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FOUR STEPS TOWARDS PARNASSUS: JOHANN DAVID HEINICHEN'S METHOD OF KEYBOARD IMPROVISATION AS A MODEL OF BAROQUE COMPOSITIONAL PEDAGOGY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 August 2019

DEREK REMEŠ
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Abstract

Johann David Heinichen's treatise Der General-Bass in der Composition (Dresden, 1728) is the most comprehensive study of thoroughbass ever written, yet it has been continually overshadowed in historical accounts by works published in the same decade by Jean-Philippe Rameau (Traité de l'Harmonie) and J. J. Fux (Gradus ad Parnassum). Despite Heinichen's nuanced treatment of a wide variety of musical subjects, Der General-Bass has yet to receive wide acclaim, in large part because it lacks a reductive pedagogical framework that can rival Rameau's basse fondamentale or Fux's species in simplicity and immediate appeal. Yet fortunately, the ‘partimento renaissance’ of the last decade has brought renewed scholarly attention to the centrality of thoroughbass is the only acceptable break in eighteenth-century music-making. Thus the time is ripe for a reappraisal of Heinichen's monumental work. On at least one occasion, Heinichen does indeed outline a pedagogical method of eminent simplicity: his four-step instruction in how to improvise a prelude at the keyboard. According to Heinichen, this method, which seems to be completely unknown today, is to be understood not only as instruction in improvising, but also as training for beginning composers. In explicating the pedagogy of one of eighteenth-century Europe's leading composer-theorists, this article contributes to both the historically informed analysis and the practical teaching of baroque music today.

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Eighteenth-Century Music , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , September 2019 , pp. 133 - 154
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press, 2019 

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Footnotes

The author wishes to thank Professor Dr Felix Diergarten (Hochschule für Musik Freiburg) for offering insightful critiques of this article.

References

1 Heinichen, Johann David, Der General-Bass in der Composition (Dresden: author, 1728), 901–902Google Scholar. All translations in this article are my own.

2 Buelow's, George J. Thoroughbass Accompaniment according to Johann David Heinichen (Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1966; revised edition, 1986)Google Scholar translates only select portions of Heinichen's 1728 treatise.

3 There were at least eight German editions of Kellner's work between 1732 and 1796, the second of which sold two thousand copies, plus issues in Swedish (Stockholm, 1739), Dutch (Amsterdam, 1741 and 1751) and Russian (Moscow, 1791). Assuming the other editions sold only one thousand copies each, there still would have been a total of thirteen thousand copies of Kellner's treatise in circulation before 1800.

4 Regarding Kellner's connections to the Bach circle see Leaver, Robin A. and Remeš, Derek, ‘J. S. Bach's Chorale-Based Pedagogy: Origins and Continuity’, BACH: Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute 48/2 and 49/1 (2018), 116–150CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The translation of Kellner can be found in volume one of Remeš, Derek and Leaver, Robin A., Realizing Thoroughbass Chorales in the Circle of J. S. Bach, two volumes (Colfax, NC: Wayne Leupold Editions, 2019)Google Scholar.

5 The most detailed English-language treatment of Heinichen's theories is Buelow, Thoroughbass Accompaniment. Buelow also contributed three articles: ‘Heinichen's Treatment of Dissonance’, Journal of Music Theory 6/2 (1962), 216–274CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘The Full-Voiced Style of Thorough-Bass Realization’, Acta Musicologica 35/4 (1963), 159–171CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and ‘The Italian Influence in Heinichen's “Der General-Bass in der Composition”’, Basler Jahrbuch für historische Musikpraxis 18 (1994), 47–65Google Scholar. Heinichen's much shorter 1711 treatise, however, has been translated in full as Johann David Heinichen's ‘ Gründliche Anweisung’ (1711), trans. Benedikt Brillmayer and Casey Mongoven (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon, 2012). The most significant recent article in English is Holtmeier, Ludwig, ‘Heinichen, Rameau, and the Italian Thoroughbass Tradition: Concepts of Tonality and Chord in the Rule of the Octave’, Journal of Music Theory 51/1 (2007), 5–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which is largely a translation of Holtmeier, , ‘Implizite Theorie: Zum Akkordbegriff der italienischen Generalbass-Tradition’, Basler Jahrbuch für historische Musikpraxis 31 (2007), 149–170Google Scholar. Holtmeier also published this material again with slight alterations in Rameaus Langer Schatten: Studien zur deutschen Musiktheorie des 18. Jahrhunderts (Hildesheim: Olms, 2017), 109–146Google Scholar.

6 Exceptions include Heimann, Walter, Der Generalbaß-Satz und seine Rolle in Bachs Choral-Satz (Munich: Katzbichler, 1973)Google Scholar; Horn, Wolfgang, ‘Generalbaßlehre als pragmatische Harmonielehre. Teil 1: Bemerkungen zum harmonischen Denken Johann David Heinichens’, in Jahrbuch 2001 der Ständigen Konferenz Mitteldeutsche Barockmusik, ed. Seidel, Wilhelm und Wollny, Peter (Schneverdingen: Wagner, 2002), 9–40Google Scholar; Horn, Wolfgang, ‘Generalbaßlehre als pragmatische Harmonielehre. Teil II: Die Besprechung der Cantata “Della mia bella Clori” von Carlo Francesco Cesarini in Johann David Heinichens “Anweisung zum Generalbaß” (1711)’, in Jahrbuch 2002 der Ständigen Konferenz Mitteldeutsche Barockmusik, ed. Wollny, Peter (Schneverdingen: Wagner, 2004), 12–53Google Scholar; and Maul, Michael, ‘Johann David Heinichen und der “Musicalische Horribilicribrifax”: Überlegungen zur Vorrede von Heinichens Gründlicher Anweisung’, in Musikalische Norm um 1700, ed. Bayreuther, Rainer (Berlin: Gruyter, 2010), 145–166Google Scholar. Yet this short list still pales in comparison with the literature on Rameau and Fux.

7 In the last decade of J. S. Bach's life, a Leipzig printer-publisher issued a comprehensive list of all major subjects that also gave the current prices of individual imprints: Heinichen's 1728 treatise is listed at two thaler eight groschen (approximately $235 at today's values). See Georgi, Theophili, Allgemeines Europäisches Bücher-Lexicon, eight volumes (Leipzig: Georgi, 1742–1758), volume 2 (1742), 228Google Scholar. In contrast, the New Bach Reader, ed. Christoph Wolff (New York: Norton, 1998), 529, lists Heinichen's treatise as costing only two thaler (about $225 at today's values).

8 Regarding the tendency for rationalist (yet over-reductive) theories to eclipse less systematic (yet more nuanced) ones see Christensen, Thomas, ‘Monumental Theory’, in Experimental Affinities in Music, ed. de Assis, Paulo (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2015), 210Google Scholar, and Holtmeier, ‘Heinichen, Rameau, and the Italian Thoroughbass Tradition’, 42.

9 Heinichen never mentions Fux by name in the 1728 treatise, but the reference to Parnassus in the quotation that opens this article must be an allusion to Fux's tract. In contrast, Heinichen explicitly refers to Rameau's Traité, though he only focuses on one aspect – Rameau's harmonization of the Rule of the Octave.

10 Adlung, Jacob, Anleitung zu der musikalischen Gelahrtheit (Erfurt: Jungnicol, 1758), 633Google Scholar.

11 See Werckmeister, Andreas, Die nothwendigsten Anmerckungen und Regeln (Aschersleben: Gottlob Ernst Struntze, 1698)Google Scholar and Harmonologia Musica oder Kurtze Anleitung Zur Musicalischen Composition (Frankfurt and Leipzig: Calvisius, 1702)Google Scholar, and Friedrich Erhard Niedt, Musicalische Handleitung, three volumes (Hamburg, 1700–1717). Volume 1 was reissued in 1710, and volume 2 reissued in 1721, edited by Johann Mattheson. Volume 3 was published posthumously in 1717, edited by Mattheson. The three volumes have been translated by Poulin, Pamela and as, Irmgard Taylor F. E. Niedt, The Musical Guide Parts I–III (1700–1721) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989)Google Scholar. Unlike Heinichen's teachings, Niedt's method has been the object of numerous studies, probably owing to the brevity of his instruction and the availability of an English translation. Three such studies are Espinosa, Alma, ‘More on the Figured-Bass Accompaniment in Bach's Time: Friedrich Erhard Niedt and “The Musical Guide”’, BACH: Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute 12/1 (1981), 13–22Google Scholar; Hiemke, Sven, ‘“Die beste Methode”: Zur Funktion des Generalbasses in Johann Sebastian Bachs Unterricht in Anlehnung an die Musicalische Handleitung von Friedrich Erhard Niedt’, in Musik zwischen Spätbarock und Wiener Klassik: Festschrift für Gisela Vogel-Beckmann zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Heister, Hanns-Werner and Hochstein, Wolfgang (Berlin: Weidler, 2005), 29–45Google Scholar; and Menke, Johannes, Kontrapunkt II: Die Musik des Barock (Laaber: Laaber, 2017), 269–284Google Scholar.

12 The debate over whether thoroughbass qualifies as true improvisation was taken up by Fritz Oberdoerffer, Robert Donington and George J. Buelow in the 1960s. In brief, the latter two authors claimed that Oberdoerffer's definition of thoroughbass was too restrictive, while his definition of improvisation was too broad, resulting in the false conclusion that the two are separate disciplines. See Oberdoerffer, Fritz, ‘Neuere Generalbaßstudien’, Acta Musicologica 39/3–4 (1967), 182–201CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Donington, Robert and Buelow, George J., ‘Figured Bass as Improvisation’, Acta Musicologica 40/2–3 (1968), 178–179CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Oberdoerffer, ‘Again: Figured Bass as Improvisation’, Acta Musicologica 41/3–4 (1969), 236–238; and Donington, ‘Prof. Robert Donington Replies’, Acta Musicologica 41/3–4 (1969), 238–239.

13 Bach-Dokumente: Supplement zur Neue Bach-Ausgabe, nine volumes (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1962–2017), volume 1 (1962), 127Google Scholar.

14 Bach's role as agent was first announced in the Leipziger Post-Zeitung on 4 April 1729. See Bach-Dokumente, volume 2 (1969), 260.

15 Highlights in this growing body of literature include Gjerdingen, Robert O., Music in the Galant Style (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Diergarten, Felix, ‘“The True Fundamentals of Composition”: Haydn's Partimento Counterpoint’, Eighteenth-Century Music 8/1 (2011), 53–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sanguinetti, Giorgio, The Art of Partimento: History, Theory, and Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012)Google Scholar; Byros, Vasili, ‘Prelude on a Partimento: Invention in the Compositional Pedagogy of the German States in the Time of J. S. Bach’, Music Theory Online 21/3 (2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Tour, Peter van, Counterpoint and Partimento: Methods of Teaching Composition in Late Eighteenth-Century Naples (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2015)Google Scholar. See also the essay collection Partimento and Continuo Playing in Theory and Practice, ed. Moelants, Dirk (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The 2007 issue (51/1) of the Journal of Music Theory is also dedicated entirely to partimento.

16 Diergarten, Felix, ‘Editorial’, Eighteenth-Century Music 14/1 (2017), 5–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 See, for example, Diergarten, ‘The True Fundamentals’ and Byros, ‘Prelude on a Partimento’.

18 See, for example, the research project at the Hochschule der Künste Bern, ‘Creating the Neapolitan Canon: Music and Music Theory between Naples and Paris in the Early Nineteenth Century’ www.hkb-interpretation.ch/projekte/neapolitancanon.html.

19 Elsewhere I have described this historical turn as the ‘Early-Theory Revival’: Remeš, Derek, ‘Anweisung zum Fantasieren: Symposium zur Praxis und Theorie der Improvisation im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert, Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, Basel, 19–21 March 2018’, conference report, Eighteenth-Century Music 16/1 (2019), 90CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This shift can be understood in part as an offshoot of the historische Satzlehre movement that gained traction in Germany in the 1980s, particularly in centres like the Schola Cantorum in Basel. See Jans, Markus, ‘Zur Idee und Praxis der historischen Satzlehre an der Schola Cantorum Basiliensis’, Basler Jahrbuch für historische Musikpraxis 32 (2008), 165–174Google Scholar; Arlt, Wulf, ‘Satzlehre und ästhetische Erfahrung’, in Musiktheorie an ihren Grenzen: Neue und alte Musik, ed. Moths, Angelika and others (Bern: Peter Lang, 2009), 47–66Google Scholar; Menke, Johannes, ‘The Skill of Musick: Handleitungen zum Komponieren in der historischen Satzlehre an der Schola Cantorum Basiliensis’, Basler Jahrbuch für historische Musikpraxis 34 (2010), 149–167Google Scholar; and Menke, , ‘Vision, Abenteuer und Auftrag: Wulf Arlts historische Satzlehre’, in Beredte Musik: Konversationen zum 80. Geburtstag von Wulf Arlt, ed. Kirnbauer, Martin (Basel: Schwabe, 2018), 277–281Google Scholar.

20 Unlike Heinichen's 1728 treatise, the numerous works of Mattheson have received much scholarly attention, including a translation of his magnum opus, Der vollkommene Capellmeister (Hamburg: Christian Herold, 1739), trans. Ernest C. Harriss as Johann Mattheson's ‘Der vollkommene Capellmeister’: A Revised Translation with Critical Commentary (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1981). Significantly, Mattheson did not believe that thoroughbass should form the basis of compositional instruction. See Heimann, Der Generalbaß-Satz, 41–47.

21 The idea that dissonance is essentially an interruption to consonance can be traced back centuries. See, for example, Roig-Francolí, Miguel A., ‘Playing in Consonances: A Spanish Renaissance Technique of Chordal Improvisation’, Early Music 23/3 (1995), 461–471CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Heinichen, Der General-Bass, 131–132. C. P. E. Bach describes his father's teaching as beginning with ‘pure four-part thoroughbass’ (‘Den Anfang musten sein Schüler mit der Erlernung des reinen 4stimmigen Generalbaßes machen’). Bach-Dokumente, volume 3 (1984), 289.

23 A 6/3 chord may contain a fourth between upper voices (for example, e, g, c1), but only as a secondary interval (quarta fundata), where the fourth is considered consonant. When a fourth occurs against the bass as a primary interval (quarta non fundata), however, it is considered dissonant. Regarding this distinction see Walther, Johann, Praecepta der Musicalischen Composition, ed. Benary, Peter (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1955), 98–99Google Scholar.

24 Both sets of rules are given in Heinichen, Der General-Bass, 734–744. Regarding Klangschrittlehre see Sachs, Klaus-Jürgen, ‘Zur Tradition der Klangschritt-Lehre: Die Texte mit der Formel “Si cantus ascendit . . .” und ihre Verwandten’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 28/4 (1971), 233–270CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Heinichen, Der General-Bass, 740.

26 Christensen, Thomas's early article ‘The “Règle de l'Octave” in Thorough-Bass Theory and Practice’, Acta Musicologica 64/2 (1992), 91–117CrossRefGoogle Scholar, has been followed by more recent contributions, including Jans, Markus, ‘Towards a History of the Origin and Development of the Rule of the Octave’, in Towards Tonality: Aspects of Baroque Music Theory, ed. Dejans, Peter (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2007), 119–144CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gjerdingen, Music in the Galant Style, 467–470; Holtmeier, ‘Heinichen, Rameau, and the Italian Thoroughbass Tradition’; Sanguinetti, The Art of Partimento, 108–138; Menke, Kontrapunkt II, 99–111; and Schwenkreis, Markus, ed., Compendium Improvisation: Fantasieren nach historischen Quellen des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts (Basel: Schwabe, 2018), 103–112Google Scholar.

27 Heinichen, Der General-Bass, 764–765. Gasparini, Francesco, L'harmonico pratico al cimbalo (Venice: Antonio Bortoli, 1708)Google Scholar, trans. Frank S. Stillings and ed. David L. Burrows as The Practical Harmonist at the Harpsichord (New Haven: Yale School of Music, 1963), 73–75, and Rameau, Jean-Philippe, Traité de l'Harmonie réduite à ses principes naturels (Paris: Ballard, 1722)Google Scholar, trans. Philip Gossett as Treatise on Harmony (New York: Dover, 1971), 396–401.

28 In this respect, Heinichen's Schemata is analogous to what Giorgio Sanguinetti refers to as the ‘essential foundations of the key’ in eighteenth-century Italian sources. He writes that ‘the “foundations of the key” represent the essential (or substantial) harmonies of the scale, the sonority that every scale degree would ideally assume in the absence of any constraint; whereas the chords of the RO (and of any other schema of bass motion) result from addition of accidental (or nonessential) intervals to the essential chords, or from their manipulation’. Sanguinetti, The Art of Partimento, 118.

29 Heinichen, Der General-Bass, 765.

30 Heinichen, Der General-Bass, 765.

31 Heinichen, Der General-Bass, 765.

32 Holtmeier's reasoning, however, in ‘Heinichen, Rameau, and the Italian Thoroughbass Tradition’, relies on notions of the cadence rather than of diatonic uniformity.

33 Heinichen, Der General-Bass, 160–195.

34 Heinichen, Der General-Bass, 151, note g.

35 Heinichen, Der General-Bass, 107.

36 Heinichen, Der General-Bass, 740.

37 See Zirwes, Stephan, Von Ton zu Ton: Die Ausweichung in den musiktheoretischen Schriften des 18. Jahrhunderts (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2018)Google Scholar.

38 The only exception is the fourth degree as a transitus from degree five to three (6/4/2 chord), which Heinichen marks in black to show its restricted status. Note, however, that when leaping to or from the fourth degree, it takes a 5/3 chord, as one would expect. These instances are marked with editorial arrows. See Heinichen, Der General-Bass, 905, note u.

39 Holtmeier, ‘Heinichen, Rameau, and the Italian Thoroughbass Tradition’, 14.

40 The tally of forty 6/3 chords includes those instances where a 5/3 or 6/3 chord may be used (where ‘5 6’ occurs over a single note in Example 6).

41 Heinichen, Der General-Bass, 742, note k.

42 Heinichen, Der General-Bass, 743. See also Special Rule Six, which allows a 5/3 chord or a 6/3 chord on the sixth degree in the major mode, since there is a whole step between degrees five and six. Heinichen, Der General-Bass, 744.

43 Note that for the D minor Schemata, Heinichen never uses the chromatically raised sixth degree or the chromatically lowered seventh degree.

44 Heinichen, Der General-Bass, 906–907.

45 Heinichen, Der General-Bass, 908.

46 Heinichen, Der General-Bass, 908.

47 Heinichen, Der General-Bass, 910.

48 Heinichen, Der General-Bass, 908.

49 Only four pitches are omitted from the D minor Schemata; these are identified in Example 6.

50 Heinichen, Der General-Bass, 912.

51 C. P. E. Bach sanctions the occasional use of a five-voice chord to solve a voice-leading problem. Bach, C. P. E., Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen, part two (Berlin: Georg Ludewig Winter, 1762), 8Google Scholar.

52 Heinichen, Der General-Bass, 913. ‘Variations and fantasies’ may refer to the kinds of diminutions given in a newly discovered manuscript treatise by Jacob Adlung, entitled ‘Anweisung zum Fantasieren’ (1726–1727). See Remeš, ‘Anweisung zum Fantasieren’, 89.

53 Heinichen, Der General-Bass, 913, note x.

54 Heinichen, Der General-Bass, 913.