Reconstructing the Paris Conservatory’s Cours d’Harmonie 1812–1844: Discipline, Sources, Theory, and Method

Abstract

A growing body of scholarship on practical music theory traditions, and Italian partimento pedagogy in particular, has begun to shed light on the nature of harmony pedagogy prior to the development of functional tonal theory. The methods of the Italian schools were not adopted wholesale in Paris, but rather interacted with local pedagogies, resulting in an institutionally-specific approach to teaching harmony. In Paris, the study of written harmony relied on a contrapuntal method for polyphonically realizing and elaborating a series of canonic figures in the form of cadences (progressions); marches (sequences); modulations; broderies (non-harmonic tones), altérations (chromatic alterations); and pédales (pedals). This article reconstructs the basic catalog of the first four of these elements which served as the cornerstone of the harmony course at the Paris Conservatory across the nineteenth century. In addition, it illustrates how the incorporation of these elements within the institutional confines of the Conservatory resulted in both their distinctive pedagogical treatment and the advancement of a specific compositional method.