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THEORY AND ANALYSIS Decoding Rameau: Music as the Sovereign Science. A Translation with Commentary of Code de musique pratique and Nouvelles reflexions sur le principe sonore (1760). By Mark Howard. (Teorie musicali, no. 2.) Lucca: Librería Musicale Italiana, 2016. [xxv, 653 p. ISBN 9788870968460 (paperback). €40.] Music examples, illustrations, facsimiles, bibliography, index.
With the publication of Decoding Rameau: Music as the Sovereign Science, Mark Howard provides the first translation into English of two treatises by Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764): Code de musique pratique and Nouvelles réflexions sur le principe sonore, which were published together in late 1760 or early 1761 (Paris: L'imprimerie royale). The Code is a pedagogical work consisting of seven methods for learning music. It is arguably Rameau's most complete work on practical music, the culmination of his life's work as a teacher of performance and composition. The bulk of Howard's book is a commentary on this important treatise.
In the introductory overview of the Code, Rameau reviews the seven methods (pp. 35-40): 1) teaching music, "even to the blind" (i.e. rudiments, p. 35); 2) the position of the hand on the harpsichord or organ; 3) the art of forming the voice (i.e. voice production); 4) harpsichord or organ accompaniment (i.e. a thorough-bass method); 5) composition; 6) accompanying without figures; and 7) improvisation. The sections on accompaniment and composition form the heart of the Code, comprising ten of its sixteen chapters.
The Nouvelles réflexions is a brief essay on how the corps sonore (sonorous body) is the key not just to music but to all arts and sciences. Though an independent work, it appeared in print alongside the Code and served as a kind of "speculative" (p. 589) or theoretical supplement.
The source for Howard's translation is the facsimile in volume four of Erwin Jacobi's Complete Theoretical Writings of Jean-Philippe Rameau (Rome: American Institute of Musicology, 1969); however, because Howard includes the page numbers of the original edition in the margins, the reader can easily use virtually any facsimile (or original) with the translation. I found it useful to consult the digital version of the treatises found in Gallica, the digital library of the Bibliotheque nationale de France (http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148 /btv1b86232474 [accessed 29 December 2017]). In his citations, Howard provides page numbers from both Jacobi's...