Music and the French enlightenment

Cynthia Verba

Around the middle of the eighteenth century the leading figures of the French Enlightenment engaged in a philosophical debate about the nature of music. The principal participants - Rousseau, Diderot, and d'Alembert - were responding to the views of the composer-theorist Jean-Philippe Rameau, who was both a participant and increasingly a subject of controversy. The discussion centered upon three different events occurring roughly simultaneously. The first was Rameau's formulation of the principle of the fundamental bass - a principle which explained the structure of chords and their progression. The second was the writing of the Encyclopedie, edited by Diderot and d'Alembert with articles on music by Rousseau. The third was the 'Querelle des Bouffons', over the relative merits of Italian comic opera and French tragic opera. The philosophes, in the typical manner of Enlightenment...