Conference Agenda

This paper examines Maurice Ravel’s innovative reimagining of marches harmoniques, a historical device encompassing both harmonic sequences and, more prominently, the sequential contrapuntal patterns that he learned as a teenager. While these patterns were widely used in the 18th century, their perceived predictability and formal rigidity led to criticism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with many composers dismissing them as clichéd. Ravel, however, embraced and transformed marches harmoniques, integrating them into his distinctive harmonic language.

Through analyses of works as Pavane pour une Infante Défunte, Ondine, Valses nobles et sentimentales, and the Trio, this study demonstrates how Ravel revitalized these traditional patterns, infusing them with harmonic richness and contrapuntal sophistication. For instance, in Ondine, Ravel adapts the Romanesca sequence to the whole-tone scale, creating a passage that combines harmonic fluidity with a fresh sonority. In Pavane pour une Infante Défunte, he reworks the conventional descending fifths sequence by varying transposition intervals across voices. In Valses nobles et sentimentales, Ravel fuses descending fifths with ascending chromatic motion, creating a three-step modular sequence that balances symmetry and unpredictability. The climactic moment in the third movement of the Trio features an extended circle of descending fifths, masterfully integrating octatonic scales, intricate counterpoint, and shifting rhythms to create a richly textured climax.

Additionally, the paper explores Ravel’s use of the Rosalia sequence, a model considered outdated since late 18th century. Despite its controversial reputation, Ravel employed the Rosalia in several works, possibly as a deliberate nod to 18th-century conventions. This study argues that Ravel’s engagement with the Rosalia reflects a nuanced dialogue with historical styles, serving both as an ironic commentary on musical tradition and a means of conveying an anti-romantic "realism" that juxtaposes past and present.

By bridging 18th-century techniques with 20th-century aesthetics, Ravel not only redefined harmonic language but also engaged with the cultural tensions of his time, transforming marches harmoniques into a tool for modernist expression. Through his innovative approach, Ravel demonstrated how historical devices could be revitalized to create a highly refined and expressive musical language.

Although Song Dynasty composer and theorist, Xiong Penglai (1246-1323), was regarded as an authoritative figure in imperial Chinese music tradition, his reputation has suffered under the critical eye of modern scholarship. Rulan Chao Pian’s classic work on Song Dynasty Music first introduced Xiong to western audiences – along with Pian’s skeptical assessment. She doubts Xiong’s “full grasp” of the earlier music theories which he transmits, demonstrated by his hazy summaries and subtle idiosyncrasies found in his compositions.

A new generation of Sinophone scholars, however, are actively reconsidering Xiong Penglai’s legacy, turning toward his extant compositions for fresh insight. In particular, Li Hongfeng has resurfaced Xiong’s own explication of the extra-musical analogues informing his compositions. By identifying the specific modes and pitches which Xiong associates with various months, seasons, and sacred paraphernalia, Li has convincingly demonstrated a verifiable link between Xiong’s theory and subsequent created works. Because Xiong draws from historical texts and cosmological rationale to generate these musical associations, the resulting revisionist view presents Xiong as a thoughtful, conscientious composer who artfully extracts and embeds the historical music theory of his time into his own creative process.

This paper builds upon the exciting scholarly reconsideration of Xiong’s work and frames it within current efforts to globalize music theory. For this presentation, I apply Li’s methods to illuminate Xiong’s setting of “King Wen” (Book of Odes), uncovering the distinctly political and ritualistic logic informing Xiong’s compositional choices. Besides rehabilitating Xiong Penglai for a Western audience, this paper also makes more accessible the issues within ancient Chinese music theory, hoping to generate further discussion and research on this vital, revitalizing topic.

The growing interest in global histories of music theory has nuanced our understanding of the circulation of music-theoretical ideas and texts across the vast expanse of the Spanish colonial project during the early modern era. However, the contemporary—and equally expansive—theoretical tradition of the neighboring Portuguese empire remains largely uncharted. I attribute this, at least partially, to the events of the morning of All Saints’ Day in 1755, when the city of Lisbon was struck by a devastating earthquake, wreaking havoc across the city. Alongside the incalculable loss of life, the royal musical library of King João IV (1640–1656)—one of the largest in Europe at the time—burned to the ground, destroying numerous Portuguese music-theoretical treatises that, still largely preserved in manuscript form, had not entered wider circulation through print.

In this paper, I trace the consolidation of a global Lusophone music theory between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, shaped by the intellectual, diplomatic, and institutional frameworks of the Portuguese empire. Through a series of vignettes examining treatises by Talésio, Fernandes, João IV, Alvares Frouvo, and da Sylva I outline the parallel development of two traditions: a practical branch rooted in the Catholic Church and the Jesuit-run University of Coimbra, and a speculative branch centered around João IV and his circle. The latter, drawing on the vast holdings of the king’s library, fostered original theoretical works that engaged in a sustained philosophical negotiation over the epistemic status of music—ranging from Aristotelian natural philosophy upheld by scholastic auctoritas to the humanist revival of Neo-Platonic and Pythagorean arithmology. I conclude with a reflection on the historiographic challenges posed by Portuguese music theory, exemplified through the fates of two recently recovered treatises: Escola de Canto de Órgão (1759–60) by Caetano de Melo de Jesus, composed in Bahia and shipped to Lisbon in hopes of royal sponsorship, but ultimately sidelined in the aftermath of the 1755 earthquake and undiscovered until the 1960s; and Especulação de segredos de Musica (ca. 1625) by António Fernandes, long-believed to have perished in the same disaster, but recently rediscovered in manuscript form in a municipal archive in Cascais.