Rameau’s Changing Views on Supposition and Suspension

Abstract

The precise sense of Jean Philippe Rameau's conception of supposition is among the more vexing questions that his theorizing poses. Supposition has been interpreted, on the one hand, as an account of ninth and eleventh chords and, on the other, as a means of explaining melodic suspensions. Understanding Rameau's doctrine means, in part, retracing the many refinements, revisions, and reversals that it underwent over the course of its author's career. This article accordingly reconstructs the development of supposition from the Traité de l'harmonie (1722) to the Code de musique pratique (1760), with particular attention to the extensive discussion of the topic in the "Art de la hasse fondamentale" (c. 1737-43). To a considerable degree, Rameau's conception of supposition was worked out in dialogue with his critics. Retracing that dialogue helps to clarify a number of points: First, Rameau revised his account of supposition continually. Second, the impetus for these revisions was, in many cases, the intervention of a prominent critic. Third, these critics did not, as has been claimed, misunderstand Rameau's account of supposition; rather, they disputed it (the second musicien) or extended it (Charles-Henri de Blainville and Jean-Jacques Rousseau). Fourth, the eventual form that Rameau's doctrine took was significantly influenced by these criticisms; indeed. Rameau tended to appropriate those aspects of his interlocutors' arguments that he ended up finding germane. And fifth, it emerges from this inquiry that supposition is not solely a means of accounting for melodic suspensions; it is also an attempt to explain a number of idiomatic sonorities that are endemic to French baroque music, and to the grand motet in particular.In general, this article aims to provide a more detailed and more nuanced account of supposition than has thus far been available by attending not only to Rameau's own writings but also to the writings of his early critics and to the musical repertories that were these writers' frame of reference.

Embedded Dissonance in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Harmonic Theory and Practice

“…Rameau claimed that the seventh represented the origin of dissonance within harmonic tonality (Christensen 1993, 123-29 andHoltmeier 2017, 38-39), but nevertheless recognized the suspension as distinct from chordal sevenths. The complex theoretical relationship between the two is thus related to the even more complex relationship between suspension and supposition in Rameau's work (Martin 2012 andDamschroder 2008). As Martin argues, supposition is the broader category of the two: even though suspensions are conceptually distinct, they can be explained by supposition and therefore fit into a wider set of harmonic relationships (Martin 2012, 127).…”

The Time It Takes to Listen

“…modified) What Rameau means exactly by sous-entendre and the closely related but carefully differentiated supposer has vexed historians of theory, but a number of commentators observe that this concept has the effect of opening up music's sounding in the direction of listening and analysis. 11 In other words, there is a quasi-deconstructive gesture here, 11 For a discussion of Rameau's changing conceptions of supposer see Martin 2012. which Brian Hyer (1994) brings out when he translates the other term Rameau uses to describe these unsounded, but heard dissonances, ajoutées, as "supplemental." 12 To describe the dissonances as supplementary is to hear the mark of an emptiness in the ajouté and thus to deconstruct the self-presence of the triad, showing that it is alwaysalready opening onto dissonance-as-other.…”