Society for Music Theory

Method and Motivation in Hugo Riemann's History of Harmonic Theory

Author(s): Scott Burnham
Source: Music Theory Spectrum, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Spring, 1992), pp. 1-14
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society for Music Theory
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/746078
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Method and Motivation in Hugo
History of Harmonic Theory
Scott Burnham
Concerning the enthusiasm for the natural sciences so
characteristicof late nineteenth-centurythought, the German
philosopher Wilhelm Wundt once quipped: "In the seven-
teenth century God gave the laws of nature, in the eighteenth
nature did it herself, and in the nineteenth the individual
scientists take care of that task."' And, we might add, they
were taking care of it with such apodictic aplomb that it is
hardly a surprise to see a young music theorist like Hugo
Riemann set his course as a musical thinker by the lights of
the natural scientists of his generation. Nor is it surprisingto
find that this is how Riemann is most often and most eco-
nomically portrayed by latter-day historians of theory.2
The author is indebted to Ivan Waldbauer, whose panel on Riemann at
the 1990 AMS/SMT/SEMnational conference in Oakland, Californiamade
possible the original version of this paper.
'Cited in Alexander Gode-von Aesch, Natural Science in German Ro-
manticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1941), 24.
2Forexample: "Riemann'saesthetic is rooted in the discoveries and pro-
cedural assumptionsof physiology, psychology, and acoustical physics, all of
which he considered to be equal partnerswith theoretical speculation in the
study of music" (Ruth Solie, review of William C. Mickelsen's Hugo Rie-
mann's Theory of Harmony, in Nineteenth-CenturyMusic 2, no. 2 [1978]:
179). See also Hellmuth Christian Wolff's spirited encomium "Hugo Rie-
mann, der Begriinderder systematischenMusikbetrachtung,"FestschriftMax
Schneiderzum Achtzigsten Geburtstage,ed. Walther Vetter (Leipzig: Deu-
tscher Verlag fur Musik, 1955), 265-70.
Riemann's
For Riemann is quite explicit about his allegiance to the
methods and viewpoints of naturalscience. His earliest work
eagerly takes up the physiological orientation of Helmholtz;
somewhat later he comes to share the excitement generated
by the claims to science of the field of psychology.3But Rie-
mann's engagement with natural science was to extend be-
yond the hunger pangs of methodological acquisition to the
satiety of an epistemological standpoint:the understandingof
art involves the discovery of underlyingnaturallaws that are
consciously or unconsciously obeyed by artists.4 Riemann
conceives of harmony as forming the natural law-governed
basis of music; harmony provides the terms of what he calls
"musical logic."5 Such logic is said to underlie the natural
3For an interestingperspective on the role of psychology and physiology
in Riemann's work see Peter Rummenholler, MusiktheoretischesDenken im
19. Jahrhundert,Studien zur Musikgeschichtedes 19. Jahrhunderts,vol. 12
(Regensburg: Gustav Bosse Verlag, 1967), 100ff.
4Riemannspecificallychargesart theory with the duty of uncoveringthese
laws. See Riemann, Geschichteder Musiktheorieim IX.-XIX. Jahrhundert,
2d ed. (Berlin: Max Hesse Verlag, 1921), 470. (This edition was reprinted
in 1961 by the Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlungin Hildesheim.) The chap-
ters of the second edition that are cited in the present article are identical
to those of the initial 1898 edition.
5Inhis sturdyaccount of the development of Riemann'sharmonictheory,
Elmar Seidel refers to Riemann's notion of musical logic as a "roter Faden"
2 MusicTheory Spectrum
coherence of all music: if one discovers the truth about har-
monic logic, one discovers the truth about Music. From this
fundamental assumption, Riemann can make the claim that
even the melodies of musical antiquityrest on the foundation
of harmony, and that it took the entire development of poly-
phonic music, from its crudest beginningsto its full harmonic
glory, to reveal completely the theoretical (that is, harmonic)
underpinnings of monody.6 The idea that tonal harmonic
logic acts as a universal musical attribute informs much of
Riemann's work from the 1880s and 1890s; only in the last
decade of his life would he start to consider the autonomous
viability of other musical systems.7
It may seem paradoxical that Riemann, who so vocifer-
ously rejected acoustics and mathematics as the absolute
foundation of musical understanding, should attach the va-
lidity and essential timelessness of natural law to his theo-
retical conception of harmonic logic, which he increasingly
based on human psychology. He thus appears to replace one
set of a priori suppositions with another, distinctly less ver-
ifiable, set. Yet this sort of transactionwas quite simply the
privilege of his age. Just as naturalist authors, especially in
Germany, sought to demonstratethat human psychology was
a determinable affair, subject to the indifferent control of
natural laws, so too did thinkers like Riemann place confi-
dence in the hard validity and causal consistency of so-called
"psychologicalfacts." One need only point out that Riemann
considered the psychological basis of his principle of Klang-
which runs through all the different periods of his theoretical work. See
Seidel, "Die HarmonielehreHugo Riemanns," Beitrdgezur Musiktheoriedes
19. Jahrhunderts,ed. Martin Vogel, Studien zur Musikgeschichte des 19.
Jahrhunderts,vol. 4 (Regensburg: Gustav Bosse Verlag, 1966), 47.
6Riemann, Geschichte, 471.
7See, for example, his monograph entitled FolkloristischeTonalitdtsstu-
dien (Leipzig, 1916). Riemann'schange of position is discussedby Wolff, 267.
vertretungto provide as secure a foundation for further sys-
tematic expansion as would a purely scientific basis.8
The appropriationon the part of the human sciences of
some of the methods and much of the confidence of the nat-
ural sciences had a broad influence on the writing of art his-
tories and intellectual histories.9Such histories could now be
recast as histories of human development, understood as the
gradualrealization of an innate human entelechy. The shape
of these narrativeswas controlled by the resilient prevalence
of organicistthought:earlierstages of development were seen
as the primitiveyet fundamentalseeds from which later stages
could grow and develop.10As we shall see, these are precisely
the terms in which Hugo Riemann cast his views on the
history of harmonic theory.
In 1898, Riemann completed and published his History of
Music Theory, an ambitious digest of a thousand years of
theory, from the ninth throughthe nineteenth centuries. Rie-
mann himself admits, in the foreword to the firstedition, that
his expansive constructionis in fact the result of two separate
projects. He originallyintended to restricthis researchto the
early history of music theory, extending no furtherthan Tinc-
toris. Some twenty years of interveningwork on the practical
and speculative aspects of harmonic theory then led to a
8Riemann, "Die Natur der Harmonik," Sammlung MusikalischerVor-
trdge, ed. Paul Graf Waldersee (Leipzig: Breitkopf and Hirtel, 1882), 185.
The relevant passage is cited and discussed by Rummenholler, 102, as well
as by Seidel, 54. I am grateful to Brian Hyer for sending me a copy of the
Riemann essay.
9Gode-von Aesch discusses some of the more extreme manifestationsof
this confidence in Natural Science, 26.
"lThe force of this narrativepremise is what compels Riemann to posit
a harmonicbasis for early Western monody: if harmony is indeed a funda-
mental and universal aspect of music it must have been there near the start
of music's evolution-it could not have arisen as a later development. Allan
Keiler makes this point in connection with HeinrichSchenker'searly writings
in "The Origins of Schenker's Thought: How Man is Musical," Journal of
Music Theory 33 (1989): 281f.

desire to ground modern harmonic theory with a thorough
study of its origins; to this end, Riemann worked back from
the present until he found himself in the sixteenth century,
facing the furthest extent of his previous work. He then de-
cided to publish both studies as a history of theory reaching
all the way to his own age.
This article is concerned with the latter half of this
work-in which Riemann traces the development of har-
monic theory from Zarlino to himself-and begins with an
attempt to describe what it is that Riemann is actually doing
when he purports to write the history of harmonic theory.
This will entail both a broad overview of his historicalschema
and a much closer reading of his criticalengagement with one
particulartheorist, in this case Rameau. His motives for writ-
ing such a history in the first place will then be examined.
Finally, his enterprise will be characterized in terms of the
conflicting currents of methodology and motivation in the
Geisteswissenschaftenof the late nineteenth century and in
terms of an ideological position which had become funda-
mental to the formative stages of German musicology.
How does Riemann conceive of the history of harmonic
theory? Near the beginning of the final chapter of his book,
Riemann presents a brief summaryof this history in explicitly
developmental terms: theoretical understanding grows out-
ward from the establishment of the consonant chord to the
recognition that whole groups of chord formations can have
the same harmonic significance (as inversions of the same
basic chord), then to an understandingof cadence formations
and, finally, to a complete doctrine of the immanent logic of
harmonic progressions, a doctrine of the natural and law-
governed coherence of harmonic motion.1' His decision to
interpret the history of theory in this way provides him with
a clear strategy for choosing and arrangingthe facts of that
history: he states that he has included only those theoretical
1Riemann, Geschichte, 473.
Methodand Motivationin Historyof HarmonicTheory 3
works which have a palpable significance, either positive or
negative, for what he calls the developmental history (Ent-
wicklungsgeschichte)of the theory of Tonsatz. 2 And he only
discusses those aspects of the included theoretical works
which seem to him to impinge upon this history. Moreover,
Riemann'scriteriafor determiningthese aspects as well as the
positive or negative significance they hold for the develop-
ment of harmonic theory are drawn entirely from the con-
clusions of his own theoretical work. The ramifications of
such a method of historical investigation loom large; we will
probe some of them after a more focused look at some of the
particularsof Riemann's history.
Each theorist that Riemann discusses is analyzed for as-
pects which further the development of harmonictheory and
aspects which hinder that development. Thus, for example,
Zarlino is lauded for his recognition of the primacy of the
triad and for his alleged emphasis on harmonicdualism, that
is to say, on the isolation of major and minor triads as the
"two possible forms of harmony."'3The concept of dualism
was to become, of course, the central axiom of Riemann's
own harmonic theory. On the other hand, Zarlino's adher-
ence to the contrapuntalstricturesof the old school have, for
Riemann, a retarding effect on his more speculative notions
about harmony.14
Riemann claims that Zarlino's discovery of harmonic du-
ality was eclipsed in the generations that followed, especially
by adherents to the figured-bassschool of theory. This claim
is based on a dichotomy which remains decisive throughout
Riemann's history: speculative advances in harmonic theory
are countered by pragmaticadvances. Thus for Riemann, the
figured-bassschool, while revolutionizingthe practicalart of
accompaniment, completely obscured Zarlino's discovery of
12Ibid.,506.
'3Ibid., 389ff.
'4Ibid., 425.
4 MusicTheory Spectrum
dualism, leaving it to be rediscovered with consequence only
in the nineteenth century. Despite his generally antagonistic
attitudetowardthe figured-bassera, Riemann admitsthat the
treatises generated therein served to extend the growth of
theoretical knowledge. Advances included the continued and
enhanced recognition of the triad, as well as the incipient
recognition of inversions.15 But the main purpose of the
figured-bassera in music theory is conceived negatively by
Riemann. After reviewing some of the contradictory and
variant methods of figured-bassnumbering prevalent in the
early eighteenth century, Riemann claims that this confused
situation was instrumental in encouraging Jean-Philippe
Rameau to make the first attempt at replacing figured bass
with a new type of designation which would reveal the roles
of harmonies within a central key.16
Thus it is Rameau who initiates the next speculative ad-
vance in Riemann's history. According to Riemann, the
French theorist developed a "doctrine of the significance of
harmonies for the logic of musical composition."'7 But this
advance, like that of Zarlino, is countered by a pragmatic
reaction, in this case triggeredby an aspect of Rameau's own
system. The concept felt by Riemann to harbor the most
disastrousconsequences for Rameau and the reception of his
work is that of chord structure by thirds. The next few gen-
erations of harmonic theorists took Rameau's idea of chord
structureby thirds and made it the basis of a proliferationof
pragmatically oriented chord-classification schemes which
'5Riemann realizes some of the theoretical implications of figured-bass
notation-for example, the very fact that the triad may remain unmarkedin
this notationreveals an underlyingassumptionabout its primacy,its normality
(ibid., 435-36). He also claims that figured-basstheorists such as Gottfried
Keller were led to an enhanced recognition of inversions when searchingfor
practical ways to simplify the role of the accompanist. Ibid., 453.
'6Ibid., 469.
x7"Lehrevon der Bedeutung der Harmonienfur die Logik des Tonsatzes"
(ibid., 474).
took no account of the coherent logical and hierarchicalcon-
nections in tonal harmony.18
Another speculative swing of the pendulumtakes place for
Riemann in the nineteenth century, setting the stage for his
own ideas. Moritz Hauptmann was the first to realize that
apparently consonant chords could actually have dissonant
harmonic significance.19Although Hauptmann's discovery
falls in the province of acoustics (specifically, the acoustical
dissonance of the ii chord), Riemann was to develop from it
a complete system of hierarchicalharmonicsignificance,rest-
ing on the assertion that secondarytriads are only apparently
consonant and are to be theoretically construed as dissonant
variants of the three main harmonic functions (tonic, dom-
inant, and subdominant).
Two other discoveries led directly to Riemann's own the-
oretical work. The first was the re-discovery of harmonic
dualism, posited by Hauptmann in 1853 and supported by
Arthur von Ottingen's 1866 treatise Harmoniesystemin du-
aler Entwickelung,in which Ottingen construes harmonicdu-
alism as the tonic and phonic derivationsof major and minor
respectively.20 The second decisive discovery was Karl
Stumpf'srecognitionthat harmonicsignificanceis a fact more
psychological than acoustical.21This led to Riemann's life-
long preoccupationwith what he called Tonvorstellung,or the
mental representationof sound, construed as a logically con-
sistent cognitive activity.
It should be sufficiently clear that Riemann reads earlier
theorists from the standpoint of his own views about the
primacy of harmony and the nature of tonal harmonic logic.
If we return to his reading of Rameau, we can do a closer
analysisof what Riemann sees and what he chooses to ignore.
'8But Riemann disassociatesfrom this prevailingtrend the "enlightened"
work of Daube and Tartini, who both recognized, in differing ways, the
primacy of tonic, subdominant, and dominant harmony. Ibid., 486-93.
19Ibid.,515f.
20Ibid., 519f.
21Ibid., 522.

We will then be in a better position to access the assumptions
which underlie his theoretical constructionof tonal music and
which greatly influence his understandingof history and the
writing of history.
As mentioned above, Riemann sees Rameau's chief virtue
in his conception of harmonic significance based on tonal
coherence. Accordingly, Riemann emphasizes everything in
Rameau's various treatises which supports the hierarchical
and logically coherent conception of a tonal center and its
subservient harmonies. This includes Rameau's position on
the primacy of the dominant-tonic relationship, his estab-
lishment of tonic, subdominant, and dominant as the "triple
proportion," his alleged recognition that the vi chord acts as
a tonic substitute in the deceptive cadence, and his concept
of "characteristicdissonance" and modulation.22
Yet Rameau is characterizedas havingfailed to bringthese
ideas to term, simply because he was more fundamentally
committed to building chords by thirds. Riemann claims that
this was the principle from which Rameau derived all har-
mony, a principle that was furthered by later generations of
theorists, thus deterring the true development of harmonic
theory. Not only does Riemann assert that third-structuring
rules Rameau's derivation of harmony; he also states that
Rameau's rules for the progression of the fundamental bass
grow out of the same unhappy idea.23
There is an importantaspect of Rameau's theory that Rie-
mann cannot, or will not, see. To uncover that aspect it is
necessary to examine those passages in which Riemann dis-
cusses Rameau's notion of third-structuring.Riemann is trou-
bled by Rameau's ambivalence about the subdominant and
its characteristicdissonance, the sixte ajoutee (see Example
1). At times Rameau interprets this harmonic structure as a
subdominant with the added sixth, at times as the inverted
form of a seventh chord built from the second scale degree.
22Ibid., 479-83.
23Ibid., 490.
Methodand Motivationin Historyof HarmonicTheory 5
Example 1. Rameau'ssixte ajoutee
"
0
Added sixth Major third
6
Fifth
# " *
5
Fourth note 0
Fundamentalbass V: Tonic note
6
5
In Riemann's view, the latter interpretation, that of the su-
pertonic seventh chord in inversion, betrays Rameau's fun-
damentalinsight about the subdominantand its characteristic
dissonance. Riemann argues that Rameau was swayed by his
principle of third-structuringwhen he "all too frequently"
interprets this chord as a ii7.24 But it is of course Rameau's
theory of the double emploi that stands behind the possibility
for two differinginterpretationsof the same harmonicentity:
the analyticaldecision to regard the sixte ajoutee as a seventh
chord on the supertonic is based on Rameau's stricturesfor
the motion of the fundamental bass. The fundamental bass
cannot normativelyprogress by a second upwards;therefore,
when the chord structurein Example 1 (with or without the
added sixth) is followed by a dominant chord, as it so often
is in practice, the analystmust perforce interpretit as a chord
based on the second scale degree, a fifth away from the dom-
24Ibid., 488. Example 1 is taken from Jean-Philippe Rameau, Treatise on
Harmony, ed. and trans. Philip Gossett (New York: Dover, 1971), 74.
6 MusicTheory Spectrum
inant. Rameau's admittedly strong claims about the primacy
of third-structuring allow him to make this analytical choice,
but they do not dictate such a choice, as Riemann asserts. The
choice is instead dictated by Rameau's conception of how the
fundamental bass must move, which in turn is based on the
primacy of the interval of a fifth.
That Riemann cannot see this aspect of Rameau's work
is obvious from his own interpretation of the basis of
Rameau's rules for the progression of the fundamental bass.
According to Riemann, the motion of the fundamental bass
is governed by Rameau's principle of third-structuring. He
quotes the following passage from the 1722 Traite in support
of his claim:
In fact, we never hear a final cadence or the end of a piece in which
this progression [the falling fifth] is not the primary element....
Since the fifth is constructedof two thirds, the bass, in order to hold
the listener in an agreeable state of suspense, may be made to pro-
ceed by one or several thirds .... Dissonance may sometimes oblige
us to make the bass ascend only a tone or a semitone. In addition
to the fact that this arises from a license introducedby the deceptive
cadence . . . we may note that this ascending (but not descending)
tone or semitone is the inversion of the seventh.... 2
2SIbid., 490. I have condensed the passage. Riemann quotes Rameau in
the original French (introducinghis own elisions, interjections, and italics),
as follows: "En effet on n'entendjamaisde cadencesfinalesou de conclusions
de chants, que cette progression(de quinte descendante) n'en soit le premier
objet ... et ce que nous disons de la Quinte doit s'entendreaussi de la Quarte
(ascendante)qui la represente toujours ... ensuite pour tenir l'auditeurdans
une suspension agr6ablecomme la Quinte est composee de deux tierces l'on
peut faire proc6derla Basse par une ou plusieurstierces, reservanttoutes les
cadences a la Quinte seule et a la Quarte qui la repr6sente,de sorte que toute
la progression de la Basse fondamentale doit etre renfermeedans ces conso-
nances. Et si la dissonance nous oblige quelquefois a ne faire monter cette
Basse que d'un Ton ou d'un semi-Ton, outre que cela provient d'une licence
introduitepar la cadence rompue . . . I'on peut remarquerque ce Ton ou ce
semi-Tonen montantet non pas en descendant(!) sont renversezde la Septieme
(!) que se fait entendre pour lors entre ces deux sons qui forment ou Ton ou
semi-Ton." (Several accents have been added in accordance with modern
usage.) I am using Philip Gossett's rendering of the passage; see Rameau,
Riemann prefers to read this as a statement to the effect
that the fundamental bass can only move in intervals of a third
or its compounds, the fifth and the seventh. His interpretation
is supported by some tendentious editing of the above quote.
For example, the clause before Riemann's excerpted version
reads: "The fifth, however, should be considered the interval
best suited for the bass. ..." In view of the reconstituted
version of this quotation as well as what we know about
Rameau's harmonic derivation, it is clear that Rameau con-
siders the interval of the fifth, and not the third, to be the
progenitor of harmonic motion.
Why does Riemann thus misread Rameau? Why will he
not admit the primacy of the fifth for the motion of the fun-
damental bass? I would argue, first, that Riemann needed to
use the idea of third-structuring as a kind of scapegoat prin-
ciple, one which could account for those aspects of Rameau's
theories that do not correspond with Riemann's own ideas.
For example, Riemann could not understand why Rameau
would undermine the singularity of the subdominant by oc-
casionally interpreting the sixte ajoutee as a supertonic sev-
enth, thus substituting functional variant for functional pro-
totype.26 Additionally, when Rameau prohibits the root
motion of a second in the fundamental bass (in favor of root
motion by fifth or third), he precludes what is for Riemann
the basic dialectical progression of subdominant moving to
Treatiseon Harmony, 60. Interested readers should also consult the original
context of the passage in Rameau's Traitede l'harmonie (1722), 50-51.
26CarlDahlhaus explores in variouspublicationsthe tension in Riemann's
function theory between prototype and variant. See, for example, Dahlhaus,
Untersuchungenuber die Entstehung der harmonischen Tonalitat (Kassel:
Barenreiter, 1968), 42, or "Terminologischeszum Begriff der harmonischen
Funktion," Die Musikforschung28, no. 2 (1975): 197-202. In "The Concept
of Function in Riemann," a paper delivered at the 1990 AMS/SMT/SEM
national conference in Oakland, California, Brian Hyer critically engages
Dahlhaus's interpretationwhile offering his own "deconstruction"of Rie-
mann'sconcept of function. Hyer argues that while Riemann describes func-
tion as an object, the concept he has in mind really denotes a relation.

dominant. Third-structuringcan be invoked as a rationale for
both of these alleged deviations, and Riemann obviously
needed to find an idea in Rameau's work which could be held
accountable for the perception that Rameau and his direct
descendants were blocked in pursuing those elements of
Rameau's system that were to be fundamentalto Riemann's
own system. The promotion of the principle of third-
structuringfrom an a posteriori to an a priori condition of
Rameau's theory accords with Riemann's fashioning of the
history of harmonictheory as the conflict between the forces
of theoretical advancementand those of theoretical entrench-
ment: as was the case with the aftermathof Zarlino, Rameau
and his followers allegedly failed to realize the more spec-
ulative advances in his work, preferring to treat as funda-
mental those aspects which could be turned to the pragmatic
ends of constructivist theory. Yet I believe that Riemann's
misreading of Rameau runs deeper than an attempt to seize
upon the most readily available scapegoat principle; Rie-
mann's deprecatory fixation on the idea of third-structuring
is not so much a matter of willful reinterpretation after the
fact as it is the result of a blind spot. To trace the shape of
this blind spot is to reconstruct in part Riemann's field of
vision, to reanimate, however imperfectly, his understanding
of how music works.
What Riemann fails to see in Rameau is the prototypical
nature of the perfect cadence for harmonicmotion. The law-
ful movement of the fundamental bass is founded on the
imitation of this cadence. Root motion by fifth drives
Rameau's system, and Rameau understandssuch motion to
be a logical deduction from the properties of the fifth as they
were themselves deduced from the principe sonore. A dia-
tonic chord progression is normatively analyzed by Rameau
as a series of imitated or avoided cadences, culminating on
the tonic sonority. Every chord in the series is considered
dissonant, in potentia if not in actu, until the final consonant
tonic. The final cadence is markedby a chord of the dominant
seventh progressing to a perfect triad. All other chords
Methodand Motivationin Historyof HarmonicTheory 7
(except the subdominant) are referred to as simple domi-
nants, understood as analogues to the so-called dominant-
tonic.27What is importantto rememberhere is that the actual
content of harmonic progression remains open-ended for
Rameau. That is to say, the necessary components of any
given chord progressionare not generalized by Rameau; only
the nature in which the chords move is defined and under-
stood in terms of the prototypicalmodel of dominant-seventh
leading to tonic triad.
Now let us consider the nature of harmonicprogressionin
Riemann's function theory. He posits a prototypical har-
monic progression consisting of the sequence of functions
tonic, subdominant, dominant, and tonic-or T, S, D, and
T. The members of any given chord progression are under-
stood to represent one (and sometimes two) of these three
underlying functions. Here the generalized aspect of har-
monic progressioninvolves the actual harmoniccomponents:
chord progressions are made up of T functions, S functions,
and D functions.
Riemann does not, like Rameau, postulate a prototypical
mode of harmonic motion; he instead postulates a proto-
typically complete harmonic motion, a dialectical process
leading from initial tonic to final tonic. The emphasis is
switched from the type of motion to the product, or content,
of motion, from an open-ended temporal process to a closed
harmonicstructure.This fundamentallyspatial conception of
harmonic logic allows Riemann to construct an underlying
network of possible harmonicrelations by means of which he
classifies and labels actual harmonic moves. (A representa-
tion of this type of network is shown in Figure 1.) Analysis
27Rameau,Treatiseon Harmony, trans. Gossett, 83. Even the subdom-
inant is in a sense defined by the dominant, in that Rameau designates its
cadentialmove to tonic as "irregular"over and againstthe "perfect"cadence
of dominant to tonic.
8 Music Theory Spectrum
becomes a taxonomic operation of labeling harmonies in
terms of a coherent system of tonal function, and tonality is
thus conceived in hierarchical and spatial terms. The pride
of his system is for Riemann the fact that he could map
virtually any harmonic move onto his underlying network,
thus demonstrating the inherent logical coherence of the
tonal system as utilized in music ranging from Bach to Wag-
ner.28
28Figure1 is taken from Renate Imig, Systemeder Funktionsbezeichnung
in den Harmonielehrenseit Hugo Riemann (Dusseldorf: Gesellschaft zur
Forderungder systematischen Musikwissenschaft,1970), 258.

Such an emphasis is incompatible with Rameau's agenda.
Rameau conceives of harmonic motion temporally, as the
result of the dissonance treatment and voice-leading char-
acteristics of a prototypical progression from dominant sev-
enth to tonic. Riemann conceives of harmonic motion spa-
tially, as the filling in of possible spaces in a coherently
arrangedunderlyingnetwork. In Rameau's system harmonic
content is interpreted in terms of a prototypical harmonic
motion; for Riemann, harmonic motion is interpreted in
terms of prototypical harmonic content. We are now in a
position to understand why Riemann picks the concept of
third-structuringand not some other aspect of Rameau's the-
ory to act as his scapegoat. Riemann's critique of Rameau
posits third-structuringas fundamental because he himself
sees the essence of harmonicprogressionas contingent on the
structureof actual harmonic components-and he simply as-
sumes that Rameau understood it in the same way, only in
UnderstandingRiemann's harmonictheory as a spatial conception allows
us to see his much disputed notion of harmonic dualism in a new light, not
as a contradictionto the rest of his functional theory but as its fundamental
condition. The concept of dualism allows Riemann to establish the two-
dimensionalityof his underlying network of harmonic logic; dualism serves
Riemann not just as an ad hoc explanation for the minor mode, but rather
as the foundationof his theory of "apparentconsonance" (Scheinkonsonanz)
and, therefore, tonal logic. Only by assuming opposite principles for major
and minor could Riemann theoretically distinguish between the major pri-
mary chords of any given major key and the minor secondary chords, con-
ceiving the latter as dissonant variants of the former. In other words, seen
from the perspective of major, the minor triad is dissonant and vice versa.
The concept of dualism is the conditio sine qua non of his two-dimensional
harmonic universe, and it is no coincidence that Riemann tenaciously de-
fended this concept throughout his career.
Nor is it any accident that Riemann reads the concept of dualisminto the
work of Zarlino. As mentioned above, the organicist presuppositionof de-
velopmental historyrequiresthat fundamentalaspects of any historicallycon-
ditioned development arise at the outset of the evolutionaryprocess:Riemann
was no doubt determined to find the seeds of dualism in the work of Zarlino,
the theorist who forms the starting point of his history of harmonic theory.
Methodand Motivationin Historyof HarmonicTheory 9
far too limiting terms (the structureof a simple chord rather
than the more comprehensive harmonic structure of a key
center) .29
The opposition between Riemann's understandingof har-
mony and that of Rameau may be less a function of their
respective scientific pretensions (the inductive taxonomies of
natural science vs. the deductive constructions of Cartesian
science) than a comment on the musics they were most di-
rectly challenged to account for theoretically. Jacques Hand-
schin has suggested that Riemann'sfunctionaltheory is based
on a prominent harmonic tendency of classical and romantic
music of the Germanic tradition.30Much of the harmonic
syntax and phraseology of this music is based on repeated
reformulations and variations of tonic, subdominant, dom-
inant, and tonic. Rameau's more temporal conception is
based, conversely, on the prevailing harmonic tendencies of
Baroque music-a rhetoric of Fortspinnung, sequence, and
elided cadences.31
This article has concentrated on Riemann's discussion of
Rameau simply for the sake of convenience; the type of se-
lective reading that Riemann indulges in vis-a-vis Rameau
could be demonstrated with any of the other theorists Rie-
mann discusses (and already has been in the case of
29Jacques Handschin explains Riemann's antipathy toward third-
structuringas the resistanceof one schematicviewpointto another. See Hand-
schin, Der Toncharakter:Eine Einfiihrung in die Tonpsychologie (Zurich:
Atlantis Verlag, 1948), 278f.
30Ibid., 268.
31CarlDahlhaus makes a similar point when he contrasts Stufentheorie
with function theory. He links the former with the harmonic tendencies of
Baroque music and the latter with the music of Beethoven. Dahlhaus, "Har-
mony," New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie,
1980. See also CharlesRosen, The ClassicalStyle(New York: W. W. Norton,
1972), 48-49, on the difference between Baroque and Classical harmonic
tendencies.
10 Music TheorySpectrum
Zarlino).32Riemann quite clearly assesses past theorists by
asking them the same questions his own work answers so
elegantly. He is not interested in uncovering the questions
that their work provides answers to because he is convinced
that they are attempting to answer the same questions, that,
in fact, the entire history of theory has been devoted to an-
swering these same questions. And the answers have been
there from the start, just waiting to be discovered.
For Riemann, these answers form a network of assump-
tions about the nature of harmonic logic, assumptionswhich
he characterizesas natural laws and treats as axioms for the
constructionof his harmonictheory. The history of theory is
then read against these underlyingaxioms, so that the work
of any given theorist or school is analyzed in terms either of
discovering or obscuring that which Riemann called, in an-
other context, "das Urgesetzliche."33Thus the internal co-
herence of a past theorist's work is downplayed in favor of
its relationship to Riemann's axiomatic system; each theo-
rist's position can be analyzed as a series of right or wrong
moves on a network of underlyingtruths, denying any inkling
of coherence as a system in and of itself, not to mention as
a document of the intellectual and cultural tenor of the age
in which it was conceived. The facts of history are instead
arrangedaccordingto that which is regardedas naturaltruth.
And history is thus involved in the gradual discovery of that
truth. Despite Riemann's framing of his history of harmonic
theory as a development history, he has in fact constructed
an Entdeckungsgeschichte,or discovery history, wherein the
32RuthSolie documents the criticalreactionsto Riemann'smisattribution
of dualism to Zarlino in her review of Riemann's Harmony, 184.
33"Ist doch der eigentliche Zweck der historischenForschung, das allen
Zeiten gemeinsame Urgesetzliche, das alles Empfinden und kiinstlerische
Gestalten beherrscht, erkennbar zu machen" (from the foreword to his
Musikgeschichtein Beispielen [1912], as cited by Dahlhaus in Entstehungder
Tonalitit, 51).
historicalprocess is understood as the gradualuncovering of
natural truth.
Considering Riemann's application of an underlying and
axiomatic network of natural laws to the history of music
theory, a consistencyof method may be discernedthroughout
the expansiverange of his musicalthought. Both his harmonic
and rhythmic theories seek to classify musical content in
terms of an underlyingand quasi-abstract,spatiallyconceived
network. As already discussed, Riemann's function theory
provides labels for harmonies in accordance with three pro-
totypical functions. And his rhythmicanalyses are supported
by the underlyingprototype of the eight-barperiod. Concrete
content, whether harmonic, rhythmic, or historical, is taxo-
nomicallyclassifiedaccordingto some abstractaxiomaticnet-
work. Riemann's work as a historian of theory thus operates
within the same methodological frameworkas his theoretical
work: not only do the terms of his own theory provide a ready
means for assessing earlier theories, but the procedures and
suppositions of his theory guide the entire enterprise of con-
structing a history of theory.34
Although Riemann's history of harmonic theory may be
characterizedas the outline of an alleged historical process
that graduallydiscoversthe naturallaws governing the innate
capacity of humans to understandand use musical language,
his motivation to undertake such an investigation in the first
place and then to cast it as a development history has not yet
entirely been explored. Why could he not just unabashedly
report on earlier manifestationsof his own ideas, in the man-
ner, say, of Noam Chomsky's Cartesian Linguistics, a work
which does not seek to dissemble its basicallysynchronicsam-
34Riemann'staxonomic enterpriseextends to his aesthetic speculationsas
well, particularlyin the pseudo-scientificcodification of melodic behaviors
which he formulatedin MusikalischeDynamikundAgogik (1884). This aspect
of Riemann'swork was broughtto my attentionby Ian Bent within the course
of a richly informative paper entitled "The Aesthetics of Hugo Riemann,"
read at the 1990AMS/SMT/SEMnationalconference in Oakland, California.

pling of intellectual history?35The closing peroration of Ri-
emann's History of Theory provides some clues:
Of greatimportancefor me is the proofthatthoughtswhichharbor
some truthwill continueto flare up until they can no longerbe
repressed.Maythis historicalworkthusbe additionallyconsidered
... as an account of the origins of my ideas about music theory,
through which . . . much that seems to so many to be new in my
booksstandsrevealedas somethingtriedandtrue,and,conjointly,
the positionI hold obtainsan unshakablefoundation.36
This paragraphemphasizes Riemann'sbelief in the validity
of his axioms-his ideas are characterizedas having the stay-
ing power of great truths.37And he states explicitly that his
history is to be understood as a report on the origins of his
own theories. By writing a history of music theory, Riemann
can show how his ideas evolved naturally;he can demonstrate
that they didn'tjust springup ex nihilo. History is thus treated
as a method of explanation: one can only understand some-
thing thoroughly by knowing its history, its evolution. This
is an idea fundamental to both Hegel and Darwin, and for
35InChomsky'swords: "Questions of currentinterest will . . . determine
the general form of this sketch; that is, I will make no attempt to characterize
Cartesian linguistics as it saw itself, but rather will concentrate on the de-
velopment of ideas that have reemerged, quite independently, in current
work" (CartesianLinguistics:A Chapterin the Historyof RationalistThought
[New York, 1966], 2).
36"[F]ir hochst wichtig halte ich den Nachweis, dass Gedanken, denen
eine Wahrheit innewohnt, immer wieder aufflammen, bis sie endlich nicht
mehr niederzuhalten sind. Moge man deshalb diese historische Arbeit . . .
zugleich als einen Rechenschaftsberichtiber die Herkunftmeiner Ideen zur
Theorieder Musik ansehen, durchwelchen zwar bis auf weniges Nebensich-
liche das vielen neuscheinende in meinen Bucher sich als ein langst beste-
hendesAlte herausstellt,zugleich aber der Standpunkt,auf dem ich stehe, ein
felsenfestes Fundament erhalt" (Riemann, Geschichte, 529).
37CompareWilliam C. Mickelsen, Hugo Riemann's Theory of Harmony
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1977), 5.
Methodand Motivationin Historyof HarmonicTheory 11
that reason has been said to stand as a basic intellectual
premise spanningthe entire nineteenth century.38But equally
important is the implication that history can validate one's
ideas; by demonstratingthat his theory is the result of a long
historical development-that is, by giving his theory a
history-Riemann is in fact seeking to create a credible basis
for the ideological (and hardly defensible) position that his
particularsystem is axiomatic for all of music. He treats the
history of music theory in the same manner as the traditional
conception of the history of natural science, that is, as the
gradual development of a theoretical language adequate to
naturalreality. Music, like Nature, must then be assumed to
have an unchangingessence for which there is only one true
description, and Riemann applies history to the task of sup-
porting this particularideological standpointabout the nature
of music.
And what motivates Riemann's ideology? Is it indeed the
ethos of natural science? There is certainly some compelling
evidence for this view. In the absence of the type of tran-
scendence which functioned as a lodestar for romantic aes-
thetics, the laws of nature become an absolute norm in the
latter years of the nineteenth century; this shift stems in part
from the so-called "anthropologicalturn" undertaken by so
many thinkers in the Geisteswissenschaftenbetween the ro-
mantic age and the age of naturalism.39The unlimited and
transcendentspiritinformingmusical works of the earlier age
becomes a limited naturalsystem as it is transformedinto the
musical faculty of humankind,conceived as a kind of musical
38CompareErnst Cassirer, The Problem of Knowledge (New Haven,
1950), 171.
390n the generalinfluenceof the Hegelian Left in Germanintellectuallife
of the nineteenth century, see Michael Ermarth, WilhelmDilthey: The Cri-
tique of HistoricalReason (Chicago, 1978), 52ff. Specificallyrelatingto music
history in this regard is a study by John Deathridge (see footnote 47).
12 MusicTheory Spectrum
competence.40Riemann's allegiance to this new way of think-
ing is clear, for he increasingly applied his theoretical de-
scriptions of music to the operations of human cognition. In
fact, his portrayalof the cognitive psychology of the listener
sounds strikinglylike his own methodological enterprise as a
theorist: musical cognition is understood as an active process
of classification according to a simplifying network of hier-
archicallyrelated categories which insure logical coherence.41
By transferringthe logical operations of music from the mu-
sical objects themselves into human cognition, and thus into
the favored realm of naturalscience, Riemann was convinced
that he was demonstrating natural laws. In his view, music
is not based on the physical nature of sound, as it was for
Rameau, nor is it conceived as the concretization of some
transcendentidea. It is rather construed as the product of an
innate cognitive network of logical relations, a network con-
forming to natural law.
But Riemann'sideology runs deeper than the assumptions
of natural science. That is to say, he appropriates natural
science (the favored methodological standpointof the age) in
the service of something else; it is not an end in itself. For
what is preserved by Riemann's so-called natural law? What
lies behind the nomothetic prototypical structures of the
eight-barperiod and the T-S-D-T harmonicformula?These
manifestations of Riemann's natural law are clearly predi-
4'As Allan Keiler has recently pointed out, this type of endeavor was
prevalent in German musical thought of the late nineteenth century, notably
including the early work of Heinrich Schenker. See Keiler, 291-92.
41"[D]asMusikhoren [ist] ein Auswvdhle/n aus dem zu Gehor gebrachten
Klanigmaterial nach einfachen, naherdarzulegendenGesichtspunkten. ... Es
ist eben ein Vorstellen,ein vereinen, trennen, vergleichen, aufeinanderbe-
ziehen von Vorstellungen . . ." (Riemann, MusikalischeSyntaxis [Leipzig,
1877], viii). The taxonomist's agenda could hardly be more succinctly re-
vealed.
cated on the Viennese classicalstyle.42Riemann hypostasizes
this style as the natural and essential basis of musical un-
derstanding. In so doing, he invests a basically Germanic
Kulturgutwith universal validity. He maintains this ideolog-
ical position throughthe variousembassies of naturalscience,
including developmental history and cognitive psychology.
It is instructive in this regard to compare the views of
Riemann to those of a real naturalscientist, namely Hermann
von Helmholtz. In his justly famous Lehre von den Tonemp-
findungen (1863), Helmholtz emphaticallycircumscribesthe
limits of a scientific investigation of music, relinquishingthe
analysis of actual musical practice to the realm of aesthetics.
The fundamentalprinciplesof any given musical style or era
are, for Helmholtz, culturally and historically determined;
they are indeed conditioned by the nature of the materials
but are not to be considered as natural products in and of
themselves. Scales and tonal systems are thus already the
result of the artistic invention.43Positing one specific system
as the naturalbasis for all of music would be as wrongheaded
as insisting that the Gothic cathedral be considered the es-
sential prototype of architecturalbeauty and the Greek tem-
ple as merely a ratherimperfect adumbration.44It seems safe
for us to consider Helmholtz's self-imposed limit on the ex-
planatory extent of science in things musical as representing
something of a benchmark for the role of natural science in
42RuthSolie also relates Riemann's"universalprinciplesof musicalstruc-
ture" with the stylistic norms of the Viennese classical style in her excellent
precis of Riemann's historical significance; see Solie, 181. See also H. C.
Wolff's article on Riemann in Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed.
FriedrichBlume (1963).
43Hermannvon Helmholtz, Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungenals
PhysiologischeGrundlagefiir die Theorieder Musik, 4th ed. (Braunschweig,
1877), 389, 588.
44Ibid.,389. For an illuminatingcomparisonof Riemann and Helmholtz
on the relation of musical systems and history see Dahlhaus, Entstehungder
Tonalitit, 51ff.

nineteenth-century musical thought. That Riemann refused
to acknowledge this limitation is less the result of an ambition
to extend the frontiers of natural science in the arts than it
is the telltale sign that he never fundamentallyoperated from
the standpointof naturalscience in the first place, despite the
range, and even depth, of his attachmentto those disciplines.
Riemann's history of theory is emblematic of the con-
flicting concerns of late nineteenth-centuryGerman intellec-
tuals involved in the human sciences-a generally facile ap-
propriation of the methods and assumptions of the natural
sciences is curiously conflated with idealist notions about the
importance of history and origins. In the case of Riemann,
the taxonomic methodology of natural science and the trap-
pings of developmental history are paradoxicallyemployed to
reach a conclusion redolent of idealist teleology: Germany's
Golden Age is fixed as both the essential basis and culmi-
nating telos of the rest of musical art. Music comes to know
itself through the Viennese classical style.
And Riemann is not alone in this: a growing perception
of the classical style as the consummate stage of musical his-
tory is reflected in much of the theoretical and historicalwrit-
ing of the period, attaining its most magisterial rhetoric in
Guido Adler's 1924 monograph on the Viennese school and
its most potent theoretical expression in the canonic pre-
scriptionsof Heinrich Schenker. This ideological position was
clearly one of the galvanizing forces behind the burgeoning
self-awarenessof German Musikwissenschaftin the late nine-
teenth century. For a sense of mission coalesced around the
music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, as Germany's in-
veterate urge for unification encouraged the systematized
protection and promotion of this living symbol of the glory
of the German spirit. Even music historians who were to
revise their notion of history in accordancewith the Hegelian
Left, thus refusing to see the Viennese or any other period
as the teleological culminationof musical history, based their
hopes for the future of music on the assumption that the
Methodand Motivationin Historyof HarmonicTheory 13
classical style represented a foundation for an ongoing Ger-
man tradition of musical universality. Franz Brendel's 1859
unveiling of the New German School (notably including the
foreigners Berlioz and Liszt) provided perhaps the premier
expression of just this idea of the continuing universalityof
German music, a universalitycharteredby the Viennese clas-
sical style.45For Brendel, Germany had become the spiritual
fatherlandof talented composers from other European coun-
tries who had transcended the limits of their own national-
ities.46 The pervasive force of this view of Germanic music
also found expression in the world of music publishing.Breit-
kopf and Hartel's extensive publication of "collected works"
editions in the latter half of the nineteenth century served to
canonize those composers who were seen as fundamentalto
the Germanic tradition.47
Hugo Riemann's contribution to this enterprise was the
formulationof a theory of music which covertly embodied as
its fundamental assumption the ideological premise that the
underlying syntax of the Viennese classical style could serve
as the universal basis of music. But lest we characterizeRie-
45BrendelunderstoodMozartas the Germaniccomposer who synthesized
several national styles (particularlythe Italian and German styles) within a
single style, thus forming "the first all-comprehensive,universal apex of the
entire European evolution" (Geschichte der Musik in Italien, Deutschland,
und Frankreich,6th ed. [Leipzig, 1878], 329). Beethoven, on the other hand,
achieved a more specificallyGermandepth of spirit that reached back to J. S.
Bach and forwardto the musicof the New GermanSchool. See Brendel, "Zur
Anbahnung einer Verstandigung," Neue Zeitschriftfur Musik 50, no. 24
(1859): 272. I am indebted to John Deathridge for making me aware of both
the central importance of Brendel's views for musical thought in late
nineteenth-centuryGermanyand the influenceof the Hegelian Left on Bren-
del's conception of musical history.
46Brendel,"Anbahnung," 272.
47JohnDeathridge provides a detailed discussion of the musical conse-
quences and ideological implications of German universality in his study
"
"Germany:The 'Special Path.' in The Late RomanticEra: From the Mid-
Nineteenth Century to World War I, ed. J. Samson (London: Macmillan,
1991), 50-73.
14 Music Theory Spectrum
mann as ideologically inflexible we must remember that, near
the end of his life, he relaxed his conception of one set of
natural laws for all of music, broadening his theoretical base
in order to validate a wider range of musical practice.48 Oth-
ers, as we know, could not make this turn, with the result that
the ideology which preserves German hegemony within the
very definition of universal musical art is still very much with
us today.
48See footnote 7.
ABSTRACT
Book III of Hugo Riemann's 1898 History of Music Theory is dis-
cussed from the point of view of historical method and underlying
motivation. Although he casts his history of harmonic theory as a
developmental history, Riemann is shown to have constructed a
discovery history, in which a set of unchangingnaturaltruths about
harmoniclogic are graduallydiscovered by generations of theorists
who are understood to be asking the same questions. Riemann's
methodology as a historianof theory is seen as embodying the same
taxonomic impulse that informs his theoretical work. There follows
an investigationof the claimsof naturalscience, idealist thought, and
nationalistpride on Riemann's motivation for writing his history of
harmonic theory.