Die Verzeitlichung des musikalischen Wissens um 1800

Kant’s verdict that music, as a transitory art form, is incapable of adequately occupying the mind, and Hegel’s definition of music as the language of subjective inwardness (Innerlichkeit) and consciousness exemplify the process of re-evaluation of music in philosophical discourse at the end of the 18th century and in the early 19th century. This corresponds to a paradigm shift in European cultural history which is described respectively as “Temporalisierung des Wissens” (Reinhart Koselleck), “ästhetische Wende” (Hans Robert Jauß), “historicité des êtres” (Michel Foucault) or “Krise des hermeneutischen Feldes” (Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht). In music-theoretical discourse, the hypothesis of a temporalization of knowledge is a topic that seems to correspond to the classic research fields of Foucault, Wolf Lepenies and Koselleck. According to Foucault, the order of representation is based on the transparent relationship between the poles of object and representation. In the tradition of the thorough-bass treatises of the late 17th and 18th century, the so-called règle de l’octave establishes a clear relation between the bass notes and the chords which are built on them. For this purpose, the règle provides a taxonomic order of chords on the basis of their structure, assigning them to corresponding grades of the major and minor scale. Toward the end of the 18th century, the idea that tonality is a “feeling”, that is, a product of the consciousness, appears in music-theoretic treatises. Here, the transparency of the representational order is questioned by the activation of a perceiving subject. This confirms the thesis that both the order of representation and the episteme of historicity can be traced in the development of music-theoretic discourse from the practice of thorough-bass to the harmonic theories of the 19th century. Such an analysis, however, should not be confused with a history of music theory or with a history of ideas. Rather, it shows how epistemological premises influence ideas and cultures.