A hypocrite called Rameau?: Thoughts on the similarities and differences in the treatment of enharmonic in Rameau's theories on harmony vs. his practice in his harpsichord composition

Abstract

The name of Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) inevitably appears in the historical considerations of musical theorists. Rameau is considered the father of modern harmony, as well as one of the pioneers of the modern understanding of tonality. At the same time, he was almost certainly the most prominent figure in French music of the first half of the 18 th century. Along with the Couperin family, as a remarkably gifted composer for keyboard instruments, he is seen as the progenitor of the long tradition of French keyboard music, which can be traced all the way to our own time. Such an interesting and multi-talented figure provides a very welcome opportunity for musicologists to assess the relationship between the theoretical and the creative; the empirical and the evanescent; and perhaps even the conscious and the subconscious. Rameau the theorist obviously underwent a long evolution; however, this path was not always progressive and straightforward, but seems to have meandered and vacillated as he abandoned some of his ideas as the result of personal insecurity and (possibly) the harsh criticisms that mostly came from Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). This led to obvious inconsistencies between the practice of Rameau the composer and the ideas of Rameau the theorist. This paper offers a chronological comparison between Rameau's postulates about tonality theories and its subsystems (diatonic, chromatic and-above allenharmony) and his contemporaneous compositions for harpsichord, and will attempt to infer if and how much the composer adhered to his own postulates.