ABSTRACT
Jean-Philippe Rameau's recognition of the suspension is really an acknowledgment that some musical passages are best understood in terms of the Basso Continuo. Echoing Riemann's primary objection to Rameau, Schenker cites Rameau's notion of chord structure by thirds as the scion of a misbegotten race of mechanical theories of vertical chord structures. The study of the history of music theory enjoys the closest view of the parade route of authorities that have been vested in music and allows for an examination of the intellectual and ethical motivations behind them. As the primary locus of German profundity and universality, German music was the heart of a spiritual nation felt to be not only universal but distinctly ethnic at the same time. In terms of intellectual history, this reading of Rameau links his work to an age when systematic thought tacked a sometimes ambiguous course between the perceived tidal forces of deduction and induction, the age of both Descartes and Newton.
