54

INTELLECTUAL CONTEXTS

157. Erpf, Studien zur Harrnonie- und Klangtechnik, 10. "Die 'Musik uberhaupt' [ist]
von Siten der konkreten Musiktheorie vorHiufig nicht zu denken. [Vielmehr ist) allein
Aufgabe der Disziplin 'Musiktheorie', [sich] mi t bestimmter, gegebener Musik [zu
beschaftigen ]:'
158. Ibid., 6. "[Die Theorie] habe fiir einen bestimmten historischen Stil die Merkmale
seines Satzes rein aus den Gegebenheiten, ohne jedes Bedurfnis einer spekulativen
Begrundung festzustellen, [um ein e] vergleichende Theorie der Satztechnik der
Stilhaltungen [zu entwickeln]:'
159. Ibid., 29.
160. Ibid., 42.
161. In this context, one might mention Sigfrid Karg-Elert's Polaristische
Funktionstheorie, which cannot be discussed in this space. See Harrison, Harrnonic

Function in Chrornatic Music, 315-316.

162. I have dealt with the history of the theory of functions during the Third Reich in
some depth in my artide "From 'Musiktheorie' to 'Tonsatz."'
163. Wilhelm Maler, Beitrag zur durrnolltonalen Harrnonielehre (Leipzig:
F. E. C. Leukert, 1931), iv.

CHAPTER 2

((THE NATURE
OF HARMONY" :
A TRANSLATION AND
COMMENTARY
l

BENJAMIN STEEGE

AT the end of "The Nature of Harmony:' Riemann encourages readers "to attempt
something new, to venture, rather than, as hitherto, to seek something new." 1 On a
rhetorical level, the elements of enterprise, risk, and novelty in this phrase could
hardly be more modern, even modernist. To be sure, there is a certain modesty in
Riemann's elevation of"attempting" or "essaying" ( versuchen) above m ere "seeking"
(suchen). The quaintness of the wordplay here somewhat mutes the musicologist's
reformist self-portrayal: it finesses as a lexical distinction what might have been
more dramatically expressed as a fundamental contrast between the production of
something from scratch and the discovery of something, already made, out there in
the world. Stili, a palpable sense of excitement at the very idea of the New remains.
And the lingering uncertainty, inherent in the notion of a "venture" or "wager"
(related to Riemann's German wagen), calls to mind other modernizing projects of
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with the enormous gambles and trade-offs
they necessarily entailed. But ali of this prompts the question: what exactly did
Riemann, no enthusiast of aesthetic novelty or sociopolitical modernization for
their own sake, mean here by invoking the New?
Alexander Rehding has discussed a t length how Riemann's irnagination of music's
development heralded a particular experience or situation of the modern. Riemann's
modernity, Rehding suggests, must be observed not only in his ubiquitous historicist

INTELLECTUAL CONTEXTS

56

developmental narratives, which tend to create a unique halo around the present as a
moment of heightened reflexivity-where to be "reflexive" involves a tendency to
become peculiarly conscious of the historical trajectory that has brought about the
musical objects before one, but also, ironically, to be less than fully observant of the
2
radical historicity of one's present perspectives on those objects. Rather, in addition
to the keen historicist consciousness Riemann exemplified, his theoretical project was
always situated in a temporal orientation that projects into the future a feeling of present responsibility to shape that future. Thus, even when "progress" or "progressiveness" are not invoked as such, Riemann can best be read as future-oriented, in spite of
the more readily apparent backward-looking characteristics of much of his writing
and research. 3
But the "future;' for ali the responsibility Riemann felt toward it, is different
from the idea of"newness" he is invoking in the case of the following essay. For one
thing, the piece seems to truck less in regulatory gestures with regard to compositional or analytical practice than many other Riemann writings from this an d later
periods. The question in the present case, then, may be less one of how the essay
relates to a broad view of the future of German musical culture than one of the
specific character of the novelty that Riemann felt his project introduced into discussions of music theory's role in that future. Asi de from the sheer originality of his
arguments in, for example, the recent Musikalische Syntaxis (1877)-which gives the
technical details of a theory for which "The Nature of Harmony" provides historical
and metatheoretical background-Riemann is claiming that his approach to harmony somehow engages with a newness unique to his intellectual and cultural
moment. By way of introducing Riemann's essay, then, it seems fair to suggest that
the New here is conditioned by a structure of thinking and feeling that might be
thought of as peculiarly modern in ways not captured by notions of historicism or
reflexivity alone.
Complementing the ethical concern for past and future is a sense for what
Fredric Jameson has recently called the "ontology of the present:' That is, investing
as much rhetorical interest as he does in the novelty of his cultura! moment,
Riemann participates in the special "libidinal charge" of modernity, "a unique kind
of intellectual excitement no t normally associated with other forms of conceptualitY:' To the extent that Riemann devotes attention explicitly to the past, an d implicitly to the future, as a way of paradoxically expanding the significance of the present,
he seems to "concentrate a promise within a present of time an d to offer a way of
4
possessing the future more immediately within that present itself:' In "The Nature
of Harmony;' it is no t only the narrative structure of the essay itself, with its express
historicist arriva! at the modern conception of the triad, that betokens such a
charged "promise;' but also, as we will see, the very conceptual units Riemann develops near the essay's conclusion to bear the burden of the overloaded expectations
for present experience.
Toward the b eginning of Riemann's essay, we fin d him proposing to explore how
what he calls "exact science" might provide useful knowledge, which music theory

" THE NATURE OF HARMONY"

57

could develop "in entirely new directions." The notion that abstract science is best
appreciated for what "utility" it can offer to everyday !ife and culture was and is
commonplace. But the offhand comment becomes more interesting in conjunction
with his later distinction between the values of "attempting" (versuchen) an d "discovering" (suchen) . The latter, for Riemann, is apparently an activity proper to science, whereas the former implies a genuine act of creativity. lt does not take long to
realize that such distinctions are code for his effort to differentiate himself from
Hermann von Helmholtz, the older physicist-physiologist who haunts so many
texts by Riemann. Here, Helmholtz plays the role of "seeker" against :Riemann's
"venturer," or, more pointedly, "discoverer" against his "creator." From a narrative
standpoint, this division of labor works out conveniently since Riemann ultimately
wants to convey a particular view of his own position in the history of music theory,
a view that depends o n such a rigorous demarcation of roles. Much like Helmholtz
himself twenty years earlier, Riemann parses the disciplinary terrain of musi c theory into three areas: physics, physiology, an d psychology.5 The division is no t merely
a quasi-spatial one. Rather, a temporal series is involved here, as Riemann's wording
suggests:
The natural science of music extends immediately to the investigation of the
nature of sounding bodies an d is then part of physics, an d specifically acoustics; if
it pursues ton e farther on its path into the human ear and examines the tone
sensations excited by it, then it is part of physiology; if it concerns itself finally
. with the nature of ton e representations and their combination, thenit enters the
area of psychology.

The journey from sounding bodies (tonende Korper) to tone sensations

(Ton empfindungen) to the menta! representations, or "imaginations," of tone
(Tonvorstellungen) is a familiar one on many counts. Not only did the EmpfindungVorstellung distinction already have a long and lofty history in the German philosophical tradition (a history we need not rehearse here); but simultaneously, the
path Riemann maps out from a bird's-eye view exactly coincides with the imagined
journey of the tone itself: from the exterior world (physics), to the human body in
its full corporeality (physiology), and "beyond" to the human imagination itself
(psychology).
The extreme directionality of this movement "inward" ought to. be regarded
with some suspicion. How is it that Riemann can allow his image of the perceptual
process to structure not only his reading of the disciplinary configuration of contemporary science but also, more adventurously, his distribution of music-historical
events in a series that views the emergence of an authentic role for "imagination" as
the great achievement of the modern moment? 6 For this is indeed what the overall
form of"The Nature ofHarmony"would suggest. Departing from the Pythagorean
mythology of the hammers, moving through Zarlino's monochord divisions an d
Rameau's fascination with the phenomenon of harmonic overtones-all elements of exteriority and extensivity-we eventually reach Helmholtz, whose
unprecedented concern for the physiological mechanics of sensation as such marked

58

INTELLECTUAL CONTEXTS

a slim threshold onto what is taken to be an intellectually richer area of psychological

inquiry, terrain Riemann claims as his own. Needless to say, this narrative of a transhistorical coming-to-consciousness is hardly unique to Riemann, though the multifaceted ways in which it structures his narrative-as disciplinary terrain, as synopsis
of tone perception, and as history of music theory-are certainly remarkable.
Given Riemann's view of the relationships among disciplines here, it seems
worthwhile to consider some further features of the physics-physiology-psychology
series, which might otherwise be read as innocuous or self-evident. First, there is a
certain historical truth to this particular ordering, insofar as the successive emergence of the three disciplines were in fact widely understood in the nineteenth
century to have followed the very chronology Riemann posits. The emergence
of physiology in the 185os and 186os as a fully institutionalized experimental
discipline-as opposed to a speculative, or a merely empirica! one-was a major
historical event with profound, and often stili unrecognized, implications for
European and, later, North American culture. Fundamental mid-century innovations by researchers such as Johannes Muller, Claude Bernard, and Helmholtz himself, ali un der the rubric of "physiology" or "organic physics;' brought about a way
of approaching organisms-and with it, a view of the "human" itself-that would
7
have been unrecognizable to scientists just a generation or so earlier. The new cultura! environment has often been characterized as o ne of increasing mechanization,
both in its apparent return to pre-Romantic views of the person as a "human
machine" and also in the relatively sudden appearance of a battery of experimental
apparatus previously deemed typical of the more venerable and continuous discipline of physics than of research on living matter. 8 Yet whatever retrospective affinities the machinic an d materialist rhetoric of some nineteenth-century scientists an d
philosophers may have had with the Enlightenment physics of a Julien Offray de La
Mettrie (author of L'Homme machine, 1750) or a Wolfgang von Kempelen (inventor
of a "speaking machine" and "chess-playing Turk;' among other famous devices) , it
is important to emphasize those features of mid-nineteenth-century physiology
that were particular to its historical moment. Prominent among these would be the
initially controversia! view that organic substances (vegetai and animai) could not
be considered metaphysically different from inorganic substances; that is, they were
not animated by any "special forces" that could not be observed under ordinary
physical conditions in various experimental apparatus. 9 This view, much exaggerated, parodied, and misunderstood by both supporters an d detractors, enabled the
more immediately relevant corollary that studying any given element of human
life-including not just activities traditionally understood as "mechanical" like selfpropulsion and digestion, but also experiences like fatigue, illusion, and, indeed,
"normal" perception (seen as continuous with all these other elements)-would
require rigorous methods of isolating the specific physical and physiological processes under consideration. In rejecting both the dream of a self-propelled mechanical device cut off from the circulation of forces in the world an d also metaphysical
speculation about "life forces" an d the like, the new "organi c physics;' unlike either
Enlightenment materialism or even some strains of idealist Naturphilosophie, was

"THE NATURE OF HARMONY"

59

keenly attuned to the finitude of the human. 10 Since the "subject" in itself had been
deemed unknowable in the Kantian tradition, it fell to the purveyors of modern
knowledge, in Helmholtz's view, to focus their energy on the dense and messy
peripheries or boundary zones of subjective experience, including especially everything that went into producing the subject's everyday experience of the world. 11
Sensory physiology in the wake of "organic physics" might be said to have shifted
attention from the core question of what it meant to be a subject, to how o ne might
study the particular qualities of the subject's experience.
Experimental physiology, then, as developed by Helmholtz and a relatively
small group of fellow travelers in the late 185os, conspicuously and self-consciously
took on a very restricted and controlled range of objects. Given the rigor with which
Helmholtz's cohort adhered to the Kantian ethical imperative of disciplinary critique and self-limitation-lest they repeat the old metaphysicians' error of overstepping the boundaries of what can truly be known-it is perhaps not surprising
if their scientific project struck some observers as fatally narrow an d ironically even
dehumanizing, in spite of its conscientious efforts no t to eliminate, butto circumscribe an d even preserve the distinctively human spiri t from the scope of the experimental gaze. In short, the particular "modernity" of physiology after around 1850
inhered not merely in the superficial trappings of empiricism (with its associated
rejection of speculative metaphysics and dogma), experimentalism, machinism,
an d so forth, for these had already been associated with various scientific projects
an d personae for many generations. Rather, it was the disciplinary pracketing of an
increasingly narrow spectrum of knowable experience-the side effect of a more
vigilant policing, since Kant, of the boundaries between subject and object, noumena and phenomena-that produced a radically different way of viewing the
natural and human worlds than what had go ne before. The suddenly expanded role
of controlled experiment o n human perception was centrai to this shift, but should
not be identified with the event itself.
As Riemann's assigning the task of studying "sensation" to physiology correctly
implies, Empfindung was indeed the elemental unit of the new discipline (at least
when it occupied itself with sensory processes as opposed to motor ones); all its
energy was devoted to isolating these units, breaking down the complex events of
perception into their least relations. In 1878, Helmholtz proudly wrote, "I believe
that we must regard the most essential progress of recent times to be the breakup of
the concept of intuition (Anschauung) into the elementary processes of thought,
which is stilllacking in Kant." 12 In the specific case of studying hearing, this largely
meant finding ways of making otherwise obscure musical phenomena empirically
available. It meant rigging up apparatus to produce overtone-free fundamentals, or
to highlight individuai upper partials, orto amplify combination tones, orto draw
listeners' attention to acoustic beats (or the lack thereof), and so on. In short,
Helmholtzian acoustics was largely a matter of shifting the modality of "normal"
listening so as to bring into focus a range of phenomena habitually screened out of
it. The first two parts of the three-p art Lehre von den Tonempfindungen are arguably
devoted almost entirely to bringing about just such a shift of focus. 13

6o

INTELLECTUAL CONTEXTS

In the apparent obsession with minutiae such a perspective entails, it is easy to

lose sight of the significance of the larger gesture involved. For Helmholtz, the p rerequisite fora genuinely modern and well-grounded theory of music was, surprisingly, a radical defamiliarization of its elements. Empfindung, for all its association
in Romantic aesthetics with something like culturally mediated "affect," was to be
ma de into a pointillistic event stripped of context an d connotation. But what would
be the function of such a defamiliarizing gesture? If the sensation of an individuai
tone could be made a kind of experiential ground zero, with no history and no
immediately self-revealing future, one might hope to (re)construct a rational- that
is, nominally unprejudiced-system of relations among such tones, including scalar
an d chordal contexts that "m ade sense" in terms of the tones' specific material. As
the physicist and music theorist Arthur von Oettingen put it, "The conscious perception of musical ton e can only be dissolved into a multiplicity of singular sensations through an intentional, strenuous attention. This analysis of the Klang is the
foundation of the theory of music." 14
Oettingen's concise (though not entirely clarifying) synopsis of the relation of
music theory to a mode of perception inaugurateci in modern experimental physiology does no t make explicit ali one would need to know in order to proceed from
"the analysis of the Klang" to "theory." But it does exemplify how the professional
scientists in Riemann's story approached the "conscious perception" ()f sensory
aggregates with a peculiar skepticism perhaps only pro per to those schooled daily in
a critical empiricism. Oettingen implies that "perception" (Wa hrnehmung) is not
entirely to be trusted, in spite of the German word's constituent root wahr with its
suggestion of reference to the "truth." (Wahrnehmen might be rendered crudely as
"to take for true:') Rather, what is normally taken as "tone" without further ado
must be dissolved into its particular individualities-overtones, combination tones,
and so forth-in order to reach an unimpeachable contact with the authentic
immediacy sensation seemed to promise.
Helmholtz likewise expressed distrust not only for Wahrnehmung, but also for
Vorstellung. Both terms, whatever their privileged positions in traditional German
philosophical discourse, st()Od for what Helmholtz considered a utilitarian form of
perception, where groups of consistently associateci sensations (the facial features of
a loved one, the harmonic spectrum of a particular wind instrument or of a friend's
voice) would allow, unconsciously, fo r recognition of given objects and thus enable
the normal moment-to-moment functioning one otherwise takes for granted. For
Helmholtz, Vorstellung, or the mental representation fo rmed by the agglomeration
of constituent sensations, was treated alrnost as a necessary evil: "I am of the opinion that it cannot possibly make sense to speak about any truth of our mental representations (Vorstellungen) other than practical truth." 15 And when it carne to
defining Vorstellung for musical contexts, Helmholtz was essentially forced to split
the "facts" of perception into two incommensurable moments:
Now what does the ear do? Does it analyze [a complex sound wave into simple
tones], or does it grasp it as a whole?-The answer to this can vary according to

"THE NATURE OF HARMONY"

61

the sense of the question, for we must differentiate here between two things:
namely, in the first piace, the sensation (Empfindung) in the auditory nerves as
they occur without the intervention of intellectual activity, and the representation
(Vorstellung) we form as a result of this sensation. We must, that is, differentiate
between the material ear of the body and the mental ear of the imagination
(Vorstellungsvermogen) .16

Helmholtz's writing here indicates that Riemann was not entirely fair in implying
that Vorstellung was a no vel concern for the post-Helmholtz turn to more a psychologically oriented view of music theory. Helrnholtz was always concerned to point
out how listening was constituted of these two moments together, though each of
the two incommensurable "ears" remained formatively deaf to the other's simultaneous experience.
Yet it remains safe to say that the valence of"representation" shifted subtly but
fundamentally in the twenty-some years between Helrnholtz's first musical publications and Riemann's. The skepticism toward representation-a learned product of
habit- and the great stock one finds Helmholtz placing in "sensation" as the site of
perceptual truth are notably absent from Riemann's thinking. Indeed, while
Helmholtz pointedly identifies representation as the moment at which one is not
hearing clearly, it is just the opposi te for Riemann. Vorstellung, an imaginative act of
"placing something before" the mind's eye, becomes the emblem of a more reliable
engagement with the logica! relations among things. Riemann was emphatic that
Empfindung is always a matter of a crude passivity-it is something that happens to
someone, as when one "suffers" the actions of another-while Vorstellung involved
a certain taking control:
If listening to music is a selecting-out from chordal materia! presented to the ear
according to simple principles .. .. , then it is no longer a physical suffering
(ein fysisches Erleiden), but rather a logica! activity. It is precisely a matter of
representing, a uniting, separating, comparing, relating-to-one-another of
representations, which only share their name with the "representations of
forms" elicited by visual impressions, but otherwise appear in totally different
quality-tone representations (Tonvorstellungen). 17

The critique of sensation here is cast in the form of a kind of antiparticularism.

Where Helmholtz had been concerned to reveal the inner workings of tone in infin-
itesimal detail-almost for the sake of detail itself-Riemann aims to construct a
kind of parallel universe to the raw sensory interventions of Helmholtzian listening,
a universe he famously designateci, from the beginning of his career, the "logica!"
(but which he instead refers to in "The Nature of Harm ony" as the "psychological").
The highly mediated and formalist nature of this mode of musical thought is aptly
characterized as one of "consolidation" by the mathematician and philosopher
Moritz Wilhelm Drobisch in an influentiallogic text (from which Riemann quotes
heavily at the beginning of Musikalische Syntaxis):
Ali thinking is in generai a consolidation of the many and manifold into a unity.
What is consolidateci are no t real objects but rather representations, and no t even

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INTELLECTUAL CONTEXTS

that, insofar as they are (subjectively) our representations, products of our

intellectual activity, but rather (objectively) with regard to what is represented in
them, the thought. 18
Riemann can be seen acting on the irnpulse to "consolidate" throughout "The
Nature ofHarmony:' Indeed, this thematic ofbringing the multiple under the influence of some unity practically constitutes a kind of metanarrative for the essay,
alongside that of the "coming to consciousness" associateci with his historicist vision
of the advent of a psychological music theory. Riemann celebrates, successively, the
apparent acknowledgment of octave equivalence in classica! Greek music notation,
the "double form" of the "consonant chord" as theorized in Zarlino's "arithmetic"
and "harmonic" proportions ("major" and "minor" purportedly understood as in
some sense permutations of the "same" thing), the implicit recognition of the
invertibility of intervals in thoroughbass notation (though only among upper
voices), Rameau's landmark appreciation of the significance of full chordal inversion,
and Hauptmann's "epoch-making" discovery (or "rediscovery") of the principle of
harmonic dualism- a progression that views the drawn-out, intergenerational process of ever greater theoretical generality as the privileged history of musical thought.
Riemann's quest to construct major and minor triads as springing at once from the
same theoretical source in equal and opposite orientations is written here as an epic
effort to peel away from any hint of the particularism that Helrnholtz enjoyed in the
exhilarating positivity of sensation. In this stream of events, representation, in
Drobisch's sense of consolidation, is both a motivating force and an ultimate goal.
Only the failure of Baroque figured-bass notation to synthesize the three inversions
of a triad (or the four inversions of a seventh chord) into a higher conceptual unity
seems to irk Riemann more than Helmholtz's persistence in differentiating among
sonorities based o n the otherwise trivial nuances of quality induced by the physiological effects of beats.
But why the impatience with particularity? On the level of theoretical argument, one might point to the widespread negative reaction to Helmholtz's physiological theory of consonance, represented perhaps most clearly by RudolfHermann
Lotze (the Gottingen philosopher who approved Riemann's dissertation there in
1873). When Helmholtz supposed that the age-old theoretical notions of dissonance
and consonance were really just relative quanta in a gradation of nervous stimulation without any logica! principle for distinguishing one categorically from the
other, Lotze felt that he was being misled by a physicist's tendency to think in extensive (as opposed to intensive) terms. What one observes in the physical measurement of a thing is only a difference in degree: frequency (or other sorts of quantity)
imagined in a one-dimensional spectrum. But, as Lotze pointed out in his Geschichte
der Aesthetik in Deutschland (cit ed by Riemann in the present essay), when it com es
to the effect on the "soul" (Seele), the quality of experience is of a different order,
which does not seem to engage properties of a "more-or-less" type. 19 This was,
according to Riemann, the "Achilles' heel" of Helmholtz's music-theoretical work.
To the extent that it mistook a difference in kind for a mere difference in degree,

"TJfE NATURE OF HARMONY"

63

Helmholtz's sensory particularism needed to be replaced with what Riemann here

calls a "principled difference" between consonance and dissonance, as well as
between major and minor.
But, again, it is worth looking beyond the surface of theoretical argument. To
some degree, Lotze's, Drobisch's, an d Riemann's turn toward a purportedly "higher"
Jevel of perception is spurred by a broader cultura! ambivalence about the decontextualization wrought by sensory physiology. Lotze, for one, was more than willing
to pathologize perceptual modalities that appeared to resist any form of logical and
psychological holism. O none occasion, he destribed how an overeager ear for "sensory impression" (essentially synonymous with "sensation") might lead someone
into a morally dangerous forgetfulness of their own personality:
The comparison of two sensory impressions, for example the pitch of two
different ton es ... demands the greatest possible holding-off of ali other
representational processes that might dim the purity of sensation ... . Someone
tuning the strings of a piano with the most strained attention to his task has a
minimum of self-consciousness .... But someone attentively considering a
decision to be taken must, at the same time, bring at least a certain memory of
his personality to bear on this reflection. The unselfconscious absorption in a
single thought as well as the disconnected flux of many thoughts are conditions
that can be united with the healthy condition of intellectuallife only when they
cease for a moment.
"Prolonged distraction, no less than prolonged narrowing of the thought process:'
Lotze concluded, are "the first stages of a disturbance of the soul."20 Of course, it is
not that sensation was wholly absent from Riemann's universe. Fora period of tirne,
he was only too eager to pursue his own "experiments;' an d "The Nature ofHarmony"
gives some sense, in passing, of his effort to devise apparatus as ingeniously modest
as any of Helmholtz's: a vibrating tuning fork held lightly against a resonant surface,
for example, miraculously produces the octave, twelfth, double octave, and so forth
below its fundamental. Riemann would have immediately recognized these as the
elusive undertones he struggled to make empirically available to others.2 1 But whatever the status of his earnest empiricism, any broader impulse to encourage attunement t o sensation in itselfwas ultimately deemed, at best, a Siegfried-like obliviousness
to the broader mora! an d spiritual context of one's subjectivity, an d, at worst, a capitulation to the "physical suffering" of corporea! experience.

It m ay well be that the positive evaluation of Empfindung Helmholtz demonstrated would have appeared a historical anomaly from Riemann's perspective. One
does no t fin d any other major writer o n music investing so much theoretical capital
in the notion, until Schoenberg's striking celebration of a modernistEmpfindungswelt
in the Harmonielehre of 1911 (as if reading a kind of message-in-a-bottle from
Helmholtz, perhaps transmitted by the Viennese physicist and science popularizer
Ernst Mach). 22 In any case, whatever criticai historical perspectives one brings to it,
the fact is that Riemann's critique of Empfindung an d elevation of Vorstellung remain
in a certain sense contemporary. Forali the patent modernity of Helmholtz's antidogmatic empiricism, liberal progressivism, and direct participation in Germany's

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INTELLECTUAL CONTEXTS

belated industriai revolution, it can be difficult to resist Riemann's largely subcutaneous conviction that there is something strangely premodern about any theory of
music, logic, aesthetics, or what have you, that does not make representation the
final arbiter of intellectual and cultural value. The directionality of the sensationrepresentation pair contains a certain persuasion in itself. This may have to do with
the way in which sensation does not always seem to require the "human" in a conventional sense. In humanist terms (at least partly recognizable as Riemann's own),
sensation is very often understood as "given" rather than produced, whether autonomously or dialectically. Representation, on the other hand, has long been taken not
only as the "process of bringing a thing before one's self, and thereby imagining it
(the German word is the same), perceiving it, thinking or intuiting it:' but also,
more boldly, as "taking possession of it:' as Jameson writes (in reference to Heidegger,
who equated Vorstellungwith the more assertive etwas in Besitz nehmen) P This taking possession of musical objects, then, would be the wiliful act of making them
contemporary with oneself that gives Riemann's sense of the New its characteristic
modernity.
Or to configure the relationship somewhat differently, we might recall
Foucault's stili provocative proposal in The Order of Things that the historical
moment of "representation" had in fact ended aro un d 1800, to be replaced by the
historical moment of the "human," along with (or indeed through) what would
become known as the human sciences. Making sense of Riemann in terms of this
exasperatingly abstract periodization seems disorienting at first, until one realizes
that it is not so much that representation altogether ceases to operate with the
emergence of the special form of being ( that is, the human) Foucault so dramatically sketches; rather, representation becomes secondary to that being, enabled by
it rather than enabling it as a kind of epiphenomenon. The gesture of taking possession, which Riemann's notion of a logical theory of Tonvorstellung seems to
entail, thus becomes a reenactment of an older gesture of inverting the priority of
representation and being. Helmholtz is to be seen here as the proponent of an
experience of modernity where representation (which he understands largely, but
not exclusively, in terms of sensation) does no t depend o n its being "possessed" by
a subject-nor even for a subject to be necessarily in full possession of itself.
Riemann, then, wants us to read his own work as having (at last) installed the truly
modern subject in the empty space supposedly left by previously theorists, while
Helmholtz becomes a kind of remnant of the p roto- or even premodern that ironically continues to haunt the modern .
If one takes "modernity" in this sense to be a narrative structure rather than a
onetime break, event, or unitary period (again Jameson's suggestion), then it is productive to read Riemann's "retelling" the story of the emerging human as something
more than a belated reiteration of what Foucault had dated to a full century before
Riemann's earliest work. Instead, modernity is characterized precisely by that very
retelling (among others, such as the perpetually reiterated break from the organic to
the mechanical that o ne encounters from at least the eighteenth century all the way
up to the present day). The New, finally, is not just what is patently novel in the

"THE NATURE OF HARMONY"

65

here-and-now, but rather an element of a perpetually recurrent temporal structure

deployed in this case to vivify the way in which Riemann might share a historical
moment with his immediate predecessors even as he claims to supersede them.

THE NATURE OF HARMONY, BY DR. HuGo

RIEMANN IN HAMBURG 24
The nearly incalculable number of harmony manuals (or harmony treatises) falls
into two groups: theoretical harmony treatises or systems ofharmony, an d practical
harmony treatises or thoroughbass schools. Both may boast a very comprehensive
literature; yet the number of guides intended directly for practice and leading to
multi-part composition by way of figured bass is considerably greater than that of
purelytheoretical systematic works on the significanceofharmonies and their relations to one another. True, it has become common in recent times to launch practical methods with a theoretical introduction orto assimilate theoretical observations
into single chapters. But one must keep the two modes of treating harmonic theory
separate. The practical harmony treatise, exercise in the pro per connection of chords
in multi-part composition, is part of the actual teaching of art, of instruction in the
teclinique of composition; the theory of harmony on the other hand is a part of
musicolo"gy, specifically of the natural science of music, which is related to the teaching of art only insofar as it can make use of its positive results.
The natural science of music extends immediately to the investigation of the
nature of sounding bodies an d is then p art of physics, and specifically acoustics; if
it pursues ton e farther o n its path into the human ear an d examines the tone sensations excited by it, then it is part of physiology; if it concerns itself finally with the
nature of tone representations and their combination, then it enters the area of
psychology. From the results of investigation in ali three research fields, in that of
physics, physiology, and psychology, arise the elements of an exact theory of the
nature of harmony, whose specific task is to provide, to the practical teaching of
musical composition, the ways an d means for subsuming the particular in the generai, for the identification of advanced perspectives and rules, and above all for a
systematic procedure free of arbitrary elements.
Contributions to such a theory, supported by natural scientific research, at first
flowed very sparingly, and only the recent generai ascendancy of the natural sciences has brought us a good bit forward. The interest of practicing musicians in the
young science is stili fairly spotty an d not very intensive; yet this is hardly surprising
when one considers that not even twenty years have elapsed since the theory had
been fleshed out enough that one could contemplate its use in practice as a system.
The more the positive utility of the shift in perspective on harmonic relations
emerges, the keener will be the generai interest in the scientific grounding of the

66

INTELLECTUAL CONTEXTS

fundamentals of music. In the following, I will attempt to indicate briefly what use
the practical teaching of music has until now already made of exact science an d to
what extent it can stili draw utility from it in entirely new directions.
The oldest principles of exact harmonic theory are the mathematical definitions of the consonant intervals, adduced through the investigation of the nature of
sounding bodies, which can be derived from the teaching of Pythagoras but are
doubtless much older than him. The familiar tale of the different weights of the
blacksmith's hammers, which were supposed to have revealed to Pythagoras the
numerica! ratios of the intervals, is physically false at its core an d thus badly enough
invented. Pythagoras may well have adopted the elements of the mathematical theory of intervals, known from string measurements, from Egyptian priests along
with the rest of his number philosophy. The practical musician can justifiably ask:
"Of what use is it to art and artists to know that the string lengths of two octaverelated ton es, assuming equal mass an d tension, stand in the ratio 1:2, or those of the
fifth 2:3, and those of the fourth 3:4?" Certainly no direct utility grows from the
practice and knowledge of these numbers in themselves; only the instrumentbuilder, in the correct measurement of instruments, and the player of an instrument, in the discovery of correct application, can profit from it. But much greater is
the indirect utility of the knowledge, resulting from these mathematical definitions,
that the ton es forming the musical interval of an octave stand in the mathematically
simplest of all ratios and that this simple ratio must assert itself for our sensation
(in a manner to be explained shortly), since we actually set octave-related tones in
closer connection to one another than ton es of any other combination. We cannot
forget that the theory of music would be completely impracticable if it could not
consider different tones under a common aspect; one such aspect is the principle of
octave equivalence, which one would have achieved only by great effort without the
aid of mathematics. Greek notation already acknowledges-although, to be sure,
only in its la test constituents: the five highest steps of the system-the designati on
of octave-related ton es by the same sign (through differentiation by an octave mark,
just as we now distinguish c' from c); the Western tone system has indicated octaverelated tones with the same names since at least the ninth or tenth century. Fifths
and fourths, the simplest ratios aside from the octave, play a correspondingly
important role in musical practice. Fundamental tone, fourth, fifth, and octave are
the pillars of ancient as well as of modern scales; they were the only fixed tones in
the ancient system, while seconds, thirds, sixths, and sevenths assumed different
values in the chromatic and enharmonic genera. I do not need to emphasize the
significance of fifths in modern chord and scale theory; particularly in scale theory,
everything revolves around them right up to M. Hauptmann. The ancients did not
yet recognize the consonance of ilie third 4:5; they theoretically defined the ton e in
their scale corresponding to our third scale-degree as an octave displacement of the
fourth fifth (C-G-D-A-E) and considered it to be a dissonance by virtue of its
complex mathematical ratio (64:81). The Arabs have the merit of having enriched
exact theory with the concept of the consonant third (cf. my Studien zur Geschichte
der Notenschrift, pp. 77-85); the so-called "messel-theory" of the Arabic-Persian

67

" TfiE NATURE OF HARMONY"

theorists, which demonstrates the interval theory on a string divided into twelve
equal parts, reckons not only the major third 4:5 and the minor 5:6, but also the
major sixth 3:5 an d the minor sixth 5:8 among the consonances, which almost allows
one to conclude that they no longer made only unison music like the Greeks, but
also recognized the significance of the consonant chords. 25 The oldest versions of
the "messel-theory" known to us (though they probably date back to considerably
o! der times) belong to the turn of the thirteenth an d fourteenth centuries, that is, t o
a time in which the West indeed already had a fairly developed musical practice of
multi-part composition (Discantus, Fauxbourdon) but had not yet arrived theoretically at knowledge of the consonance of the third. The man who first declared
the consonance of the major third in the West was Ludovico Fogliani (Musica theorica, 1529). Yet he believed he was establishing something new just as little as did
Gioseffo Zarlino, who did the same thing in 1558 in his Istitutioni harmoniche. Both
referred to the Greek theorists Didymus an d Ptolemy, who, among various possible
divisions ofthe fourth (tetrachord divisions), also gave the division with the third
4:5 ( consisting of the major whole ton e 8:9 and the minor 9:10 ); buti t still remained
far from the Greeks to consider the consonance of the third, an d it was not necessary for either Zarlino or Fogliano to renounce the originality of their idea for the
Greeks' sake.
But Zarlino went farther. He is not called the "Father of Harmonic Theory"
without reason; fori t is h e who gave the world the concept of the consonant chord
an d indeed even in its double form as major chord an d minor chord.
While musical practice had long since discovered by empirica! means the fundamentals of multi-part composition (consonant harmonies), theory an d the practically oriented teaching of art completely lacked concepts for ili e definiti o n of these
formations. Zarlino (Istitutione harmoniche, Books l.30 and II1.31 ) compared two
methods of string division, the harmonic (divisione harmonica) and the arithmetic
(divisione aritmetica); by "harmonic divisi o n" of the string, h e meant the derivation
of the pitches of one half, one third, one quarter, one fifth, and one sixth of the
string; by "arithmetic divisi o n;' in contrast, the derivation of the pitches of multiples of a smallest part = 1: 2:3 : 4:5: 6. The series of string lengths 1: 1/2: 1/3: 1/4:
1/5: I/6 corresponds, when we take c) asl, to the tones c ), c 4, G4, e s, Es, Gs, that is,
tones that collectively belong to the C-major chord; the series 1 : 2 : 3 : 4 : 5 : 6 in
contrast results, if we take Gs as a starting point, in the tones G5 , G4, C~, G3 , El>3, C3 ,
that is, tones that collectively belong to the minor chord un der G5 (=C minor):

]h

l'l

!h

1
/4

116
n

/s

._; --e
l'l
t)

15

68

INTELLECTUAL CONTEXTS

In other words: the minor chord according to Zarlino is mathematically the polar
opposite of the major chord (Zarlino also uses the expressions divisione harmonica
and divisione aritmetica as shorthand for the major chord and minor chord themselves). Whether Zarlino himself made the ingenious discovery cannot be proven;
butI am not aware of any older theorists who mention it.
Unfortunately, Zarlino's great thought remained a theorem; whether it was not
sufficiently noticed or whether it was not understood, in any case, it disappeared for
two full centuries, in order to resurface only in 1754 with Tartini.
Thoroughbass fguration, which appeared in the literature only a few decades
later but was already developing in practice at the time, was probably the reason
that the seeds of a rational harmonic theory indicated here did not develop further,
but rather fell into complete oblivion. A comprehensive naming of even the simplest and most common chords did not exist at that time; if such a naming had not
been established on Zarlino's dualistic explanation of the major consonance and
minor consonance-that is, an explanation based o n two opposed principles- then
the theory would have been steered along the same paths o n which the la test efforts
also aspire to steer, namely that of the thoroughgoing dualism of the major relations
and the minor relations, the former considered from below and the latter from
above. 26 Instead, thoroughbass linked the interpretation of ali simultaneities to the
lowest voice an d constructed chords from the botto m up.
The Italian organists, who had to accompany choral singing in rehearsal or in
performance, probably made use of this shorthand fgured notation as early as the
middle of the sixteenth century. The limited notation, at the time, of mensural music
without bar lines, and with varying note values in the individuai voices to boot, made
playing from a score in the modern sense impossible, and scores were therefore not
written or printed at ali, an d directors an d organists had to try to create an overview
of the work by other means. The Italians accomplished this by placing the notes on
top of one another somewhat in the m_a nner of a score and then indicated with numbers above the lowest voice which intervals the higher voices should form with it; the
Germans had long had another means for better clarity in the so-called organ tablature. To grasp the signifcance of thoroughbass for the practice of compositional
teaching at this time, one must keep in mind that the previous era had only seen in
the chords an accidental convergence of several voices in consonant intervals, and
that even Glarean (1547) was of the view that polyphonic composition was a coupling of several voices moving in different modes and that in the same piece, for
example, a plagal mode is found in the discantus an d an authentic mode in the bass.
The idea of considering an d naming the simultaneously sounding tones from a consolidating perspective was foreign to an era that knew neither the dominating melody nor the supporting bass and viewed and treated the four or fve voices of
contrapuntal composition as completely independent individuals. The frst half of
the sixteenth century is indeed the era of the highest blossoming of imitative contrapuntai style; only the second half brought the clarifed composition of a Palestrina
and an Orlando di Lasso, an d its end brought the new musical style of homophonic
composition. lt is hard to resist the idea that the discovery, at precisely this time, of

69

" THE NATURE OF HARMONY"

the chord concept and the thereby altered conception of music in many parts won
decisive influence over musical production.
As mentioned, thoroughbass was the very frst thoroughly developed chordal
nomenclature and signifed tremendous progress for theoretical knowledge as
well as for practice itself. The essential character of thoroughbass is well known;
it designates every tone with a number, which corresponds to its degree reckoned
in diatonie order, starting from the bass tone, but it generally sets the intervals
greater than an octave equal to those an octa~e or more closer to the bass-in
other words, it recognizes identity between octave-related ton es, on the condition
that the interval in relation to the bass tone remain the same from above and
below; for since it always takes some bass tone as its point of departure, it has
no way of expressing the fact that the ffth C-G and the fourth G-C are just as
much the same intervaF 7 as the following chords have the same signifcance
and same sign:

~
6

=Thus:~
~

=, ~ =, ~ =
~

Hence, while the inversions of the intervals of the upper parts do not change signifcance for thoroughbass, such interval equivalence is impossible when one voice creates this interval in relation to the bass. It can hardly be denied that fgured bass is
an incomplete means for the theoretical representation ofharmonies; buti t was the
first that people carne to know and was therefore extremely beneficiai. It was not
long unti! additional abbreviations arose in the practical treatment of bass fgures,
which greatly simplifed harmonic thinking. That chords formed from the third
and ffth were especially common was immediately noticed and they were given a
special signifcance by virtue of the fact that they were assumed when no sign at all
was written above the bass. Only if the third or ffth, as given i~ the notation, were
to be altered were accidentals and numbers necessary. But the chord of the third and
fifth, or, as we now cali it, the triad, required by the absence of signs could just as
easily be a major or minor chord as a diminished triad:

= ~,!}:a=~,~

Thus fgured bass occasioned the development of chord theory in a direction completely different from where it ha d been leading the most erudite and famous theorist of
his century, Zarlino, through the establishment of the polar opposition of the major and
minor chords. That C-E-G and E- G-C and G-C-E as well as other (more extended
and multi-part) simultaneities of the three tones C, E and G have the same harmonic
signifcance certainly arose from Zarlino's conception as clearly as could be desired, and

70

INTELLECTUAL CONTEXTS

also for the minor chord the various rearrangements appear as identica! formations. In
contrast, it was impossible from the standpoint of thoroughbass to arrive at this knowledge; rather, Zarlino's thought, even when it had already achieved wide dissemination,
was pushed into the background, sin ce for thoroughbass it seemed to have more to do
with a melodie conception of simultaneities than with a truly harmonic one. According
to figured thoroughbass, the minor chord is something that is not differentiated from
the major chord; and yet according to figured thoroughbass, the major sixth chord is
something different from the chord of the third and fifth, the triad, of the same chord.
The budding knowledge in Zarlino of the diverse significances of the harmonies and the
equivalence of their inversions was thus stifled, and the single positive gain was the possibility of an abbreviateci nota!ion for ali simultaneities in connection with the figures,
such as: sixth chord (6), six-four chord (~), seventh chord (7), six-five chord
etc.
That the sixth chord is an inversion of the triad, that the six-five chord is an inversion of
the seventh, was only noticed nearly 150 years later, after Zarlino's pertinent idea had
been totally forgotten.
Thoroughbass spread throughout Europe with lightning speed once it first
emerged around 1600 in the printed works ofltalian composers, and it captured much
terrain even from German tablature, since the latter did not contain the elements of
chord nomenclature. The rapid blossoming of opera, the oratorio, and instrumental
music, moreover, pushed the thought of reforming and improving theory into the
background, an d for over a century, one was content with the practically very useful
bass figures, which, as is well known, carne to play an outstanding role to the extent
that the organ or the harpsichord became integrai components of the accompaniment in church as well as in the theater; the p art of the organist or harpsichordist, and
indeed of the theorbist or gambist, was nothing more than a figured bass from which
the accompanist had to develop a correct multi-part composition. Thoroughbass was
therefore an important art unti! past the middle of the previous century.
Theory received a powerful new impetus toward rational development in 1722
from Jean-Philippe Rameau, 28 a man of great significance in the history of French
opera as well. Rameau can be considered the discoverer of the overtones. H e noticed
that a sounding string allows o ne to hear no t only its proper tone (the tone which is
demanded by a notation and which is normally considered to sound uniquely), but
also simultaneously its twelfth (i.e., the fifth above the octave) and seventeenth (the
major third above the double octave); in other words, that what we normally hold
to be a simple tone is rather a complex of severa! tones and is indeed a major chord;
for from, say, C2 , the twelfth above is G3 and the seventeenth is E4; that is, we have
the complete C-major chord:

m,

-e-

'1:-=-n
,

Il

-e-

For a musician of Rameau's talent this discovery was more than a curiosity; it was a
revelation. Indeed, the phenomenon of the overtones was not entirely unknown

71

"TliE NATURE OF HARMONY"

before Rameau; Mersenne (1636) had already pointed to it, and Sauveur (1701) ~ad
eXPlained it scientifically, and had even emphasized its significance for the knowledge of the principles of harmony; yet it first carne to be known in broader circles
and obtained a practical significance for the theory of art through Rameau's theory
of fundamental bass, which was based upon it.
A clever musician like Rameau sensed clearly that the grounding of the major
consonance in an acoustical phenomenon was not fully sufficient for the construction of a scientific system of harmony; but his attempt to verify a corresponding
phenomenon also for the minor consonance failed. Whether Rameau took Zarlino's
mathematical explanation of both Klang-principles 29 as his point of departure in
such a quest is not known; in any case, he attempted to ground the minor chord in
the phenomenon of undertones, in contrast to that of the overtones. Specifically, h e
discovered tha.t those strings of which a sounding tone is an overtone (in other
words, as Rameau says: those of the undertweifth and underseventeenth) vibrate
forcefully as long as the pertinent tone (Rameau's "gnrateur") vibrates, while
strings tuned differently remain completely at rest. Although he was no t ab le to hear
out this lower string's ton e from the sounding mass, h e stili assumed that it must be
contained in it, and believed he had found the principle of the minor consonance in
the so-called phenomenon of sympathetic vibration; for the undertwelfth and
underseventeenth produce the minor chord under the generating principal ton e in
just the same way as the overtwelfth an d overseventeenth represent the major chord
over the principal tone:
-ei):
'

l1
Il

Unfortunately, Rameau learned from the physicist d' Alembert that this sympathetic
vibration of lower strings di d no t produce their pro per ton e (the ton e of the whole
string), but rather (in the manner of the harmonics of string instruments) the n oda!
points make it vibrate in so many aliquot parts that they intensify only the generating tone. A few years ago, I demonstrated that Rameau's observation was stili not
without significance for the explanation of the minor consonance (Musikalische
Syntaxis, 1877); for the sympathetically vibrating strings do produce their proper
tone in addition to the generating principal tone, though to be sure considerably
more weakly.
Rameau had to abandon the scientific grounding of the minor consonance,
then, and found it necessary to base his system one-sidedly o n the major principle.
Thus the minor chord was a modification of the major chord for him-that is, a
sirnultaneity not given by nature, a less perfect consonance. His physical explanation of consonance thus in the end remained behind Zarlino's merely mathematical
explanation. Only in one point did his system represent great progress in theoretical
knowledge; Rameau enunciateci for the first time in unambiguous terms that ali

72

INTELLECTUAL CONTEXTS

possible permutations of the chord-by octave displacement of the individua!

tones, by inversion of the interval from above and below even with respect to the
bass, by octave doubling, etc.-do not alter its harmonic significance; that is, he did
what was indeed near to hand but unattainable from the standpoint of the thoroughbass method: he rendered chords that are composed of like-named tones identica!, regardless of which of them is the bass tone; he created the theory of the
inversion of chords. But this was an extraordinary stroke of genius; for with that,
the apparatus of the theory of harmony was fundamentally simplified in a single
stroke. The triad, sixth chord, and six-four chord now appeared as different forms
of the same harmony, just as di d the seventh chord, six-five chord, four- three chord,
an d second chord. This may have been intuited for a long time, but nobody had as
yet articulated it.
It is much to be regretted that Rameau was hindered by d'Alembert from a
dualistic construction of the theory of harmony; for one can deduce how fine his
harmonic instinct was from two further peculiarities of his system, namely from the
conception of the diminished triad as a dominant seventh chord with omitted root,
for example: B-D-F as a G-major chord with the minor seventh (F) but an omitted
root (F):

~
an d, further, from the construction of the added-sixth chord (accord de la sixte ajoute); specifically, he explains the six-five chord, F-A-C-D in C major, as a subdominant chord (F major) with an added major sixth (D):

~
an d not as an inversi o n of the seventh chord D-F-A-C, as o ne would expect an d is
generally don e today. No musician can deny that the effect of the diminished triad
as well as of the chord F-A-C-D (both in C major) fully corresponds to this explanation; the sense of the harmony wili be fundamentally altered neither by the addition of the omitted G n or by the omission of the added D (though the diminished
triad can also be conceived in another context as a half-diminished- [under-]seventh chord; for example, B-D-F in A minor as B-D-F-[A] ). This conception makes
explicit the intuition of an ideato which I will return, namely that dissonant chords
are to be interpreted as alterations of consonant chords but not as fundamental
formations in themselves.
For the outward presentation of his system, Rameau needed a representational
means other than thoroughbass, for the tone in whose sense the harmony is to be
grasped, is a different o ne from the root in all inverted chords. Yet, as we have already
seen, he stuck with the construction of chords from the bottom up (for minor

"rBE NATURE OF HARMONY"

73

chords too ), and therefore expressed ali chords, as in thoroughbass, as if they were
resting on a bass tone; h e called this bass ton e the "son fondamentale" (fundamental
tane) and the whole succession of fundamental tones "basse fondamentale" (fundarnental bass). The following conspectus will serve to illustrate the difference between
figured bass and the Ramellian fundamental bass:

Thoroughbass:

Fundamental Bass Thereof:

The fundamental bass furnished a means to consider the relation of successive harmonies from a synoptic perspective an d to fin d the fundamentallaws of harmonic
phrase composition; along this line, Rameau established the rule that the fundamental bass may only progress in perfect fifths and fourths , or (major and minor)
thirds. If this rule does not appear entirely adequate even today, it still effectively
contains an indication of the most important perspective for the judgment of Klang
successions, namely the recognition of a third relationship between Kliinge in addition to th generally acknowledged fifth relationship.
As rich as Rameau's system is in attempts at a rational theory of harmony, it
cannot be designateci as such in its totality. The natura! grounding of the major
consonance as well as the ingenious derivation of the diminished triad and the
major chord with major sixth remain too isolated within an otherwise fully arbitrary schematic construction. The ideas mentioned could easily have been missing
in the same system without its failing; only the simplification of the chord theory
inaugurateci by thoroughbass would remain, the theory of chord inversion. It was
this, then, that obtained direct and enduring influence on the entire further development of the theory of harmony; the theory of inversion resurfaces in the systems
of Calegari (Tratto del sistema armonico di F A. Calegari [t 1740], first published in
1829 by Balbi), Vallotti (Della scienza teorica e pratica della moderna musica, 1779),
Kirnberger (Die Kunst des reinen Satzes, 1774-79), Abb Vogler (Handbuch der
Harmonielehre, 1802), and everything that followed. The weak point of Rameau's
system, the abortive development of connections to the physicalist theory of Kliinge,
was readily noticed, an d Vallotti rejected the one-sided grounding of the major consonance in an acoustic phenomenon and derived the diatonie scale from the higher
overtones, among which he found the minor chord as well as the major chord. It
was m ade clear by d'Alembert (Elments de musique thorique et pratique, suivant les
principes de M. Rameau, 1752; translated into German by Marpurg in 1757) that,
among other things, the overtones observed by Rameau (twelfth and seventeenth)

74

INTELLECTUA~

CONTEXTS

do not stand alone but are rather only the elements most immediately apparent to
the ear out of a series of tones-the higher the weaker-which, with respect to
Zarlino's harmonic division, correspond to string lengths, but, with respect to vibratiana! frequencies, correspond to the natura! integer series 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc.

:r 4 ,J v&;
l

(The tones marked

*
7

J ~r

v r v ~r r

IO

Il

12

* L*
E
~t: gt: E
13

14

15

etc.

16

* are lower than the tones indicated by the notes of our musical system.)

Valletti found the scale between the eighth and sixteenth overtones, the major chord
between 4:5=6 and the minor chord between 10:12:15. Of course, an actual grounding
of consonance did not result from this, since for Rameau, this grounding consists in
the interpretati an of the ton es of a Klang in the sense of the fundamental tane; G3 an d
E4 are consonant with C2 because they merge into it; one cannot interpret E5-G 5-B 5 as
giving a sense of C2 , however, without destroying the consonance of the chord.
Kirnberger took the overtones as an explanation of the major consonance, allowed
the inconsistency of its continuation to remain, gave up the maverick explanation of
the dirninished triad and of the added-sixth chord, an d retained the system of inversions in such a form that thoroughbass method did not need to be altered in any way;
that is, he lined up the major chord, the minor chord, and the dirninished triad (as
fgured bass had previously), an d drew from them four types of seventh chord as source
chords: the major chord with major and minor seventh, and the minor chord and
diminished triad with minor seventh. Kirnberger's system remained with incidental
modifcations in practical handbooks unti! the present day. Since Rameau, the punctum saliens for the differentiation of the source chords, inversions, and suspension
chords, etc., has been construction in thirds; that is, chords that can been constructed
as a series of (major and minor) thirds aver their bass tane were seen as source chords;
those that can be arranged in thirds through inversion (that is, choosing a different
ton e than the bass) appeared as inverted source chords; an d fnally those that cannot be
represented as a series of thirds in any way were to 'be seen as incidental constructions,
as suspension chords. With this construction from thirds, one went beyond the seventh
to ninth, eleventh, and thirteenth chords, which one could naturally demonstrate only
in elliptical form. From such monster chords-especially as rendered well-nigh horrifying in J. H. Knecht's system (see Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung1, 1798-1799)-there
has been a retreat recently, and we are generally content to concede the ninth chords a
somewhat conditional entitlement as source chords.
I have already mentioned that, having been forgotten for 200 years, the dualistic
conception of harmony, frst posited by Zarlino, was taken up again by Tartini, the
famous violin virtuoso. 30 lt is not improbable that Tartini thoroughly studied and
understood Zarlino; not only does he derive the major consonance from the harmonic division of the string an d the minor consonance from the arithrnetic division,

75

"TiiE NATURE OF HARMONY"

but he also sees in the minor nota different species of third (that is, not the minor
one, as it is viewed by thoroughbass) but rather only a different positioning of the
only third to be considered (the major one), which is positioned against the lower
tone of the ffth in the major chord and against the higher tane in the minor chord:

'

Ci)

(~)

Il

But Tartini was a contemporary of Rameau an d di d not simply adhere to Zarlino's

viewpoint. The questio n, frst raised by Rameau, of the grounding of consonance in
acoustical phenomena actively preoccupied him an d h e was ab le to see a new aspect
in it. To be sure, in grounding the minor consonance, he remained satisfed with the
suggestion of a polar opposition to the major consonance in Zarlino's conception
(opposition between the harmonic and arithmetic divisions), but he considerably
deepened the explanation of the major consonance by not ignoring, as did other
theorists, the fact that other, higher overtones existed than the sixth, but he attempted
to go at least as far as the seventh. As is well known, the seventh overtone is a minor
seventh, which is a little flat in comparison with the minor seventh of the tempered
twelve-note system. Tartini momentously asserted the consonance of the major
chord with a natura! seventh, a view o ne also fnds even in the la test promoter of the
exact theory of harmony, Helmholtz; but that even the seventh chord tuned with
ma.thematical purity as 4:5:6:7 is a musical consonance, can never be accepted from
science by art, although it cannot be denied, on the other hand, that it does exceed
even the major chord in equa! temperament in physical euphony-that is, as far as
the undisturbed fusion of the vibration patterns. Kirnberger and Fasch in Berlin
attempted, a few decades after Tartini, to assert the use of the natura! seventh for
our practice of music, but with little success; for naturally it canna t make sense to
introduce an untempered seventh next to a tempered third and tempered ffth,
while it would remain possible for anyone to regard the natura! seventh as having
been introduced into our tane system with the meaning of a ( dissonant) basic interval, tempered just like any other interval. 31
As is well known, Tartini is also the discoverer of the combination tones or
''Tartini tones," named after him; in fact, his Trattato frst appeared in 1754, while
Sorge had already pointed to the existence of combination tones in 1740 in his
Vorgemach musikalischer Komposition; but Tartini discovered the combination ton es
in 1714 and introduced them to his violin school, opened in Padua in 1728, as the
touchstone of pure intonation in chords (cf. my Studien zur Geschichte der
Notenschrift, 1878, p. 101). As Tartini correctly observes, the phenomenon of combination tones coincides with that of overtones insofar as the lower tones, which
become audible when two ton es sound together, are none other than the ton es of an
overtone seri es in which the pertinent interval, right down to the fundamental, can
be correlated with the smallest ordinai numbers. Just like Rameau with the overtone
series, Tartini only observed the combination tones incompletely and heard only

76

INTELLECTUAL CONTEX'I's

the lowest combination tone, which always corresponded to the fundamental tane
of the series an d was initially (in the Trattato) identifed by him in errar as an octave
too high but was correctly identifed in the text De principii. We now know that the
entire overtone series of this fundamental is audible, not only the tones that are
lower than the given interval, but also those falling within the interval an d higher,
so that the relationship of the two phenomena is in any case evident. The ffth 2: 3
(C3-G 3) produces only a lower combination tane, namely one corresponding to the
integer 1, the underoctave (C2 ) of the interval's lower tane; the fourth 3:4 (G 3-C4)
audibly produces 1 and 2 (C 2-C3); the third 4:5 (C 4-E 4) the tones 1, 2, and 3 (C 2C3-G3), etc. These lower combination tones have special signifcance for the interpretation of the major chord; for the frst time, they provide the theory of chord
inversion its true scientifc foundation, since the triad C4-E4-G 4 as well as the sixth
chord E4-G 4-C5 and the six-four chord G3-C 4-E4 fnd their point of unity in the
combination tane C2 :
t.

Chord:

i)

:go

:go

77

Lo w est
Combination
Tone:

ltJ=

---

Il

Not the dose position

~
but rather the open position
-&

q::=--11
Il

7
-&

proves to be the typical form of the major chord. Another type of combination tane
has frst been graced with the appropriate recognition only recently, namely the
coincident overtones (A. v. Oettingen, Harmoniesystem in dualer Entwickelung, 1866);
among the higher overtones of an interval or chord (that is, the overtones of the
individuai chord ton es an d the combination ton es of the overtones), the frst common overtone of the chord tones sounds especially loud to the ear. 32 Sin ce its ordinai number is found by multiplying the ordinai numbers of the interval ton es in the
overtone series, one may cali them multiplication tones. Thus the major third 4:5
(C4-E4) has the multiplication tane 4 x 5 = 20 (E6), the major sixth 3:5 (G 3-E4)
has the multiplication tane 3 x 5 = 15 (B 5), the minor third 5:6 (E4-G 4 ) has the mul-

77

"riiE NATURE OF HARMONY"

tiplication tane 5 x 6 = 30 (BJ Just as the minor third E4-G4 and the major sixth
G -E are completed by the combination tane C2 to form a major chord, the same
4
U:tervals are completed by the multiplication tones B6 and B5, respectively, to form
a minor chord. A. v. Oettingen (Professar of Physics at the University of Dorpat)
sees in the multiplication tones, or the "phonic overtones" as he calls them, the
natura! cohesiveness of the minor chord; B6 is the common overtone of the following series of ton es:

~ f=
l

~*
J J ?: f E r V

r v r* nJ*

11

IO

12

13

14

1vJ
15

J
16 etc.

(The tones marked *are ali high in comparison with the corresponding tones ofthe tempered system.)

Thus we have h ere the complete undertone series, the counterpart of the overtone
series, of equally foundational signifcance for the minor chord as the overtone
series is for the major chord. The tones of this series fuse into a unity in relation to
this highest ton e in the same thorough way that the ton es of the overtone series do
in relation to the fundamental. I have already explained above how the musical
conception can be brought into accord with the tones of this series that do not
belong to the E-minor chord (7, 9, n, 13, 14, etc) in connection with the corresponding overtones.
Yet just as we cannot explain the consonance of the major chord through combination tones alone, but rather regard the phenomenon of the overtones as its
actual foundation, we also need an opposing phenomenon of undertones for a fully
satisfactory explanation of the minor consonance. If such a phenomenon has not
yet been able to be established with suffcient certainty, we do not lack signs that
minor relationships are reckoned by the perceiving mind along the same lines from
the top as major o n es are from the botto m. I have already pointed out that the phenomenon of sympathetic vibration furnishes the undertone series; the phenomenon of ringing ton es (KlirrtOne) also belongs here. If you ho ld the base of a vibrating
tuning fork only very lightly without affxing it frmly, or if you set a loosely fastened metal p late into vigorous vibration, you hear the underoctave or undertwelfth,
even perhaps the underffteenth, underseventeenth or other lower uridertones of
the fork or plate instead of its proper tone. But it is even probable that each tane,
with an intensity decreasing in proportion to the lowness of the pitch, always produces a seri es of undertones corresponding to the series of overtones, though the
former are even more diffcult to perceive-to single out, that is, from the mental
representation of the Klang (Klangvorstellung)-than are the overtones. To that end,
l have adduced all manner of material that has been observed on this point without
having been refuted. (Musikalische Logik, 1873, p. 12; "Die objective Existenz der
Untert6ne in der Schallwelle," 1875, special publication of the Allgemeine Deutsche
Musikzeitung; Foreword and Addendum to Musikalische Syntaxis, 1877; cf. also the
artide, "UntertOne;' from my Musik-Lexikon).

78

INTELLECTUAL CONTEXTS

Whatever one thinks about this or that of my proofs, the fact remains that the
major and minor consonances are, according to their mathematical-physical relations, strict opposites of one another. The question then is whether the physiology
of hearing and the psychology of tone representations can explain a similar reciprocity of major and minor and whether they are able to recognize the principle of
this mathematical-physical theory of ton e as their own.
The physiology of tone sensations has only recently undergone a more thoroughgoing revision, particularly by the physicist and physiologist of outstanding
merit, Heinrich Helrnholtz [sic]. 33 The book however by no means contains only
physiological investigations, as one might assume from the title, but rather spans
the entire area of the scientific study of ton e, from the generation an d propagation
of sound to the concatenation of chord ideas (Klangvorstellungen); in other worcis,
it occupies itself not in the least onlywith mathematical-physical irivestigations anci
it extends ali the way into psychology and aesthetics. Thus the theory of overtones
an d combination tones is treated thoroughly an d the differences of ton e color are
explained by the differences in composition of Kli:inge out of overtones; these investigations are especially valuable for the theory of instrument construction an d also
explain, among other things, the mixture stops of the organ (Quint, Terz, Mixtur,
Cornett, etc), which have been in practical use since long before knowledge of the
composition of complex ton es, an ci which collectively had no other purpose than to
reinforce individuai overtones anci thus the fundamental so un d of the organ's basic
ranks. The specifically physiological chapters in Helmholtz's book include one on
the analysis of complex ton es by the ear, or the singling out of individuai overtones
from the wave motion that still strikes the ear as a single vibrational form; further,
one on the perception of the different tone colors (which rest on the same principles); and one on the euphony of the different chord types. As fine and intelligent as
the investigations an d observations on both of the first named problems are, they
must still be designateci in their entirety as hypotheses and are so designateci by
Helmholtz. The hypothesis suggests that in the inner ear, a complicateci apparatus
exists with various-sized anci more or less tautly stretched fibers, which are set in
motion according to the law of sympathetic vibration and excite the nerve endings
leading away from them. The entire apparatus is of microscopic proportions. Far
music theory, there can be no discussion of a positive result of this hypothesis,
regardless of whether it pertains to the Membrana basilaris or the fibers of Corti; far
the time being, it is not even beyond douJ:>t that it constitutes a positive result far
natura! science itself.
The most vulnerable chapter of Helmholtz's music theoretical work is the one
on consonance and dissonance, which concepts Helmholtz tries to explain from a
physiological standpoint as difference in euphony. He locates the essence of dissonance in the presence of beats; that is, regular, rapidly recurring intensifications of
a Klang, which are felt as unpleasantly disturbing. Consonance, according to
Helmholtz, is the complete absence of beats or at least their limitation to a very
small number. The major chord appears most free of beats, but the minor consonance is an obscuring of physiological consonance; in generai, a complete scale of

79

"'ffiE NATURE OF HARMONY"

decreasing euphony can be constructed according to the scale of beats, beginning

frorn the undisturbed fusion of a chord manifesting the relations of the first
overtones:

:i

q;rr 11
,

ii

-&

up to the harshest dissonances anci musically most impossible discordances, such

that for neither the major chord and minor chord nor for COI\SOnance and dissonance is anything produced other than a difference in degree of euphony.
This most unsatisfactory result immediately met the most vigorous opposltion;
right away, the already-named A. v. Oettingen34 entered the field and demanded a
principled difference for major and minor; he found it in the completely opposed
mode of construction of both species of consonance; that is, he constructed the
minor consonance as the antipode of the major consonance in the manner already
shown an d also followed through with this opposition between major an d minor in
scale theory an d chord theory. He rightly pointed out that the physical euphony of
the major consonance is inferi or when o ne compares the arrangement of the undertones with that of the overtones. The minor chord:
-&

~
is just as free of beats as the major chord in the form given above an d fuses in the
most complete manner into the unity of the highest tone. The disaccord of the common combination ton e F0 against the A-minor chord in the arrangement given here
correlates with the discord of the corresponding overtone B5 against the C-major
chord in the arrangement given above. Oettingen also indicates the satisfactory
results to be attained for the differentiation between consonance and dissonance.
But this would lead us beyond the area of the physiology into psychology.
With equally keen intellect, the ingenious Gottingen philosopher Hermann
Lotze (Geschichte der Asthetik in Deutschland, 1868) found the Achilles h eel of the
Helmholtzian system; like Oettingen, he demanded a principled differentiation
between major and minor and between consonance and dissonance; he demanded
something other than a gradated difference in euphony for the many different types
of ciissonance. In the meantime, a number of more recent music-theoretical writings have followed, which have interpreted Oettingen's and Lotze's reproofs against
Helmholtz's theory differently and sought a satisfactory solution to the problem,35
whereby Oettingen's almost completely fleshed out system formed the basis of further investigati ons.

So

INTELLECTUAL CONTEXTs

If I bave no t dedicateci a single word so far to Moritz Hauptmann, wbose epochmaking work Die Natur der Harmonik und Metrik appeared in 1853, that was so as
to do bis work an d its merits fuller justice without interruption. Hauptmann was at
once an eminently musical figure and a deep pbilosopbical tbinker. Harmonic dualism, the polar opposition between major an d minor, wbich two of the most ingenious older theorists found through mathematical construction, be generateci anew
through philosophical speculati o n, long after the intellectuallabor of his two predecessors had passed into oblivion in libraries. If, in studying the history of harmonic theory today, we fin d that Hauptmann's idea of considering the minor chord
as a major chord developed negatively an d set o n its head-an idea that caused such
a great sensation-had already been posited 300 years earlier by Zarlino, we must
not deny Hauptmann the originai discovery of this thought. We would commit a
great injustice were we to con test Hauptmann's independent discovery of this dual
harmonic principle. As far as the further development of tbe tbeory, Hauptmann is
the originator of this idea. lt is just as unlikely that a theorist of the first half of our
century would have generateci bis wisdom from Zarlino or Tartini, as it is that it
would occur to a theorist of our time to draw on those "old masters." All we loyal
students of Hauptmann, who adhere to the letter of his teaching (Kohler, Paul,
Rischbieter), O. Tiersch who seeks a compromise between Hauptmann and
Helmholtz (System und Methode der Harmonielehre, 1868), as well as the strict dualists (Oettingen, Thtirlings, myself and, witb reservations, Hostinsky), who have
become more Hauptmannian tban Hauptmann himself-all of us adopted harmonic dualism as a new concept from Hauptmann. That there wer~ any early
defenders of this idea at all, I frst brought to ligbt again in 1875 with regard to
Tartini ("Die objective Existenz .... ") and in 1881 with regard to Zarlino ("Zarlino
als harmonischer Dualist;' Monatshefte fiir Musikgeschichte).
Though Helmholtz di d no t accept harmonic dualism and still positions himself
at least in resistance to it, Hauptmann's system exerted tbe greatest influence even
o n him, as becomes clear from the evidence of the tbird an d musically most valuable section-entitled "The Affnity of Tones"-of his treatise on tone sensations.
One senses everywhere here tbe essentiallapidary tbought of Hauptmann's work:
"There are three directly intelligible intervals: I. tbe octave, II. the fifth, III. the
(major) tbird" (Natur der Harmonik, p. 21). This thought is truly great and epochmaking and contains within it everything tbat exact theory has since been able to
develop. The minor third, the fourtb, the sixth, and all other intervals do not exist
for Hauptmann; for him, they are no t entities subsisting in themselves an d in themselves significant, but rather merely products, combinations of the essential concepts: octave, fifth, an d third. I do not wish to suppress tbe fact that this recognition
was not absolutely new; the mathematicians had already known for severa! centuries that all musical intervals can be expressed as products and powers of the numbers 2, 3, and 5- Ancient theory only recognized two essential intervals: octave and
fifth, and derived all other intervals from them, the second (G-D) as an octave displacement of the second fifth (C-G-D), the third (G-E) as an octave displacement
of the fourtb fifth (C-G-D-A-E), etc. Sin ce Fogliani's an d Zarlino's construction of

81

"THE NATURE OF HARMONY"

the consonance of the third, so definitive for tbe West, the third has also been taken
jnto account and, for example, the major seventh (G-B) has been defned as the _
third of the fifth (C-G-B), the augmented fourth (G-F~) as the third of the second
fifth (C-G-D-F~), the augmented fifth (C-G~) as the third of tbe third, and so forth.
But this progress in knowledge first entered the harmony manuals through
Hauptmann. It was Hauptmann who introduced a differentiation between fiftbrelated and third-related torres, not in notation but in a nomenclature for tones in
}etters. The signifcance ofHauptmann's familiar upper- and lower-case tone-letters
is that two similarly named tones, one of whicb is indicated with a large and one
with a small letter, differ from each other in the mathematical determina~ion of
their pitches by the so-called syntonic comma or comma of Didymus. As already
mentioned above, Didymus presented a tetrachordal division:
B16/15

C-

D-E

10/9

9/8

That is, he introduced two different whole ton es, 10:9 an d 9:8; the difference between
the two (10/9 : 9/8) is the comma of Didymus 8o:81. In our major scale C:D is the
whole ton e 8:9 (D is the second fifth of C, thus [3/2)2 = 9/4, or, in dose position, 9/8)
and D:E is tbe whole ton e 9:10 (E is the third of C, tlms 5/4; d: e= 9/8 : 5/4 = 40/36 =
10/9); the third E stands in relation to the fourth fifth (G-G-D-A-E) as 80:81 (since
[3/2] 4 is 81/16, or, in dose position, 81/64; 5/4: 81/64 = 8o:81). Hauptmann indicated
C Witb an upper-case character, the third e with a lower-case one and tbe fourth
fifth E again with upper-case; in generai, all tones indicated in upper-case represent
a chain of fifths, while the intervals indicated through an alternation of upper- an d
lower-case letters imply a third-progression; the tones indicated witb lower-case
characters stand in relation to each otber again in a fifth-chain:

f"

g"

. a e b
c"
d"
.FCGDAEB
. db ab eb bb

g . .

Hauptmann represents the key as constituted from the tones of the three chords on
the tonic, dominant, and subdominant:
~~~

FaCeGbD
~

"-----"'

In C major, then, we have the two fifth-series F-C-G-D an d a-e-b, the former comprising tones that are related to C by fifths, the latter from tones that are related to
it by thirds. The eminently important result of this arrangement, though, is the
recognition of the third- relationship of chords an d keys. Even [A. B.] Marx wondered
that tbe keys of E major and A major were immediately intelligible following
C major, while D major and B~ major sound foreign and incoherent in relation to

INTELLECTUAL CONTEXTS

82

C major; indeed, since Marx stili had no knowledge of the third relation, he had to
wonder at the fact that the key of the fourth ffth appeared better connected than
that of the second ffth. Yet E major is not at all the key of the fourth ffth, but rather
the key of the third. Although Beethoven had already introduced the second theme
of the frst movement of the C-major Sonata, op. 53, in E major, it was only
Hauptmann who enunciated the third-relationship of keys an d thereby disposed of
the problem once and for all. In more recent music, the juxtaposition of thirdrelated keys along with ffth-related keys has since been vernacularized, even if some
theorists' dogged clinging to old traditions and blindness against Hauptmann's
ingenious progress even today stili regard it as somewhat abnormal, or at most as
only exceptionally admissible. Hauptmann's letter nomenclature for tones, with its
differentiation between ffth- and third-related tones, has been further perfected by
Helmholtz and Oettingen, such that one now distinguishes between thirds below
and thirds above, an d third relationships of the frst an d second, etc., degrees (in the
manner devised by Oettingen and altered by Helmholtz):
. C# G# D# .

D A

F# C# G# D# .

. Db Ab Eb Bb F

. F

F# C# G# D#.

-----

Db Ab Eb Bb F
B~

Fb.

Instead of the large an d smallletters, we thus now use the unambiguous commalines Cf, is one comma lower than E, AJ, is a comma higher than AJ,, C# is two commas lower than a, etc).
(
Yet Helmholtz did no t only comprehend Hauptmann's theory in its full breadth
and, apart from the insuffcient explanation of the minor consonance.and of the
difference between conso11ance and dissonance, give it a scientifc basis, but he also
developed the theory essentially further with the establishment of a concept that
has opened entirely new perspectives: the concept of Klang representation
(Klangvertretung). If ali theorists had intuited it, stili none had spoken aloud that
we conceive tones as representatives of Kliinge. Indeed, according to Helmholtz,
Kliinge are just overtone sonorities-major chords-and in fact, for the construction of the minor chord C-E~-G, h e introduces the Kliinge C (for C-G) an d B (for
8>-G); that is, the minor chord, according to Helmholtz, combines parts of two
different Kliinge. (Hostinsky follows him in this and goes even further.) A. v.
Oettingen, though, gave Helmholtz's concept of Klang representation an unparalleled breadth by positioning the minor chord along with the major as an actual
Klang, as whose representative a ton e can appear. The principle of Klang representation no longer belongs within physics, n or within physiology, but rather in psychology. If experience shows that we are able to understand a tone as the

"TJ1E NATURE OF HARMONY "

83

representative of a minor chord just as easily as we can understand it as the repre_sentative of a major chord (without one Klang or the other actually sounding),
then this is a scientifc fact on which we can build further just as well as we can
build upon acoustical phenomena. Once we penetrate to this knowledge, a physical grounding for the minor chord no longer matters much to us. The psychological fact of the understanding of tones in the sense of Kliinge remains fxed, and
indeed each tone can be understood as the representative of three major chords
and three minor chords; it can be the root, fifth, or third in either the major or the
minor direction. It is by no means more difficult for us to comprehend a single E
as the root of its under-Kiang (A-C-E), or the fifth of aB under-Klang (E-G-B),
or the third of a G# under-Klang (a-E-G#), as it is to comprehend it as the root of
an E over-Kiang (E-G#-B), or the ffth of an A over-Klang (C#-E), or finally as the
third of a C over-Klang (C-E-G). There are no other Kliinge as whose representative E can be understood; it can occur in a great number of other Kliinge only as a
foreign, consonance-disturbing tone, as the seventh, for example, of an F#-major
chord, as the added sixth of a G-major chord, etc.
Through this most recent progress of scientifc knowledge, the theory of harmony has developed from a theory of the mathematical ratios of musical intervals
into a theory of ton e representations and their concatenation, while acoustics and
the physiology of hearing h ave regained the status of supplementary sciences, which
they deserve an d which they have certainly, from the perspective of the musician,
always had. 36 The musician greets this turn of events with joy, for. the representatio~s of tones, of chords are familiar to him, an d he understands a theory pertaining
to them iinmediately, so long as the chosen terminology is understandable, while he
feels a deep rift between the calculations of the physicist an d the nervous stimuli of
the physiologist on the one hand, and his conceptions of music on the other. The
same rift subsists between the second an d third sections of Helmholtz's Lehre von
den Tonempfindungen; in the third section, all is bright light, brilliant knowledge,
true musical understanding, while in the second, a connection with living music is
striven for in vai n an d only the already-discussed thoroughly unsuccessful explanation of consonance and dissonance presents itself.
The mistake Helmholtz made is now easy to recognize; he sought to explain
from the nature of sounding bodies concepts that can only be explained from the
nature of the perceiving mind. Consonance an d dissonance are musiCal concepts,
but not definite forms of sound waves. But we cannot forget that this knowledge
could only be won after physical and physiological investigation; the impossibility
of physics and physiology being used to achieve a grounding of musical concepts
could only be seen once psychology could enter in its own right. We know today
that there is no absolute consonance, that even a chord which is, according to physical and physiological formulations, the most undisturbed and euphonious can be a
dissonance musically (for example, the six-four chord).
In order no t to extend the reach of this sketch unduly, I must be brief an d can
only indicate in broad strokes the form that the theory of harmony has achieved
through the introduction of the concept of Klang representation.

84

INTELLECTUAL CONTEXTs

As long as a ton e is not determined according to the significance of its Klang, we

have the simplest musical representation of tone; the conception of tone is empty
an d unsatisfying, it comprises only the simple ton e along with its octaves above and
below; indeed, only seldom do we encounter with complete purity the mental representation of a tone not further determined, but tend much more to understand
the first tone of a piece as the root either in the major or the minor direction. The
representation of interval is considerably richer in content; while tone can be conceived in six different ways, only two different conceptions exist for the (consonant)
interval: C-G is either the representative of a C over-Klang or of a G under-Klang;
for we could only be compelled to understand a ton e in an interval as a dissonance
by further added tones, which would give the second tone a definite significance as
the representative of a Klang to which the former did not belong. But even the full
concept of musical Klang is capable of yet further determinations an d is not in itself
conclusive. If one thinks of the C-major chord in F major or in G major or in C
major, the mental representation is different each time. Helmholtz rightly remarks
(Lehre von den Tonempfindungen, 4th ed., p. 471) that a consonant chord as such is
no t yet entirely ab le to conclude a piece of music; this consonant chord must rather
be the tonic, if it is really to have a conclusive effect. When Helmholtz states further
that earlier theorists had been entirely clear o n this point, I must make an exception
for Tartini, who emphasized (Trattato, p. 112) that all tones in a key are dissonant
with the exception of those belonging to the tonic Klang. In other words: the tonic
chord alone is uniquely a musical consonance in the strictest sense of the word-a
chord that is capable of concluding and conditions no further progression, in C
major the chord C-E-G, in G major G-B-D, in A minor A-C-E, etc. The G-major
chord is not a perfect consonance in C major, from which it immediately follows
that the seventh can be added to it without changing its significance (lnd indeed
without essentially changing its physical sonority (Klang); the F-major chord is also
not a perfect consonance in C major and can appear with its major sixth without
changing its effect. The effect of these chords is, then, a dissonant o ne, or better put,
the menta! representation of these chords contains something that disturbs their
consonance, and this something is nothing other than their relatedness to the
C-major chord. Por to comprehend a Klang within the context of a specific key
means to understand it as a related Klang, as the subsidiary Klang of another, in
exactly the same way that to comprehend a ton e in the context of a particular Klang
means to comprehend it not in isolation but rather in its relationship to a root, or
as a root itself in relation to other ton es. If I think to myself of a C-major chord in
the context of the key of C major, it is itself the tonic, center, conclusive chord, its
mental representation thus contains nothing that opposes its consonance, it appears
calm, pure, simple; but if I think to myself of a G-major chord in the context of the
key of C major, then I think of it as the Klang of the over-fifth of the C-major Klang;
that is, the C-major chord itself enters the mental representation as the Klang by
which the significance of the G-major chord is determined as something departing
from it-the center of the menta! representation, then, lies outside it, so to speak;
that is, an element of unrest occurs in it, the desire for a progression to the C-major

"THB NATURE OF HARMONY"

ss

chord, dissonance. It is just the same with the F-major chord, and indeed generally
with every Klang in the key. Yet this mode m notion of key or, as we say in distinction
[rom the old noti o n of mode, of tonality, is not bound to the scale; Kli:inge using
tones foreign to the scale could also be comprehended in the sense of a tonic and
thereby receive their own characteristic meaning, such as above all the third-Kli:inge
(the E-major chord and AJ,-major chord in C major) and minor-third-Kliinge (the
FJ,-major chord and A-major chord in C major).
Indeed, the matter of ton e relationships allows o ne further elaboration, namely
that of the relation of keys to one another. Just as the root of a Klang relates to its
subsidiary ton es (the fifth and third an d the more distant relatives), just as the principal Klang relates to its subsidiary Kli:inge (the Klang of the fifth scale degree, the
Klang of the third, etc), the principal key relates to the subsidiary keys (the key of
the fifth, the key of the third, etc). In a piece in C major, the G-major key plays the
same role or a similar role to that played in a brief C-major cadence by the G-major
chord or the tone Gin a C-major arpeggio, or the tones D and B in a C-major scale;
that is, it operates to dissonant effect and cannot justify its own existence, but rather
its justification is conditional an d is permanently without entitlement. The prima!
Jaws of chord succession, as ofkey succession (modulation) thus present themselves
in a direct manner from the expansion of the simplest musical concepts, consonance and dissonance. Psychology teaches us that severa! menta! representations
cannot co-exist in the comprehending mind, but rather one dominates and the
other appears in opposition to it, disturbing it. This rule proves itself n the most
thorough way in musical imagination; it provides the key for the true definition of
the notions of consonance an d dissonance, which physicists an d physiologists have
sought m valli. By it, we achieve not only a principled differentiation for consonance and dissonance, but also simultaneously the qualitative differentiations,
demanded by Lotze, among the different species of dissonance. Consonance is the
unified comprehension of tones representing one and the same Klang in the context
of this Klang; in contrast, dissonance is the opposition to the Klang forming the
principal content of menta! representation, the disturbance of the unificati o n of the
same by one or severa! tones, which represent other Kli:inge. The Kli:inge that are
sirnultaneously represented in the dissonant chord thus do not appear as coordinateci but rather one appears as the principal content of the menta! representation
and the other as a mere modification of it. This modification naturally differs
according to the relatedness of the Klang represented as a dissonance.
It is a fact, established through centuries of experience, but also easily confirmed through psychological experimentation-hence, a law-that only one
major or minor chord can be the principal Klang (the tonic) of a key, though nota
dirnmished triad or a seventh chord or some other kind of chord formation; one
must therefore wonder that the theorists did no t long ago arrive at the insight that
ali species of dissonant chords are not comprehensible in themselves, but rather
become so in the context of a consonance, except where one or two other tones
are added to the tones of a Klang (seventh chord, added-sixth chord, ninth
chord), or where for one chord tone, another neighboring one enters leading to

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INTELLECTUAL CONTEXTs

it (suspension chords), or where one tone of a Klang is itself chromatically altered

so that it leads t o a ton e of another Klang (altere d chords). Up unti! the present day,
one instead construed dissonant chords as essential formations, as root chords in
just the same way as the major and minor chord; the blame for this is due to
Kirnberger, who did not understand and did not further develop Rameau's first
steps toward a derivation of dissonant chords from consonant ones, but rather
held onto chord classifications of thoroughbass that could not be accommodated
to the progress of harmonic knowledge.
If I succeed in carrying the harmonic theory I have sketched here forward into a
complete system, the theory ofharmonywill become a true exercise in musical thought,
fori t m oves from the simplest itself t o the more complicated and induces o ne t o attempt
something new, to venture, rather than, as hitherto, to seek something new. In my
Musikalische Syntaxis and Skizze einer neuen Methode der Harmonielehre, I have made
an attempt to carry out the system, and I tried especially in the first book to achieve
generai perspectives for the formation of harmonic phrases closed in themselves. Yet I
emphasize once again in conclusion that some elements in the external apparatus of
my presentation, in the formation of rules, may be new, but that o n the other hand the
principal perspectives, the fundamental concepts, do not originate with me, but rather,
to the extent that they cannot be derived from older theorists (especially Rameau),
originate with the three greatest instigators of knowledge of the essence of harmony:
Moritz Hauptmann, Heinrich [sic] Helmholtz, and Arthur von Oettingen.

N OTES
. . 1.

1. Riemann, "Die Natur der Harmonik," Sammlung musikalischer Vortrage (Leipzig:

Breitkopf und Hartel, 1882), 190. " ... Neues zu versuchen, zu wagen, statt wie bisher, Neues
zu suchen."
2. This formulation might seem to confuse the "historicist" and "presentist"
categories that are traditionally taken as dialectically opposed. I t has recently become easier
to recognize-particularly in the wake of postcolonial and subaltern studies-how readily
historicist narratives tend to suppose a privileged point of historical arrivai ( often, though
not always, their own present) by hewing to the structural "not yet" that is required to
maintain the intellectual distance such narratives claim as a motivating asset. Historicism
(even when it does no t explicitly rely o n the developmentalism that structures the vast
majority of nineteenth-century historical writings) cannot be seen as entirely free from the
more obvious presentist distortions Thomas Christensen diagnoses in "Music Theory and
Its Histories," in Davi d W. Bernstein an d Christopher Hatch, eds., Music Theorji. and the
Exploration of the Past (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 9-39. See Dipesh
Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), esp. 6-16.
3 See the discussion of the "responsibilities of music theory" in Rehding, Hugo
Riemann and the Birth of Modern Musical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2003), 36-66.

"TflE NATURE OF HARMONY"

87

4. Frederic Jameson, A Singular Modernity: Essay on the Ontology of the Present

(Verso: London, 2002), 34-35.
5. In 1863 (about a decade before the advent of what is now recognizable as
modern "psychology:' and thus without explicitly referring to that discipline as such),
the first sentence of Helmholtz's monumental treatise o n physiological acoustics and
music theory had read, "The present book attempts to unite the boundaries of sciences,
which, though oriented toward one another through many natura! points of contact,
have hitherto stood qui te apart from o ne another-namely the boundaries between, on
the one han d, physical and physiological acoustics, an d on the other han d musicology an d
aesthetics." "Das vorliegende Buch sucht di e Grenzgebiete von Wissenschaften zu
vereinigen, welche, obgleich durch viele natiirliche Beziehungen auf einander
hingewiesen, bisher doch ziemlich getrennt neben einander gestanden haben, die
Grenzgebiete namlich einerseits der physikalischen un d physiologischen Akustik,
andererseits der Musikwissenschaft und Aesthetik." Helmholtz, Die Lehre von den
Tonempfindungen als physiologische Grundlage fiir die Theorie der Musik (Braunschweig:
Vieweg und Sohn, 1863), 1.
6. Admittedly, this question emphasizes only o ne possible translation of the
problema tic term Vorstellung. Yet, as Brian Hyer notes, Riemann would later put even
greater emphasis on Phantasie, which arguably gives a more pointed sense of"imagination"
as a form of higher thinking. See Hyer, "Reimag(in)ing Riemann," Journal of Music Theory
39.1 (Spring 1995), 101-138. Hyer is referring h ere to "Ideen zu einer 'Lehre von den
Tonvorstellungen,"' Jahrbuch der Musikbibliothek Peters 21/22 (1914!1915), 1-26.
7 A useful introduction to the cultural-historical shifts involved here is the essay
collection by Timothy Lenoir, Instituting Science: The Cultura/ Production of Scientific
Disciplines (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997).
. 8. This familiar view is exemplified by classics such as Dolf Sternberger, Panorama,
oder Ansichten vom 19. Jahrhundert (Hamburg: H. Govert, 1938); Sigfried Giedion,
Mechanization Takes Command: A Contribution to Anonymous History (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1948), and Anso n Rabinbach, The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the
Origins ofModernity (NewYork: Basic Books, 1990).
9. See Timothy Lenoir, The Strategy of Life: Teleology and Mechanics in NineteenthCentury German Biology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).
10. The notion of"finitude" as an unprecedented characteristic of nineteenth-century
modernity is famously developed in Miche! Foucault, The Order ofThings (New York:
Vintage Books, 1970).
u. A good sense of Helmholtz's methodological positions can be gained from his
respectively early and late essays, "O n the Interaction of the Natura! Forces" (1854) and
"The Facts in Perception" (1878), in David Cahan, ed., Science an d Culture: Popular and
Philosophical Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 96-126 and 342-380.
12. Helmholtz, "The Facts in Perception," in Cahan, ed., Science and Culture, 364. "Als
wesentlichsten Fortschritt der neueren Zeit glaube ich di e Auflosung des Begriffs der
Anschauung indie elementaren Vorgange des Denkens betrachten zu miissen, die bei Kant
noch fehlt." Helmholtz, "Die Thatsachen in der Wahrnehmung," in Vortriige und Reden, vol.
2 (Braunschweig: Vieweg un d Sohn, 1884), 248. Helmholtz may be referring here to work
by Wilhelm Wundt, widely considered the founder of modern psychology, particularly as
exemplified in his unprecedented experimentallaboratory in Leipzig, opened in 1879, and
in his monumental Grundziige der physiologischen Psychologie of 1874. But as the title of
Wundt's three-volume book implies, psychology at this point was stili very much mode! ed
on physiology (so that the physics-physiology-psychology series in fact amounts to a

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INTELLECTUAL

cogent sumrnary of the graduai transference of experirnental technique frorn one set of
"objects;' to the next, to the last).
13. The cultura! politics and epistemologica! pitfalls of this project are discusssed at
greater length in Benjarnin Steege, "Materia! Ears: Herrnann von Helrnholtz, Attention, and
Modern Aurality;' (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2007).
14. Arthur von Oettingen, Harmoniesystem in dualer Entwickelung: Studien zur
Theorie der Musik (Dorpat and Leipzig: W. Glaser, 1866), 24. "Die bewusste Wahrnehmung
eines Klanges wird nur durch eine b eabsichtigte angestrengte Aufrnerks~mkeit in eine
Summe von Einzelernpfindungen aufgelost. Diese Analyse des Klanges, ist das Fundament
der Theorie der Musik."
15. Helrnholtz, Handbuch der physiologischen Optik, vol. 3 (Leipzig: Leopold Voss,
1867 ), 443 "Ich me in e ... daB es gar keinen rnoglichen Sinn haben kann, von einer anderen
Wahrheit unserer Vorstellungen zu sprechen, als von einer praktischen."
16. Helmholtz, "O n the Physiological Causes of Harrnony in Musi<;" (1857), in David
Cahan, ed., Science and Culture, 63-64. "Was thut n un das Ohr, lost es si e auf, oder fasst es
sie als Ganzes?-Die Antwort darauf kann nach dem Sinne der Frage verschieden
ausfallen, denn wir rniissen hier Zweierlei unterscheiden, namlich erstens di e Empfindung
irn Hornerven, wie sie sich ohne Einrnischung geistiger Thatigkeit entwickelt, und die
Vorstellung, welche wir in Folge dieser Empfindung uns bilden. Wir miissen also gleichsam
unterscheiden das leibliche Ohr des Korpers, und das geistige Ohr des
Vorstellungsverrnogens." Helmholtz, "Ueber die physiologischen Ursachen der
musikalischen Harrnonie," in Vortrage und Reden, 1: 103.
17. "Ist also das Musikhoren ein Auswahlen aus dem zu Gehor gebrachten
Klangmaterial nach einfachen ... Gesichtspunkten, so ist es kein fysisches Erleiden rnehr,
sondern eine logisch e Aktivitat. Es ist eben ein Vorstellen, ein vereinen, trennen, vergleichen,
aufeinander-beziehen von Vorstellungen, die freilich rnit den durch Gesichtseindriicke
hervorgerufenen Gestaltvorstellungen nur den Narnen gemein haben, iibrigens aber von
to tal verschiedener Qualitat erscheinen- Tonvorstellungen." Riernann, Musikalische
Syntaxis. Grundrifi einer harmonischen Satz~ildungslehre (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Hartel,
1877), viii.
18. Moritz Wilhelrn Drobisch, Neue Darstellung der Logik nach ihren einfachsten
''
Verhaltnissen. Mit Rucksicht auf Mathematik und Naturwissenschaft, 3rd ed. (Leipzig: L.
. Voss, 1863), 5 "Jedes Denken ist irn Allgemeinen ein Zusamrnenfassen eines Vielen und
Mannigfaltigen in eine Einheit. Das was zusarnrnengefasst wird, sind aber nicht wirkliche
Gegenstande, sondern Vorstellungen und auch diese nicht, sofern sie (subjektiv) unsere
Vorstellungen, Produkte unserer Geistesthatigkeit sind, sondern (objektiv) hinsichtlich
Dessen, was in ilmen vorgestellt wird, das Gedachte." Quoted in Riernann, Musikalische
Syntaxis, 1-2. Drobisch would have been familiar to contemporary rnusic theorists for his
treatise on temperarnents, Ober musikalische Tonbestimmung und Temperatur (Leipzig:
Weidmann, 1852).
19. Lotze, Geschichte der Aesthetik in Deutschland (Munich: J. G. Cotta, 1868), 279-82.
Lotze's other, less compelling, critique is that Helmholtz offered no way of expre~sing how
consonance rnight be thought of in positive terrns, since he described it rnerely as an effect
of the (relative or absolute) absence of beats. But this dogmatically asserts a predetermined
desideraturn-that consonance be valued "positive"-without accepting the possibility
that empiricist perspectives, by their very nature, tend to fii p such valences.
20. Rudolf Herrnann Lotze, Medicinische Psychologie, oder Physiologie der Seele
(Leipzig: Weidmann, 1852), 506-507. " [D]ie Vergleichung zweier sinnlicher Eindriicke
dagegen, der Hohe verschiedener T o ne etwa, . . . erfordert vielrnehr die grosste mogliche

"tllE NATURE OF HARMONY"

89

Abhaltung alles andern Vorstellungsverlaufs, der die Reinheit der Empfindung trii ben
konnte .... Wer die Saiten eines Clavieres stirnrnt, ha t bei der angestrengtesten
Aufinerksamkeit auf seinen Gegenstand ein Minirnum des Selbstbewusstseins; ... wer rnit
Aufinerksamkeit dagegen einen zu wahlenden Entschluss iiberlegt, soli wenigstens zugleich
eine bestimmte Erinnerung seiner Personlichkeit zu dieser Reflexion hinzubringen. Sowohl
das selbstbewusstlose Versenken in eine einzige Vorstellung, als die unverbundene Flucht
vieler sind Zustande, die nur, wo sie momentan sich einstellen, mi t der gesunden
Bestimmung des geistigen Lebens vereinbar sind; eine dauernde Zerstreuung sowohl, als
eine Verengung des Gedankenlaufs werden wir dagegen spater als Anfangspunkte der
Seelenstbrungen kennen lernen."
21 . Riemann's reference to Klirrtone (which might be best translated as "rasping
tones") may be based o n fairly dateci materia! he could have unearthed in professional
journals from the 183os an d 184os. See, for example, August Seebeck, "Ueber Klirrtone;' in
Annalen der Physik und Chemie, n.s., 10 (1837), 539-547. On Riemann's "moonshine
experiments;' see Rehding, Hugo Riemann an d the Birth of Modern Musical Thought, 15-35.
22. Arnold Schoenberg, Harmonielehre, 3rd ed. (Vi enna: Universal Editi o n, 1922), 15ff.
To date, the connection remains underexplored. But see Steven Cahn, "Variations in
Manifold Time: Historical Consciousness in the Music and Writings of Arnold
Schoenberg," Ph.D. dissertation (Stony Brook University, 1996), esp. 433-462; and Albert
Cramer, "Music for the Future: Sounds of Early-Twentieth-Century Psychology and
Language in Works of Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg, 1908 to the First World War;' Ph.D.
dissertation (University of Pennsylvania, 1997).
23. Jameson, A Singular Modernity, 46, Heidegger, Nietzsche, vol. 2 (Pfullingen: Neske,
1961), 151 (quoted in Jameson).
. 24. Lecture held a t Harnburg Conservatory, February 4, 1882. (Published in
Waldersee's Sammlung musikalischer Vortrage 4 (Leipzig: Breitkopf un d Hartel, 1882),
159-90.]
25. [Contrary to some accounts, Messe! does no t derive from the German "cognate"
messen (to measure), but rather appears to be a rough transliteration of the Arabic mathar,
which connotes "comparison" or, in a mathematical context, "proportion." Riemann's
principal source h ere is Raphael Georg Kiesewetter's classic study, Die Musik der Araber,
nach Originalquellen dargestellt (Leipzig: Breitkopf & H arte!, 1842). In his Studien zur
Geschichte der Notenschrift, Riemann explained further: "By 'messel; the [Arabic an d
Persian) authors rnean the uni t according to which the string lengths of the lower tone of
an interval are rneasured; this uni t is the string length of the interval's upper ton e."
Geschichte der Notenschrift (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Hartel, 1878), 78. ("Unter dem Messe!
verstehen n un die Autoren die Masseinheit, nach welcher die Saitenlange des tieferen Tones
eines Intervalls gemessen wird; diese Masseinheit ist di e Saitenlange des hoheren
lntervalltones:') In other words, ifa string is divided in twelfths, the "messel" refers to the
basic uni t of one twelfth of a string, which when plucked would produce a pitch one fifth
and three octaves abeve the pitch of the whole string. The remaining available string
lengths createci by a twelve-fold division would produce the following intervals above the
pitch of the whole string: a fifth and two octaves (2/12 = 1/6), two octaves (3/12 = 1/4), a
twelfth (4/12 = 1/3), a minor tenth (5/12), an octave (6/12 = 1/z), a (just) major sixth (7/12), a
lfth (8/12 = 2/3), a fourth (9/12 = 3/4), a minor third (10/12 = 5/6), and a (srnall) minor
second (n/12). Riemann was delighted that this procedure produced the sarne intervals
familiar from the undertone series. It is clear, however, that the respective relationships of
the generative Klang (see below) and the "messe!'' unit of 1/12 with their interval complexes
are qui te different: whereas the undertones have a downward directionality, the intervals of

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INTELLECTUAL CONTEXTs

the "messel-theory" are stili conceived in reference to an underlying lowest tone,

corresponding to the whole string length. But see n. 26.]
26. That the conception of tone relationships from above downward was the only
current one in antiquity and also among the Arabs, and that it gradually gave way to the
inverted conception which is now predominant, I have proven at length in my Studien zur
Geschichte der Notenschrift (chapter 3: "Die Umbildung der Auffassung im Mollsinne indie
Auffassung im Dursinne;' 72-95).
27. [Riemann's phrase is "ebensogut das gleiche Verhaltnis sind." In other words, there
is no way of clarifying explicitly that an interval in the upper parts is interpreted as
equivalent under octave inversion, despite the fact that it is not so interpreted if o ne of its
notes appears in the bass. In J. C. Fillmore's 1886 translation of this essay, no longer widely
available, this phrase is confusingly translated in precisely the opposite sense: " ... there is
no possible way of expressing the fact that the fifth G-G and the fourth G-C are not
exactly the same interval." Fillmore, trans., The Nature of Harmony (Philadelphia: Presser,
1886), 9 But Riemann is no t criticizing the system's inability to say that intervals of fourtll
and fifth in the upper voices are different; rather, he is interested precisely in how it renders
moot the need to say that fourth and fifth are the same. As his subsequent discussion
shows, he values theoretical perspectives that favor greater generality, provided they do not
privilege some types of equivalence (between different qualities of triad) a t the expense of
others (between different inversions of a single triad).]
28. Trait d'harmonie reduite ses principes naturels; a series of writings elaborating
on this followed until1760.
29. [Following Alexander Rehding and Ian Ben t among others, I have chosen not to
translate the idiosyncratic German Klang since none of the standard English options qui te
do justice to its particular meaning in Riemann's writing. "Sonority" implies a far too
limited notion of immediate sensation; "chord," on ili e other hand, points too much
toward a purely theoretical abstraction, and would obscure Riemann's separate use of the
more straightforward Akkord. In contrast, Klang sits somewhere right between the sensory
and the abstract, capturing an idea for which there is no satisfactory English equivalent.]
30. Trattato di musica secondo la vera scienza dell'armonia (1754), and De' principj dell'
armonia musicale contenuta nel diatonico genere (1767).

31. [Fillmore creatively misconstrues Riemann's meaning h ere, rendering

" ... wahrend es jedermann unbenommen ist, die natiirliche Septime als in unse,r
Tonsystem mit der Bedeutung eines (dissonanten) Grundintervalls eingefiihrt anzusehen,
nur sogut temperirt wie alle anderen Intervalle;' as: " ... and no body has proposed to use
the natura! seventh in our system as a fundamental (dissonant) interval, without being
tempered like the rest." Fillmore, trans., The Nature of Harmony, 18.]
32. [Oettingen makes no asserti o n about the loudness of the first common (i. e.,
phonic) overtone.]
33 Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen als physiologische Grundlage fiir die Theorie
der Musik (1863, 4th ed. 1877).
34 Harmoniesystem in dualer Entwickelung (1866).
35 Dr. Adolf Thiirlings, Die beiden Tongeschlechter un d die neuere musikalische
Theorie (1877); Dr. Ottokar Hostinsky, Die Lehre von den musikalischen Kliingen (1879); and
my already mentioned Musikalische Logik and Musikalisch e Syntaxis, as well as the Skizze
einer neuen M ethode der Harmonielehre (188o).
36. [Perhaps drawing on Helmholtz's earlier use of the term Vorstellung to draw a
distinction with Empfindung, Riemann here introduces the concept of Tonvorstellung iliat
will be developed further in later essays, in which he elaborates a "Lehre von den

"rllE NATURE OF HARMONY"

91

Tonvorstellungen." Following Robert Wason and Elizabeth West Marvin, the term
"iJnagination of tone" has become the standard translation, though it is usually pointed
out tlrat the German Vorstellung can be rendered as either imagination or representation.
In ilie present context, early on in Riemann's thinking, ilie concept of"representation"
seems to capture better Riemann's ideas in their immediate intellectual context here. The
use of"representation" as a rough equivalent for Vorstellung is conventional in translating
relevant (particularly neo-Kantian) philosophical discourses, in relation to which both
Helmholtz an d Riemann formulateci their core aesthetic an d epistemologica! beliefs.
Extending this usage to the present text makes Riemann's early relationship to this
intellectual tradition more explicit for English readers. For a fuller consideration of the
problems of translating this key term, see Wason an d Marvin, "Riemann's 'Ideen zu einer
"Lehre von den Tonvorstellungen"': An Annotateci Translation;' Journal of Music Theory 36
(1992), 69-117, esp. 72-74.]