Overview

Charles-Simon Catel's Treatise on Harmony and the Disciplining of Harmony at the Early Paris Conservatory traces the formation of the discipline of harmony at the early Paris Conservatory, focusing on the seminal 1801 treatise of the school’s inaugural harmony professor, Charles-Simon Catel. By examining the forces that shaped Catel's text and the discipline of harmony more broadly, Michael J. Masci reconstitutes the contours of the dynamic “disciplinary network,” forged by music theoretical and wider cultural forces alike, that determined the content and scope of the study of harmony in Paris. The institutional forces that bound the Conservatory to the Opéra and French military accrued to Catel’s authority as a music theorist while the internal hierarchies of the Conservatory would ensure the transmission of his ideas through the middle of the nineteenth century. This book continues in the model of recent partimento scholarship by excavating the catalog of figures and techniques that formed the foundation of the Conservatory's harmony course, expanding our understanding of practical harmony traditions beyond those of eighteenth-century Italy.

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9781793630452

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The French Revolution brought us many of the ideas and institutions of the modern world. It gave us both the metric system and the Paris Conservatory. That state-sponsored music school needed to reconcile an inherited, Italian-influenced tradition of practical music making with a French tradition of speculation about harmony. The year 1801 saw not only a truce between Napoleon and the Catholic Church (the Concordat) but also the official approval of the Traite d'harmonie of Charles-Simon Catel . From that point on, 'harmony' became part of the discipline of formalized music training. It is a fascinating story of music, power, and institutions, well told by author Michael Masci.--Robert O. Gjerdingen, Northwestern University Michael Masci tells the captivating story of Catel's harmony treatise and how it shaped the discipline of music theory at the Paris Conservatoire, the most admired institution in the nineteenth century. It's a thrilling story of power, personal and institutional relations, and what it means to be a musician.--Alexander Rehding, Harvard University

Author Information

Michael J. Masci is associate professor of Music Theory at SUNY Geneseo, where he teaches courses in harmony, music analysis, and the aesthetics of modernism.

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