'Back to the Future'
- The Music Theorist Heinrich Josef Vincent (1819-1901) and his Polemic against
Figured Bass
A critique that the discipline of music
theory sometimes has to face is that it would be lagging behind the musical
products of composition, what means in other words, that there would be some
musical reality that has to be built first, before it can be theorized. But
there have always been approaches existing that seem to turn round the
relationship between music theory and composition by containing almost
futuristic ideas in their time or dealing with sound material, which was in
use only in later generations of composers. In my presentation, I wish to
concentrate on the theorist Heinrich Joseph Vincent (actually Winzenhoerlein),
whose ideas are nowadays not in the main focus of the theoretical discourse,
maybe not completely without any reason. Nevertheless, Vincents works appear
as refreshing by being rigorous and partly seeming completely liberated of any
historicity. Among other aspects, I would like to talk especially
about Vincent's representations of sounds as geometric figures on circles, his
almost fanatical renunciation from the traditional figured bass system, and
about his draft of a new musical notation. Finally, I would like to present
some (conscious or unconscious) possible precursors and successors of
Vincent´s ideas. A timeline of related approaches emerging this way might shed
a new light on the alleged outsider Vincent.
|
|
