Table of Contents

List of illustrations; Foreword by Ian Bent; Acknowledgments; Introduction; 1. Rameau and the Enlightenment; 2. Rameau as music theorist; 3. Precursors of harmonic theory; 4. The generative fundamental; 5. The fundamental bass; 6. The corps sonore; 7. Mode and modulation; 8. Rameau and the philosophes; 9. D'Alembert; 10. The final years; Appendices; Select bibliography; Index of subjects; Index of proper names.

Promotional Information

This is the first intellectual biography of the French composer and theorist Jean-Philippe Rameau, the 'Newton of the Arts'.

Reviews

"Ian Bent's foreward describes this intellectual biography as the first to survey the totality of Rameau's work, incorporating recently discovered materials, along with glimpses of his contemporaries, proponents and antagonists alike. The broad scope of the book's approach, balanced by an appropriate level of technical and theoretical detail, will be welcomed by theorists and scholars of music, 18th-century science, the Enlightenment, and the history of ideas." The Diapason