Dictionary of Music
Entries cover notation, composition, performance, and musical history. Rousseau often defends melody’s expressive primacy and disputes Rameau’s harmonic theories. The work joins practical knowledge to an account of music, language, and feeling.
Understanding the text
It revises work originally undertaken for the Encyclopédie. Alphabetical arrangement contains debates extending across entries.
Theoretical, technical, and polemical dictionary. It revises work originally undertaken for the Encyclopédie. Alphabetical arrangement contains debates extending across entries.
Key points
- 01
Defining to dispute
Definitions are not invariably neutral: they involve theoretical choices.
- 02
Melody and harmony
The debate concerns principles explaining music’s expressive force.
- 03
Practice and theory
Notation and performance show music as an art learned, transmitted, and interpreted.
How to read it
Follow one concept across entries and compare definitions with the Letter on French Music.
Editions & sources
Summaries and key points are original editorial interpretations. They accompany reading the work and do not replace an edition of the text. Editorial method ↗