International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music - December 2011 [antikvár]

K. Chapin: »A Harmony or Concord of Several and Diverse Voices«: Autonomy in 17th-century German Music Theory and Practice IRASM 45 (2011) 2: 213-242 »A Harmony or Concord of Several and Diverse Voices«: Autonomy in 17th-century German iVIusic Theory and Practice Keith Chapin Cardiff University Cardiff School of Music Corbett Road Cardiff CF10 3EB, U.K. E-mail: [email protected] UDC; 78.01 "16"(=3) Original Scientific Paper Izvorni znanstveni rad Received: August 29, 2010 Primljeno: 26. veijace 2010. Accepted: January 5, 2011 Prihvaceno: 5. sijecnja 2011. Sometime between his return to the Dresden court chapel after his second trip to Italy (1657) and his departure for Hamburg (1663), the singer and composer Christoph Bernhard (1628-1692) penned a treatise in the august tradition of música poética} The Tractatus compositionis augmentatus has become a classic example of the rhetorical outlook on composition in 16th and 17th-century Northern Germany. Drawing on their extensive educations in classical Latin rhetoric, musicians conceived their art as one of effective communication (rather than of organic works), which could be learned through codifiable rules and techniques. The rhetorical slant of the Tractatus is best known in its classifications of figures ' The exact date of the work is not known. Known today only through 18th-century copies, the treatise circulated widely in manuscript in the last decades of the 17th century. For a summary of current knowledge of its provenance, see Paul WALKER, Theories of Fugue from the Age of Josquin to the Age of Bach, Eastman Studies in Music, no. 13 (Rochester; University of Rochester Press, 2000), 152-53. Abstract - Résumé As a classic example of música poética, Christoph Bernhard's Tractatus compositionis augmentatus exhibits a rhetorical mode of thought. But while rhetoric informs an aesthetic in which music is bound to specific purposes, it also gives the foundation for theoretical, aesthetic, and social principles of musical autonomy. Autonomy and functionality are not mutually exclusive. This article tracks the emergence of concepts and practices of autonomy in the iate seventeenth century, and, secondly, redefines aesthetic autonomy as linked to a particular type of function—the use of music to strive toward »the good life,« as Aristotle termed the goal of human existence. Keywords: Christoph Bernhard • autonomy • música poética • work concept • Johann Mattheson • Querelle des anciens et des modernes 213