REVIEWS: DECODING RAMEAU: MUSIC AS THE SOVEREIGN SCIENCE. A TRANSLATION WITH COMMENTARY OF CODE DE MUSIQUE PRATIQUE AND NOUVELLES RÉFLEXIONS SUR LE PRINCIPE SONORE (1760)

MARK HOWARD DECODING RAMEAU: MUSIC AS THE SOVEREIGN SCIENCE. A TRANSLATION WITH COMMENTARY OF CODE DE MUSIQUE PRATIQUE AND NOUVELLES RÉFLEXIONS SUR LE PRINCIPE SONORE (1760) Lucca : LIM , 2015 pp. xxv + 653, isbn 978 8 870 96846 0

Reviews: Books

The Code de musique pratique of Jean-Philippe Rameau is not one of the author's most familiar theoretical works. Published towards the end of his lengthy career (Rameau was seventy-six when it appeared in 1760), it lacks the attention-grabbing claims of his earlier theoretical writings such as the Traité de l'harmonie of 1722 (which introduced his revolutionary concept of the basse fondamentale) or the Génération harmonique of 1737 (where his most extensive thoughts on the acoustical generation of harmony through the sonorous body - the corps sonore - are developed). The Code seems an oddly eclectic work. Consisting of sixteen chapters embedding seven 'methods' of practical pedagogy for accompaniment, composition, singing, melodic embellishment and improvisation (and each subdivided into several dozen 'lessons', 'articles', 'observations' and 'means'), it has a helter-skelter quality that suggests it became a repository for some of Rameau's mature pedagogical reflections. The last-minute addition of a highly speculative addendum on the origins of music and the corps sonore entitled Nouvelles réflexions tends to support this hunch. Yet tucked away within these two works is a wealth of brilliant observation and thought by Rameau that well deserves the attention of scholars.

We are fortunate that we now have an excellent published English translation of these works thanks to the diligent efforts of Mark Howard. (Kudos also to the Italian publishing firm of Libreria Musicale for such a handsome production of the book.) But this edition is far more than a translation. Howard has provided an extensive introduction and commentary on both texts that is interspersed within the translation. (I will come back in a moment to consider the wisdom of this intermingling of text and commentary.) Comprising some 650 pages in total, the result is the most exhaustive critical edition of any single one of Rameau's writings hitherto published. Even the Traité de l'harmonie, long available in a fine translation by Philip Gossett, has never received the singular scholarly attention that Howard lavishes upon the Code and Nouvelles réflexions.