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Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) is remembered today as a composer and music theorist. He contributed significantly to the harpsichord literature in his early years and gave us such grand dramatic compositions for the stage as Hippolyte et Aricie, Les Indes Galantes and Castor et Pollux in his later years. For his achievements he was granted the title Compositeur du Cabinet du Roi in 1745, which carried with it a handsome pension. He was also incredibly proud of his theoretical writings as evidenced by the fact that he spent much of his life revising, explaining and defending his theory of the basse fondamentale, which established the triad as the building block of harmony, and the principle of the corps sonore, which he established as the scientific basis for music theory. As the result of his groundbreaking accomplishments in music theory he was known as the Isaac Newton of harmony. Rameau was a product of the Age of Enlightenment, a philosophical movement that swept across Europe beginning in the early eighteenth century and affected nearly every aspect of life. At the center of the movement was its emphasis on raison as the main source of authority and authentication. It nurtured the ideals of liberty, separation of church and state, tolerance, scientific methodology and reductionism. While there were significant scientific discoveries and developments in the period leading up to the eighteenth century that affected virtually every aspect of science, in the early eighteenth century music theory was still predicated on the principle of string division as established by Pythagoras when he defined the ratios of consonant intervals and justified the diatonic scale in the sixth century, B.C.E. Roman scholars transferred Pythagorean theory to medieval Europe where it became the foundation for western music. It was not until the year 1701 that French scientist Joseph Sauveur (1653-1716) described the acoustical phenomenon of overtones and codified the harmonic series scientifically, which became known as the principle of the corps sonore. Since he was a scientist rather than a musician, Sauveur did not build a harmonic theory on the principle of the corps sonore. That task was left to someone with the musicianship, curiosity and ingenuity to make the connection between overtones and music, and that person was none other than Jean-Philippe Rameau. It is the purpose of this paper to examine the state of music theory prior to the advent of the corps sonore, including its Pythagorean mathematical basis and Rameauʼs revolutionary theory of the basse fondamentale as presented in his Traité de lʼharmonie; the circumstances surrounding Rameauʼs discovery of Sauveurʼs research in acoustical science, and why he was unaware of it prior to writing the Traité; the difficulties encountered in applying the principle of the corps sonore to his previously established theory of harmony; and Rameauʼs methodology in the Age of Enlightenment as related to the Encyclopédistes and the extent to which he would go in defense of his principle of the corps sonore. |
