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Stories of Tonality in the Age of François-Joseph Fétis Thomas Christensen

2021; Oxford University Press; Volume: 102; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/ml/gcab090

1477-4631

Nathan John Martin,

Historical Influence and Diplomacy

As a music theorist, François-Joseph Fétis has never quite received his due. The reasons, no doubt, are complex: the reflexive Teutonocentrism of those university music departments where the history of music theory has been most cultivated—in Germany (understandably) and in the United States (less so)—the gradual decline, outside of the Francophonie, in French-language reading ability generally, as well as the very profusion and prolixity of Fétis’s own literary production. But a significant factor has surely also been Fétis’s overt and enthusiastic racism, which becomes explicitly entangled with his music theorizing—above all, with his conception of ‘tonality’ and especially in the Histoire générale de la musique (1869–76). Fétis’s copy of Arthur de Gobineau’s Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines (1853) is amongst the most heavily annotated items in his personal library, which is preserved in the exemplar Fétis 327 RP held at the KBR (Koninklijke Bibliotheek/Bibliothèque Royale, known informally as...