensional model of musical
space-time are neither clearly deQned nor consistent (179). The
depth of Seeger’s knowledge of physics remains little researched
compared to work by scholars on Seeger’s interest in diverse Qelds
within the humanities and social sciences, and Yung makes a
strong case for the importance of further research about the inter-
connections between physics and musicology in Seeger’s theories.
We should be grateful to Yung not only for his efforts to under-
stand Seeger through a new portal, but also, in collaboration with
Helen Rees, for this stimulating collection.
Understanding Charles Seeger does not attempt comprehen-
sive coverage of Seeger’s plethora of interests and endeavors—an

impossible task, to be sure. Instead of faulting such an impressive
book for not addressing in more depth topics such as Seeger’s own
compositions, the impact of Seeger on his children’s music-
making and political beliefs, and the implications of his work for
music education, we should take Yung & Rees’s collection as a
Qrm reminder of the lasting signiQcance of Seeger’s work and as
an invitation to pick up where the book leaves off. Seeger’s revo-
lutionary ideas are many, including his call to expand the number
and varieties repertories studied, to adapt ideas from disciplines
outside of music to projects in theory and analysis, and to embed
musical analysis within its social, historical, and political contexts
instead of retreating to what Arnold Whittall has called “the safe
shores of technical analysis” (Whittall 2001). As Seeger observed
nearly thirty years ago, “The drive to internationalize the world
economically, politically, intellectually—that is, as one cultural
whole—is in full swing. Music is an integral factor in the process”
(Seeger [1972] 1994, 434). In the twenty-Qrst century, it becomes
increasingly necessary for music theory as a profession to Qnd its
place within a larger social and disciplinary fabric while retaining
its integrity as a Qeld that considers musical structure and meaning
as its primary goals. Developing theories that consider music in its
global as well as local contexts would be one way to ensure our
survival as a profession and as a discipline in a rapidly changing
world.
LIST OF WORKS CITED
Bernard, Jonathan W. 1999. “Ligeti’s Restoration of Interval and
its SigniQcance for His Later Works.” Music Theory Spectrum
21: 1–21.
Brackett, David. 2000. Interpreting Popular Music. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Burkett, Lyn Ellen Thornblad. 2001. Tensile Involvement:
Counterpoint and Compositional Pedagogy in the Work of
Seeger, Hindemith, and Krenek. Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana
University.
Reviews 147
Burns, Lori. 2000. “Analytic Methodologies for Rock Music:
Harmonic and Voice-Leading Strategies in Tori Amos’s
‘Crucify’.” In Expression in Pop-Rock Music: A Collection of
Critical and Analytical Essays. Edited by Walter Everett. New
York: Garland, 213–46.
Clarke, Eric F. 1999. “Subject-Position and the SpeciQcation of
Invariants in Music by Frank Zappa and P. J. Harvey.” Music
Analysis 18: 347–74.
Clendinning, Jane Piper. 1995. “Structural Factors in the
Microcanonic Compositions of György Ligeti.” In Concert
Music, Rock, and Jazz Since 1945: Essays and Analytical
Studies. Edited by Elizabeth West Marvin and Richard
Hermann. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 229–56.
Cogan, Robert. 1984. New Images of Musical Sound. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press.
Crawford Seeger, Ruth. [1940] 2001. The Music of American Folk
Song. Edited by Larry Polansky. Rochester: University of
Rochester Press.
———. [1948] 1997. “Analysis of the Third Movement of the
String Quartet 1931.” In Judith Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger: A
Composer’s Search for American Music. New York: Oxford
University Press, 357–60.
Greer, Taylor A. 1994. “Critical Remarks about Tradition and
Experiment in (the New) Music.” In Studies in Musicology II:
1929–1979. Edited by Ann M. Pescatello. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 27–42.
———. 1998. A Question of Balance: Charles Seeger’s
Philosophy of Music. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hisama, Ellie M. 1995. “The Question of Climax in Ruth
Crawford’s String Quartet, mvt. 3.” In Concert Music, Rock,
and Jazz Since 1945: Essays and Analytical Studies. Edited by
Elizabeth West Marvin and Richard Hermann. Rochester:
University of Rochester Press, 285–312.
———. 2000. “Life Outside the Canon? A Walk on the Wild
Side.” Music Theory Online 6 (August). http://smt.ucsb.edu/
mto/issues/mto.00.6.3/toc.6.3.html.
148 Music Theory Spectrum
———. 2001. Gendering Musical Modernism: The Music of Ruth
Crawford, Marion Bauer, and Miriam Gideon. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Lomax, John A., and Alan Lomax, coll. and comp. [1941] 2000.
Our Singing County: Folk Songs and Ballads. Edited by Ruth
Crawford Seeger. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover.
Middleton, Richard. 1990. Studying Popular Music. Milton
Keynes: Open University Press.
Moore, Allan F. 1993. Rock, the Primary Text: Developing a
Musicology of Rock. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Nicholls, David. 1990. American Experimental Music, 1890–1940.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Seeger, Charles [Sands, Carl]. 1934. “Thirteen Songs from Eight
Countries Included in Book Put Out by Music Bureau
Internat’l,” The Daily Worker (1 February): 5.
———. [1939] 1994. “Grass Roots for American Composers,”
Modern Music 16:143–9. Reprinted in Studies in Musicology
II, 1929–1979. Edited by Ann M. Pescatello. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 383–8.
———. 1939. “Systematic and Historical Orientations in
Musicology.” Acta Musicologica 11: 121–8.
———. 1940. “Folk Music as a Source of History.” In The
Cultural Approach to History. Edited by Carolyn F. Ware. New
York: Columbia University Press.
———. 1941. “Inter-American Relations in the Field of Music.”
Music Educators Journal 27: 17–18, 64–5.
———. 1951. Review of Alton C. Morris’s Folksongs of Florida,
William A. Owens’s Texas Folksongs, and Byron Arnold’s
Folksongs of Alabama, in Notes 8: 523.
———. [1958] 1977. “Prescriptive and Descriptive Music
Writing.” Musical Quarterly 44: 184–95. Reprinted in Studies
in Musicology, 1935–1975. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 168–81.
———. [1966] 1977. “Versions and Variants of ‘Barbara Allen’ in
the Archive of American Folk Song in the Library of
Congress.” Selected Reports [University of California at Los
Angeles, Institute of Ethnomusicology] 1: 120–67. Reprinted
as “Versions and Variants of the Tunes of ‘Barbara Allen’ ” in
Studies in Musicology, 1935–1975. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 273–320.
———. [1972] 1994. “World Musics in American Schools: A
Challenge to be Met.” Music Educators Journal 58 (October):
107–11. Reprinted in Studies in Musicology II, 1929–1979.
Edited by Ann M. Pescatello. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 427–34.
———. 1994. “Tradition and Experiment in (the New) Music.” In
Studies in Musicology II: 1929–1979. Edited by Ann M.
Pescatello. Berkeley: University of California Press, 49–266.
Seeger, Mike. 1964. Old-Time String Band Songbook. Edited by
Mike Seeger and John Cohen. New York: Music Sales
Corporation.
———. 1998. Southern Banjo Sounds. Smithsonian Folkways
40107.
Seeger, Peggy. 1998a. The Peggy Seeger Songbook, Warts and All:
Forty Years of Songmaking. Edited by Irene Scott. New York:
Oak Publications.
———. 1998b. Period Pieces. Tradition TCD 1078.
Seeger, Pete. 1993. Where Have All the Flowers Gone: A Singer’s
Stories, Songs, Seeds, Robberies. Bethlehem, Penn.: Sing Out.
———. 1998. If I Had a Hammer: Songs of Hope & Struggle.
Smithsonian Folkways SF CD 40096.
Slottow, Stephen P. 2001. A Vast Simplicity: Pitch Organization in
the Music of Carl Ruggles. Ph.D. dissertation, City University
of New York.
Straus, Joseph N. 1995. The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tagg, Philip. 2000. “Analysing Popular Music: Theory, Method,
and Practice.” In Reading Pop: Approaches to Textual Analysis
in Popular Music. Edited by Richard Middleton. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 71–103.
Temperley, David. 2000. “Meter and Grouping in African Music:
A View from Music Theory.” Ethnomusicology 44: 65–96.

Tenzer, Michael. 2000. Gamelan Gong Kebyar: The Art of
Twentieth-century Balinese Music. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Tick, Judith. 1990. “Dissonant Counterpoint Revisited: The First
Movement of Ruth Crawford’s String Quartet.” In A
Celebration of American Music: Words and Music in Honor of
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H. Wiley Hitchcock. Edited by Richard Crawford, R. Allen
Lott, and Carol J. Oja. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 405–22.
Whittall, Arnold. 2001. “Revoicing Expression: Postmodern
Classicism.” Lecture presented at University of London (15
March).
150 Music Theory Spectrum
Susan McClary. Conventional Wisdom: The Content of Musical
Form. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.
Reviewed by Judy Lochhead
Conventional Wisdom grew out of McClary’s Bloch Lectures at
the University of California at Berkeley in 1993—its publication
postponed until 2000 because of professional circumstances. The
delayed appearance of these essays changes rather signiQcantly
their impact on the musicological community since many of the
issues raised and approaches introduced have been discussed and
debated in various contexts over the last eight years. Read in
2001, Conventional Wisdom seems less like a call to change—as it
might have in 1993—and more like a conQrmation of issues that
have enlivened music studies within the last decade.
McClary has several simultaneous goals in this book: demon-
stration of (1) the kinds of roles that formal conventions play in a
broad spectrum of historical styles and musical traditions, (2)
how changes in the compositional uses of formal conventions re-
spond to historical changes, and (3) how musical sound partici-
pates in processes of social signiQcation. ConQrming one of
the long-standing strengths of McClary’s work, Conventional
Wisdom takes musical sound as its focus and afQrms that music is
not absent from processes of social meaning but participates di-
rectly in the articulation of cultural systems of value. While I un-
derstand this focus as a fundamental value, I also recognize that
the particular ways that McClary engages musical sound have
been controversial. Often, controversy hinges on issues of
whether musical sound participates directly in our daily lives or
whether it operates at a more general level of abstract or universal
meaning. McClary argues Qrmly against a notion of the purely
musical, the “music itself,” and for an understanding of the
“power of music . . . to shape the ways we experience our bodies,
emotions, subjectivities, desires, and social relations” (7). Here I
want to demonstrate how, as a consequence of an ahistoricized
interpretative approach, McClary ends up relying on a notion
very close to the “music itself ” to make claims about music as
social construct.
The Qve chapters of Conventional Wisdom survey the use of
several formal conventions in Western music. Chapter 1, titled
“Turtles All the Way Down (on the ‘Purely Musical’),” considers
an aria from the oratorio La Susanna (1681) by Alessandro
Stradella and a 1959 gospel performance of the hymn “Near the
Cross” by the Swan Silvertones. Chapter 2, “Thinking Blues,” fo-
cuses on blues from Bessie Smith (her 1928 performance of
“Thinking Blues”), Robert Johnson (his 1936 performance of
“Cross Road Blues”), and Cream (their live Filmore performance
of Johnson’s song issued on Wheels of Fire in 1976). The third
chapter, “What Was Tonality?,” investigates a da capo aria from
Scarlatti’s opera Griselda (1721), a movement of Vivaldi’s op. 3,
no. 8, concerto (1715), and the courante from J. S. Bach’s D-
major Partita for keyboard. Chapter 4, “The Refuge of Counter-
convention,” considers Beethoven’s op. 132 string quartet
(composed 1825), and Chapter 5, “Reveling in the Rubble: The
Postmodern Condition,” discusses Glassworks (1982) by Philip
Glass, Spillane (1986) by John Zorn, “Kiss” (1986) by the Artist
Formerly Known As Prince, “Still Thrives This Love” (1992) by
k.d. lang, and “Nighttrain” (1991) by Public Enemy.
Rather than sampling the kinds of claims McClary makes
about how and what kinds of cultural meanings music produces, I
will focus here on the underlying argument of the third chapter
since it applies to much of the book. As suggested by its title,
“What Was Tonality?,” this chapter considers how “tonality,” as a
musical practice emerging in the eighteenth century, conQrms
Enlightenment ideals. The three works by Scarlatti, Vivaldi, and
Bach are analyzed with respect to their articulation of a “tonal
background . . . [which] proceeds through a series of arrivals, be-
ginning in the tonic key, moving through a few other keys, and re-
turning Qnally home to the tonic” (66). And this tonal background
is interrogated for the way that it “works to produce a particular

construction of the self” (70). For example, in Scarlatti’s Griselda,
the title character is able “to pull her conRicting emotions under
one tonal trajectory, thus displaying the centered subjectivity—the
belief in the unshakability of that inner core—which is still one of
our favorite myths” (79). McClary’s analysis correlates differing
motivic Qgures with the range of affects that depict Griselda’s
varying emotional states during her aria “Figlio! Tiranno!” Her
account of the tonal progress of the aria tells a somewhat different
story, since it is the continuity of a single “tonal trajectory” that
enacts the sense of a centered subjectivity. The sense of “self” de-
picted here is twofold: on one hand, there is the eighteenth-
century subject that gave rise to the paradigm of tonality as
embodying Enlightenment values of “progress, rationality, intelli-
gibility, quests after goals, and the illusion of self-contained
autonomy,” and on the other hand, there is the contemporary sub-
ject who in “still embrac[ing] these ideals” hears tonality as “nat-
ural” (68). There is an assumption here that what eighteenth-
century listeners heard is identical to what contemporary listeners
hear. The chapter then takes as a central assumption that what
tonality was is identical to what it is.
This assumption could be argued in principle on the basis of
historical and contemporary accounts of musical experience or of
how music was understood to work. McClary does not offer such
evidence, however, but bases her argument instead on an analytic
interpretation that borrows many of its concepts from nineteenth-
and twentieth-century notions of tonality.
For instance, about Scarlatti’s aria McClary writes: tonality
“possesses . . . a hierarchy of relationships that drew all moments
of the composition together into a single goal-oriented network”
(73). And later in the chapter one reads: “Vivaldi sets out with re-
markable clarity the background tonal progression that had started
life as a linear cadence pattern but that now stretches out to grant
coherence to a full ninety-three measures” (83). It is worth noting
in this regard that a concept of “tonality” per se did not exist in the
eighteenth century. The initial articulation of that concept is cred-
Reviews 151
ited to François-Joseph Fétis, its fullest discussion occurring in
the 1844 Traité complet de théorie et de la pratique de l’harmonie. 1
Concepts of function, hierarchically related key areas, and long-
range coherence were not theorized until later in the nineteenth
and into the twentieth centuries. One might argue that “the music”
operated for eighteenth-century musicians and audiences in ways
identical to those implied by late twentieth-century notions of
tonality, but this would be a universalizing argument that runs
counter to what I take as the spirit of McClary’s project.
The issue hinges on the status of analytical observations and
the types of historical and experiential claims that are founded on
them. Since analytical observation is necessarily contingent upon
concepts about musical sound, and since conceptual understand-
ing is contingent on historical context, then the extent to which
analytical observation about music and subjects of the past is
grounded in historical context will affect the status of analytical
observation. Thus, in order to address the question of “What was
Tonality?,” one has to ask, For whom does such a concept apply?
Such a prior question will necessarily lead to an investigation of
the socially-constructed cognitive constraints of the concept.
Inasmuch as I am in sympathy with McClary’s effort to
demonstrate how musical sound participates in a wide variety of
socially-constructed behaviors, I want to make explicit here how
the universalizing of concepts about music can overthrow the
spirit of the project. This is how I read the underlying procedures
in Conventional Wisdom.
McClary offers analytical interpretations of speciQc works that
demonstrate how musical effects and structures both reRect and
enforce socially-constructed behaviors, arguing that musical
sound is subject to the contingencies of ethnicity, gender, class,
and history. She uses analytic concepts in ways that are not, how-
ever, sensitive to the historical contingency of those concepts,
1While the term “tonality” did not originate with Fétis, he was the Qrst to
frame the concept in ways consistent with its contemporary understanding.
152 Music Theory Spectrum
while making claims about historical subjects. Such an ahistorical
use of the terminology has the effect of universalizing those con-
cepts. If we understand concepts about music as not simply reRec-
tive of but also constructive of experience in accord with what in
very general terms I will call “postmodern philosophies,” then the
claims made about such phenomena as tonality must be carefully
qualiQed.2 But if we understand concepts as “applied to” an un-
changing experience, then we must judge these concepts as tools
which reveal a thing that is prior to its conceptual understanding.
McClary’s universalizing music-theoretical concepts implies the
latter—that there is a “music itself ” which is prior to the social
constructions of language, a position that is clearly not in keeping
with the spirit of her project, which disallows a retreat into “the
purely musical.”
While the analyses of Conventional Wisdom employ theoretical
tools and make claims about musical experience that are not sensi-
tive to historical contingencies within the Western tradition of
music making, McClary seems to be aware at some level of the
conceptual power of theoretical language. In the very Qrst pages
of the book she writes: “The measuring sticks of Schenker graphs
or the kabbalistic methods of set-based analysis strive to pull ap-
parently unruly music back inside the horizons of the rational, the
orderly, and (implicitly) the metaphysical. Why, I have always
wondered, do we not label the procedures such theories trace like-
wise as conventions? And why do we neglect to talk about why
these procedures matter so very much to us? . . . In this book, I
want to claim that this split between conventions and the ‘purely
music’ is itself socially and historically contingent” (3). Despite
this stated concern for the “conventionality” of music-theoretical
concepts currently in use, McClary’s descriptions of “tonal” pro-
cedures owe much to them: such phrases as “tonal background”
2A very short list of authors who articulate a postmodern philosophical per-
spective include Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Frederic
Jameson, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Richard Rorty. On the speciQc issues of
the contingency of experience, see Joan Scott, “The Evidence of Experience,”
Critical Inquiry 17 (1991): 773–97.
and “tonal coherence” were not part of the conceptual landscape
for eighteenth-century theorists. Rather than building upon
eighteenth-century conceptual understanding in order to under-
stand what musical experience might have been, McClary dis-
counts it: “The fact that music theorists of the time did not by and
large write about music in these terms should hardly surprise us:
verbal accounts of ‘structures of feeling’ often appear only long
after the fact, if at all” (65). In discounting contemporary evidence
for the project of understanding “what tonality was,” McClary
contradicts one of the fundamental observations of a postmodern
philosophical perspective: the contingency of conceptual under-
standing and experience.
Concepts such as tonality, cadence, dominant and tonic, har-
monic hierarchy, and coherence do not transparently reveal music.
While McClary’s project of linking musical sound to social be-
haviors is necessary and perhaps even urgent, the analytical base
on which it rests needs careful consideration.
To conclude, I will simply suggest here that a more considered
and creative approach to analysis through channels of speculative
theory might better serve the project of linking musical sound to
social behaviors. All the chapters of Conventional Wisdom utilize
universal notions of tonal conventions as a basis for depicting nar-
ratives of subjectivity. Such narratives are typically told through
key relations, yet such relations are not foregrounded in musical
experience. Rather, the immediacies of experience are such phe-
nomena as texture, timbre, rhythm, and phrasing. One might as-
sume that such aspects of musical sound might more readily be
understood as doing the “cultural work” that interests McClary.
While her analyses often refer to such features, they are not
considered the signiQcant events that receive detailed analytical
attention. For instance, in listening recently to a performance
of Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre’s suite in D minor for
clavecin (1707), I was struck by how the ornamental Qligree
emerged as the structure of the pieces. I was not hearing the “im-
provised surface” as the icing on the tonally coherent cake.
Rather, the animated surface was the source of playful design that

was anchored by cadential progressions serving as temporal
markers. Structure in this usage is that which assumes the central
focus of musical design, that which makes the piece hold together.
Since the musicological community does not have sophisticated
tools for taking account of how the textural effects of ornamenta-
tion operate, any analytical account would have to theorize this as-
pect of musical design in order to demonstrate the kinds of social
behaviors it reRects and engenders.
The absence of an appropriate analytical apparatus in Con-
ventional Wisdom is also noticeable in McClary’s accounts of sev-
eral of the pieces in the last chapter on postmodern musics. One is
aware of McClary’s struggling to evoke the sounds of the pieces
by, for instance, John Zorn and Public Enemy. But in the end, the
reader does not have a clear sense of how the sounds of these mu-
sics accomplish their particular types of musical communication.
Reviews 153
Conventional Wisdom offers many ideas about how music stud-
ies might proceed within the new paradigms of the late twentieth-
century intellectual traditions. Yet it does not offer a new vision of
what kinds of descriptive languages about music the profession
should be using to articulate these new approaches. One is re-
minded of Boulez’s criticism of Schoenberg: his predecessor’s in-
novations in pitch were not matched by complementary innova-
tions in phraseology and form, a failure which blunted the overall
effect of the purported revolution in music. As McClary works
through her project of linking musical sound to social behaviors,
we have every reason to expect that she will reQne her analytical
tools and more adequately historicize her accounts of subjectivity
and the nature of musical experience.
154 Music Theory Spectrum
José de Torres’s Treatise of 1736: General Rules for Accom-
panying on the Organ, Harpsichord, and the Harp, By Knowing
Only How to Sing the Part, or a Bass in Canto Qgurado. An anno-
tated bitextual edition by Paul Murphy. Publications of the Early
Music Institute. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000.
Reviewed by David Schulenberg
The major French and German music-theoretical treatises of
the eighteenth century have long been available in facsimiles,
modern editions, or translations. Some, such as Jean-Philippe
Rameau’s Traité de l’harmonie and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s
Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen, have been suf-
Qciently familiar and widely distributed in both their own time
and ours to have had a profound impact on both music theory and
musical practice.1 The same cannot be said of writings from else-
where in Europe, including the Iberian peninsula, whose musical
culture throughout the Baroque remains a domain of specialists.
Of Spanish and Portuguese theoretical writings only the Llave de
modulación of Antonio Soler is at all well known, thanks in part to
a facsimile published over thirty years ago.2 Harpsichordists and
organists may have at least passing acquaintance with the music
of such major Qgures as Soler or Juan Bautista José Cabanilles
(1644 –1712), but the instrumental and vocal repertory of
eighteenth-century Spain and Portugal remains virtually unknown,
and it is fair to say that most professional theorists and historians,
if they think at all about eighteenth-century music in these coun-
tries, have only a vague sense of it as stylistically conservative and
derivative. A new edition and translation of a major treatise from
late-Baroque Spain therefore provides an opportunity for broaden-
ing modern awareness of Iberian musical culture in the eighteenth
century. For a variety of reasons, however, this ambitiously
1Rameau 1722; Bach 1753–62.
2Soler 1762.
planned volume is unlikely to alter prevalent conceptions of late-
Baroque Spanish music and musical thought.
José de Torres y Martínez Bravo was a composer and maestro
de capilla at the royal chapel in Madrid from 1718 until his death
in 1738. He is known as well for his publishing house, La
Imprenta de M ◊ sica, founded at Madrid in 1700, through which
he issued a number of theoretical works including the present trea-
tise. The work comprises four parts, or tratados, whose subjects
are: (1) musical fundamentals: notes, intervals, and modal scales;
(2) progressions of consonant chords; (3) passing tones in the
bass, suspensions, and transpositions; and (4) realization in the
Italian style. Torres Qrst published tratados 1–3 in 1702; his sec-
ond edition of 1736 not only added the fourth section but also re-
cast the examples in typeset keyboard notation—a Qrst for
Spanish music printers according to Murphy (xi).
The present volume offers on facing pages the text of the 1736
edition and a new English translation. The Spanish (Castillian)
text is newly set, with the original examples interspersed in fac-
simile; transcriptions in modern notation appear within the
English text. In a brief introduction, Murphy places the treatise in
its music-theoretical context, describing it as “the Qrst work in
Spain to deal speciQcally and completely with thoroughbass
accompaniment at the keyboard” (xi).3 More precisely, Torres’s
chief concern is the correct writing or playing of three simple
contrapuntal parts above a bass line, Qgured or unQgured.
Practical matters of style and performance are largely ignored ex-
cept in the closing chapters of tratado 3 (which provide examples
of liturgical verses with Qgured bass) and in tratado 4. In both,
Torres acknowledges borrowing material from Francesco Gas-
parini’s L’armonico pratico al cimbalo, which gives a more thor-
ough introduction to the types of arpeggiation and the irregular
3References are to the pagination at the bottoms of the pages, not the page
numbers in the running heads, which are repeated on the Spanish and English
sides of each opening.

dissonances, especially acciaccaturas, employed in Italian con-
tinuo playing of the time.4 Elsewhere, too, Torres relies on older
writers, including a number of Spanish authors (identiQed by
Murphy) and, above all, Lorenzo Penna, whom he cites frequently
as an authority.5
The opening section on musical fundamentals offers few sur-
prises, although it is notable for its adherence to the ninefold divi-
sion of the whole tone, a feature also of contemporary German
theory. Thus the chromatic (incantable) half step—the “un-
singable” half step in Murphy’s translation—comprises four com-
mas, the diatonic (cantable) Qve. This yields, for example, a G
that is audibly lower than its enharmonic equivalent A , such as
would occur in any of a number of keyboard temperaments that
Torres might have used.6 Because Torres does not discuss tem-
perament, the exact size of these intervals is undeQned, but if the
intention was to create pure major thirds (e.g., E–G ) then Torres’s
comma would differ by a minuscule amount from the traditional
ditonic or Pythagorean comma.7
If not an original thinker, Torres was certainly an organized
one. The most notable feature of his treatise may be the systematic
manner in which it sets forth the types of voice leading most fre-
quently encountered in early eighteenth-century music. Torres’s
focus was presumably the old-fashioned Spanish vocal polyphony
of which he himself was an important composer; his few works
available in modern editions reveal a capable command of imita-
tive liturgical counterpoint in the stile antico, in four to eight
parts. Many of Torres’s examples would have seemed stylish at
4 Gasparini 1708.
5 Penna 1672.
6On German sources for this simpliQed division of the whole tone and its
practical ramiQcations, see Oleskiewicz 2000, 205–8.
7Murphy equates the two intervals (280 n. 11). In fact, the ditonic comma,
deQned as the interval between a major third (5:4) and a ditone (two major
whole steps, or 81:64), corresponds to the ratio 81:80. Eighteen of the latter
yield an interval (81 18:8018) imperceptibly larger than a major third.
Reviews 155
the time of the Qrst edition; for instance, the illustrations of glosas
(divisions or passing notes) in the bass are reminiscent of what one
Qnds in Corelli’s trio sonatas (especially those of op. 1, 1681). But
both the musical illustrations and the fundamental theoretical orien-
tation as revealed in tratado 1, which is still grounded in liturgical
practice and the church modes, might by 1736 have begun to seem
old-fashioned in France, Italy, Germany, or Britain. The same is true
of Torres’s scholastic literary style, untouched by Enlightenment
wit or rationalism. Nevertheless, the progressions which Torres
illustrates recur routinely as foreground voice leading in the music
of Corelli, Handel, J. S. Bach, and other younger contemporaries.
Tratado 2 describes the progressions of consonant chords—what
would now be termed root-position and Qrst-inversion triads—that
can take place over bass lines moving respectively in minor or chro-
matic half steps, major or diatonic half steps, whole steps, and so
on, up to the diminished fourth and augmented Qfth.8 Tratado 3
presents various types of passing motion in the bass as well as the
most common suspensions with similar rigor.
In its emphasis on actual progressions, Torres’s volume differs
from what are now the more familiar French and German treatises
of the eighteenth century, which are organized according to
chords—that is, individual classes of verticality as deQned by their
Qgured-bass signatures (e.g., 54 , 73 , etc.). Indeed, Torres discusses
the Qgures themselves only as an afterthought, after the presenta-
tion of the various progressions (164– 6). His strict contrapuntal
orientation is also evident in his avoidance of the types of liberties
which, in the French style of Qgured bass realization, led to the
routine use of the petite sixte—that is, a 63 -chord with an added
fourth—on the second degree of the scale. Rameau understood this
chord—which incorporates an unprepared dissonant fourth—as the
equivalent of what we would call a second-inversion dominant
8At that point Torres stops, declaring that motion through the sixth is the
same as motion through the third (84).
156 Music Theory Spectrum
seventh; contrary to Murphy, I Qnd no evidence of the principle of
chord inversion in Torres’s treatise.9
Torres’s examples are accompanied by detailed descriptions or
“rules”—the reglas of the title. But these amount to little more than
note-by-note accounts of what is manifest in the illustrations. The
book’s greatest value, particularly for students, probably lies in the
examples themselves, which are sufQciently numerous and well
designed to constitute a systematic exposition of the most common
four-part progressions in late-Baroque music. Most examples are
presented Qrst as bass lines with numerical Qguration, then in fully
realized form on two staves. Practicing these illustrations at the
keyboard would lead to familiarity with each progression in turn—
which seems to have been their primary purpose. The book will
prove less useful for practice in reading actual Qgured basses, how-
ever, since the initial presentation of each example uses not the
sketchy Qguring of real continuo parts but a sort of tablature remi-
niscent of older Spanish keyboard notational systems: every note
of the upper voices is indicated by numbers, speciQc registers
being indicated through a system of letter abbreviations.
The examples go well beyond the simple illustrations of typi-
cal chords that one Qnds in contemporary French and Italian
Qgured-bass treatises, including Book 4 of Rameau’s Traité.
Moreover, by offering variations of each basic progression in dif-
ferent keys within continuous passages of music, Torres provides
a clearer sense of how each progression occurs in context than do
German writers, such as Bach. To be sure, the latter reveals a more
sophisticated sense of the possibilities of voice leading, especially
in dissonant and chromatic progressions. Torres never goes be-
yond the conventional; even tratado 4, which includes numerous
illustrations of extravagante chords, such as Neapolitan and full
diminished-seventh harmonies, offers little that was out of the or-
dinary in contemporary Italian practice.
9Murphy asserts that “this treatise . . . considers chord inversion and voice-
leading in the realization of the bass” but does not specify what passage he has
in mind (xi).
The book’s utility is diminished by the sketchy background in-
formation provided, as well as inaccuracies in the transcription of
the examples, infelicities in translation, and remarkably poor edit-
ing and production. Although conscientious in the discussion of
selected problems of translation, Murphy directs readers to unpub-
lished dissertations (including his own) for substantive informa-
tion about the author’s life and music; consideration of how the
present work relates to Torres’s compositions would have been es-
pecially welcome here. Other important questions, such as the
sources of the liturgical melodies in tratado 3, which more closely
resemble seventeenth-century Italian recitative than chant, are left
unasked. I would have liked to know how these examples relate to
the long tradition of accompanied liturgical chant, documented in
earlier Italian keyboard treatises that Torres probably knew.10
Some commentary on the instruments available to Torres (and
their tuning and temperament) would also have been appropriate.
Despite the mention of three instruments in the title, the account
of musical fundamentals in tratado 1 assumes use of an organ
with a so-called short octave (lacking C , E , F , and G in the
lowest octave). The harp enjoyed widespread use in Baroque
Spain, but Torres says nothing whatever about it or how his musi-
cal examples might have been adapted to it. The organ is distin-
guished from the harpsichord only in tratado 4, whose examples
of arpeggiated accompaniment are intended chieRy for the latter
instrument.
The parallel Spanish and English texts, both containing illus-
trative material, posed production challenges that were not met
with complete success. For instance, on page 174 the second mu-
sical example in the English text is repeated in place of the third
example; the examples for the Spanish text on pages 259 and 263
are exchanged. More troubling is the astounding number of proof-
reading errors; for example, throughout the book, the word
“method” appears more often than not as “mehtod,” and in tratado
10 For example, Banchieri 1609.

1 the endnotes are misnumbered, starting on page 20. Even the
book’s manufacturing is wanting; in my copy many of the pages
were incompletely cut.
More substantive problems attend the English version, which is
literal to the point of obscurity, often reading like the unedited
output of an electronic translation program. Problems begin with
the title, which in the original Castillian reads Reglas generales de
acompañar, en órgano, clavicordio, y harpa, con sólo saber can-
tar la parte, o un bajo en canto Fgurado. As Murphy explains
(xviii), the last two words refer not to Qgured bass (as one might
think) but to “Qgural music,” that is, polyphony. In the puzzling
phrase “Sing the Part, or a Bass,” Murphy suggests plausibly that
“the part” (la parte) is the bass (un bajo), that is, a Qgured or un-
Qgured bass line; the two nouns are in apposition. But then in
modern English the comma after “Part” should have been supple-
mented by a second one after the word “Bass.” Perhaps, too, the
word cantar (to sing) should be understood metaphorically, yield-
ing an idiomatic rendering of the title as “Rules for Accom-
panying on Organ, Harpsichord, Or Harp From Only the Bass Part
of a Polyphonic Composition.” This makes it clear that the pur-
pose of the book was to teach organists to accompany choral
music without a score; evidently, there as yet existed no simpler
terminology with which Torres could describe continuo playing
for his Spanish-speaking readers.
Although I was unable to check the reliability of the Spanish
text against the original editions, it seems sound, and the English
translation rarely contains outright errors. Murphy asserts that
Torres refers to both perfect and augmented fourths as mayor (282
n. 18), but this reRects a misreading of the chapter heading “Del
salto de cuarta hacia abajo, o quinta hacia arriba, así mayores
como menores.” Murphy gives this as “On the leap downward, or
the Qfth upward, both perfect and diminished” (76, 268), but it
might be better rendered as “Leaps of a fourth downward or a Qfth
upward, including augmented and diminished intervals.” Else-
where, it is clear that Torres uses mayor only for augmented
fourths and minor for diminished Qfths.
Reviews 157
Unfortunately, the types of problems evident in the rendering
of the title continue throughout the English translation, which
consequently can be understood only by someone already famil-
iar with the subject and with eighteenth-century musical termi-
nology. Sometimes a reliance on cognates leads to unidiomatic
translations—“the studious” for estudioso, student (50), “cantor”
for cantor, singer (123)—or to non-words such as “unisonically”
(50). Especies falsas, meaning “dissonances,” appears throughout
as “false intervals”; voces and cuerdes, translated literally as
“voices” and “strings,” respectively, more often seem intended
metaphorically, as “notes.” Metrical and rhythmic terms present a
particular problem; although Murphy acknowledges the impor-
tance of mensural thinking in Torres’s understanding of rhythm
(ix), he nevertheless updates Torres’s terminology, offering, for
example, “the measure’s downbeat or upbeat” for dar o alzar del
compás (96). I would have preferred “thesis and arsis of the tac-
tus,” using rhythmic nomenclature consistent with Torres’s archaic
notation, which includes old-fashioned irregular barring and sur-
vivals of mensural notation such as coloration and proportions.
Murphy updates the latter as well, frequently halving the values of
examples in triple time.11
Numerous wrong notes further mar the examples, sometimes
obscuring the points they are meant to illustrate. Thus on page 240 the
7 7
second of two 54 chords is realized instead as a 64 —in modern terms,
2 2
eliminating the dominant-seventh chord (over a tonic pedal) which
the example was supposed to show. On page 182 the examples
under the headings “Chord 1 . . . Chord 2” and “Chord 3 . . .
Chord 4” have been exchanged, and a sharp has been added to a G
in the bass, resulting in a diminished third and a cross relation—
highly uncharacteristic dissonances for Torres! In such cases,
comparison with the original notation on the facing pages will re-
veal the errors, but sometimes the original is clearly erroneous;
only occasionally does Murphy offer corrections. Errors seem par-
ticularly common in tratado 4, suggesting that the aging Torres
11 Contrary to what is stated in the introduction (xxi).
158 Music Theory Spectrum

did not carefully oversee production of the concluding pages of LIST OF WORKS CITED
his work; a glaring instance occurs on page 250, where all of the
Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel. 1752–63. Versuch über die wahre Art
Qgures 5 and 7 are errors for 5-6 and 7-6, respectively.
das Clavier zu spielen. 2 vols. Berlin. Facsimile, with
As disturbing as the outright errors is the faulty notation of the
Nachwort by Lothar Hoffmann-Erbrecht and supplement con-
transcriptions, which wherever possible group the noteheads of
taining additions from the edition of 1787–97. Leipzig: VEB
the three upper parts—set on one staff for the right hand—onto
Breitkopf und Härtel, 1981. Translated by William J. Mitchell
single stems. This obscures the contrapuntal character of the voice
as Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments.
leading, and further damage occurs when the stems of passing
New York, Norton, 1949.
notes go in the wrong direction, as is often the case. To be sure,
Banchieri, Adriano. 1609. Conclusioni nel suono dell’organo.
the original is often equally at fault, entirely omitting stems from
Bologna. Facsimile. New York : Broude Brothers, 1975. Partial
the middle (alto) voice in most sonorities. This, however, is a
translation by Lee R. Garrett as Conclusions for Playing the
common feature in typeset keyboard music of the period, for rea-
Organ. Colorado Springs: Colorado College Music Press,
sons logically analogous to those which today create difQculties
1982.
for music-setting software in contrapuntal keyboard textures. It is
Gasparini, Francesco. 1708. L’armonico pratico al cimbalo.
ironic that, although Murphy duly notes the signiQcance of the
Venice. Translated by Frank S. Stillings as The Practical
high-tech printing process that Torres adopted in the 1736 edition,
Harmonist at the Harpsichord. New Haven: Yale University
by the end of the century music publishers were returning to en-
Press, 1963.
graving as the best method for printing graphically complex key-
Oleskiewicz, Mary. 2000. “The Flutes of Quantz: Their
board notation.
Construction and Performing Practice.” Galpin Society Journal
Despite its many shortcomings, this edition will prove valu-
53: 201–20.
able to serious students of Spanish Baroque music and
Penna, Lorenzo. 1672. Li primi albori musicali. Bologna.
eighteenth-century theory. It demonstrates that the strict, four-
Facsimile of the fourth edition (Bologna, 1684). Bologna:
part contrapuntal style of Qgured bass realization best known
Forni, 1969.
today from German sources, such as Bach’s Versuch, was also
Rameau, Jean-Phillipe. 1722. Traité de l’harmonie réduite à ses
typical of what Torres calls “the rigorous Spanish style” (212).
principes naturels. Paris. Facsimile. New York, Broude, 1965.
The extraordinary achievements that this style could produce in
Edited by Erwin R. Jacobi in The Complete Theoretical
the seventeenth century are evident in the contrapuntal keyboard
Writings of Jean-Philippe Rameau, vol. 1. American Institute
works of Cabanilles and other Iberian organist-composers.
of Musicology, 1967. Translated by Philip Gossett as Treatise
Future work might relate Torres’s teaching of this style to his
on Harmony. New York: Dover, 1971.
vocal compositions and those of other eighteenth-century
Soler, Antonio. 1762. Llave de la modulación. Madrid. Facsimile.
Iberian musicians.
New York: Broude, 1967.