ABSTRACT
From the 1720s, the French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau allowed music theory to become a discipline severed from musical practice. Through his rejection of Rameau, Rousseau stigmatized French music as a product of nurture and posited instead Italian music as the innate expression of musical genius. In his 1742 project of a simplified musical notation, Rousseau had already identified in the musical practices of his time such conflicting conceptions. The Rousseauian binary French (nurture) vs. Italian (nature) music can be historically verified by considering the rise of the Classical style, its fetishization of the musical score, and the demise of semi-improvisatory musical practices inherited from the Baroque period.
