Music Theory in the Nineteenth Century
Authors: Christensen Thomas 
Published: December 2022

The nineteenth century was a burgeoning time for music theory in the West. One need only peruse a bibliography of musical writings concerning music theory and pedagogy to see that the quantity and variety of works multiplied exponentially when compared to the previous century.1 The nature of these writings varied and crossed a number of disciplinary boundaries, from elementary manuals on the fundamentals of music, through practical works of harmony, form and counterpoint, to learned studies of musical acoustics, tuning, aesthetics and psychology, among many others. The quantity and diversity of these publications pressures us to reflect on what we might properly consider to be ‘music theory’ in the nineteenth century. While this is a question that has been answered in different ways over the past century,2 in this essay we will consider a more circumscribed literature and pedagogy that deals directly with questions related to the teaching and learning of compositional skills – usually in institutional settings. This is not to say that the aim of music theory in the nineteenth century was simply to teach a young student how to become a good composer (although there are pedagogies and pedagogues who promised precisely that). More accurately, compositional music theory could be a means offered to musicians from all ranks by which they would gain an ‘inside’ understanding of the ways the vocabulary, grammar and forms of music worked in practice. Along with historical knowledge of the most important composers, genres and styles of music, music theory had become in the nineteenth century a kind of practical knowledge available for a growing community of middle-class educated musicians. So how could one gain entry to such inside compositional knowledge? In the nineteenth century, it was done in two basic ways. One could begin from ‘below’, so to speak, with a student learning the rudiments and skills of music at a very basic level and gradually ascending through a pedagogy of graded study and exercise. This is the ‘practical’ or ‘propaedeutic’ tradition of music theory. The second approach was from ‘above’, whereby one would begin by studying masterpieces of musical repertoire to gain an appreciation and understanding of canonical works and thereby see their governing principles displayed, and perhaps even gain inspiration for one’s own musical compositions. Both approaches can be found in music theory texts published in the nineteenth century – often by the same author. Whether they actually led to the same place, however, is another question altogether. Still, neither the reading of music theory textbooks nor the study of scores alone would be sufficient for learning to compose. The most important transmitters of theoretical and compositional knowledge were actually the many institutions of learning that were established in the nineteenth century for the teaching of music. The founding of the French Conservatoire national de musique et de déclamation in 1795, shortly after the revolution, marks the beginning of this important chapter of musical instruction in Europe. It is important to keep in mind that during the ancien régime of the eighteenth century, musical instruction usually took place as guild knowledge passed on by a master composer to a small number of apprentices, whether in the church, the court or – somewhat uniquely – a number of orphanages in Naples. These Neapolitan orphanages that passed on a remarkable tradition of partimenti-based training were called conservatori thus inaugurating the term as a descriptor for an institution of musical instruction.3 With the establishment of the French Conservatoire, though, musical instruction began to be more institutionalised and standardised. It became the model for many other countries which soon adopted the structure – if not necessarily the specific curriculum – of the Conservatoire for their own national institutions of musical instruction (Milan – 1807, Prague – 1808, Warsaw – 1810, Vienna – 1817, London – 1822, Leipzig – 1843, Moscow – 1866). Music theory (though not under that name) was taught in the French Conservatoire by means of three basic, though overlapping, subdivisions: harmony, counterpoint and composition.4 These divisions were often porous and fungible, with individual instructors charged with teaching two or even all three of those subjects. Yet even as all of these subjects were traditional ones found in many eighteenth-century texts of musical instruction, important changes were being introduced.