Harmonic theories prior to Riemann

[preludium]

Today the work of Riemann is considered the foundation of functional harmonic. This is quite amazing, because it was published only in 1893. How was composition taught during the centuries before? I'm mainly interested in trying to understand the harmonic approaches of J.S.Bach. How could this guy find such incredible chord progressions? There are the weirdest things in his compositions, like altered 9ths, he often prevents resolution by putting a minor 7th in the bass, and it goes on and on...

There must have been some theory at that time, but what was it like?

[preludium]

Just found this Wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_the_affections

Maybe this would be a starting point. Doctrine of affections. But as far as I understood it this deals with melody lines only.

[Bob]

I'm interested too.

I've kept my eyes open but never saw much.

The closest ideas I got were that they were focusing more on counterpoint and the intervals between the notes, rather than chords.

[pianistimo]

i found a book on amazon that looks helpful:

Cambridge History of Western Music Theory by Thomas Christiansen

he suggests in the opening pages these titles from the 17th century -
Thomas Campion's 'A New Way of Making Fowre Parts in Counterpoint by a Most Familiar and Infallible Rule.'  (love the spelling)
Rene Descartes 'Musicae Compendium'
Robert Fludd's 'Utriuesque Cosmi, maioris scilicet et minoris metaphyicas'

now i will look for what he suggests after that.

[pianistimo]

ok.  here's one entitled 'Beethoven's Hero.'  you can see the third is 'Beethoven and the Theorists'  https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0691050589

looks interesting anyways.  i kind of wish i was you right now.  i don't have time for this - but i'm very interested.  can you tell me exactly what he thought he was doing in the grosse fugue?

[pianistimo]

ooh.  i found a good one - though old Jean-Phillipe Rameau 'Treatise on Harmony'  written in 1683 or thereabouts

www.library.upenn.edu/exhibits/rbm/music/landmarks.html  you can see a few pages in french

the modern english translation with notes is done by Phillip Gossett and is available at amazon.com

also - a contemporary of riemann (changing subject now) is moritz hauptman. 

[preludium]

Descartes writes more about the physical basics. I read the extract "Beethoven and the Theorists", but this seems to focus on how Beethoven influenced Riemann and Hauptmann. But the link to the Rameau text helped a lot, because when feeding the French title of the book into a search engine I found this gem:

https://www.chmtl.indiana.edu/tfm/

This site is brimming with texts on music theory back to the 14th century, all in French, but that's ok for me. This will keep me busy for some time. If I find something noteworthy I'll post an English translation or summary. There's a link in the text to even more stuff in Latin, so if someone can read this and is bored with practicing piano...

Thanks a million, pianistimo, you've put me on the right track!
 

[pianistimo]

glad to help!  hope you enjoy your research and post about it from time to time!

[preludium]

During the last days I just browsed through different texts to get a general idea. The amount of information makes it necessary to read this in a more organized way. I started with Charpentier's "Regles de Composition", where I found the style of writing a bit chaotic and clumsy. There is a text by Descartes that actually treats harmony (this came as a surprise to me) and has a better structure. I started reading Rameau's "Démonstration du Principe de L'Harmonie", which was written one century later and is therefore closer to what I'm looking for. By now I've read about one third of it. A fulltime job and 3 hours piano practice per day will allow me to do this reading only on weekends, so it will take some time to come up with a summary.

[pianistimo]

let us know what you find out that interests you!  i'm listening.  i don't have much time either.  and i really thought you were a full-time student.  good to know there are other people that struggle just as much to find out information.  wish i had a library nearby.  that's my excuse -because the one i used to go to is about 45 minutes away.  i can't do that during the day and pick up kindergartener.  maybe next year.  they'll never know where i went during the day.