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Veranstaltungsreihe: Collegium Musicologicum
Vortrag
Scales, Skulls and Sanskrit: Fétis and the origins of Tonality
Termine
Do., 23.06.202218:00 Uhr - 19:30 Uhr
Standort
Am Kupfergraben 5, 10117 Berlin Institutsgebäude Eintritt
frei
Thomas Christensen (University of Chicago)
Scales, Skulls and Sanskrit: Fétis and the origins of Tonality
The question of music's origins became a heated topic of controversy in the mid-19th century among French scholars. In my paper, which is drawn - and expanded - from my recent book, I look at the writings of one of the most influential writers on this question: the Belgian music theorist and historian, Francois-Joseph Fétis (1783-1871). Fétis was inspired by evidence stemming from various Colonial encounters of alteric tonal systems (more specifically, scale systems) from the Levant and far East that differed markedly from those in the West. He became convinced that the evolution of musical tonality in the West must have mirrored the stemmata of Indo-European languages that comparative linguists of his day were creating in which most Western language families could be traced back to an aboriginal version of Sanskrit spoken in the North Indian subcontinent many millennia ago. But Fétis fell under the sway of racial theories that were also circulating widely at the time, particularly those of Joseph Arthur, Comte de Gobineau (1816 – 1882) and a circle of phrenologists who were active in France and Belgium. Fétis eventually concluded that musical capacities were limited within certain races, and as a consequence, the complexity and artistic value of their respective tonalities were likewise limited. Fétis's work offers a fascinating and cautionary case study of how fashionable ideas in cognate sciences can be misappropriated by music theorists seeking to endow their own writings with the aura of scientific prestige.
Thomas Christensen is the Avalon Foundation Professor of Music and the Humanities at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1999. A scholar of historical music theory and its intellectual and social contexts, he has published a number of books, including a major study of the music theory of Jean-Philippe Rameau in 1993 and a collection of essays (The Work of Music Theory, 2014). He was the editor of the Cambridge History of Western Music Theory which appeared in 2002, and most recently a monograph entitled Stories of Tonality: Fétis and the Tonal Imagination in the French Nineteenth Century published by the University of Chicago Press (2019). Professor Christensen has been the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards; a frequent visitor to Berlin, he was a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin (2002) and the Wissenschaftskolleg (2011), and most recently the recipient of both an ACLS and a Guggenheim senior scholar Fellowships. He earned his PhD from Yale University in 1985 studying under David Lewin and Claude Palisca.
Scales, Skulls and Sanskrit: Fétis and the origins of Tonality
The question of music's origins became a heated topic of controversy in the mid-19th century among French scholars. In my paper, which is drawn - and expanded - from my recent book, I look at the writings of one of the most influential writers on this question: the Belgian music theorist and historian, Francois-Joseph Fétis (1783-1871). Fétis was inspired by evidence stemming from various Colonial encounters of alteric tonal systems (more specifically, scale systems) from the Levant and far East that differed markedly from those in the West. He became convinced that the evolution of musical tonality in the West must have mirrored the stemmata of Indo-European languages that comparative linguists of his day were creating in which most Western language families could be traced back to an aboriginal version of Sanskrit spoken in the North Indian subcontinent many millennia ago. But Fétis fell under the sway of racial theories that were also circulating widely at the time, particularly those of Joseph Arthur, Comte de Gobineau (1816 – 1882) and a circle of phrenologists who were active in France and Belgium. Fétis eventually concluded that musical capacities were limited within certain races, and as a consequence, the complexity and artistic value of their respective tonalities were likewise limited. Fétis's work offers a fascinating and cautionary case study of how fashionable ideas in cognate sciences can be misappropriated by music theorists seeking to endow their own writings with the aura of scientific prestige.
Thomas Christensen is the Avalon Foundation Professor of Music and the Humanities at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1999. A scholar of historical music theory and its intellectual and social contexts, he has published a number of books, including a major study of the music theory of Jean-Philippe Rameau in 1993 and a collection of essays (The Work of Music Theory, 2014). He was the editor of the Cambridge History of Western Music Theory which appeared in 2002, and most recently a monograph entitled Stories of Tonality: Fétis and the Tonal Imagination in the French Nineteenth Century published by the University of Chicago Press (2019). Professor Christensen has been the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards; a frequent visitor to Berlin, he was a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin (2002) and the Wissenschaftskolleg (2011), and most recently the recipient of both an ACLS and a Guggenheim senior scholar Fellowships. He earned his PhD from Yale University in 1985 studying under David Lewin and Claude Palisca.
Weitere Informationen
Veranstalter: Institut für Musikwissenschaft und Medienwissenschaft
Referenten: Thomas Christensen
Kontakt
Penelope Braune
Telefon: +49 (30) 2093-2062
penelope.braune@hu-berlin.de
Adresse
Am Kupfergraben 5, 10117 Berlin Institutsgebäude
Raum: Raum 501
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