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

Abstract

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