Towards a Diachronic Music Theory

Descripción del proyecto

Un método diacrónico de la evolución musical

Durante décadas, la teoría musical ha estado dominada por los métodos sincrónicos, que se centran en instantáneas estáticas de momentos musicales. Si bien valiosas, estas teorías tienen tres importantes puntos ciegos. No pueden explicar las tendencias, ya que dejan de lado los procesos de cambio a lo largo del tiempo. Tampoco evalúan la música entre dos instantáneas, aplicando a menudo modelos anticuados o anacrónicos. Por último, oscurecen las tendencias al presentar una falsa sensación de estabilidad. En este contexto, el proyecto DIACHRONY, financiado por el Consejo Europeo de Investigación, pretende cambiar este paradigma adoptando una metodología diacrónica, centrada en los procesos de cambio. Mediante el estudio de 1 700 obras de 1680 a 1819, el proyecto explora las tendencias de la forma a gran escala, la estructura de las frases, las cadencias y los esquemas, ofreciendo nuevas perspectivas sobre la evolución musical.

Objetivo

This proposal argues for a quantum shift in the way we theorize about music. In the past three decades, music theory has been dominated by synchronic theories based upon typologies. The value of these theories notwithstanding, there are three significant “blindspots” that arise from a purely synchronic perspective. First, synchronic approaches are incapable of explaining trends – they at best capture “snapshots” along a timeline, but cannot explain processes: how one snapshot progressed to another. Second, music written between two snapshots is evaluated in synchronic approaches either according to a defunct model, or according to one that had not yet come into existence, as often occurs with the music of the generation between Bach and Mozart. Third, such snapshots mask trends during their period of interest behind a false façade of stability.

I propose to address this problem through a diachronic methodology, designed to focus not on definitions and synchronic typologies, but rather on processes of change over time. To this end I will carry out a corpus study of unprecedented scope, covering 1700 works between 1680-1819. In two overlapping subprojects based upon the same corpus, I will examine trends in four fields: large-scale form; phrase structure; cadences (musical units signifying closure); and schemata (stock musical phrases).

Tracing the diachronic process of change across the decades of the corpus, I will reveal the forces that propelled music from one style to another, and through this, the tensions with which composers were faced and to which they responded. Furthermore, my novel diachronic approach will enable a more flexible mode of accounting for the fuzzy limits of theoretical definitions and histories. Lastly, with its original conceptual premises and its corpus-based methodology, this project will serve as a model for a new approach to music theory, encouraging the embrace of a diachronic perspective in other fields of music theory too.