Fétis and the Idea of Progress in Music

Anne-Emmanuelle CEULEMANS

Translated by Holly Chung

“Art does not progress: it transforms itself.” This quotation from François-Joseph Fétis, often

cited in the musicological literature, has established the Belgian musicologist as a precocious

advocate of a vision of the arts uncoupled from the idea of progress. However, Fétis’s

position is more ambiguous than it seems at first glance. A close reading of his works shows

that he perceived not only transformation, but also progress in the history of music. This idea

is primarily manifested in his judgments of medieval and non-European musics, which seem

to have been repellent to him—judgments that, in turn, resulted in severe, even cruel

dismissals of musical practices with which he was unfamiliar.

This contradiction is of long standing and runs through many of Fétis’s publications.

The following passage, drawn from the fourth book of his Traité complet de la théorie et de la

pratique de l’harmonie, may serve as an example. Having proposed a historical study of

numerous harmonic treatises, Fétis then defends the solidity of his own theory in comparison

to others: “the indisputable excellence [of this theory] is that it is at once the history of the

progress of the art, and the best analysis of the traits manifested therein.”1 The same

                                                                                                               
1
“Ce qui en démontre invinciblement l’excellence, c’est qu’elle est en même temps l’histoire

des progrès de l’art, et la meilleure analyse des faits qui s’y manifestent.” François-Joseph

Fétis, Traité complet de la théorie et de la pratique de l’harmonie contenant la doctrine de la

science et de l’art, 2nd ed. (Paris: Maurice Schlesinger, 1844), 254, emphasis added. This and

all subsequent translations from French sources are by Holly Chung unless otherwise noted.

For an English edition of the Traité, see Fétis, Complete Treatise on the Theory and Practice

of Harmony, trans. Peter M. Landley (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon, 2008).

observation appears unchanged in the various reprintings of the Traité, even though it

manifestly contradicts the affirmation of the non-progressive nature of the arts that emerges in

Fétis’s other writings of the same period.

Katharine Ellis has recently underscored Fétis’s equivocation concerning the idea of

progress.2 The present article proposes to explain this ambivalence by placing his writings in

dialogue with the cultural context in which his vision of music is anchored. By striving to

define how Fétis viewed music under the categories of “art,” “aesthetic experience,” and

“genius,” we may begin to comprehend what the theorist specifically meant when he declared

that “art does not progress.”

THE NOTION OF PROGRESS IN MUSIC

The history of Western music is peppered with testimonials from musicians and music

connoisseurs who affirm the superiority of the music of their time over that of previous eras.

To cite just two examples, in his Liber de arte contrapuncti of 1477, Johannes Tinctoris

opined: “It is a matter of great surprise that there is no composition written over forty years

ago which is thought by the learned as worthy of performance.”3 Three centuries later, Jean-

Benjamin de La Borde expressed a similar idea in the preface to his Essai sur la musique

ancienne et moderne: “Undoubtedly, one must hope that a pen more experienced than our

own will undertake a more profound work about an art that becomes more interesting by the

                                                                                                               
2
Katharine Ellis, Music Criticism in Nineteenth-Century France: “La Revue et gazette

musicale de Paris,” 1834–1880 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 44,

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511470264.
3
“Neque quod satis admirari nequeo quippiam compositum nisi citra annos quadraginta extat

quod auditu dignum ab eruditis existimetur.” Johannes Tinctoris, The Art of Counterpoint,

trans. and ed. Albert Seay (n.p.: American Institute of Musicology, 1961), 14.
day owing to the progress it has made in France, especially in the past several years.”4 And a

few pages later: “However, although we are very much persuaded of the dearth of progress

that music had made among the Ancients, we remain far from claiming that this art had

scarcely been cultivated with care.”5 As Rudolf Flotzinger has shown, in comparison to

previous eras, the first histories of music published during the Enlightenment codified a vision

of an evolution of music built upon the idea of progress,6 a phenomenon illustrated by La

Borde’s Essai. Thus Fétis’s claim that art did not in fact progress made him a pioneer among

music historians.

FÉTIS AS A PHILOSOPHER OF MUSIC

                                                                                                               
4
“Il est sans doute à desirer que quelque plume plus exercée que le nôtre, entreprenne un

ouvrage plus approfondi sur un art qui devient chaque jour plus intéressant, par les progrès

qu’il fait en France, sur-tout depuis quelques années.” Jean-Benjamin de La Borde, Essai sur

la musique ancienne et moderne (Paris: Eugène Onfroy, 1780), v–vi.

5
“Mais quoique nous soyons très-persuadés du peu de progrès que la Musique avait fait chez

les Anciens, nous sommes loin de penser que cet art n’y ait point été cultivé avec soin.” Ibid.,

xii–xiii.
6
Rudolf Flotzinger, “Progress and Development in Music History,” in The Idea of Progress,

ed. Jürgen Mittelstrass, Peter McLaughlin, and Arnold Burgen (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter,

1997), 124, http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/9783110820423.121. See also Robert Wangermée,

François-Joseph Fétis, musicologue et compositeur: Contribution à l’étude du goût musical

au XIXe siècle (Bruxelles: Palais des Académies, 1950), 118–23.

Over the course of his career, Fétis demonstrated a clear interest in philosophy. At the time of

his death, his library contained some 364 works on the subject.7 He himself intended to

publish a general philosophy of music (“Philosophie générale de la musique”), yet only an

outline and summary of this work remain.8 His vision of progress in the arts, then, must

clearly be understood in light of these philosophical preoccupations. The latter have been the

subject of numerous studies;9 thus it will suffice here merely to recall a few salient features

that illuminate the issue.

                                                                                                               
7
Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, Catalogue de la bibliothèque de F. J. Fétis, acquise par

l’État belge (Bruxelles: C. Muquardt, 1877), nos. 48–301 and 6867–6976.

8
The outline and summary have been published in Fétis, “De la philosophie de la musique,”

Revue et gazette musicale 7 (1840), 2–5. A slightly different manuscript version, entitled

“Bases de la science et de l’art dans la musique—Traité de la philosophie de la musique,” is

held by the Bibliothèque du Conservatoire de Bruxelles (MS 30200). It is reproduced in

Wangermée, François-Joseph Fétis, 319–24.

9
Peter Anthony Bloom, “Critical Reaction to Beethoven in France: François-Joseph Fétis,”

Revue belge de musicologie/Belgisch tijdschrift voor muziekwetenschap 26–27 (1972–73),

67–83; David Lewin, “Concerning the Inspired Revelation of F.-J. Fétis,” Theoria 2 (1987),

1–12; Rosalie Schellhous, “Fétis’s Tonality as a Metaphysical Principle: Hypothesis for a

New Science,” Music Theory Spectrum 13 (1991), 219–40, doi:10.2307/745899; D. Martin

Jenni, “Fétis and le sens musical,” in Convention in Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-

Century Music: Essays in Honor of Leonard G. Ratner, ed. Wye Jamison Allanbrook, Janet

M. Levy, and William Mahrt (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon, 1992), 447–72; Thomas

Christensen, “Fétis and Emerging Tonal Consciousness,” Music Theory in the Age of

Romanticism, ed. Ian Bent (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 37–56; Ellis,

Music Criticism, 33–45; Valérie Dufour, “Pour une typologie de la critique musicale chez
 Fétis’s interest in philosophy seems to have initially been linked to his activities as a

writer on music. Conscious of the evolution of taste and vagaries of fashion, he hoped to find

in philosophy a lens through which he could evaluate composers and their works in a rational

manner. The necessity of doing so was self-imposed, a result of his continued work on his

monumental Biographie universelle des musiciens. In view of the mass of information to be

digested, Fétis asked himself how he would assess composers, their works, and their relative

importance in the history of music in an objective way. He sought to prevent the work from

limiting itself to enumerating chronological points and wanted to contribute to a better

understanding of music and its history.10 The preface to the first edition of the Biographie

universelle des musiciens encapsulates this preoccupation: “If the actual principles of the art

were discovered; if all that had been done in this art, from the most ancient times through the

present day, could be realized in several radical ideas, […] then the appreciation of this labor

and these products would no longer be a function of certain emotional impressions, but

instead the expression of absolute truth.”11 In the “Résumé philosophique de l’histoire de la

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
Fétis: Sources et traces lexicales,” Revue belge de musicologie/Belgisch tijdschrift voor

muziekwetenschap 62 (2008), 51–61; and Caleb Mutch, “‘L’art ne progresse pas’:

Reconsidering Teleology in Fetis’s Historiography,” unpublished manuscript. I wish to thank

Professor Mutch for sending me his article in advance of its publication.

10
On this subject see Wangermée, François-Joseph Fétis, 161.
11
“Si les principes réels de l’art étaient découverts; si tout ce qui a été fait dans cet art depuis

les temps les plus anciens jusqu’à ce jour pouvait être ramené à un certain nombre d’idées

radicales; […] alors l’appréciation de ces travaux et de ces productions ne serait plus le

résultat de certaines impressions sentimentales, mais bien l’expression de la vérité absolue.”

Fétis, Biographie universelle des musiciens et bibliographie générale de la musique

(Brussels: Meline, Cans, 1835), 1:xxx–xxxi.

musique” that follows this preface and spans more than two hundred pages, the author then

takes pains to emphasize that his conception of music history cannot be reduced to a

succession of factual events, but rather should be understood to deploy a “radical” principle of

the kind invoked in the passage above.12 That principle is tonalité.

The Foundation of Music in the Human Mind

As a whole, Fétis’s musical aesthetic is aligned with German Idealism and characterized by a

rejection of three traditions inherited from the eighteenth century, all of which aim to find an

extra-musical rationale for music: sensualism; the concept of music as an imitation of nature;

and justifications for music rooted in mathematics or physics. In a letter to Eugène Troupenas

dated 17 October 1838, Fétis claims that it was in the 1830s that he developed these

convictions and forged a new, coherent aesthetic system.13

Sensualism, as defended by Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, saw sensations as the source

of all knowledge. According to Condillac, on Fétis’s idiosyncratic reading, music is defined

by the physiological organization of the ear and can produce only a sense of physical

enjoyment.14 Conversely, from Fétis’s point of view, music cannot be limited to a series of

                                                                                                               
12
Fétis, “Résumé philosophique de l’histoire de la musique,” ibid., 1:xxxvii–ccliv.
13
Robert Wangermée, ed., François-Joseph Fétis: Correspondance (Sprimont: Mardaga,

2006), letter no. 38-5, 135. See also Histoire générale de la musique depuis les temps les plus

anciens jusqu’à nos jours, vol. 1 (Paris: Firmin Didot Frères, 1869), i–ii.
14
Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, Traité des sensations, in vol. 1 of Oeuvres philosophiques, ed.

Georges Le Roy (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1947), 240–42. See Fétis’s

commentary in the Traité, xviii–xix. Fétis also condemns sensualism in “État actuel de

l’esthétique musicale (Science du beau en musique),” Revue et gazette musicale de Paris 5

(1838), 6.
sensations that are pleasant to the ear. Rather, music is capable of moving the soul and also

assumes active thought on the part of the listener. Due to these features, music may be

elevated to a higher status—to what Fétis calls “art.”

Fétis categorically dismisses the conception of music as an imitation of nature, an idea

that in the eighteenth century was defended most notably by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Charles

Batteux, and Denis Diderot. Although Fétis does not deny that music may imitate certain

natural effects, he considers it music’s primary duty to express the passions and emotions of

the soul.15

Finally, Fétis also eschews attempts to explain music in terms of mathematics or

physical acoustics, a tendency that, according to him, originates with Jean-Philippe Rameau

and was adopted by a great number of his contemporaries.16 Fétis certainly does not rule out

                                                                                                               
15
Fétis, “Sur la philosophie et sur la poétique de la musique,” Revue musicale 3 (1828), 413,

and “État actuel de l’esthétique musicale,” 6. As Fétis indicates, the origin of this theory is

distantly related to Aristotle, despite the fact that the authors to whom he refers do not invoke

the philosopher. See Göran Sörbom, “Aristotle on Music as Representation,” Journal of

Aesthetics and Art Criticism 52 (1994), 37–46, doi:10.2307/431583. For theories of imitation,

see Jean Mongrédien, “La théorie de l’imitation en musique au début du Romantisme,”

Romantisme: revue de la Société des études romantiques 8 (1974), 86–91,

doi:10.3406/roman.1974.5017.
16
The most complete critique of these mathematical theories can be found in the Traité, x–xx

and 201–15. Fétis claims to have condemned the confusion between acoustics and music

theory for the first time in 1816, in a letter to the music department of the Institut de France

that accompanied the first publication of his Traité. See “La littérature musicale dans les dix

dernières années (1848–1858),” Revue et gazette musicale de Paris 26 (1859), 270. The letter

has not been preserved, however. There is ample evidence to confirm that Fétis disentangled
the validity of the experiments conducted by the acousticians of his time.17 However, he does

insist that natural phenomena can by no means explain musical relationships between sounds,

as these are governed by human thought and emotion. If music were subject to some kind of

natural determinism, he adds, one would not be able to account for the great diversity of

musical traditions in the world.

Positioning himself against the three hypotheses outlined above, Fétis reasons that

music is an art of emotion more than one of intellectual thought—a characteristic that

distinguishes music from other arts, which make an impression first on the mind and only

then the heart.18 Initially one might think that the intellect has no place in this process, but this

is far from the case.19 In effect, Fétis appropriates Leibniz’s affirmation that “music is a kind

of secret calculation that the mind performs without its own knowledge.”20 According to

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
himself from supporters of mathematical or physics-based conceptions of music. A case in

point—his argument with Camille Durutte—is offered in Anne-Emmanuelle Ceulemans,

“Fétis, la naissance de la tonalité moderne et la réception de ses idées aux XIXe siècle,” in

Musica, sive Liber amicorum Nicolas Meeùs, ed. Luciane Beduschi, Anne-Emmanuelle

Ceulemans, and Alice Tacaille (Paris: Presses Universitaires de Paris Sorbonne, 2014), 370–

73.
17
On this subject, see Robert S. Nichols, “Fétis’ Theories of Tonalité and the Aesthetics of

Music,” Revue belge de musicologie/Belgisch tijdschrift voor muziekwetenschap 26–27

(1972–1973), 122, doi:10.2307/3686545.

18
Fétis, “Résumé philosophique,” xxxvii.
19
This erroneous interpretation is explicitly refuted in Nichols, “Fétis’ Theories of Tonalité,”

120.
20
The original quotation is: “Musica est exercitium arithmeticae occultum nescientis se

numerare animi [or, according to another reading, animae].” It appears in a letter to Christian
Fétis, one should understand this claim in the following way: when the senses perceive

sounds, the intellect unconsciously evaluates their relationships and examines their suitability

in the given context, which leads the intellect to make an aesthetic judgment. The beauty of a

work of music depends on the correctness of these relationships, which can only be judged by

the mind.21 Fétis insists that the ability of the ear to perceive the tuning of sounds and to

discern their relationships is in fact an intellectual operation, irreducible to sensation alone.22

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
Goldbach dated 17 April 1712, published in Viri illustris Godefridi Gui: Leibnititii Epistolae

ad diversos, ed. Chr. Kortholt (Leipzig: Bern. Christoph Breitkopf, 1734), 1:241. See Patrice

Bailhache, Leibniz et la théorie de la musique (Paris: Klincksieck, 1992), 41ff.

21
Fétis, “État actuel de l’esthétique musicale,” 5–6. On Leibniz, see also Histoire générale,

1:ii. Fétis’s argument is directly linked to that of Leibniz, who wrote: “Music is an occult

exercise of the mind unconsciously performing arithmetical calculations, as it does many

things in the midst of confused or insensible perceptions, which it cannot notice by way of a

distinct apperception. For those who believe there cannot be anything within the mind of

which it is unaware are mistaken. Therefore, even if the mind does not sense that it is

calculating, it does sense the effect of this imperceptible calculation, that is, the pleasure of

consonances and the displeasure of dissonances.” Frédéric de Buzon, “Extraits de la

correspondance Leibniz-Goldbach concernant la musique,” Philosophie 59 (1998), 11. The

Latin text reads: “Musica est exercitium arithmeticae occultum nescientis se numerare animae,

multa enim facit in perceptionibus confusis seu insensibilibus, quae distincta apperceptione

notare nequit. Errant enim qui nihil in anima fieri putant, cujus ipsa non sit conscia. Anima

igitur etsi se numerare non sentiat, sentit tamen hujus numerationis insensibilis effectum, seu

voluptatem in consonantiis, molestiam in dissonantiis, inde resultantem.” A. P. Juschkewitsch

and Ju. Ch. Kopelewitsch, “La correspondance de Leibniz avec Goldbach,” Studia

Leibnitiana 20 (1988), 182.

The Heritage of Idealism

Rosalie Schellhous has shown how Fétis’s philosophical convictions link him, in a global

sense, to Kantian and post-Kantian Idealism.23 A passage taken from his Philosophie de la

musique reveals this adherence as well as his desire to establish a basis for music in the

human mind:

Thus, the foundations of music actually exist in the manifestations of certain

phenomena, quite independently from the forms of art that man’s genius impresses

upon it. These consist of relations of time and space within the phenomena of which

we are aware. Calculations demonstrate the exactitude and reality of these relations.

This reality is certainly only relative to our ability to perceive and to know, for we

know nothing of things in themselves. […] There ends the domain of objective reality

in the science of music, for the relations between one sound and another, and then a

third, are isolated instances from which no music could spring if a logical thread did

not exist between them. The laws of succession of sounds thus cannot emerge either

from the determination of the proportions of intervals, or the proportions of their

simultaneous harmony: the latter do not and cannot have a source other than the

operations of our moral and intellectual faculties, in connection with our sonic

perceptions.24

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
22
Fétis, “Le génie en musique, et la critique,” Revue et gazette musicale 29 (1862), 71.
23
Schellhous, “Fétis’s Tonality,” 225–29.
24
“Les bases de la musique existent donc réellement dans les manifestations de certains

phénomènes, indépendamment des formes d’art que lui imprime le génie de l’homme. Elles

consistent en des rapports de temps et d’espace dans les phénomènes dont nous avons

conscience. Le calcul démontre l’exactitude et la réalité de ces rapports. Sans doute, cette
Apart from Kant, Fétis was also receptive to the ideas of many other German philosophers

and writers, especially Herder, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel.25 In addition, he was influenced

by his friend Victor Cousin, who greatly contributed to the promulgation in France of German

philosophical currents in the first half of the nineteenth century.26 Cousin preached an eclectic

philosophy that viewed other schools of thought with an open mind and borrowed from them

such elements as seemed to him to hold some truth, ignoring everything else.27 Fétis’s library

held a large number of works by Cousin, and his own aesthetic approach was equally eclectic.

He found such an approach helpful in the service of his extremely focused objective—to

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
réalité n’est que relative à notre faculté de percevoir et de connaître: car nous ne savons rien

des choses en elles-mêmes. […] Là finit le domaine de la réalité objective dans la science de

la musique; car les rapports de tel son à tel autre, et de celui-ci à un troisième, sont autant de

faits isolés, desquels ne saurait naître une musique; aucun lien logique n’existe entre eux. De

la détermination des proportions des intervalles des sons ne peuvent donc sortir les lois de la

succession de ces sons, ni celles de leur harmonie simultanée: celles-ci n’ont et ne peuvent

avoir d’autre origine que les opérations de nos facultés morales et intellectuelles, à l’occasion

de nos perceptions sonores.” Wangermée, François-Joseph Fétis, 319–20.

25
Schellhous has illustrated the influence of German Idealists on Fétis’s thought in general in

“Fétis’s Tonality,” 219–40. Christensen concentrates more specifically on Hegel in “Fétis and

Emerging Tonal Consciousness,” 49–53. Mutch has analyzed borrowings from Herder in

“‘L’art ne progresse pas.’”

26
This influence has been demonstrated in Schellhous, “Fétis’s Tonality,” 221–24; see also

Ellis, Music Criticism, 33–45.

27
Victor Cousin, Du vrai, du beau et du bien, 5th ed. (Paris: Didier, 1855), 10.
justify the existence of aesthetic judgment in music—yet that approach also found

legitimation in Cousin’s methodology.28

This eclecticism explains how musicologists could have linked Fétis to such a variety

of philosophical sources. It is helpful, however, to remember that an isolated idea does not

necessarily point to a coherent and self-contained philosophical heritage. As such, it is useful

to discuss an 1853 article in which Fétis denounces the broad lines of Schelling’s and Hegel’s

philosophies.29 This piece somewhat tempers the testimony of Fétis’s letter to Troupenas, in

which he cites Schelling and Hegel among the philosophers who made a lasting impression on

him.30 The 1853 article shows that while Fétis certainly admired them, he did not accept their

philosophical systems unconditionally. Fétis’s endorsement of Kant’s ideas was undoubtedly

more profound, yet the philosopher, having notoriously had no feeling for music, was not a

great help to him in the elaboration of an aesthetic philosophy of music. Furthermore, Fétis

chastised Kant for defining music as a “language of pure sensation, without any intellectual

ideas.”31

                                                                                                               
28
See Ellis, Music Criticism, 36.
29
Fétis, “Théorie de la musique: Études sur l’origine du système musical,” Revue et gazette

musicale de Paris 20 (1853), 88–91. This article critiques Feuerbach as well.

30
Wangermée, Fétis: Correspondance, 134–42. See also n. 13.
31
Fétis, “État actuel de l’esthétique musicale,” 45. Fétis refers to Kant’s Anthropology from a

Pragmatic Point of View. Here is the passage in question as it appears in the second edition:

“Was aber den Vitalsinn betrift, so wird dieser durch Musik, als ein regelmäßiges Spiel von

Empfindungen des Gehörs, unbeschreiblich lebhaft und mannigfaltig nicht blos bewegt,

sondern auch gestärkt, welche also gleichsam eine Sprache bloßer Empfindungenen (ohne

alle Begriffe) ist.” Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (Königsberg: Friedrich

Nicolovius, 1800), 49, emphasis added.

 All of this suggests that the key to understanding Fétis’s attitudes lies in his own

writings. Moreover, it is important to remember that he never expressed himself merely as a

philosopher, but also as a musician, a musicologist, a teacher, and a concert organizer. We

have seen that his philosophical preoccupations pursue a very concrete goal: the aesthetic

evaluation of composers and of particular works. As provocative as they are, however, his

philosophical ideas are not entirely abstract and remain anchored in the quotidian reality of

nineteenth-century musical life.

Tonalité as a Metaphysical Principle

In the world of music theory and musical aesthetics, Fétis’s name is closely associated with

the concept of tonalité, which defines the set of laws that govern relationships between

musical sounds. The term tonalité encompasses many meanings and applies to every musical

tradition.32 In accord with a Kantian perspective, Fétis considers tonalité to be an a priori

feature of hearing, that is, anterior to any sensory experience.33 This concept must be

understood apart from any reference to culture. Consequently, it reaffirms the musical

aptitudes of all human beings in the domain of melody and, if applicable, in that of harmony.

One of the difficulties with interpreting Fétis’s conception of tonalité resides in the

fact that the latter is frequently qualified as a “metaphysical principle,”34 a term that holds a

different meaning for Fétis than that which Kant attributes to it. For the German philosopher,

the term “metaphysical” applies to the knowledge of things in themselves, apart from all

                                                                                                               
32
Fétis’s concept of tonalité has been the subject of numerous studies. See especially Nichols,

“Fétis’ Theories of Tonalité,” 116–29, and Schellhous, “Fétis’s Tonality,” 219–40.

33
Fétis, Traité, 251.
34
“[P]rincipe métaphysique.” See, for example, ibid., 249.
sensory experience and outside of space and time.35 For Fétis, the word has a vaguer

definition, referring simply to that which goes beyond sensory experience. Its meaning surely

recalls Kant’s notion of the “transcendental,” yet this is a word that Fétis never employs. In

certain cases he uses the word “metaphysical” as a synonym for “psychological” in order to

underscore its relationship to the human mind.  

The use of the qualifier “metaphysical” has sparked lively commentary in recent

musicological literature.36 This use of the term is not surprising, however, given that it forms

part of the nineteenth-century French lexicon, particularly that of the École des Idéologues, as

demonstrated most notably by Antoine Louis Claude Destutt de Tracy, for whom metaphysics,

not physics, denoted the science of the mind.37

According to Fétis’s conception, one of the characteristics of tonalité is that it

manifests an intrinsically historical scope, one that is directly linked to the author’s

                                                                                                               
35
André Lalande, Vocabulaire technique et critique de la philosophie, 8th ed. (Paris: Presses

Universitaires de France, 1960), 614–15.

36
For example, Carl Dahlhaus thought that Fétis used “metaphysical” as a synonym for

“anthropological.” See Untersuchungen über die Entstehung der harmonischen Tonalität

(Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1967), 15. For further information on Fétis’s use of the term

“metaphysical,” see Renate Groth, “Zur Theorie der Musik bei François-Joseph Fétis,” in

Heinrich Sievers zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Richard Jakoby and Gunter Katzenberger (Tutzing:

Schneider, 1978), 50; Schellhous, “Fétis’s Tonality,” 228–29; and Nathan John Martin,

“Rameau and Rousseau: Harmony and History in the Age of Reason” (Ph.D. diss., McGill

University, 2009), 275–76.

37
Lalande, Vocabulaire technique, 617.
musicological preoccupations.38 Fétis’s periodization of the history of Western music is well-

known: la tonalité ancienne applies to music up to Monteverdi, whereas la tonalité moderne

begins with him, on account of Monteverdi’s innovative use of unprepared dominant seventh

chords. La tonalité moderne, in turn, is subdivided into three eras: la tonalité transitonique,

characterized by the possibility of modulating from one key to another; la tonalité

pluritonique, which allows for enharmonic relationships between many different keys; and,

finally, la tonalité omnitonique, which, by virtue of its excessive chromaticism, threatens its

own very existence.39

The concept of tonalité is also very much apparent in Fétis’s analysis of non-Western

musical traditions, to the point that at times he seems to confuse “music” and tonalité. For

                                                                                                               
38
Christensen sees a Hegelian influence in Fétis’s conception of the history of music, in that

Fétis interprets the deployment of tonalité among different peoples in a teleological light

(“Fétis and Emerging Tonal Consciousness,” 50). Nevertheless, Martin disputes Fétis’s

Hegelianism (“Fétis’ Historicism,” paper presented at the European Music Analysis

Conference, Leuven, 17 September 2014). The motivations of Fétis’s historical exploration

are analyzed in more detail in Rémy Campos, “L’analyse et la construction du fait historique

dans le Traité de l’harmonie de Fétis,” in Sillages musicologiques: Hommage à Yves Gérard,

ed. Philippe Blay and Raphaëlle Legrand (Paris: Conservatoire national supérieur de musique

et de danse, 1997), 37–52.

39
This theory is represented in several of Fétis’s publications. See, for example, Esquisse de

l’histoire de l’harmonie, considérée comme art et comme science systématique (Paris:

Bourgogne et Martinet, 1840), in addition to the Traité, 151–200. For an English translation

of the Esquisse, see Fétis, “Esquisse de l’historie de l’harmonie”: An English-Language

Translation of the François-Joseph Fétis “History of Harmony,” trans. and ed. Mary I. Arlin,

Harmonologia 7 (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1994).

example, Fétis qualifies tonalité as the “eternal foundation not only of music as we

understand it, but of all possible music.”40 Yet this is not exactly the case, for elsewhere Fétis

identifies two pillars of music: tonalité and rhythm. Still, he considers tonalité to be proper to

one’s musical inclination, rhythm being subordinated owing to its more instinctual nature.41

MUSIC WITHIN HISTORY

The Histoire générale de la musique, a portion of which was published posthumously, sets

forth Fétis’s most unified vision of the history of music. This wide-ranging study was

supposed to span eight volumes,42 though only five saw the light of day. In them Fétis sought

to sketch out a complete panorama of the world’s musical traditions, beginning with a general

summary organized according to continent and people and then proceeding to a discussion of

European music, starting from antiquity. Copious elements of this opus ultimum are already

present in his previous published works; their reappearance in the Histoire confirms ideas that

Fétis had expressed decades earlier and reveal the continuity of his thought.

Nevertheless, from the vantage point of the early twenty-first century, it is difficult to

read this work objectively owing to its erroneous appraisals and offensive analyses of

numerous non-European musical traditions. This is not the place to judge Fétis on such

matters. Rather, I will simply recall that his knowledge of non-Western music is based on

                                                                                                               
40
Fétis, Biographie universelle (1835), 1:xxix.
41
Fétis, Histoire générale, 1:23. On the subject of Fétis’s research on rhythm, see Mary I.

Arlin, “Metric Mutation and Modulation: The Nineteenth-Century Speculations of F.-J.

Fétis,” Journal of Music Theory 44 (2000), 261–322, doi:10.2307/3090680.

42
Fétis, Histoire générale, 1:vii.
second-hand sources that were by definition incomplete, sources he approached with the

racial preconceptions typical of his time.43

As innovative as his approach may be in writing a history that incorporates both

Western and non-Western musical traditions, Fétis also saw the advantage of relating these

traditions to the lessons of anthropology and linguistics so that he could better discern the

exchange of influences between different groups.44 One cannot help but be astonished by the

                                                                                                               
43
James Cowles Prichard, Natural History of Man: Comprising Inquiries into the Modifying

Influence of Physical and Moral Agencies on the Different Tribes of the Human Family

(London: H. Baillière, 1843), is generally identified as a notable influence owing to the

importance Fétis accords to the morphology of types of people in his appreciation of their

moral and intellectual characteristics. In addition, Fétis cites Arthur de Gobineau, Essai sur

l’inégalité des races humaines (Paris: F. Didot frères, 1853–55), for its genealogy of the

“Aryan” race, yet without plunging headlong into the anti-Semitism this infamous work

tragically served to justify later on. The notion of geographical and biological determinism

and their effects on peoples and their history recalls the theories of Guillaume André

Villoteau, Recherches sur l’analogie de la musique avec les arts: Qui ont pour objet

l’imitation du langage (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1807), 1–12. Thomas Christensen

analyzes race and racial issues in Fétis’s writings in detail in his forthcoming book, Fétis and

the Tonal Imagination: French Discourses of Tonality in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, forthcoming), especially chapter 5. I am grateful to the author

for sending me this text prior to publication.

44
Émile Haraszti recognized that Fétis took advantage of this approach. See his “Fétis

fondateur de la musicologie comparée: son étude sur un nouveau mode de classification des

races humaines d’après leurs systèmes musicaux, contribution à l’œuvre de Fétis,” Acta

musicologica 4 (1932), 97–103, doi:10.2307/931921. Fétis also offered a contribution on the

range of references to recent linguistic studies, in which Fétis took a serious interest toward

the end of his life.45

All the same, what is most striking in the Histoire générale is that the idea of progress

is omnipresent. In a certain sense this is not surprising, considering that the idealists who

inspired Fétis all defended, to varying degrees, a progressive vision of history.46 Furthermore,

Fétis himself held firm ideas on the ability of different “races” to progress.47 His Histoire

générale abounds with explicit references to progress as it relates to music, such as: “If music

is the ideal work of humanity, it can only have been produced by peoples who excel in

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
“Classification des races à l’aide de leurs systèmes musicaux” (Classification of Races on the

Basis of Their Musical Systems) at the Société d’anthropologie de Paris (Paris

Anthropological Society), published in the Bulletin de la Société d’anthropologie de Paris,

2nd ser., 2 (1867), 134–46. Evidently, however, the originality of his method did not

compensate for his mistakes, which have been pointed out in various sources, notably Ernest

Closson, “La flûte égyptienne antique de Fétis,” Acta musicologica 4 (1932), 145–47,

doi:10.2307/931921; and Paul Raspé, “Monaule,” in François-Joseph Fétis et la vie musicale

de son temps (Brussels: Bibliothèque Royale Albert Ier, 1972), 229–30.

45
Thus we may note references to Franz Bopp, Jacob Grimm, Max Müller, Ernest Renan, and

other active linguists around the mid-nineteenth century.

46
See, for example, Victor Cousin, Cours de l’histoire de la philosophie: Introduction à

l’histoire de la philosophie (Paris: Pichon et Didier, 1828), lesson 9, 9: “the history of a

people can be summed up as a perpetual progress” (l’histoire d’un peuple est un progrès

perpétuel).
47
See especially Fétis, Histoire générale, 1:12, 2:i–ii.
appreciating relations, inspiration, and invention. What is more, it must have been called to

progress.”48

In general, the musical progress that Fétis describes is closely associated with the

evolution of tonalité. Two passages on the Ars Nova may illustrate this point. In spite of the

technical ineptitude that he attributes to works from this period, Fétis also sees in the Ars

Nova “the true beginning of harmony.”49 Thus, he writes, “it is emotion that leads the way,

and progress will continue from this moment onward.”50 In reference to Philippe de Vitry and

Johannes de Muris, he adds: “In their works, these experts in teaching exhibit […] a

considerable degree of progress by virtue of the harmonic purity of the examples they provide

to illustrate the rules.”51

Such assertions hardly seem compatible with the idea that art does not progress.

However, we will see below that Fétis’s point of view is not completely incoherent. Although

his use of the word “progress” is equivocal, to say the least, we may still be able to fathom the

depths of his thought and even discern the origin of the contradictions in which he entangles

himself.

Music: Popular Song, Art, and Science

Fétis’s Histoire générale de la musique divides music into two branches: the “satisfaction of

an instinctive, emotional, or traditional need,” present everywhere in the world and across

                                                                                                               
48
“Si la musique est l’œuvre idéale de l’humanité, elle ne peut avoir été produite que par des

peuples doués des facultés d’appréciation de rapports, d’inspiration et d’invention; de plus, il

faut qu’elle ait été appelée à progresser.” Ibid., 1:ii.

49
Ibid., 5:262.
50
Ibid., 5:262.
51
Ibid., 5:301.
time, which he calls “popular song”; and music as “art,” which can only be found in “modern”

Europe.52 The moment that Western music passes from popular song to art takes place in the

Renaissance. Dufay plays a critical role in this process.53 Fétis claims the music that preceded

Dufay is worthy of nothing more than archaeological interest, and he scoffs at the idea of

producing a dedicated study of it.54

In order for music to reach the level of art, it must first meet the condition that “the

system of its elements is complete.”55 By this, Fétis means that art music must have a

harmonic dimension based on what modern tonal thinking would later call chords.56 He

qualifies organum and two-voice polyphony—that is, the “lengthy succession of fifths or

fourths, and octaves” that characterizes the beginnings of Western polyphony—as a “barbaric

system.”57 According to Fétis, Adam de la Halle’s chanson Tant con je vivrai, with its sixths

                                                                                                               
52
Ibid., 1:5. A similar idea is expressed in “Le génie en musique,” 114.
53
Fétis, Histoire générale, 1:177, 5:321–29. See also Esquisse de l’histoire de l’harmonie,

20–21.
54
Fétis, Histoire générale, 1:177.
55
“[Q]ue le système de ses éléments est complet.” Ibid., 1:5.
56
This opinion resurfaces throughout the Histoire générale. See, for example, 2:330: “But the

music of India is set apart from the true and complete art of modern music by a much more

profound deviation, that is, the absence of harmony, through which the latter [i.e., modern

music] has arrived at the pinnacle of one of the grandest conceptions of the human spirit and

the most powerful source of emotion” (Mais la musique de l’Inde est séparée de l’art véritable

et complet de la musique moderne par une divergence bien plus profonde, à savoir l’absence

de l’harmonie, par laquelle celle-ci est parvenue à la hauteur d’une des plus grandes

conceptions de l’esprit humain, et de la plus puissante cause d’émotion).

57
Histoire générale, 1:172. See also Esquisse de l’histoire de l’harmonie, 5.
as well as the addition of third harmonies to the fifths, demonstrates a “palpable progress in

the feeling of harmony”;58 however, it does not yet deserve to be called art in the proper sense

because the rules that govern the conventional progressions of modern harmony are not

respected.

Thus, the sole criterion of music as art is that it conform to tonal harmony as Fétis

would have known, taught, and theorized it. It is instructive to examine a few of his

transcriptions of fifteenth-century works housed at the Bibliothèque royale de Bruxelles

(Examples 1–3). Here one observes the theorist who, like a teacher, highlights imitative

passages whose elegance he appreciates, yet also points out peculiar features of the

harmony—that is, “errors”—with an approach that betrays a perspective strongly conditioned

by Baroque and classical harmony.59 In these three examples, Fétis reads polyphony as a

succession of tonal chords, as his annotations confirm: “sixth and fifth” on the sixth degree of

F; “minor third and fifth”;60 and “dominant seventh” prompting a modulation. Furthermore, in

                                                                                                               
58
Esquisse de l’histoire de l’harmonie, 9. The song is printed in “Découverte de plusieurs

manuscrits intéressans pour l’histoire de la musique: premier article,” Revue musicale 1

(1827), 7–9. See also Histoire générale, 5:270.

59
The manuscripts in question are Brussels, Bibliothèque royale, II 3851 Mus Fétis 1805, and

II 3852 Mus Fétis 1806. The former contains works by Dufay, and the latter, works by

Busnois. Fétis’s transcriptions are based on MS 5557 of the Brussels Bibliothèque royale and

the Pixérecourt MS of the Bibliothèque impériale de Paris (now Paris, Bibliothèque nationale,

Fonds Fr. 15123).

60
Fétis’s “minor fifth” is what we would now call a “diminished fifth.”
the second example, he is not content merely to observe the unusual suspensions between the

uppermost voices, but also condemns Busnois’s lack of musical clairvoyance.61

<Insert Examples 1–3 near here>

One of the many difficulties that Fétis’s writings present is that the theorist sometimes

uses the word “art” in a broader sense than that indicated above to designate musical forms

other than those of the modern West. He writes of the music of what he terms the “yellow

race”: “[the] imperfection of its musical organization manifests itself in the choice of tonal

principle upon which it has built the foundation of this art. This principle is of such a nature

that it renders all progress and development of the art impossible.”62 Similarly, on the subject

of medieval music: “The art of which Hucbald speaks is as barbaric as his era. But it is

precisely because he allows us to see it as it was that his writings have sparked such lively

                                                                                                               
61
In fifteenth- and sixteenth-century polyphony, suspensions most often resolve to an

imperfect rather than a perfect consonance. Nevertheless, resolution to a perfect consonance

would be rather unusual. See Anne-Emmanuelle Ceulemans, “A Stylistic Investigation of

Missa Une mousse de Biscaye, in the Light of Its Attribution to Josquin des Prez,” Tijdschrift

van de Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis 48 (1998), 30–50,

especially 41–45), and “Une étude comparative du traitement de la mélodie et de la

dissonance chez Johannes Ockeghem et chez Josquin des Prez,” in Johannes Ockeghem:

Actes du Xle colloque international d’études humanistes, ed. Philippe Vendrix (n.p.: n.p.,

1998), 707–53 (especially 729).

62
“[L]’imperfection de son organisation musicale se manifeste dans le choix du principe tonal

dont elle a fait la base de cet art. Ce principe est de telle nature, qu’il rend impossible tout

progrès, tout développement de l’art.” Fétis, Histoire générale, 1:55. I will comment on the

bizarre idea proclaimed in this passage below.

interest: it is the first milestone marking the path that leads to the great art of modern

music.”63

Reading Fétis thus requires a certain vigilance regarding the word “art,” which

designates both polyphony from the Renaissance onward and music in a more general sense.

Further complications arise when we consider Fétis’s use of the term “science”: beyond the

distinction between popular song and art, Fétis repeatedly insists that, in certain of its aspects,

music ought to be considered a science. That is, if the capacity of the artist to coordinate

sounds is art, then the study of the laws that govern relationships between sounds is science.64

This feature of music evidently has no bearing on the issue of progress or its opposite, since

Fétis believes every science to be capable of progress. Fétis even considered himself a

scientist of music and reckoned that his theory of the history of harmony marked a decisive

advance in our comprehension of the history of the language of music.65

Fétis’s writings do not explicitly state why only one part of Western musical

production should qualify as art, yet his opinions might be explained by the fact that all art

presupposes a form of beauty, a quality that the theorist absolutely could not appreciate in

music older than Dufay’s. Fétis describes the music of the thirteenth century as follows:

In the end, the musicians of this century are still barbarians when it comes to harmonic

conventions, and, what is worse, they show themselves to be extremely awkward in

the art of adjusting parts for the cohesion of the voices. Their works are far from

                                                                                                               
63
“L’art dont parle Hucbald est barbare comme son époque; mais c’est précisément parce

qu’il nous le fait voir tel qu’il était, que ses écrits nous inspirent un vif intérêt: c’est le premier

jalon planté sur la voie qui doit conduire au grand art de la musique moderne.” Ibid., 4:529.
64
Fétis, Traité, 1 and 4, and Biographie universelle des musiciens, 2nd ed. (Paris: Firmin

Didot, 1866), 1:xvi.

65
See n. 1.
 belonging to that which constitutes the art of harmony; one finds instead

inharmoniousness, disharmony […] words that fit well with the discussion of

organum and discant, as they are ugly in music.66

With regard to non-Western music, his assessment is less straightforward, yet it nevertheless

remains symptomatic of an obvious difficulty in appreciating its intrinsic beauty.

Let us agree to recognize, while still preserving our racial pride, that there have been

and still are peoples who were fashioned differently, but even for all that, were not

deprived of the pleasures music procures. It is unquestionable that our own is a more

elevated art, and that it alone is an art; nevertheless, it is compelling to understand the

primitive forms of this same art and observe the transformations that its elements

underwent before they arrived at the state in which we see them today.67

                                                                                                               
66
“Enfin, les musiciens de ce siècle sont encore des barbares à l’égard des convenances

harmoniques, et de plus ils se montrent très-maladroits en ce qui concerne l’art de faire

mouvoir les parties dans la cohésion des voix. Loin que leurs ouvrages appartiennent à ce qui

constitue l’art harmonique, on y trouve surtout l’inharmonie, la disharmonie. […] Ces termes

sont ceux qui conviennent en parlant de l’organum et du déchant, car ils sont le laid en

musique.” Histoire générale, 1:175. Fétis borrows the term “disharmony” from Karl

Rosenkranz, Aesthetik des Hässlichen (Königsberg: Gebrüder Bornträger, 1853), 99.

67
“[C]onsentons à reconnaître, tout en conservant notre orgueil de race, qu’il y a eu et qu’il y

a encore des peuples conformés d’une autre manière, lesquels n’ont pas été pour cela privés

des jouissances que procure la musique. Que la nôtre soit un art plus élevé; que même elle

seule soit un art, cela n’est pas douteux; mais il n’en est pas moins intéressant de connaître les

formes primitives de ce même art et d’observer les transformations subies par ses éléments,

avant qu’ils fussent parvenus à l’état où nous les voyons.” Fétis, Histoire générale, 2:vi.
Transformations or Progress?

In view of the points we have explored thus far, the question of musical progress in Fétis’s

writings may be appreciated in a fresh light. Rosalie Schellhous, who has investigated this

issue in depth, explains his position in terms of Kantian philosophy. For Fétis, she argues,

progress is limited to phenomena and does not concern the domain of noumena. In other

words, the principle of art is immutable, although its manifestations may vary.68

This interpretation reflects Fétis’s thought to some extent, but the theorist himself does

not treat the question in so abstract a way. Indeed, he devoted two entire articles to the subject

and evoked it time and again in his more extended publications. The first article to analyze the

idea of progress in the arts dates from 1833.69 Then, in 1846, Fétis presented a more detailed

study of the matter at the Académie royale des sciences, des lettres et des beaux-arts de

Belgique (Belgian Royal Academy of Sciences, Letters, and Fine Arts).70 From a theoretical

point of view, Fétis asserts that the concept of the beautiful is absolute and of divine origin.

By the grace of divine creation, he says, this idea flourishes in the soul; it forms the

foundation of art, but it does not arise from experience and hence cannot progress.71 This

explains why the history of music is not marked by an intensification of aesthetic experience.

The notion of aesthetic experience is crucial, as it allows for the resolution of the

contradictions that seem to pervade Fétis’s writings on progress in the arts. Fétis explains that

                                                                                                               
68
Schellhous, “Fétis’s Tonality,” 231–32. Ellis makes a similar argument in Music Criticism,

39.
69
Fétis, “En quoi consistent les progrès de la musique,” Revue musicale 7 (1833), 17–19.
70
Fétis, untitled article, Bulletin de l’Académie Royale des sciences, des lettres et des beaux-

arts de Belgique 13 (1846), 241–45.

71
Ibid., 241.
aesthetic experience consists of a feeling or emotion that represents the very aim of art.72

Inasmuch as this emotion is no stronger in the nineteenth century than in the sixteenth, one

may assert that “the beautiful is not capable of progress,”73 which, again, amounts to saying

that aesthetic experience does not increase as time goes on: “furthermore, one cannot say

there has been progress in music in the sense that there is no music of the present day that can

produce greater enjoyment than the good music of the past.”74

In a piece from 1850, this same principle is articulated a bit differently, this time in

relation to all the arts:

Art, in its essential characteristics, thus does not progress, and its works are immortal.

It does not walk hand in hand with civilization and industry, for the greatest poets,

Homer, Ossian, and Dante, belong to barbaric times. The power of this art is based in

the organization of mankind, renews itself in the inexhaustible fount of his faculties,

and acts reciprocally upon them.75

                                                                                                               
72
Fétis, “En quoi consistent,” 18, and Biographie universelle (1835), 1:xxxiii.
73
“le beau n’est pas susceptible de progrès.” Fétis, untitled article, Bulletin de l’Académie

Royale, 242.
74
“Aussi ne peut-on pas dire qu’il y ait eu progrès dans la musique en ce sens qu’il n’y a pas

de musique de l’époque actuelle qui puisse procurer de jouissances plus vives que la bonne

musique d’autrefois.” Fétis, “En quoi consistent,” 19. A similar formulation of this idea

appears in his Biographie universelle (1835), 1:xxxiii.

75
“L’art, en ce qu’il a d’essentiel, ne progresse donc pas, et ses œuvres sont impérissables. Il

ne marche pas côté à côte avec la civilisation et l’industrie, car les plus grands poëtes, Homère,

Ossian et Dante, appartiennent à des temps de barbarie. Cet art puise toutes ses forces dans

l’organisation de l’homme, se renouvelle à la source inépuisable de ses facultés, et réagit

 The opposition indicated above, between music as popular song and music as art,

suggests that this passage applies only to Western music from the end of the Middle Ages

onward: Fétis would surely not have described polyphony older than that of Dufay as

immortal. On the other hand, by emphasizing the persistence of the musical creations of past

centuries, he criticizes a commonly held opinion of his own time: that the history of music is

one of perpetual loss, which condemns every work to languish in obscurity owing to the

evolution of taste.76 Fétis highlights a tangible difference between music and other arts:

whereas paintings and works of literature continue to be appreciated throughout the centuries,

music falls rapidly into obsolescence, and composers too often concern themselves with

establishing a reputation that is merely ephemeral.77

Finally, the following two passages present the principle of non-progress from a more

historical perspective:

Music transforms itself, and […] progresses only as far as its material elements are

concerned.78

The history of art indicates a progressive development in forms and the advancement

of means, but there is only transformation in its object, which is to stir the emotions.79

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
réciproquement sur elles.” Fétis, “L’histoire de la musique par ses monuments,” Revue et

gazette musicale de Paris 17 (1850), 181.

76
This image is taken from “Concert historique de M. Fétis: Discours sur la danse au

seizième siècle et sur la musique qui lui était destinée,” Revue musicale 6 (1832), 390.
77
Fétis, “De la nécessité de considérer la musique dans son histoire, soit pour en étudier les

principes, soit pour ajouter à ses progrès,” Revue musicale 5 (1831), 279.
78
“La musique se transforme, et […] ne progresse que dans ses éléments matériels.” Fétis,

Biographie universelle (1866), 1:v.

These remarks call attention to the evolution of musical language: if aesthetic experience is

not likely to increase over time, Fétis nevertheless acknowledges the existence of a kind of

progress contained in particular musical languages themselves.80

In light of this point of view, it is interesting to return briefly to Fétis’s idea that the

music of the “yellow race” cannot undergo progress.81 Bizarrely, Fétis was convinced of the

unchanging quality of the music of the Far East: “All the peoples of the yellow race […]

demonstrate their native identity through the characteristics of their music, which is exactly

the same among all of them.”82 In his eyes, the reason for this inalterability lies in the

pentatonic and anhemitonic character of these musics.83 Fétis, in effect, sees half steps as

vectors of affinities that constitute crucial factors in the evolution of music. These affinities

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
79
“[L]’histoire de l’art indique un développement progressif dans les formes, et d’avancement

dans les moyens, mais [il] n’y a que transformation dans l’objet, qui est d’émouvoir.” Ibid.,

3:233.
80
On this subject, it may be instructive to recall the confusion between progress and

development as they relate to the history of music, which Flotzinger documents thoroughly in

“Progress and Development,” 121–38.

81
See n. 62.
82
“Tous les peuples de la race jaune […] démontrent l’identité de leur origine par les

caractères de leur musique, qui, chez tous, sont exactement les memes.” Fétis, Histoire, 1:52.

This idea may have been inspired by Herder, whom Fétis cites on p. 54, referring to the Idées

sur l’histoire de l’humanité [Outline of a Philosophical History of Humanity], 3 vols., trans.

Edgar Quinet (Paris: Levrault, 1834), 2:300.

83
Fétis, Histoire générale, 1:57.
engender the necessary relationships, on both the melodic and the harmonic level, that spur

the transformation of a musical language.84

Thus, the structure of the diatonic scale paves the way for the advent of tonalité

moderne, owing to the combination of the “appellative” quality of the diminished fifth and the

“natural” dissonance of the fifth and fourth degrees. New affinities, still based on half steps,

mark the advent of tonalité pluritonique and tonalité omnitonique. In Fétis’s view, the

absence of half steps in pentatonic scales constitutes an obstacle that impedes all evolution of

music. Even though he disavowed the existence of progress in music, Fétis ardently defended

the need for variation as a means of avoiding the repetition of sclerotic formulae.85The music

of the Far East, or at least the portion of it that he believed he knew, must have seemed dull to

him precisely because of the absence of appellative intervals, which undoubtedly gave him

the impression that such music was fixed, immutable, unalterable, uniform—and monotonous.

GENIUSES AND PROGRESS

In his view of the history of Western music, we know that Fétis accorded special importance

to Monteverdi’s introduction of the dominant seventh chord into the harmonic lexicon, as this

harmony reinforced affinities between chords and conferred upon harmony a new and

previously unknown dramatic accent. The dominant seventh chord allowed Western music to

pass from tonalité unitonique to tonalité pluritonique. In keeping with his Kantian convictions

and his “metaphysical” conception of tonalité, Fétis held that the dominant seventh chord

could not properly be called an invention, but rather should be considered a discovery: “When

Monteverdi found the dominant harmony that changed the character of music, and built our

                                                                                                               
84
Fétis, Traité, 248.
85
Fétis, “En quoi consistent,” 19.
tonalité in major and minor modes that were strictly uniform regardless of the key […] his

audacious idea did not create this fact but rather discovered it.”86 Thus, Monteverdi did not

conceive a new harmonic language ex nihilo, but rather discovered sonic relationships that

had not been exploited in tonalité ancienne. For this achievement, he could be considered a

genius, according to the definition proposed by Victor Cousin: “a man of genius cannot

master the power within him; it is due to the intense, overwhelming need to express what he

feels that he is a man of genius.”87

The importance that Fétis accords to the figure of the genius in the development of

music history poses a particular problem concerning the question of music’s progress.

Although the influence of a genius is not supposed to bolster aesthetic experience in

comparison to earlier historical periods, the genius nevertheless develops the language of

music and diversifies its means of expression. In his 1833 article on Monteverdi’s use of the

dominant seventh chord, Fétis explicitly states that his works demonstrate a kind of progress

by virtue of the fact that Monteverdi had enriched the art of music with elements it had

previously lacked.88

                                                                                                               
86
“[Q]uand Monteverde a trouvé l’harmonie de la dominante qui a changé le caractère de la

musique, et a constitué notre tonalité en modes majeurs et mineurs toujours uniformes, quel

que soit le ton, […] [s]on audacieuse pensée n’a pas créé le fait, mais elle l’a découvert.” Fétis,

Traité, 250.
87
“L’homme de génie n’est pas le maître de la force qui est en lui; c’est par le besoin ardent,

irrésistible, d’exprimer ce qu’il éprouve, qu’il est homme de genie.” Cousin, Du vrai, du beau

et du bien, 175. On Monteverdi as a genius, see Schellhous, “Fétis’s Tonality,” 232; and

Ceulemans, “Fétis, la naissance de la tonalité moderne,” 372–73.

88
Fétis, “En quoi consistent,” 18.
 Conscious of the problems with making such a claim given his anti-progressive stance,

Fétis nevertheless hastens to add that tonalité ancienne, which employed only perfect, non-

modulating chords, disappeared at the same moment. As a result, Monteverdi’s contribution

also provoked an impoverishment of musical language, especially for church music, which

had been thoroughly adapted to tonalité ancienne.89

Fétis did not envision the possibility of real musical progress except in the future, at

the moment when a genius would succeed in creating a new music, one that would jettison

mere fashion and meld together all the lessons of the history of music. This new music would

create works adapted to every sensation, with an intensity that had never before been

experienced.90 However, the strength of this conviction, which Fétis expressed in 1833,

diminished over the course of his career. As the years passed, the theorist demonstrated an

increasing reticence concerning the music of his own time. For him, it was no longer a

question of future musical progress, but rather of future decadence.91

However, the principle of non-progress remained dear to him. An intriguing passage

appears in an 1862 piece in which Fétis explains that other composers inevitably imitate the

new forms of musical expression discovered by geniuses. Over time these devolve into

stereotypical formulae, to the point that stylistic renewal becomes inevitable. This renewal, in

turn, can only occur through the intervention of another genius, and thus, slowly but surely,

the cycle repeats itself.92 In the same work Fétis lambastes the claim that the genius of recent

composers is superior to that of past composers: the creative work of geniuses of the sixteenth

                                                                                                               
89
Ibid. See also Esquisse de l’histoire de l’harmonie, 45.
90
Fétis, “En quoi consistent,” 19.
91
Fétis, untitled article, Bulletin de l’Académie Royale, 244. See also Fétis, Biographie

universelle (1866), 1:v.

92
Fétis, “Le génie en musique,” 113.
century is not inferior to that of geniuses of later centuries, he maintains; they simply had

fewer resources at their disposal.93

So far I have shown that Fétis does not allow for any expansion of aesthetic

experience over the course of history. Yet this did not prevent him from thinking, from his

position as an observer of the nineteenth century, that the music of the past, particularly

Renaissance polyphony, was poor in means and less evolved than that of composers around

1800. In the following passage, dated 1831, this disposition becomes evident:

If one compares the compositions of Busnois, Okeghem, and Josquin Desprez to those

that existed before they were writing, one must pay homage to the genius of these

artists and acknowledge their celebrated role in the progress of their art. However, if

under the influence of the effects of current music, and predisposed to the prejudices

of its routines, one attempts to find analogous effects in the works of these old

musicians, then listening to them could only be boring, even though these same works

inspired the greatest admiration at the time they were written.94

It seems to have taken even Fétis some time to acquire any real feeling for

Renaissance music. Citing an 1827 article in which he described a work of Palestrina’s as a

                                                                                                               
93
Ibid., 72.
94
“Si l’on considère les compositions de Busnois, d’Okeghem et de Josquin Desprez, en les

comparant avec ce qui existait avant qu’ils écrivissent, on est forcé de rendre hommage au

génie de ces artistes et de reconnaître qu’ils ont eu une part glorieuse dans les progrès de leur

art; mais si, placé sous l’influence des effets de la musique actuelle et livré aux préjugés de

ses habitudes, on cherche dans les productions de ces vieux musiciens des effets analogues,

alors on n’éprouve que de l’ennui à écouter ces même ouvrages qui ont excité l’admiration la

plus vive au temps où ils furent écrits.” Fétis, “De la nécessité de considérer la musique dans

son histoire,” 278.

“curious specimen,”95 Katharine Ellis estimates that Fétis may have been more receptive to

the technical expertise of the composer than to the beauty of his works.96 Nevertheless, one

would think that Fétis no longer felt this way by the end of his life; its predictably excessive

praise aside, the following account provides evidence that he found in listening to Palestrina a

true aesthetic experience:97

However, in order to evaluate the power of this genius fairly, go inside a church with

the necessary religious awe, hear sixteen or twenty beautiful voices resonating in the

distance, in a chapel, with perfectly just intonation, singing this noble and pure music,

so peaceful and pious. Then, without a doubt, if you have any propensity for sensing

the beauty in art in its many forms, you will be stunned; you will feel the need to kneel

down, and your eyes will be wet with tears. Such is the genius of Palestrina.98

                                                                                                               
95
Fétis, “Institution royale de musique religieuse dirigée par M. Choron: Premier exercice, ou

Concert spirituel,” Revue musicale 1 (1827), 91.

96
Katherine Ellis, “Palestrina et la musique palestrinienne,” in La Renaissance et sa musique

au XIXe siècle, ed. Philippe Vendrix (Tours: Centre d’études supérieures de la Renaissance,

2004), 153.
97
Here we may establish a link to the definition of genius found in Jean-Jacques Rousseau,

Dictionnaire de musique (Paris: Veuve Duchesne, 1768), 230, according to which genius is

self-evident: “if your eyes well up with tears, if you feel your heart pounding, if you shiver, if

dyspnea suffocates you in the midst of your transports” (“[s]i tes yeux s’emplissent de larmes,

si tu sens ton cœur palpiter, si des tressaillements t’agitent, si l’oppression te suffoque dans

tes transports”).
98
“Mais si l’on veut faire une juste appréciation de la puissance de ce génie, qu’on entre dans

une église avec le recueillement nécessaire; qu’au loin, dans une chapelle, seize ou vingt

bonnes voix dirigées par une intelligence musicale fassent résonner, avec une justesse parfaite
Fétis lacked the capacity to experience any of the same emotion for music written before the

fifteenth century; this is why he denies this music the status of “art” in the proper sense.

With respect to non-Western musics, his sentiments were more divided still. He

undoubtedly struggled to appreciate such musics, yet he relied on accounts that tended to

relativize the supremacy that he attributed to the European tradition. Guillaume-André

Villoteau, for example, who had participated in the French invasion of Egypt and whose work

Fétis knew well, wrote:

The Egyptians did not like our music at all, and found their own delightful; as for us,

we liked our own, and found the music of the Egyptians revolting: everyone thinks

himself right, and is surprised to find that someone else could experience something

totally different than what he had felt; perhaps neither group stands on firmer ground

than the other.99

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
d’intonation, cette noble et pure musique si calme, si dévote; alors, n’en doutez pas, si vous

êtes organisé pour sentir le beau dans l’art sous toutes ses formes, vous serez saisi; vous

sentirez le besoin de vous agenouiller, et des larmes vous viendront aux yeux. Voilà le génie

de Palestrina.” Fétis, “Le génie en musique,” 72.

99
“Les Égyptiens n’aimaient point notre musique, et trouvaient la leur délicieuse; nous, nous

aimons la nôtre, et trouvons la musique des Égyptiens détestable: chacun de son côté croit

avoir raison, et est surpris de voir qu’on soit affecté d’une manière toute différente de ce qu’il

a senti; peut-être n’est-on pas mieux fondé d’une part que de l’autre.” Villoteau, De l’état

actuel de l’art musical en Égypte, ou relation historique et descriptive des recherches et

observations faites sur la musique en ce pays (Paris: C. L. F. Panckoucke, 1826), 115. Fétis

regularly cites Villoteau’s work in his Histoire générale de la musique.

Villoteau himself recounted meeting Europeans who had lived in Egypt for some eighteen to

twenty years and who had acquired a taste for that country’s music.100 This type of

observation must certainly have spoken to Fétis, who never categorically dismissed the

aesthetic qualities of non-Western musics, even if he tended to deny them the status of true

art.101

The Constitution of a Non-Progressive Vision of the Arts

In spite of the contradictions that would seem to emerge from his writings, Fétis was

convinced that the arts in general, and music in particular, were incapable of progress—at

least when viewed from the perspective of the subject who perceives the work of art, and

whose aesthetic sensibility is not likely to increase over time. In terms of the history of the

language of music itself, Fétis’s vision is more uncertain, and he also remains somewhat

reserved with respect to the idea of true progress. It now remains to explore why, in the

context of such a marked aesthetic conviction, the theorist expressed himself in so

contradictory a fashion. The following discussion speculates concerning this point in terms

that certainly seem difficult to verify but that are contradicted by none of the sources.

One may suppose that Fétis’s inconsistency stems from the fact that he embraced the

idea of non-progress in the arts very early in his career—before having discovered German

Idealism, in any case. Inevitably, the progressive vision of history supported by the majority

of the exponents of this school of thought clashed with his own conception of non-progress in

the arts, and he was never able comfortably to assimilate the two points of view.

                                                                                                               
100
Villoteau, De l’état actuel de l’art musical en Égypte, 116.
101
For example, in an 1831 article, Fétis contents himself with explaining that each musical

culture is a different art, based on specific ideas that have little relation to any others (“De la

nécessité de considérer la musique dans son histoire,” 277).

 In support of this idea, consider the record of a conference paper Fétis gave during his

1816 stay in Douai:

After having established that the object of music is to imitate nature, to excite or to

paint the various movements of the soul, he [i.e., Fétis] shows that music essentially

relates to our sensory faculties; he thoroughly develops the reasons behind this

opinion; he surveys every genre; he observes that the nature of the climate, customs,

and an infinite number of other circumstances that provoke changes in the physical

and moral constitution of nations and also necessarily introduce variations in the

affections and consequently the arts these nations cultivate, which are dependent on

them; he believes the musical groans of the Arabs or Persians, and the music for

percussion of the Chinese or the Mongols holds as true a beauty for these peoples as

song for the Italians, harmony for the Germans, and vocal music for the French; so

that to fairly judge the merit of a work, one must have native ears, so to speak.102

                                                                                                               
102
“Après avoir établi que la musique a pour objet d’imiter la nature, d’exciter ou de peindre

les divers mouvements de l’âme, il [Fétis] démontre qu’elle participe essentiellement de nos

facultés sensitives; il développe avec avantage les motifs de cette opinion; il parcourt tous les

genres; il fait apercevoir que la nature du climat, les habitudes et une infinité d’autres

circonstances apportant des modifications dans l’organisation physique et morale des nations,

introduisent nécessairement aussi des variations dans les affections qui en dépendent et par

suite dans les arts qu’elles cultivent; il pense que les gémissements musicaux des arabes ou

des persans et la musique de percussion des chinois ou des mongols ont pour ces peuples des

beautés aussi réelles que le chant pour les italiens, l’harmonie pour les allemands, et la

musique déclamée pour les français; de sorte qu’en ce genre, pour juger sainement du mérite

d’un ouvrage, il faut en quelque sorte des oreilles indigenes.” S.A.S.A., Registre aux procès-

verbaux des séances générales de la Société d’Agriculture, des Sciences et Arts du

As Guy Gosselin, who unearthed this text, notes, Fétis here still defends a vision of music as

the imitation of nature, and from a very sensualist perspective at that.103 Furthermore, Fétis

insists that the climate influences the cultivation of the arts among different peoples, an

opinion that resurfaces fifty years later in his Histoire générale de la musique. Finally, he

emphasizes the degree to which the appreciation of non-Western musics depends upon a

cultural immersion in them.

Although it lacks an explicit articulation of the principle of non-progress in the arts,

the record of the Douai conference nevertheless strongly suggests that principle: notably, it

recognizes the possibility of true aesthetic experience among populations outside Europe. We

may associate these positions with authors such as Rousseau or Herder,104 but it is more likely

that they come directly from Villoteau, whose work Fétis knew from about 1804–7 onward.105

Villoteau, too, thought that climate exerted a decisive influence on the arts,106 and as we have

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
département du Nord, séant à Douai, 1816–20, cited in Guy Gosselin, L’âge d’or de la vie

musicale à Douai, 1800–1850 (Liège: Mardaga, 1994), 44.

103
This would seem to confirm what Fétis says on the subject of the evolution of his ideas in

the Histoire générale, 1:i–ii.

104
Martin, “Rameau and Rousseau,” 278–79; and Mutch, “L’art ne progresse pas.”
105
See Fétis, Biographie universelle, 1866, 8:350, s.v. “Villoteau.” At this time Fétis surely

did not know Villoteau personally, for Villoteau wrote to him in 1831 that he would be

pleased to make his acquaintance (Wangermée, Fétis: Correspondance, letter 31–4, 70–71).

However, it is likely that Fétis maintained an interest in his work on music in Egypt since the

beginning of the century.

106
Villoteau, Recherches sur l’analogie de la musique avec les arts: Qui ont pour objet

imitation du langage (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1807), 1–12.

seen, he showed himself to be quite conscious about how a priori cultural notions could bias

the appreciation of unfamiliar music.

In any event, Fétis’s shift in opinion on music as an art of imitation postdates the

Douai conference. Although it remains difficult to situate chronologically, it must have taken

place before 1828. That year, in an article on the philosophy of music, the theorist expressed

his interest in Michel Paul Guy de Chabanon, whose Observations sur la musique, et

principalement sur la métaphysique de l’art (1779) might be characterized as a diatribe

against the idea of music as an art of imitation.107 Moreover, Chabanon affirms that the beauty

of the arts is immutable,108 an opinion that was close to Fétis’s later commitment to non-

progress in the arts. Hence it is not beyond the realm of possibility that reading Chabanon’s

works had a role in the evolution of Fétis’s aesthetic thought. Other intellectuals must have

influenced him as well. The teachings of Victor Cousin, for example, probably allowed him to

see the limits of sensualism, insofar as that doctrine reduces the beautiful to the pleasant:109

When an object produces an agreeable sensation, if you are asked to describe why this

object is agreeable to you, you could say nothing other than stating your impression;

and if you are informed that this same object produces a different impression among

other people and upsets them, you would not be terribly surprised, as you understand

                                                                                                               
107
Michel Paul Guy de Chabanon, Observations sur la musique, et principalement sur la

métaphysique de l’art (Paris: Pissot, Père & Fils, 1779), 13–34. Fétis cites Chabanon in “Sur

la philosophie et sur la poétique,” 413.

108
Chabanon, Observations, 174.
109
Cousin, Du vrai, du beau et du bien, 137.
 that responses can be varied, and feelings cannot be debated. Is it the same when an

object is not only agreeable but beautiful to you?110

Convinced of the grandeur of music, Fétis was surely not ready to accept the relativism of

individual taste as a criterion for beauty in the arts. Earlier, we have seen that he connects the

idea of beauty with a divine, absolute origin. However, it is from the perspective of personal

experience, above all, that he developed his line of argument. In music, it would seem

impossible to him that aesthetic emotion was less well developed in the sixteenth century than

in his own time, and hence he did not allow for the idea of progress. From a philosophical

point of view, this reasoning surely lacks consistency, in that he never truly defines the nature

of art. But Fétis was first and foremost a musician, and he knew very well what the art of

music was for him: it was the tonal music in which he had been steeped since childhood.

CONCLUSION

In the context of early nineteenth-century musical thought, Fétis’s defense of the principle of

non-progress constituted an original point of view, one that ran counter a great deal of

received wisdom. Notwithstanding his long career, Fétis had to defend himself until the end

of his life, yet he also garnered admirers. The movement toward the rediscovery of early

music, to which Fétis himself contributed through his publications and historical concerts,

                                                                                                               
110
“Quand un objet vous fait éprouver une sensation agréable, si on vous demande pourquoi

cet objet vous agrée, vous ne pouvez rien répondre, sinon que telle est votre impression; et si

on vous avertit que ce même objet produit sur d’autres une impression différente et leur

déplaît, vous ne vous en étonnez pas beaucoup, parce que savez que la sensibilité est diverse,

et qu’il ne faut pas disputer des sensations. En est-il de même, lorsqu’un objet ne vous est pas

seulement agréable, mais lorsque vous jugez qu’il est beau.” Ibid., 139.
would continue to forge ahead. In the twentieth century, Wanda Landowska would become a

leading figure of this campaign and would take up the principle of non-progress in music in

her own right. Her writings demonstrate that, despite of the passage of time, the idea of

progress in the arts was still alive and well; it was not without cause that she spoke ironically

of her beliefs as being a “crime of lèse-progrès.”111

A similar situation can be observed in literature of a more scientific bent. During the

first half of the twentieth century, some began to speak out against the idea of progress in the

history of music, yet they had little clout.112 It was not until the second half of the twentieth

century that repertoires of early music were more widely accepted among general audiences.

Finally, we may note that Fétis’s influence was not necessarily limited to the musical

domain. His ideas also foreshadow the positions of some French poets of the second half of

the nineteenth century. In the 1864 work William Shakespeare, Victor Hugo’s choice of

words mirrors Fétis’s: “Art, taken as art, and in itself, goes neither forward nor backward.

[…] Art is not susceptible to intrinsic progress. From Phidias to Rembrandt, there is

movement, but not progress […] you may go backward in centuries, you do not go backward

in art. […] Masterpieces have only one level, the same for all, the absolute.”113

                                                                                                               
111
Wanda Landowska, Musique ancienne: Le mépris pour les anciens—la force de la

sonorité—le style—l’interprétation—les virtuoses—les mécènes et la musique, 5th ed., in

collaboration with M. Henri Lew-Landowski (Paris: Maurice Senart, 1921), 13.

112
Flotzinger has studied this phenomenon in “Progress and Development,” 125.
113
“L’art, en tant qu’art et pris en lui-même, ne va ni en avant, ni en arrière. […] L’art n’est

point susceptible de progrès intrinsèque. De Phidias à Rembrandt, il y a marche, et non

progrès […] vous pouvez reculer dans les siècles, vous ne reculez pas dans l’art. […] Les

chefs-d’œuvre ont un niveau, le même pour tous, l’absolu.” Victor Hugo, William

Shakespeare (Paris: Librairie internationale, 1864), 138. Jaap Karskamp proposes other
 Did Fétis directly influence Hugo? The hypothesis is a stretch; but we do know that

Hugo was aware of Fétis’s historical concerts and showed a real interest in them.114 This in

itself is worthy of attention: it shows that Fétis’s opinions not only reached a circumscribed

audience of musicians and music-lovers, but were also heard by a larger public.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
quotes from poets who are contemporaries of Hugo with similar ideas. See Karskamp,

Anatomy of Despondency: European Socio-Cultural Criticism, 1789–1939 (Leiden: Brill,

2011), 327–28.
114
Wangermée, “Les premiers concerts historiques à Paris,” in Mélanges Ernest Closson

(Brussels: Société belge de musicologie, 1948), 191; and Wangermée, Fétis: Correspondance,

letter 33–1, 79.