ART - Fétis's Tonality as a Metaphysical Principle, Hypothesis for a New Science

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Fétis's "Tonality" as a Metaphysical Principle: Hypothesis for a New ScienceAuthor(s): Rosalie SchellhousSource: Music Theory Spectrum, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Autumn, 1991), pp. 219-240Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society for Music TheoryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/745899 .

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Fetis's Tonality as a Metaphysical Principle: Hypothesis for a New Science

Rosalie Schellhous

In the conclusion to his harmony treatise of 1844, Francois-Joseph Fetis (1784-1871) defined tonality as a metaphysical principle:1

This principle is purely metaphysical. ... This is a fact that exists for us by itself and independent of any cause foreign to us . . . a principle both objective and subjective, the necessary result of the sensibility that perceives the relationships among sounds and the intelligence that measures them and deduces their consequences.2

I am indebted to the National Endowment for the Humanities and to the Michigan State University Foundation for their generous support of this project. My special thanks go to Professor Richard Peterson of the MSU Philosophy Department for his help in the early stages.

1Tonalite. The concept will not be distinguished here by means of the French spelling as it has been in some other studies. This essay will establish that the idea does not derive entirely from French thought and does not represent a specifically French or Belgian position in the development of music theory.

2",. .ce principe est purement metaphysique. ... C'est un fait qui existe pour nous par lui-meme, et independamment de toute cause 6trangere a nous . . .principe a la fois objectif et subjectif, r6sultat necessaire de la sensibilite qui percoit les rapports des sons, et de l'intelligence qui les mesure et en deduit les consequences." Traite complet de la thdorie et de la pratique de I'harmonie contenant la doctrine de la science et de l'art [1844], 12th ed. (Paris: Brandus et Cie., 1879), 249-251.

The book as a whole made the author's reputation as a music theorist throughout Europe, but the alliance of science and metaphysics met resistance. The idea was derived from contemporary philosophy, but to the growing ranks of scientific positivists, a metaphysical principle could have no place in an empirical inquiry. Fetis's critics did not understand why he had rejected mathematics as a foundation for his theory. By the turn of the century, the ascendency of positivism had left him behind, and although he had been recognized as a pioneer in musical scholarship, he had also been dismissed as a "mystificateur de la science."3

During this century, Fetis's metaphysical principle has been largely ignored. His contribution to the field of comparative musicology has been acknowledged and criticized, his theory has been interpreted, and an excellent biography has been written, but the nature of his philosophy and the position it occupies in his thought remain to be understood.4

3Pierre Aubry, La musicologie medievale: histoire et mdthodes (Paris: H. Welter, 1900), i.

4For discussion of Fetis's musicological achievements, see: Willibald Gurlitt, "Franz-Joseph Fetis und seine Rolle in der Geschichte der Musik- wissenschaft," International Musicological Society, Compte rendu du con- gres, 1 (Basel: Barenreiter, 1930); Emile Haraszti, "Fetis fondateur de la musicologie comparee: Son etude sur un nouveau mode de classification des



220 Music Theory Spectrum

Some of the responsibility for this neglect belongs to F6tis. He used the metaphysical principle to structure his inter-

pretations but explained it only in piecemeal fashion, here and there throughout his writings. And he used the term

tonality to designate not only the metaphysical principle but the "affinities" of the tones of the scale, melodic motion,

races humaines d'apres leurs systemes musicaux: Contribution a l'oeuvre de Fetis," Acta musicologica 4/3 (1932), 97-103; Ernest Closson, "La flifte

egyptienne antique de Fetis," Acta musicologica 4/4 (1932), 145-147; Stephen Blum, "Rousseau's Concept of Sisteme musical and the Compar- ative Study of Tonalities in Nineteenth-Century France," Journal of the American Musicological Society 38 (1985), 349-361: Philip V. Bohlman, "The European Discovery of Music in the Islamic World and the 'Non- Western' in Nineteenth-Century Music History," Journal of Musicology 5

(1987), 147-163. The following contain substantive discussions of Fetis's theoretical work: Matthew Shirlaw, The Theory of Harmony: An Inquiry into the Natural Principles of Harmony, with an Examination of the Chief Systems of Harmony from Rameau to the Present Day (London: Novello, 1917: repr. New York: Da Capo Press, 1969), 335-351: Robert Sheldon Nichols, "Francois-Joseph Fetis and the Theory of Tonalite" (Ph.D. dissertation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1971): Bryan Simms, "Alexandre Choron (1771-1834) as a Historian and Theorist of Music" (Ph. D. dissertation, Yale University, 1971): Mary Irene Arlin, "Esquisse de l'histoire de l'harmonie, considdrde comme art et comrne science systematiqle of

Francois-Joseph Fetis: An Annotated Translation" (Ph.D. dissertation, In- diana University, 1972): Bryan Simms, "Choron, Fetis, and the Theory of

Tonality," Journal of Music Theory 19 (1975), 112-139: Renate Groth, Die

franzisische Kompositionslehre des 19. Jalhrhunderts (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1983): Anthony Jay Kosar, "Francois-Joseph Fetis's Theory of Chromaticism and Early Nineteenth-Century Music" (Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1984). The most authoritative biographical study of Fetis is Robert Wangermee's Francois-Joseph Fetis, Musicologue et Com- positeur: contribution a l'e'ude dit golit musical alr XIXe siecle, Academie royale de Belgique, Classe des Beaux-Arts. M6moires 6/4 (Brussels: Palais des Academies, 1951).

Most studies dismiss the philosophical dimension of Fetis's work as irrelevant or confusing, but Robert Nichols claims that the philosophy is sound

("Theory of Tonalite"). He places Fetis among the most adept at this type

chord progression, key, and style.5 He had planned a com-

plete philosophy of music in which he would treat this idea

systematically but did not live to write it. All that remains is a topical outline.6 However, many of his most serious

writings expose his philosophy, and it can be reconstructed

by means of a critical reading. Fetis's metaphysical principle is more than an aesthetic

theory; it is a way of organizing the available knowledge about music into a science-a systematic discipline.7 Tonality is a hypothesis that unifies all inquiry into music from every point of view: creative, practical, theoretical, and historical-

of inquiry, but his treatment of it is rudimentary. Peter Anthony Bloom's dissertation on Fetis's activity as a journalist takes up his aesthetic only as it is found in La Revue Musicale and La Revue et Gazette Musicale, where its foundation in German philosophy is not clear ("Franqois-Joseph Fetis and the Revue musicale [1827-1835]" [Ph.D. dissertation, University of Penn- sylvania, 1972]). The most familiar treatment of Fetis's theory, Matthew Shirlaw's, is a biased and incomplete reading (Theory of Harmony). Shirlaw does not recognize the historical element in Fetis's theory and makes no attempt to understand its metaphysical foundation. In several writings, Fe- tis's ideas have been considered as extensions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's (1712-1778) or as precursors of later theory (Stephen Blum, "Rousseau's Concept": David Lewin, "Concerning the Inspired Revelation of F.-J. Fe- tis," Theoria 2 [1987], 1-12: and Carl Dahlhaus, Untersuchen iiber die Ent- stelhung der harmonischen Tonalitdt [Kassel: Barenreiter. 1967]). This work is of undeniable value, but it cannot be placed in perspective until Fetis is understood in his own terms. The study by Dahlhaus is the only one so far to recognize the correspondence between Fetis's metaphysic and Kant's philosophical anthropology, but it does not explain the connection or its implications for the understanding of his theory.

SSee Nichols, "Francois-Joseph Fetis," 65. 6Reproduced in Wangermee, Francois-Joseph Fetis, 319-324. 7His writing on the subject had been in progress for nearly two decades

before Friedrich Chrysander (1826-1901) issued what has been interpreted as the first call for a systematic approach (1863). (Preface to Jahrbiicher fiir miisikalische Wissenschaft, 2 vols. [Leipzig: Breitkopf und Hartel, 1863].)



Fetis's Tonality as a Metaphysical Principle 221

ethnological.8 As a metaphysical principle, it is the aspect of human mental process that makes musical thought, from

perception to creation to scholarly study, possible. Although the idea is based on an outmoded psychological model, that of the faculties, and could not survive the nineteenth century on that basis, it is the first modern cognitive theory of music.9

This inquiry into Fetis's concept of tonality is not designed to discover the truth-value of his idea but to clarify what he meant by it, and by means of a reconstruction of his con-

ceptual system to remedy a number of persistent misunder-

standings. Through an investigation of the way he presented the term (not only in his theory but in all connections), of what he aimed to accomplish with its redefinition, and of the context of ideas and events that gave it shape, it will be

possible to draw some fresh conclusions about it. This study is intended to provide a historical perspective on our present concepts of tonality, to fill in a gap in our understanding of Fetis, and to contribute to a more cosmopolitan view of the

origins of musical inquiry as an academic discipline.

8Fetis's history, like others from the eighteenth century to his time, does not separate history and ethnology. It is a "general history" in the sense that it treats the subject humanistically and in world perspective.

9The reliance on faculty psychology can pose some problems for the modern reader. It is a model of mind as old as Western thought and it survives in common parlance today. Formally, it is a theory of the dynamic interaction of different functions of the mind, such as memory, understand-

ing, judgment, intelligence, imagination, and will. Over the years, descrip- tions have varied widely in terms of the particular faculties included, the way some of them are subordinated to others, what each faculty is supposed to

accomplish, and how they all interact. Fetis mentions several theories, most

notably those of Rene Descartes (1598-1650), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

(1646-1716), and ttienne Bonnot de Condillac (1715-1780), but the scheme he adopts bears a greater resemblance to Kant's. It should be noted that the

questions once dealt with by metaphysical speculation were given over to the developing field of psychology in the course of the nineteenth century.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Fetis's idea of tonality took shape during a critical period in the development of modern thought, when the sciences as we know them were being delineated. A new positivistic spirit was on the rise, along with new approaches to philosophy. These innovations had come into conflict with each other and with established traditions. Fetis's response was to try to satisfy all sides by means of a comprehensive vision. That vision included as much factual support as he could summon to meet the demands of positive science, but it was structured and unified by ideas adapted from German transcendentalism. His conclusions derived from a comprehensive knowledge of historical as well as contemporary writings in both music and philosophy and a familiarity with con-

temporary sciences that spanned the disciplines from comparative philology (linguistics), to anthropology, positivistic sociology, and neurophysiology.

This breadth of vision was consistent with the method of eclecticism advocated by Victor Cousin (1792-1867), a friend whose ideas were an inescapable element in Fetis's intellectual milieu.10 Cousin was the principal representative of the main current of French philosophy in Fetis's time. Eclec- ticism was a method of inquiry based on a theory of reason and a systematic search for truth through the history of philosophy. Its primary tenets were that all knowledge is a unity and that the reconciliation of what is truthful-that is, what serves that unity-in all systems of knowledge is the way to a sound philosophy. The eclectic method must be understood as an attempt to recover and sort out a lost past in order to create a philosophy for the future. Its technique consists in the systematic critical examination of historical and contemporary texts. Cousin was not a great philosopher, but his

"'Bloom, "Francois-Joseph Fetis and the Revue musicale," 370-371.




work had met a need for philosophy in the years following the Terror, when intellectual activity in France, including all public education, had come to a halt.'1

Fetis emulated Cousin's critical approach to the history of ideas and made use of his sources, especially Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), F. W. J. Schelling (1775-1854), and G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831). Fetis's approach to any subject was to make an exhaustive critical examination of what had already been written about it and to extract what seemed most truthful by applying logic, common sense, and his unifying hypothesis. Both Fetis and Cousin were involved in the contemporary effort to create a universal philosophy-one that would bridge the separation into national traditions that had occurred during the Enlightenment. 2 Cousin had traveled to Germany as a young man, and through his personal contact with Schelling and Hegel had brought back to France the ideas of the New German School. However, his particular synthesis was criticized, and it could not have been the only source of Fetis's interest. It was probably through a variety of French commentaries that Fetis first became acquainted with German philosophy. His personal library, now the property of the Bibliotheque Royale Albert ler, Brussels, con- tains many of these as well as the collected works and most of the separately published writings of the German philosophers.

"Jules Simon, Victor Coulsin, trans. M. B. Anderson and E. P. Anderson (Chicago, 1888), 9-21. Cousin was for the most part an interpreter of the ideas of others-a popularizer of philosophy. The poetic quality and elo- quence of his writing and oratory brought him considerable acclaim and power, including the directorship of the Ecole Normale. However, he was severely criticized for the inaccuracy and lack of depth of his thought. Of the two men, Fetis was by far the more meticulous and responsible scholar.

'2Treated by J. Willm in "Essai sur la nationalite des philosophies," introduction to F. W. J. Schelling, Jugement de M. Schelling sulr la Philo- sophie de M. Cousin, trans. J. Willm (Paris and Strassburg: F. G. Levrault, 1835).

Early in his career, Fetis had concluded that music was a product of human mental processes, and that as such its origins could be attributed only to what is human-never to anything outside the human such as the harmonic series or the divisions of the string. He had launched a search through historical writings in philosophy and music to discover a principle adequate to explain music as idea in all its aspects and connections. He had not immediately abandoned mathematics as a possible founding principle but had spent six years in an unsatisfying attempt at independent study. In the end, he had found no convincing evidence in favor of mathematics. He had discovered his principle in German transcendental idealism.

In a letter (1838) to his friend the publisher Eugene Troupenas (1799-1850) in which he defends his rejection of mathematics, Fetis cites the three great critiques of Kant and Schelling's refutation of the philosophy of Victor Cousin as monuments that marked the separation of idealism from mathematics.'3 He says that the works of these two men, as well as Johann Gottlieb Fichte's (1762-1814) The Vocation of Man (1800), were the most influential sources for his philosophy.'4 He also declares that Hegel's idea of universality

'3Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, Departement de musique, uncatalogued letters, Fetis, L.A. no. 7.

'4Fetis details the works read and the sequence of study and lists specifically, in addition to the work by Fichte, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Critique of Practical Reason (1788), Critique of Judgment (1790), and The Metaphysic of Morals (1785), as well as Schelling's Transcendental Ide- alism (1800), On the Unconditional in Human Knowledge (1795), and Judg- ment of the Philosophy of Victor Cousin (1833). The French translation of the latter, by J. Willm, inspector of the University of Strasbourg and trans- lator of works of Hegel and Schelling, includes the above-cited essay on nationality in philosophies and an appendix on the idea of process in German historiography. There is reason to believe that these two essays were par- ticularly influential in the development of Fetis's thought. It is apparent that he studied both Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and Schelling's Judgment,




has been an inspiration to him. He cites no specific writings by Hegel, but in his history, he espouses a notion of "world- spirit" as coming to consciousness in the variety of human cultures or "peoples" similar to Hegel's.15

It is of special interest in the context of recent scholarship on Fetis that he does not mention Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) as a source, even though his basic assumption- that music is human and can be attributed only to what is human-resembles Rousseau's theory of the origin of music.16 David Lewin proposes that the prototype for Fetis's notion of a "world-spirit" is Rousseau's "general will."17

primarily in French translations by J. Barni and J. Willm. His personal copy of the translation of the Critique is worn and liberally marked in pencil, whereas his copy of the German edition shows little use. His library does not contain Schelling's Judgment in the original German; only the French translation is there. It is also worn and it shows the same characteristic pencil markings. He had some difficulty obtaining the collected works of Schelling, and his use of Schelling's ideas appears to stem almost entirely from the separately published System of Transcendental Idealism of 1800.

'5G. W. F. Hegel, Natural Law (1802-03), trans. T. M. Knox (Phila- delphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975), 42 and 127. In making a study of this kind, it is essential to try to understand these German ideas, all of which present formidable problems of interpretation, as Fetis might have understood them. Introductions to English and French translations can be helpful in uncovering the semantic problems in transcendental philosophy, and I have found Rudolf Eisler's Kant-Lexicon: Nachschlagewerk zu Kants samtlichen Schriften/Briefen und Handschriftlichem Nachlass (Berlin, 1930; repr. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1961) and Interpreting Kant, ed. Moltke S. Gram (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1982) especially helpful. However, F6tis's understandings must be derived from his own texts. It will not be possible to treat his semantics completely here, but problems will be pointed out as they occur in the texts selected. (Because these semantic problems are covered, and because the German transcendental writings are difficult even for specialists, I have cited accessible English translations of the philosophical works whenever possible.)

'6See Blum, "Rousseau's Concept," and Bohlman, "European Discov- ery.

'7Lewin, "Concerning the Inspired Revelation of F.-J. Fetis."

However, Fetis's idea conforms more closely to Hegel's, which had been derived in turn from Schelling's. The resemblance of Fetis's ideas to Rousseau's is extensive and undeniable, but it is not remarkable in his time. Many contemporary philosophers, including Kant, Hegel, and Schell- ing, had built on Rousseau's ideas, and much of the scientific effort on which Fetis depended had received its impulse at least in part from Rousseau's speculations.18 Rousseau is certainly a precursor, but he is not a source. And as a precursor, he is only a little more important than Leibniz and Giambattista Vico (1668-1744). It is the survival in German philosophy of the ideas of all these predecessors that makes them useful to Fetis, whose concern is to make his own philosophy universal.

Although romantic attitudes and assumptions pervade Fe- tis's thought, and although it cannot be denied that he is a French romantic whenever he speaks from a personal point of view, his position as a scholar is intentionally representative of contemporary idealism. His citation of Fichte's Vo- cation as a primary influence on his philosophy is especially significant, because it is in this work that Fichte argues in favor of idealism as opposed to the romantic view of nature

18Fetis's argument depends directly on contemporary anthropology, ethnology, and linguistics. In the Histoire generale de la musique depuis les temps les plus anciens jusqu'a nos jours (Paris: Librairie de Firmin Didot Freres, Fils, et Cie., 1869-76), I, iii, 2-3, he says that the instinctive revelation of song to humanity was spontaneous, as was that of language, according to modern scholars, and he cites specific works by Franz Bopp (1791-1867), Jacob Grimm (1785-1863), Ernst Renan (1823-1892), and F. Max Muller (1823-1900). A similar idea can be found in Rousseau's On the Origin of Languages (1749), but it is not systematically developed there. Citations of then current scientific studies are so abundant in Fetis's writings that they have been dismissed by some as pretentious. However, they must be taken seriously if Fetis is to be understood.




and art.19 It is also important to recognize that F6tis's philosophical efforts, serious and sustained as they were, do not

represent his basic orientation to his field. He considered himself a composer first of all, and the point of view of the artist underlies all his scholarly efforts. In his writings it sometimes appears as an unresolved conflict between the scientific and the personal.2?

Like Cousin, Fetis was engaged in meeting urgent intel-

'9Fetis does not accept Fichte's ideas in their entirety. He found the

philosopher's doctrine unsuited to lead to a knowledge of beauty. See his

essay "Etat actuelle de l'aesthethque musicale (Science du beau en mu-

sique)," Revue et Gazette Musicale (1838), 4-7, 44-46, 149-53; trans. in part in Peter LeHuray and James Day, Music and Aesthetics in the Eighteenth and Early-Nineteenth Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 498-512.

2'The tale he tells of the discovery of his hypothesis in an experience of the natural light, which he calls a trait de lnmiere (in Histoire, I, ii), is one such inconsistency in his thought but one that can also be found in many contemporary sources. Rousseau had had a similar experience (described by Lewin in "Inspired Revelation"), but it does not represent a specifically romantic orientation. It derives from the idea of the lumen naturalis of the Renaissance, which had been treated by Descartes and Leibniz and many who followed them. It had been regarded as a faculty similar to conscience but concerned with intellectual rather than ethical matters. It was the soul's

receptivity to the experience of divine revelation-a gift from God to man for "the immediate apprehension of truth." A succinct explanation is given by Laurence J. Lafleur in his introduction to Rend Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), trans. Laurence J. Lafleur (Indianapolis: Bobbs- Merrill Company, 1950), xiii. At that time, the light of nature was considered an aspect of man's ethical nature, given directly and not mediated by any nonhuman agency. In its modern form, this experience has been explained as a secularization of the medieval mystical experience (see William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience [1902], ed. Martin E. Marty [New York: Penguin Books, 1982]). By the eighteenth century, nature-or the wilderness-had taken on a mediating role. In Fetis's milieu, the idea had

reappeared as an important element in the philosophies of Pierre Paul Royer- Collard (1762-1845) and Victor Cousin. However, it is inconsistent with the transcendentalist view, which explains such things as an aspect of human

psycho-organic processes.

lectual and social needs. Working in Paris and later in Brus- sels as an educator and as a member of the Acad6mie des beaux arts, he served as an authoritative source of advice and information about music and as a mediator between the in- terests of musicians and the various government authorities. In order to bear this responsibility, he had to establish a high degree of credibility not only with the government but also with his peers in competing fields. His philosophical work was motivated to some extent by the need to justify the concerns of the Classe de musique of the Academie in the

eyes of the intellectual community, which tended to favor the new sciences and their method.2"

However, his work is more directly addressed to the need for regulation of the curriculum and academic standards in the conservatories. In the Preface to the third edition of the Traite, he makes it clear that his philosophy is being devel-

oped in response to the need for a strengthened and unified

conservatory curriculum.22 He is convinced that music in-

struction, especially in harmony and composition, is being undermined by a proliferation of unsound theories (reves extravagants). He complains that too many ambitious pro- fessors have developed their own methods, and that all of this publication is an obstacle to the propagation of a sound scientific doctrine.

A specific call for a scientific doctrine of music had come from F6tis's colleague at the Paris Conservatory, Alexandre Choron (1771-1834), who had proposed the creation of "a new science: a metaphysical theory of music in which general

21See his "Discours prononce a la seance publique de la Classe des Beaux- Arts de l'Academie royale de Belgique, le 24 septembre, 1846, par M. Fetis, membre d l'academie royale de Belgique, etc.," Academie royale de Bel-

gique, Bulletin 13/10 (1846). in which he argues before a public audience for the serious mission of the arts in society.

-2Ftis, Trailte, ii.




laws governing musical systems could be deduced a priori."23 Choron had wanted to do for music what Leibniz had done for philosophy-"to substitute the language of science for the jargon of the workshop"-but his writing was fragmen- tary and he never worked out his idea systematically.

Fetis's use of a metaphysical principle was a way to make the study of music scientific in the philosophical sense. The word science in this context indicates more than an empirical investigation; like the German Wissenschaft, it refers to a complete systematization of facts or theories under a governing principle.24 Philosophers from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries had used the term to describe the uni- fication of their ideas under an overarching hypothesis from which each idea could be deduced a priori. Schelling had described a science as a "continuous connection of conditional theorems, of which the first, the axiom, is not conditional."25

For Choron and Fetis, a science of music had to subsume both speculation (the philosophy of art) and practice (the findings of empirical investigations). The latter were also called scientific, just as they are today. Consequently, although the word science in the title to Fetis's treatise (Doc- trine of Science and Art) refers to the empirical study of harmony, the treatise as a whole is scientific in the larger sense. The subject of this doctrine is the overarching concept

23Choron, Motifs d'eligibilit. . .. pour la place vacant a l'acaddmie des Beaux-arts de l'institute Royale de France (Paris: Ducessois, 1830). Cited in Simms, "Alexandre Choron," 40.

24To criticize Fetis for deriving ideas from the work of colleagues and predecessors, as many have done, is to misunderstand his motives and the purposes of his work. His aim was to unify instruction within the conservatory-to make it consistent and to give it a solid foundation-not to replace what was already sound.

25"On the Possibility of a Form of All Philosophy," trans. Fritz Marti in The Unconditional in Human Knowledge: Four Early Essays (1794-1796) (London: Associated University Presses, 1980), 40.

of tonality, which gathers the empirical science of music and the philosophy of music as art into one scientific system.26

THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCE

Fetis's philosophical science was the first systematic post- Kantian explanation of music. An analogue to Kant's philosophical anthropology, it begins conceptually in psychology. It defines music as a product of the workings of mind as well as sound and relates both empirical observations and aesthetic theory to Kant's explanation of cognition.27 Fetis compared his philosophy to Kant's and declared that he too was creating an epistemological "Copernican" revolution. Both philosophies depart radically from those of the Enlighten- ment, which had recognized the workings of the faculties of the mind in understanding the world and creating art but had assumed an exact correspondence between the world external to ourselves and our idea of it. Music theory provides a cogent example in the work of Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683- 1764), who had striven to account for music on the basis of mathematics and the observation of phenomena. Fetis did not deny the importance of this approach-it is essential to his own empirical inquiries-but he was the first modern theorist to take systematic account of Kant's denial of the assumed correspondence and to argue for a conception of

26It is important to note here that our present-day usage of the word science is inconsistent with philosophical tradition. An expanded view will be essential to any further consideration of nineteenth-century theories, and for the sake of all our inquiries into music, we need to reflect on the possibility of adopting a broader interpretation of this idea.

27An explanation of music in terms of mental processes had appeared in 1837 in Adolph Bernhard Marx, Lehre von der musikalischen Composition, 4 vols. (Leipzig, 1837, 1838, 1847), but it is not defended there as a meth- odology, and there is no evidence to suggest that Fetis ever became familiar with this particular work by Marx.




music as being the product of mental processes. His theory acknowledges that sound comes from an external source but attributes its organization into music to the interior workings of the human mind.

Fetis's idea of tonality results from the application of Kant's "revolutionary" method, which does not derive its laws from but prescribes them to nature. As Kant explained it: " . . we must not seek the universal laws of nature in nature by means of experience, but conversely, must seek nature as to its universal conformity to law, in the conditions of the possibility of experience, which lie in our sensibility and our understanding."28 In keeping with this first principle, Fetis's description of music begins with the idea that the mind imposes an order or arrangement on the impressions received by the ear: "The ear perceives sounds; the sentiment finds a priori the laws of their associations; and the mind compares their relationships, measures them, and determines the melodic and harmonic conditions of a tonality."29 Fetis explains that this notion is strictly limited; it is only the foundation for the creation of art, which depends on such

28Prologomena to Any Future Metaphysic (1783), trans. Paul Carus (Chi- cago: Open Court Publishing, 1933), No. 36 (p. 60).

29"L'oreille perqoit les sons; le sentiment trouve a priori les formules de leurs associations; et l'esprit compare leurs rapports, les mesure, et determine les conditions melodiques et harmoniques d'une tonalite." Traite, 251. Several concepts here must be understood in the context of Kant's psychology. When Fetis says that "the ear perceives," he refers to the process discussed under sensibility below. In his time, as in the eighteenth century, the ear might refer to musical taste, the organ itself, its capacity to pick up vibrations, or the entire process of sound apperception. In this passage it

represents the latter. The word sentiment refers to the mind's power to

respond positively or negatively to the products of sound apperception, that is, to select (also discussed below). Fetis's use of the word l'esprit poses a slight problem. Sometimes it refers to the mind in general, but in connection with the process of sound apperception, Fetis uses it to designate the synthesizing activity of the mind under the pure concepts of the understanding.

things as feelings, inspiration, and poetic imagination. How- ever, he argues that "if the composer [genie] were to have no intuition of the relationships of sounds before the creation of his work, and could not make, without knowing it, a very rapid calculation that would clarify them, then neither sentiment, inspiration, nor imagination could be awakened and music could not exist."30

Fetis attributes little to nature. He says it supplies only a multitude of sounds. Some of these become the objects of attention because they are sufficiently differentiated to affect the ear as distinct. When this happens, the notion of affinities is aroused in the intelligence and "under the action of sensibility and will, the mind arranges them in different series, each corresponding to a particular set of emotions, sentiments, and ideas."31 These series, he says, develop into the

30,. . . mais si, avant la creation de son oeuvre, le genie n'avait pas l'intuition de ces rapports de sons et n'en faisait, sans le savoir, un calcul plus rapide que I'clair, ni le sentiment, ni l'inspiration, ni l'imagination ne s'eveilleraient, et la musique n'existerait pas." Histoire, I, 2. In this context, the word intuition does not denote a "hunch" or a feeling about something but the perception of objects through the senses. It is the French (and English) equivalent of Kant's Anschauung or cognitio sensitiva, the manner or way objects appear to the human mind. It is separate from the understanding (Verstand), which is the source of their objectivity for us. See Hans Rudnick's explanation in Gram, ed., Interpreting Kant, 110. Fetis's calcul plus rapide is not a mathematical operation. It is the a priori activity of the mind in response to sound impressions (intuitions), an activity that prepares these impressions to be stored in the memory, where they are available for the creation of music. In this explanation, Fetis omits Kant's idea of pure imagination, which is the source of the mind's impulse to organize. In general, he offers a simplified version of Kant, one that sidesteps some of Kant's less translatable ideas.

31" . . et sous l'action de la sensibilite d'une part, et de la volonte de l'autre, l'esprit les coordonne en series differentes, dont chacune correspond a un ordre particulier d'emotions, de sentiments, et d'idees." Traite, xii.




types of tonalities [pitch systems] and rhythms that arouse the imagination in the creation of music.32

Fetis's language resembles Kant's in some respects, and their ideas of the dynamic interaction of faculties are similar. Fetis's idea of the cognitive process begins with l'intuition

(Kant's Anschauung), the reception of sense data,33 and like Kant, he separates this process into two different operations. The first is la sensibilite (Sinnlichkeit). This is not a faculty but the mind's receptivity to (and the source of) intuitions. In this part of the process, the ear is passive; it does not think but merely vibrates in sympathy with the motion of the air around it.34 The nervous system carries the impulse of these vibrations to the mind, where the understanding (Verstand) represents them to the consciousness as sound.35 This is the limit of sensibility. According to Kant, it makes the sensory experience available to the mind but does not provide its form. In order for any sound impression to "make sense," the mind must act on the products of sensibility. It is the work of intellect (Vernunft) to analyze impressions given in the first part of the process. Prompted by the will, the mind

compares them with previous experience and puts them in order. The activity of the mind provides the form of knowl-

edge. In Fetis's theory, this is the stage at which the sound

32Ibid. 33Die Anschauung is a philosophical notion that has had a variety of

different interpretations in the course of history. Kant uses it in several ways, but in this context it means only the reception of sense data.

34Fetis's study of the physiology of the ear ("Note sur les veritables fonctions de l'oreille dans la musique," Academie royale de Belgique, Bul- letin 16/3 [1864], 1-14), like all his work, is not scientific but eclectic. It is based on a critical reading of historical and contemporary writings.

35Fetis does not clearly distinguish the part played by the understanding (Kant's Verstand) in the process of sensibility from the mere reception of sense data, and the word found in the French translations of Kant, I'en- tendement, does not appear in these explanations. Instead, he simply refers to the entire process-la sensibilite.

impressions become for us melodies, chords, and chord suc- cessions. Because of the synthesizing activity of intellect, sound impressions can be understood as music, compared with other music, and stored in the memory. They are then available to the imagination and the will for the creation of new music.

In this way, Fetis accounts for music as a union of objective (external) and subjective (interior) forces. In his essay on aesthetics, Fetis acknowledges Kant and explains: "... [Kant's] system, acknowledging both the action of the exterior world on our senses to communicate knowledge to us and the action of our interior sense for the analysis and

judgment that bears on these acquired understandings [connaissances], reconciles and unites the advantages of the doctrines of empirical knowledge and a priori knowledge."36 The reconciliation Fetis describes is the model and the logical precedent for his reconciliation of empirical science and aesthetics within his own theory of music.

As long as music is understood to be a product of the action of the mind on sensory stimuli, its origins can be traced to cognitive processes common to all humankind. This idea is the key to Fetis's differences with Rameau. For Fetis, it is only in a universal principle, one discoverable in the music of any time or any society, that music can be said to originate, and the only principle that can be said to be universal in this way, that is, attributable to human mental activity previous to culture and education, is the organization of pitch into a succession of discrete tones. All societies develop some kind of scale. On the other hand, neither the divisions of the string nor the harmonic series, on which Rameau founded his the-

36,. . . ce systeme admettant a la fois et l'action du monde exterieur sur nos sens pour nous communiquer des connaissances et I'action de notre sens interieur pour l'analyse et le jugement que nous portions sur ces connaissances acquises, concilie et reunit les avantages des doctrines de la connaissance empirique et de la connaissance a priori." "Etat actuelle," 6.




ory, is a universal principle. They exist for us only by means of learned systems of observation and mathematics. Accord- ing to Fetis, if they were universal, the music of all societies would be the same. F6tis understood mathematics to extend from and apply exclusively to the phenomenal, as Kant had treated it in his critical philosophy. It could have no application within the noumenal, that is, to Art or Beauty, which could not be known in themselves through the process of sensibility. 37

When Fetis says that the understanding finds a priori the laws of the associations of tones, he is speaking of mental activity in which sensory experience stimulates the mind to act a priori-that is, according to its own laws, which Kant calls the categories of the pure understanding.38 Among these categories are possibility, existence, necessity, substance,

37In Fetis's philosophy, as in the transcendentalists', Beauty is a quality of Art but not the whole of it. See Schelling's The Philosophy of Art: An Oration on the Relation Between the Plastic Arts and Nature (1807), trans. A. Johnson (London: John Chapman, 1845). However, Fetis sometimes uses the word to represent the greater whole. In the present article, the capi- talization of the word Art distinguishes references to the metaphysical principle, which belongs to the noumenal, from the phenomenal sense in which we commonly use the term. In German transcendental philosophies. Art as a principle is not the same as the body of works, experiences, or activities we call art. Art-spelled here with a capital A-must be understood as the cause or condition existing in the human mind that makes possible the phenomena that go by the same name. The words Beauty and Idea (which occurs elsewhere) will be capitalized for similar reasons. Beauty as a principle is not the same as beauty as an attribute of something, but it is the condition that makes the attribute possible; and Idea in the noumenal sense is not the same as an idea or a concept of something but the condition under which ideas or concepts take shape and develop in time. Both notions depend on the ideas of universal human mental potentiality and its expression in the Weltgeist.

38Critique of Pure Reason (1787), trans. Norman Kemp Smith (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1929), 111-119.

and cause, together with their opposites and correlates, but the list was not intended to be exhaustive; at one point, Kant had allowed that still other pure concepts of the understanding exist. He had called them derived (a priori) and had said they were subsidiary, but he had not identified them. All these categories are distinguished from the pure categories of time and space in that they are predicated. Since F6tis treats tonality as a system of relationships created by the action of the intelligence in the second part of the process of sensibility, the principle of tonality functions as a derived a priori synthetic category.

A potential source of confusion in dealing with Fetis's ideas is the use of the term metaphysical to describe a principle he claims to have derived from Kant. Since the earliest philosophical writings, the word metaphysics has been understood and used differently by different philosophers. Kant had defined metaphysics as a philosophy of ideas not dependent on sensory experience, and he had held that such a thing was impossible. Since sensory experience was the foundation of his philosophy, he had described it as transcendental rather than metaphysical. However, the a priori categories of the understanding are metaphysical principles since in themselves they are previous to sensory experience and they are called up only on the occasion of sensory experience.

Fetis uses the term metaphysical in reference not to his whole philosophy but specifically to his idea of the a priori character of tonality. As a metaphysical principle, tonality exists as a potential of the mind, previous to experience and only manifesting itself on the occasion of experience. In Kant's terms, it is an a priori synthetic category that determines the conditions that make music possible. It also functions as an analytical a priori principle analogous to Kant's Categorical Imperative. It guides composers' choices and accounts for the transformation of music in history into ever




more complete actualizations of its potential.39 Fetis also uses it as a heuristic principle, on the Kantian model, to guide his empirical inquiries into music.40 However, in Fetis's philosophy, music itself is never considered to be independent of sensory experience. It is in response to sensory experience that the a priori principle, tonality, comes into play. Consequently, his whole philosophy, since it derives from Kant's, is best described as transcendental rather than metaphysical.41

The importance of will in the description of the interaction of faculties in the creative process has suggested to some a connection with the ideas of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788- 1860). However, there is no evidence that Fetis had a special interest in Schopenhauer, and there is little of the spirit of Schopenhauer in Fetis's work. Schopenhauer's description of music as the direct representation of the will has no parallel in Fetis's writing, nor does his idea of the subconscious as a seat of powerful drives. What is more, the parallel that Schopenhauer finds between the harmonic series and the actual world as objectification of the will is an idea F6tis would have rejected emphatically.42

To consider the will the motive force in the mental organization of experience is common to the New German

39Treated in Kant, Critique of Practical Reason (1788), trans. Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1956).

4?See Kant, Critique of Judgment (1790), trans. J. H. Bernard (New York: Hafner Press; London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1951).

4tThis idea receives no clear exposition anywhere in Fetis's writings. His assumption that the word metaphysical required no explanation and his failure to identify his Kantian philosophy in Kant's own terms are somewhat alarming, but whether or not such lapses indicate a degree of failure to understand his sources, they do not indicate any failure of integrity at this point within his own science.

42See Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (1819), trans. E. F. J. Payne, 2 vols. (Indian Hills, Colo.: Falcon Wing Press, 1966; repr. New York: Dover, 1969), I, 258-260.

philosophies. Schelling had been the first to make the will the supreme faculty. In 1809 he had called it "primordial Being" and claimed that "all predicates apply to it alone."43 Schopenhauer's treatment of the will had been suggested by Schelling's. However, Schopenhauer had considered it in two aspects: the phenomenal, as it is here, and in terms of the thing-in-itself, which is equated with the subconscious and irrational. Nowhere in Fetis's epistemology is the will equated with the irrational. It works in conjunction with the imagination and the intelligence, as it does in Kant's. The problem of the thing-in-itself, which so occupied the post- Kantians, is not taken up in Fetis's writings.

Fetis distinguishes sentiment from the will. He does not explain how he conceives of sentiment but treats it much as Kant did-as a faculty. In this context, sentiment is the mind's capacity to react positively or negatively to the products of sensibility. Sentiment is inseparable from social life. It is conditioned by genetics and education and is different among the world's peoples. Kant says that this faculty, along with that of being able to communicate one's feelings, together "constitute the characteristic social spirit of humanity, by which it is distinguished from the limitations of animal life."44 It is the source of the law-abiding life and essential to the formation of communities. For Fetis, it also accounts for the differences among the musics of these different communities because it dictates the forms of their tonalities. He explains that the impulse to create music arises in these feelings, which, together with the imagination, act upon the will and the intelligence in the creation of art. Thus, the creative act arises not primarily from the will but from the integration

43Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom (1809), trans. James Gutmann (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1936), 24. Fichte had also treated the will as the foundation of intellect in The Vocation of Man.

44Critique of Judgment, 201.




of the faculties in response to sentiment. Sentiment prompts the will in the creative act. But sentiment cannot be identified with Schopenhauer's irrational will because it is developed through experience and education.

THE HISTORIOGRAPHY

The key to Fetis's idea of the will is found in its association with reason. In this respect it resembles Kant's rational will as described in the Critique of Practical Reason. In this work, Kant takes up the possibility of moral action. He addresses the problems of moral choice and whether there can be an a priori principle of judgment. To establish the possibility of such a principle is the task of what Kant calls analytic philosophy.

Fetis echoes the analytic philosophy when he considers the development of art and science as aspects of the human

capacities for moral choice. He does not regard these ca-

pacities as uniform throughout all humanity but considers them to be most highly developed in European society, which he defines in terms of a theory of race: ". . . the white race develops, in the course of time, all the consequences of its moral organization . . . it has the sense of the beautiful, the grand, and that which belongs to the creation of pure art and progressive science."45 He adds that the development of

tonality toward its highest expression in art is bound up with the development of moral law and is inseparable from the

45i. . . la race blanche developpe dans la suite des temps, toutes les

consequences de son organisation morale . . . elle a le sentiment du beau, du grand, et c'est a elle qu'appartient la creation de l'art pur et de la science

progressive." Hisroire, I, 108. This was not the first time the theory of music had been associated with ethics or morality in modern writings, but F6tis is the first modern thinker to present a theory of music as an analogue to the interior moral life.

belief in one god, the history of the Church, and the tradition of patriarchy in Indo-European society.46 F6tis derives these ideas in the eclectic manner from contemporary studies in

comparative philology, contemporary theories of brain structure (phrenology), current notions of racial superiority, and the positive sociology of Auguste Comte (1798-1857).47

The source for Fetis's aesthetic and his history is not the

philosophy of Kant, who had left those aspects of his work relatively undeveloped, but nineteenth-century German transcendentalism. His historiography resembles Schelling's and Hegel's in that aesthetics, history, and physiology are intertwined. It is a process theory; it treats history as the actualization of absolute principle. History is the unfolding in the course of time of an ideal which is a universal potentiality existing in the timeless realm of the Absolute.48

There was much dispute among the transcendentalists, including Kant, about the Absolute-just what it is and how to describe it-but they associated it exclusively with the intelligence, the faculty of reason. They treated it as a realm of pure Idea, of noumena, entirely above and beyond sen-

46Ibid., 109. 47This passage reflects to some extent Comte's comparative method, but

Fetis makes selective use of it. The association cannot be treated fully here, but it should be noted that a common source for Fetis's and Comte's ideas of history is Hegel, and Fetis adopts from Comte the ideas that develop from and do not contradict Hegel.

48In this respect Fetis's work is exceptional in France, but the German scholar August Wilhelm Ambrose (1816-1876) was to base his history of music on a transcendental principle (Geschichte der Musik, 5 vols. [Breslau, F. E. C. Leuckart, 1862-1878]). On the other hand, J. N. Forkel's (1749- 1818) Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik, ed. Othmar Wessely, 2 vols.

(Leipzig, 1788-1801; repr. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1967), which Wangermee calls Fetis's model and point of departure, lacked a systematic philosophy. It is unfortunate that this dimension of historical

writing about music is not taken up more fully in Dwight Allen's Philosophies of Music History: A Study of General Histories of Music 1600-1960 (Amer- ican Book Co., 1939; repr. New York: Dover, 1962).




sory experience.49 Fetis does not criticize Kant's, Fichte's, or

Hegel's treatment of the Absolute, and he appears to miss the complexity of their ideas of art, nature, and empiricism, but his work conforms in some ways to the most stringent prescriptions for a science to come out of the New German School. His simplification of their ideas (and Kant's) may have stemmed to some extent from a desire to keep his own

writing within the grasp of the readership of musicians for whom it was intended. On the other hand, he does not accept wholeheartedly the aesthetic he finds in the works of the transcendentalists because it fails to address specifically musical problems. His admiration for Schelling may have been based primarily on the fact that Schelling had put the inquiry into Art as an absolute principle at the summit of philosophy.50 Fetis had found a reference to the unity of musical themes as an element of beauty in a piece in a little-known work of C. H. L. Politz (1772-1838).51 Politz was a professor of history, political science, and philosophy and a post- Kantian, but his aesthetic was too limited to satisfy Fetis

entirely.52 Fetis's vision of the history of music compares to both

Schelling's and Hegel's in that he too recognizes Art as an absolute principle and treats aesthetics and history as in-

49Fetis praises Schelling's idea of the Absolute in his essay on the state of aesthetics ("L'Etat actuelle," 509).

51Schelling, System, 219-236. A succinct explanation of Schelling's aesthetic as it applies to music can be found in J. Gibelin, L'Estlegtique de

Schelling d'apres la Philosophie de l'Art (Paris: Librarie Philosophique J. Vrin., 1934), 29-31.

5>C. H. L. Politz, Grundleglng zu einer wissenschaftlichen Aesthetik oder iiber das Gemeinsdme aller Kiinste (Pirna, 1800). Cited in Fetis, "L'Etat actuelle," 506-507.

52Fetis's eclectic essay on the present state of musical aesthetics ("Etat actuelle"). in which he systematically criticizes aesthetic theories from

Pythagoras to his contemporaries, shows that he never found an aesthetic that was completely satisfactory.

separable. For all of them, Art is a principle that exists in

perfect form outside time and beyond historical change. Art can only be known partially, because it can only be known

through its incomplete appearances in the realm of the finite. There-that is, in history-it can be understood as an end or a potentiality toward which the changes we observe seem to be directed. The progression of change toward this end is necessary, which in this context means ineluctable. It occurs according to natural law, which in this philosophy is the intellectual equivalent of the physical laws that govern the universe.

For Fetis, music participates in Art, and its history is the unfolding of Art in time, but music reveals itself in accor- dance with its own separate and distinct metaphysical principle-tonality. The end toward which the history of music is directed is the complete actualization of tonality, that is, the fulfillment in actual music of all its possibilities. In this vision, the history of music, like the transcendentalists' history of art, is the emergence toward fulfillment of an innate human potentiality that is continually coming into consciousness. That potentiality is the motive force in the history of music.

Since the various forms that Art takes in history are the finite manifestations of an unchanging, infinite principle, they cannot progress the way the sciences do. This is the basis for Fetis's often quoted assertion that art does not progress but is transformed.53 In this context Fetis uses the word progresse in a special way. It does not denote progress as we understand it today but is specifically limited to the phenomenal. It excludes the noumenal, which is the foundation

53"Si le beau n'est pas susceptible de progres. ses formes sont neanmoins variables, par cela meme que 'idee de beau est infinie, d'ou il suit que l'art ne progresse pas, mais qu'il se transforme." Untitled article in Bulletin de I'Academie Royale de Belgiqiie 13/2, 242.




for the process theory of the history of art. This must be understood in terms of the contrasting views of the transcendental philosophers and the positivists. It is Auguste Comte's positive idea of progress that Fetis rejects. In the Preface to the second edition of the Biographie universelle, he explains further:

. . . the doctrine of progress, good and true for the sciences and for industry, has nothing to do with the arts of the imagination, and less in the case of music than any other. It can give no valid rule for the appreciation of the talent and works of an artist. It is in the very object of these works, in the thought and the sentiment that have dictated them, that value must be found.54

Fetis sees the sciences as belonging entirely to the phenomenal realm. Science changes because of new discoveries or new ways of investigating and interpreting. Music, on the other hand, is a product of human imagination, with its source in the noumenal. Its principle of change must be appropriate to that realm. Fetis explains that the advance- ment of music in history is achieved through the discovery of something that is inherent but not yet actualized, and he describes that actualization as a process of transformation effected by a great mind. The transformation is not conscious for the composer. In spite of himself, and without knowing it, the individual genius effects a predetermined historical change.

The process of historical change is not described as dialectical, but is simply ascribed to the "mysterious laws of

54,... la doctrine du progr&s, bonne et vrai pour les sciences comme

pour l'industrie, n'a rien a faire dans les arts d'imagination, et moins dans la musique que dans tout autre. Elle ne peut donner aucune regle valable

pour l'appreciation du talent et des oeuvres d'un artiste. C'est dans l'objet meme de ces oeuvres, dans la pensee et dans le sentiment qui les ont dictees,

qu'il en faut chercher la valeur." Biographie universelle des musiciens et

bibliographie generale de la musique, 2nd ed. (1835-44), 8 vols. (Paris: Librairie de Firmin-Didot et Cie., 1877), I, vi.

the mind." Those laws are evident in the special capacity of the genius for original thought. This kind of mind is capable of feeling what others cannot feel and seeing possibilities for expression that others do not see. F6tis's description of the contributions of Alessandro Scarlatti, Reinhardt Keiser, and Mozart emphasizes insight, originality, passion, and taste.55

In Fetis's system, genius is a faculty of the mind. It is the capacity to participate in the unfolding of Art, and its working is a combination of strong sentiment and exceptional rational insight. This view is consistent with Schelling's description of genius as the perfect union of conscious and unconscious forces-of learned techniques and deep emotion-that produces the work of art.56 However, it does not reflect Schelling's dialectical explanation, which sees the work of art as a reconciliation of the opposition between the conscious and the unconscious at the ultimate root of the artist's whole being. Fetis alludes to but does not deal with the deeper psychological dimension in German transcendentalism. And a personal element invades and tarnishes his vision to some extent. He saw himself as a genius because he had the capacity to discover the principle of tonality, and he cites his own compositions as examples of the complete fulfillment of that principle. It would seem that for himself, the perfect actualization of Art was no longer a potentiality or an ideal but a finite, attainable goal.

Fetis does not debunk the "Great Man" theory of history, as recently claimed, but works it into his process theory as an efficient cause.57 He began his historical work with the Biographie universelle, and biographical considerations oc-

cupy an essential position in his teleological vision. To be

55Ibid.

56Schelling, System, 222-224.

57Compare Bohlman, "Discovery," with Fetis, Biographie universelle, I, iii.




sure, the biographies of great men do not constitute history in his view, but history is constituted through them. The

composer is the instrument of change. Except for its ad- herence to the transcendental rather than the positivistic idea of progress, Fetis's history conforms to most nineteenth-

century "great man" theories. However, it stands opposed to that of Raphael Georg Kiesewetter (1773-1850), which held that Genius alone is absolute.58

Excluded from Fetis's concept are the notion of Kraft, as found in Herder's historical theory, as well as energy or

organic unfolding. Fetis's language does not accommodate these ideas. He talks about genius and expressive purpose: "Attracted by a doctrine that responded to the needs of their

genius ... .;" "Monteverdi, with no guide other than his

interior sentiment, perceived the possibility . . ."59

This is not an evolutionary theory either; it is teleological and eschatological. The discovery made by the person of

genius is always the seizing of something already implied in the tradition in a way that results in a new creative vision- one that is integral to the unfolding of Art in history. There is always a continuity with the past and an implied future

development as well. Every step in the unfolding of Art in

history depends on the previous steps and presupposes the

subsequent steps, so that the idea is continually circling back

upon itself-a telos. However, this unfolding is envisaged as

58Raphael Georg Kiesewetter, Geschichte der europaisch- abendlandischen oder unserer heutigen Musik: Darstellung ihres Ursprunges, ihres Wachstumes und ihrer stufenweise Entwickelung; von dem ersten Jahr- hundert des Christenthumes bis alf unsere Zeit (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Hartel,

1834). F6tis took issue with Kiesewetter in his "R6sume philosophique de l'histoire de la musique," in Biographie universelle, 1st ed. (Paris: Librarie de H. Fournier, 1835), I, xxxvii-ccliv.

59"Seduits par une doctrine qui repondait aux besoins de leur genie . . . ;" . . . Monteverde, sans autre guide que son sentiment intime, aperqut la possibilite . . ." Traite, xxxvii-xxxviii.

reaching an end, a final state- eschaton- in which no further

unfolding can take place.60 This is the shape of Fetis's idea of the successive eras which he calls unitonique, transito-

nique, pluritonique, and omnitonique. Each stage extends from the previous stages and is the presupposition for those that succeed it. However, music does not transform beyond the omnitonique. That is its fulfillment and completion.

Fetis's description of the role of genius in shaping the

history of art results in a simpler and more specific idea of historical fulfillment than that of the transcendentalists. Where Schelling and Hegel see history as the continual striv- ing toward the fulfillment of Idea, F6tis sees a literal filling in of potential design. Each contribution of genius is the discovery and application of a specific technique that is the condition for further techniques. This history of music is not dialectical. It is an uncomplicated, straight-line progression. And its unfolding is traced solely in terms of the development of modulation techniques or the techniques necessary for their discovery.

However, in the Traite, F6tis develops his idea of modulation systematically from his basic premises, so that it takes its place in "a continuous connection of conditional theorems," as prescribed by Schelling in his description of a true science. In this way, he avoids the problem of incomplete organization that can result from the arbitrary reduction to a single observable characteristic. Hegel had called this kind of reduction "scientific empiricism." He had found it ob- jectionable and had associated it with Hobbes and utilitar- ianism.61 He had advocated a procedure he called "pure empiricism." Pure empiricism abstracts a single quality in

6'See Werner Marx, The Philosophy of F. W. J. Schelling: History, Sys- tem, and Freedom, trans. Thomas Nenon (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 5-6.

61Hegel, Natural Law, 62, 67.




such a way that it sheds light on the whole without sacrificing any of its variety or complexity.

Fetis was aware of the question of fatalism or predesti- nation posed by this idea of history. In the Preface to the third edition of the Traite (1849), he acknowledged that of all his ideas, the metaphysical principle had met with the most resistance, and he attributed the problem to its popular (and therefore presumably misunderstood) association with sensualism and fatalism.62 However, his historical vision has its precedent in Schelling's concept of the unfolding of Idea in history toward the perfect constitutional state, and both concepts are rooted in the Christian interpretation of the history of the Church as the revelation in time of God's will. The question of freedom as opposed to determinism was the

principal subject of the New German School. And just as the philosophers had found no contradiction in the idea that the individual acts on the principle of freedom, so F6tis finds none in the idea that the history of music is a history of free creative choice. He points out that the composer is not conscious of the law of necessity; he is conscious only of his freedom to choose.

THE APPEAL TO BIOLOGY

This idea of the relation of freedom and necessity depended, in Hegel's and Schelling's thought, on the concept of universal spirit or mind, and the same idea underlies Fe- tis's treatment of the music of all human societies. Like He- gel, F6tis treats mind as determined by human biology. Using the findings of the positivistic social theorists and comparative philologists of his time, he adopts the notion of a racially determined brain capacity. Two propositions found his

62Traite, xiv.

historiography: first, that the history and development of music are inseparable from the particular human faculties of the races that conceive it; and second, that the people of Europe (and the Colonies, he adds) have the aptitude to grasp the rapports of tonality-an aptitude developed by listening to music, one that study perfects-because the principle that governs historical transformation is inherent in the physical characteristics of the race.63 Uncivilized people, by contrast, are unable to understand rapports of tones because of the inferiority of their cerebral conformation.64 Fetis at- tempts to prove his point by an extensive survey of music in undeveloped nations, biased to be sure by the stance he has taken: if it takes a finer psychological organization to pro- duce finer music, then finer music is evidence of finer psychological organization. The tautology is characteristic of the positive comparative method, but in this part of Fetis's work the assumption begs the question on a grand scale. Missing is the actual experience of the music of other societies. His conclusions are the result of his eclectic procedure. They are not based on original research other than the inspection and perhaps the sounding of musical instruments. For the most part, he relies on reports of travelers whose musical understanding was amateur or outdated or both, other general histories, and publications in the fields of archaeology, iconology, and organology.

According to Wangermee, Fetis's view is probably based at least in part on the positivistic social theory of count Jo- seph Arthur de Gobineau (1816-1882), who had attempted to account for the decline of the European aristocracy

63Histoire, I, 108. 64Fetis's ideas about race are offensive in the extreme, but they were a

part of the intellectual milieu in which he worked and he was not exceptional in adopting them. A suspension of judgment is essential to responsible historical study and it must be made here if the internal consistencies and inconsistencies of his thought are to be clear.




through the study of the declines of other civilizations.65 De Gobineau had predicted the demise of European civilization. He believed that racial mixture results in debilitation, and that therefore, in an expansionistic, imperialistic society such as that of nineteenth-century Europe, decay and dissolution would be swift and inevitable. However, he had found the white race, in its pure state, to be superior to the others because it possessed both energy and intelligence in the right proportions. De Gobineau's idea of racial differences, like those of the eighteenth century, extended to European na- tionalities, and he attributed the decline of European culture in part to the intermingling of local groups.

Fetis's ideas about the superiority of the Indo-European mind, which, he says, never knew the savage state, and his attitude toward primitive societies, which he regards as in-

capable of civilization because of the racially transmitted inferiority of their brain structures, parallel certain passages in De Gobineau's book. But Fetis uses the same evidence to come to a different conclusion, one surprisingly consistent with Auguste Comte's positive vision, on which De Gobi- neau had also depended. Fetis sees a steady advance toward

perfection in European culture as represented in its music and finds music to be at the culmination of its historical

development. But he attributes the greatest advances in music within the Indo-European groups to the infusion of north Germanic traditions into the Roman. It appears that he took what was useful from De Gobineau and left the rest, in-

cluding that author's main thesis. There is some confusion in Fetis's thought between the

notions of brain and mind, but the same confusion can be found in Comte's positive philosophy and German transcendentalism. There were too few empirical resources to satisfy

5iThe Inequality of Human Races (1853-55), trans. Adrian Collins (Lon- don: William Heinemann. 1915).

the need for a biological foundation. The philosophers had nowhere to turn but to the theory of phrenology advanced by Franz Joseph Gall, a Viennese doctor who had ascribed various mental functions to specific areas of the brain. The technique of cranioscopy, which involved examining the shape of the skull to determine the level of development of the faculties, had long ago been debunked in scientific cir- cles, but the idea of localization had survived. In 1861, Paul Broca, the "father of modern brain surgery" and a defender of Fetis's theory of racial identification,66 found the speech center of the brain and thus validated the general theory of localization. However, his findings had to do with sensory and motor functions, not faculties.

Gall's ideas had a longer life in nineteenth-century philosophy. Comte had rejected contemporary psychology because of its associations with metaphysics and had turned to phrenology to found his positivistic theory of mind. But phrenology was not the sole property of the positivists. Hegel had found it indispensable to his idea of the human.67 He describes the individual as a psycho-organic being and argues for the importance of the skull as the external actualization of the powers of the mind. Whether or not F6tis was familiar with this part of Hegel's or Comte's philosophies cannot be ascertained, but phrenology had spread during his lifetime into the most respectable philosophical thought. His adop- tion of its does not represent a specifically positivistic view but could have extended equally well from German transcendentalism.

Fetis includes phrenology as a topic in his outline of the philosophy of music, and it is implied in his reference to

66In the notorious incident before the Societe d'anthropologie involving the so-called Egyptian flute (Closson, "La flfite egyptienne"; Haraszti, "Fetis fondateur").

67Tlhe Phenomenology of Mind (1807), trans. J. B. Baillie, intro. George Lichtheim (New York: Harper & Row. 1967). 352.




physical characteristics quoted above. But as a foundation for an aesthetic faculty, it had, at one point, left too many unanswered questions to satisfy him. In his essay on aesthetics, he had complained that while it helped to explain how some areas of the brain are better suited than others to

grasp the beauty of tonal relationships, the theory could

provide no basis for the judgment of the beautiful.68 Fetis published his racial theory in the form of a world

history of music. He explained his method in the Preface: "The historian of music has, for the prime object of his research, the necessary conditions for the creation of this art and for its development; the second [object] consists in dis-

tinguishing in general history, the human race that possesses these qualities."69

Fetis describes the development of music in history in terms of necessity, that is, in terms of immutable laws of the mind, and he uses the term tonality to designate both the laws, as they are manifest in all human societies and throughout history, and the specific ways they are manifest in Eu-

ropean music. He explains that while tonality is universal, the form it takes in any society is variable, and only among European societies could music become Art. He divides Eu-

ropean music into two styles, tonalite ancienne and tonalite moderne, and recognizes Art only in the latter.

THE EMPIRICAL SCIENCE

The Histoire does not include the omnitonique; only five of the projected ten volumes had been completed at the time

68'L'Etat actuelle," 502. 69"L'historien de la musique a donc pour premier objet de ses recherches

les conditions necessaires pour la creation de cet art et pour son develop- pement: le second consiste a distinguer dans l'histoire generale, la race hu- maine qui possede ces qualites." Histoire. I, ii-iii.

of Fetis's death. However, the music of his own time is the subject of investigation in the Traite. There the tonalite moderne, including the transitonique, pluritonique, and omnitonique, is subject to empirical inquiry, and tonality, the metaphysical principle, organizes that inquiry. Throughout the Traite, Fetis's discussion is both synthetic, as it relates to the creation of art, and analytic, as it describes the laws of tonal organization. He explains that the object of art is to coordinate sounds which develop sensations and ideas of a more or less lively, elevated, and agreeable character and are capable of realizing the insights of the artist; the object of science is to discover the laws of their relationships. There- fore the study of harmony is at once an art and a science.7"

Science in this context means the discovery of the particular within the general. According to Kant, this is the work of the faculty of judgment. Judgment has its own a priori principle, but this a priori is a heuristic principle. He says that "special empirical laws . . . must be considered . . . as if an understanding which is not ours had given them for our powers of cognition to make possible a system of experience according to special laws of nature."71 This does not mean that the scientist presupposes the existence of God, but that scientific inquiry can proceed only on the basis that nature is an intelligible unity. The scientist approaches nature as if it were the work of a divine mind.

Fetis's tonality functions in this way as an a priori principle for the guidance of empirical inquiry into music. It makes possible reflective judgments about music and governs the association of particulars under the general. Fundamental to Fetis's judgments about musical structure is the concept of

7"Trait,e iii. 71Critiqle of Judgment, 16; this trans. in Frederick Copleston, Kant, Vol.

6 of A History of Philosophy: Modern Philosophy (Garden City, N.Y.:

Image Books, 1960), 144.




nature, which derives from his theory of cognition. What is natural in music is a result of the process of sensibility as it produces the basic forms of musical perception. Nature consists in the mysterious, immutable, God-given laws of the mind, and these laws are evident in what F6tis describes as the affinities among the tones in the scale. These affinities appear in the successive order of the tones and their ten- dencies toward motion or rest.

It is not within the scope of this paper to take up Fetis's theory in detail, but a few characteristics must be pointed out. Most notable is the systematic reference to the workings of mind to explain harmonic usage. For example, Fetis says that among the many combinations that make up the harmony of modern music, there are two that are directly intelligible: the perfect chord (major triad), which has the character of repose and conclusion, and the dominant seventh chord, which determines the tendency, attraction, or movement of harmony.72 He explains that our "musical instinct" accepts these as existing in themselves, independent of any circumstances and free of preparation. These two harmonies, which comprise the notes of the scale, are directly intelligible because of the positions their notes occupy in the scale. Be- cause they are associated with the tonic and dominant notes of the scale, they will be heard as tonic or dominant wherever they occur. Consequently, F6tis's rules for harmonization of the scale preclude the use of the triad in root position on any degree but the tonic because of the tendency for any degree to sound like a tonic when so harmonized.

In Fetis's system there can be no argument about whether the scale determines the harmony, as so many have claimed, or that the scale is determined by the chords, as Shirlaw

72It has been noted that the two-chord foundation was nothing new. It had come from Rameau. What is new is the use of these chords to found an attraction/repose theory of musical motion.

insisted.73 The question is irrelevant. For F6tis, the basis for determination is not in the phenomena but in the mind. The relationships of scale and chords must also be understood historically. The scale and its harmonies are a unity, but the harmonic relationships, which have always been inherent but have been realized only gradually and only in the history of European music, lend to the modern scales their particular sets of affinities. Thus it is that the use of harmony has brought about the transformation from the modal system to the major-minor system in the course of history. However, this does not mean that the system is derived from the chords; it has always existed in fullest form in potential in the Absolute. Until the advent of harmony, the system was incomplete. It is not through harmony or through the forms of the scales that the system takes a specific shape but through a gradual revelation of the laws of the mind.

This argument reflects a radical shift in the basis for understanding music, and its implications are far-reaching. For example, not only intervals and chords, but even consonance and dissonance are to be understood in terms of relationships within the scales. In general, consonant combinations are combinations that have the quality of repose within the key. Fetis says that consonant combinations please the ear immediately because they seize the mind as a perfect rapport of tonality.74 They do not serve tonality because they are pleasing; they are pleasing because they serve tonality.75 In Fetis's philosophy, mere sensory pleasure does not explain or cause anything; it is not one of the mind's higher functions. And he eschews counting vibrations because that is not the

73Shirlaw, Theory of Harmony, 337-339. 74Traite, 7. 75Fetis argues against the smoothness of sound as a measure of conso-

nance in his criticism of the theory of Leonhard Euler (Esquisse de I'histoire de l'harmonie [1840], 74-93: trans. in Arlin, "Esquisse," 103-121).




way we perceive. Only the workings of an a priori principle can account for consonance.

In the same way, dissonance is not regarded as an acous- tical property, an uncomfortable experience, or the product of a contrapuntal rule; it is the harmonic combination of

adjacent scale degrees or their inversions.76 F6tis reaches back to the tonality of the ancient Greeks to describe the

origin of dissonance as they did -in the structure of the scale, as the disjuncture between the two tetrachords of the octave. What gives the dissonance its modern character-its ability to create a cadence-is its harmonic fulfillment, which in-

corporates the combination of the active seventh and fourth

degrees.77 The evocation of the sense of a new key through the

substitution or alteration of tones of a chord-that is, the

borrowing of tones from different scales-is fundamental to Fetis's theory of modulation, and modulation is the vehicle

through which music has reached its state of fullest devel-

opment in history: the omnitonique. Fetis defines the omnitonique in terms of specific tech-

niques for certain enharmonic modulations.78 These are the modulations that result from the simultaneous combination of alterations, substitutions, or prolongations (suspensions) to the intervals of natural harmonies so that multiple possibilities for resolution result. He calls the progressions created by these chords transcendent enharmonic progressions (enharmonies transcendantes) because they escape the limits of the necessary resolutions of the key. Their significant quality is that they cannot be understood until they have been

completed; they leave the imagination free, momentarily, of

76It might be noted that the dissonance embodies a contradiction in that it presents the affinities of succession in harmonic combination.

77Traite, 38. 78Traite, 185-200.

any specific key.79 Yet this freedom is achieved through the very affinities that have been escaped.80 Fetis does not say so, but this kind of musical experience parallels Schelling's transcendental dialectic. It is the reconciliation of freedom and necessity through the representation-that is, the work that participates in Art.

Fetis regards this kind of progression as the ultimate fulfillment of the unity of key-the completion of a system in which every key can be related to every other key. He does not describe the omnitonique as a termination, as would be consistent with his eschatological vision of history, but as a new world of tonal possibilities for the composer. He makes a point of the fact that this part of his theory is original, and in the conclusion to Part III of the Traite he gives it over to the artists of the future as well as the present.81

Fetis's idea of the omnitonique justifies the techniques of some of the most advanced music of his time, but his illus- trations are limited to the music of Rossini, Mozart, and J. S. Bach. He expresses his concern that these techniques, if overused, can transform an art elevated to the level of pure Idea into a mere play of sensation.82 He finds their use in

79The transcendental enharmonic modulation need not be realized to serve its purpose in the omnitonic system. Fdtis identifies it also in modulations where some expected complexity is evaded and cites the opening movement of J S. Bach's St. Matthew Passion and certain works of Mozart as examples. He also shows how melodies are made vague or ambiguous by this kind of progression and points out that they cannot be understood apart from their harmonizations. He also points out that in modulations of this kind, melody and harmony are more unified than in any others (Traite, 191-195).

80An important issue in Part II of the treatise is the way in which the sense of tonality can be suspended and regained. See his discussion of se-

quences (Traite, 29). 81Traite, 200. It is not the treatment of the chords specifically that is

original but the way he develops his explanation of the musical event. 82Ibid.




combination with luxuriant orchestration in some of the music of his own time fatiguing to the ear and the spirit, and he cautions composers to use these techniques appropriately.

SUMMARY AND CRITIQUE

The idea of tonality as a system of relationships among tones of a scale and its harmonies is Fetis's most enduring contribution to musical thought, and he would be gratified to see how this idea has come to bridge the divisions in musical inquiry, even though it has been separated from its metaphysical foundations. Not only theorists but historians, ethnomusicologists, performers, and knowledgeable music- lovers as well have all come to depend on it, each group in its own way. Yet it still lacks a logically sound definition that all fields will find valid. Part of the problem is that it has not been distinguished adequately from acoustically based interpretations. When it is treated as a system built from a fundamental tone or related to a fundamental tone, it begs the question of how, that is, on what principle, tones may be related at all, and it restricts the application of the idea to the Western tradition. It is more accurate and more useful to recognize that the tonic, in its original treatment in Fetis's system, is not a fundamental in the sense we have come to use that word. F6tis's theory extends from the idea of a pattern of relationships. That pattern is dictated by the workings of mind-not by any phenomena external to us-and it is most evident in but not limited to the need-that is, the impulse or expectation that musicians and audiences edu- cated in the Western tradition feel-for harmony and melody to move or not to move in a musical context. This theory is a logic of musical motion in which the significance of the tonic is not that it is the originator of the key but that it is the most conclusive point of rest, and as such-and only as such-it delimits the key.

The form of argument in Fetis's theory has been described as deductive and rejected on that account,83 but the inductive-deductive dichotomy is not an adequate model for a description of this scholarship. It does not accommodate the historical dimension, or the eclecticism that marks all of Fetis's work-even the details of his theory, many of which can also be found in the works of Choron, Momigny, even Rameau, and other predecessors. As Fetis developed his ideas, the facts came first. He did not deduce them from the hypothesis; they were already in evidence and attested to by other scholars. These details are the outcome of a rigorous system of information-gathering. The hypothesis, once it had occurred to Fetis, selected and organized the facts. His method is not inductive but scientific in the philosophical sense. It is the method of the transcendentalist, and like other transcendental visions, its logic is betrayed by an eclectic procedure that reads the past according to a principle. Because the final test of "truth" is whether an idea fits a preconceived hypothesis, Fetis can reject anything that con- tradicts his thesis. His argument is not deductive; it is tau- tological. And it becomes positivistic at just the wrong point. It is tantalizing to speculate on the way a Hegelian dialectic might have contributed to a more consistent and encom- passing vision.

There is another flaw in F6tis's system. When he describes the omnitonique-the state of complete fulfillment of the principle of Art in music-in terms of a modulation technique evident in the music of his own time, he posits that the end of musical history has already arrived. In this way, his teleology annihilates itself. The problem is inherent in

83Peter Rummenholler, Moritz Hauptmann als Theoretiker: Eine Studie zum erkenntniskritischen Theoriebegriff in der Musik (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Hartel, 1963): and Musiktheoretisches Denken: Versuchi einer Interpre- tation erkenntnistheoretischer Zeuignisse in der Musiktheorie (Regensburg: Gustav Bosse Verlag. 1967).




any teleology that specifies the final state, as did many in Fetis's time, and here it is compounded by his apparent un- awareness of the contradiction.

The reader today may not understand the designation hypothesis as it is used by Fetis. Although his notion of

tonality as a principle is subject to logical testing-its claim to validity rests on its ability to account logically for a set of facts-it does not serve well as a "working" hypothesis. It cannot predict new facts or derive new theories and it is not amenable to change.84 Instead, it delimits the basic unifying assumptions that dictate the questions, the techniques of

inquiry, and the form in which his interpretation of the data of research will be cast. In this respect, it organizes what we would call today the paradigm for a discipline.85

Through its affinity with German idealism, Fetis's theory can be linked with later theories of music, especially those based in an interpretation of history, but it is not a source for these theories. He had no direct successors, for he was too much a part of an older era. His ideas belonged to a tradition that had extended from Giambattista Vico to the

post-Kantians-one that had provided an alternative to the

dominant Cartesian view during the Enlightenment.86 But that tradition was already in its twilight when Fetis discovered the idea of tonality.

S4In his one public attempt to use it in this way, as an application of the now notorious theory of racial identification based on the tunings of instruments, he embarrassed himself before the anthropological society (see note 66).

S'Thomas S. Kuhn. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago and

London: University of Chicago Press, 1962). 86David R. Stevenson, "Vico's Scieniza Nuo'a: an Alternative to the

Enlightenment Mainstream," in The Quest for the NewL Science: Latnguage

Fetis's transcendental vision was soon overwhelmed by the growing acceptance of positive philosophy, by advances within the peripheral disciplines on which that vision de-

pended, and by the increasing specialization within the branches of professional musical education. And the aim of Fetis and his associates to create a universal philosophy was frustrated by political events. Nevertheless, the impulse toward a complete philosophy of music remained an essential

aspect of public music education in France and Belgium throughout the rest of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth. Fetis's concept of tonality is imperfect, but its

shortcomings seem insignificant compared to the consistency and magnitude of his synthesis. To recognize that the modern idea of tonality is rooted in transcendental philosophy, where it is defined by reference to human processes of cognition, can help us now as we search for a concept adequate for our own time.

ABSTRACT Defined as a metaphysical principle, tonality is the aspect of human mental process that makes musical thought, from perception to creation to scholarly study, possible. It serves as an overarching hypothesis that allows Fetis to organize all knowledge about music into a systematic discipline. Based on Kant's philosophical anthro-

pology and the aesthetics and historiography of Schelling and Hegel, this principle constitutes a transcendental philosophy of music.

Many long-standing misconceptions and arguments about Fetis's

theory will be resolved if it is understood that his inquiry is founded in a theory of mental process rather than the observation of phenomena.

and Thoulght in Eighteenth-Centlury Science, ed. Karl J. Fink and James W. Marchand (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press. 1979).



ART - Fétis's Tonality as a Metaphysical Principle, Hypothesis for a New Science

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