This volume explores the possibilities of cognate music theory, a concept introduced by musicologist John Walter Hill to describe culturally and historically situated music theory.
Cognate music theories offer a new way of thinking about music theory, music history, and the relationship between insider and outsider perspectives when researchers mediate between their own historical and cultural position, and that of the originators of the music they are studying. With contributions from noted scholars of musicology, music theory, and ethnomusicology, this volume develops a variety of approaches using the cognate music theory framework and shows how this concept enables more nuanced and critical analyses of music in historical context.
Addressing topics in music from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, this volume will be relevant to musicologists, music theorists, and all researchers interested in reflecting critically on what it means to construct a theory of music.
Chapter 9 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.
Edited by:
Ignacio Prats-Arolas
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 254mm,
Width: 178mm,
ISBN: 9781032106656
ISBN 10: 1032106654
Series: Routledge Research in Music
Pages: 286
Publication Date: 29 September 2025
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming
1. Musicology beyond historicism: Epistemological implications and scope of John Walter Hill’s cognate music theory Ignacio Prats-Arolas Part I: Framing concepts 2. Cognate music theory John Walter Hill 3. Insiders and outsiders: Revisiting Indigenous musical thought Bruno Nettl Part II: Syntax, form, and genre 4. Heinrich Christoph Koch's description of the Andantino e cantabile in Joseph Haydn's Symphony No. 42 as a response to recent sonata theories Gregory Hellenbrand 5. Artisanal knowledge as a cognate music theory: Reading a partimento Robert Gjerdingen 6. Intersections of biography, analysis, and performance: Beethoven at Heiligenstadt in 1802 William Kinderman 7. A cognate theory of generic classification in the Airs sérieux et à boire of Sébastien de Brossard Kenneth Smith Part III: Rhetoric and emotions 8. Ripa’s Iconologia as a source for musical rhetoric of the seventeenth century Barbara Russano Hanning 9. The language of emotions from Descartes to Metastasio Álvaro Torrente and José María Domínguez Part IV: Timbre, color, and temperament 10. ""Quegli strumenti, che erano più atti a far proporzionata accompagnatura al balletto a cavallo”: Envisioning a cognate theory of instrumental timbre in early modern Florence Kelley Harness 11. “Énergie des modes”:Tuning and temperament in seventeenth-century France Charlotte Mattax Moersch 12. ""Il cembalo de’ colori, e la musica degli occhi”: Francesco Algarotti and a cognate concept of music in the age of the Enlightenment Bella Brover-Lubovsky Part V: Historical sources and cultural hermeneutics 13. Insider and outsider views in early modern correspondence involving patrons and musicians Dinko Fabris 14. Anthropology, music, and theater in a seventeenth-century year Robert L. Kendrick 15. Song about song, music about life: Herder on music's transcendent moment Philip V. Bohlman. Index
Ignacio Prats-Arolas is on the faculty of musicology at the Conservatorio Superior de Música “Joaquín Rodrigo” in Valencia, Spain and teaches courses on music at the Florida State University Valencia Study Center. He holds a PhD in musicology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
