Embedded Dissonance in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Harmonic Theory and Practice

Abstract

Seeking to elucidate aspects of harmonic practice that originated in contrapuntal patterns, this article traces a specific set of voice-leading configurations in which the generative roles of dissonance, counterpoint, and harmonic progression are blurred. These configurations, originating in early eighteenth-century practice, feature upper-voice suspensions, which are notable for their interlocking qualities and for their compatibility with an extended range of thoroughbass patterns and bass motions (Harrison 2003). Segments of such patterns were partially assimilated into later compositional practice and appeared in treatises on fundamental-bass and scale-step systems of harmony, but these configurations revealed a degree of friction between counterpoint-based idioms and the emerging harmonic theories attempting to explain them according to singular principles. The continued appearance of these configurations in subsequent compositional practice raises the question of what aspects of dissonance and counterpoint have been both embedded in harmonic practice and increasingly subordinated to chord structure in the harmonic theories that stretch from Rameau to Schenker. This dialectical engagement between historical theory and compositional practice offers a critique of our inherited harmonic theories, exposing competing conceptions of dissonance and discrepancies over its autonomy relative to harmonic principles. Tracing this history also reveals that the essential connections among rhythm/meter, dissonance treatment, and harmonic progression that are clearly present in eighteenth-century practice—Kirnberger’s “rhythmic harmony” (Aldrich 1970)—become increasingly subordinated to harmonic principles in nineteenth-century theory. The historical path of embedded dissonance appears to exemplify Adorno’s notion of sedimentation, which offers several interesting disciplinary and aesthetic conclusions about harmonic theory.