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Rehding, Alexander

This article explores some of the consequences of Riemann's harmonic dualism that were not pursued by Riemann himself. The question of musical forms is one that Riemann intriguingly leaves unresolved—despite the fact that he is considered a formalist theorist, his ideas about musical form remain comparatively underdeveloped. The root of the problem is assumed to be related to the skepticism with which harmonic dualism is widely regarded. In exploring the idea of a dualistically based concept of form, the article takes Riemannian ideas further than Riemann did and (re-)constructs a Riemannian theory of forms based on the concept of harmonic symmetries.

This article discusses Riemann's Folkloristische Tonalitätsstudien or “Studies in Folk-Musical Tonality”. While his study at a glance seemed to contradict his earlier beliefs on tonality as a natural and universal system, his study however, sought to reinforce the natural basis of the tonal system by looking and examining non-European repertoires. Riemann's Folkloristische Tonalitätsstudien is unique among his studies in that it is his only treatise that does not start out from the assumption of tonal triadic harmonies; instead, it approaches musical structures from a strictly melodic angle. In this article, the focus is on Riemann's melodic analysis and evolutionary history of scalar models. It focuses on his analysis of pentatonicism and tetrachords. In his Folkloristische Tonalitätsstudien, Riemann is generally careful not to commit to a chronology, but supplies instead heuristic links between structural stages. While his explanation of tetrachords as three-note fragments of pentatonic scales with infixed pien is historically doubtful, his study nevertheless allowed him to examine all scalar systems as combinations of these two principles. Thus, his study on folk music has been pressed into service to represent a middle ground between strict pentatonicism and modern diatonism.

While ecomusicology is clearly a growth area in musicology, its mission and purview are not entirely clear. This article explores the complex relationship between ecology and musicology: ecocriticism in literary and visual fields may have an easier time capitalizing on current concerns about the environment by tapping into an "apocalyptic" mode, but musical ecocriticism can counter by foregrounding a "nostalgic" mode to raise awareness. The article argues that the study of "soundscapes" is a natural ally for a musicology no longer predominantly focused on the musical work, as a brief exploration of J. G. Kastner's Les Voix de Paris (1857) demonstrates.

J. B. Kennedy recently proposed a radical new interpretation of the Platonic dialogues, arguing that their stichometric structure is based in a Greek twelve-tone musical scale. We explore to what extent such an interpretation might be borne out historically by Greek music-theoretical traditions: the concept of scale, the significance of number 12 (on which Kennedy's theory is anchored), conceptual differences between Harmonicists and Pythagoreans, and the applicability of Kennedy's scale within the context of Plato's thought. While the statistical correlations Kennedy notes are intriguing, their foundation in Greek music-theoretical traditions proves problematic.

This article explores musical instruments as a source for the historical study of music theory. The figure of Pythagoras, and his alleged penchant for the monochord, offers a way into this exploration of the theory-bearing dimensions of instruments. Musicians tend to think of instruments primarily in terms of music-making, but in other contexts instruments are, more broadly, tools. In the context of scientific experimentation, specifically, instruments help researchers come to terms with “epistemic things”—objects under scrutiny that carry specific (but as yet unknown) sources of knowledge within them. Aspects of this experimental practice can productively be transferred to the study of music theory and are explored in two test cases from different periods of musical theorizing (and instrument building): Nicola Vicentino’s archicembalo from mid-sixteenth century Italy, and Henry Cowell’s rhythmicon from early twentieth-century America.