| Under the influence of Enlightenment, Sturm und Drang, and Romantic ideals of human subjectivity, German writers of the 18 th and early 19th century began to manipulate the idea and theory of counterpoint to accord with a discourse of interiority and self-expression. The metaphysics of counterpoint---the idea of musical law grounded in a universal tone system, and of an accord between human individuals and the cosmos that gives music an immediate significance---were altered according to the postulates of human and work autonomy.; To read this reconfiguration, this dissertation examines the nexus of music theory and aesthetics as presented by a broad range of writers, including Fux, Mattheson, Marpurg, Kirnberger, Forkel, Koch, Wackenroder, Michaelis, Hoffmann, and Marx, among others. As these theorists, in the broadest sense of the vocation, relativized the philosophical divide between rationality and sensibility and the music-technical one between harmony and melody, they altered the way they presented counterpoint, traditionally the site of rationality in music. Partially separating it from its foundation in the ratios of the tone system, they molded it to fit an emphatic work concept. This involved reinterpreting the necessity of perfect partwriting, striving for "sentimental" expressivity in fugue, and emphasizing theme over harmony within invertible counterpoint. As these subdisciplines of counterpoint evolved, so did the critical categories used to describe and to explain their affects---attunement, expression, and sublimity. By re-envisaging the technique and aesthetics of counterpoint, theorists reconfigured them for a new type of composer, audience, and mode of listening. If the professional composer looked at the layperson from across a relative music-sociological divide up until the early 18 th century---the one attentive to musical processes, the other sensible to the event as a whole---they approached each other as impassioned professional and learned amateur by the early 19th. The new approach to counterpoint thus suited the rational-emotional, critical-intuitive approach to composition and listening that underpinned Romantic metaphysics of instrumental music. Analyses of compositions by Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn further elucidate the changes in the theory and aesthetics of counterpoint: between the paradigms of tone system and personal inspiration. |
