Kurz nach der Veröffentlichung von Arcangelo Corellis op. 2 entzündete sich in Italien eine intensive Kontroverse um die Allemande der dritten Sonate. Die sogenannte Quintenaffäre, die in einem Briefwechsel von insgesamt elf Schreiben aus dem Jahr 1685 dokumentiert ist, hat bislang deutlich weniger Aufmerksamkeit erfahren als andere vergleichbare musiktheoretische Debatten des 17. Jahrhunderts.

Im Zentrum der Auseinandersetzung steht eine sequenzielle Verbindung der in die Quinte resolvirenden quarta subsyncopata, die Corelli als Tenue-Satz realisiert. Daraus ergeben sich unterschiedliche Deutungsmöglichkeiten der betreffenden Passage, insbesondere die Wahrnehmung offener Quintparallelen, die den Streit auslösten.

Der Beitrag interpretiert die Quintenaffäre als Ausdruck divergierender Hörwahrnehmungen der beteiligten Protagonisten und verbindet die Analyse satztechnischer Phänomene mit hörpsychologischen sowie aufführungspraktischen Überlegungen. Unter Einbezug gestalttheoretischer Ansätze wird gezeigt, wie Gestaltprinzipien, etwa das Gesetz der Nähe oder der Geschlossenheit, unterschiedliche Wahrnehmungsmöglichkeiten begünstigen. Die theoretisch gewonnenen Einsichten werden durch verschiedene Interpretationen der Allemande ergänzt und auf klanglicher Ebene nachvollziehbar gemacht.

North American music theory's multifarious formalisms (Babbitt, Forte, Lewin, etc.) have sparked frequent critiques and reflections on the disciplinary outlook of music theory. More recent scholarship has introduced increasing nuance through examinations of the historical backgrounds of such thinking, drawing on information theory, computer science and analytical philosophy.

In particular, the consolidation of music theory in the US during the 1960s and 70s coincided with the emergence of the interdiscplinary assemblage known as ‘cognitive science'; connections with the Massachussettes Institute of Technology, a key site of this development, are documented for music theorists such as Forte, Lewin and Lerdahl. Consequently, formalist music theories inherited a certain epistemological outlook from this intellectual environment; however, this outlook is rarely made explicit and remains relatively underdiscussed in the literature.

I clarify this implicit epistemology through a case study of one particular strand of 1980s post-tonal theory: contour theory, which describes melodies in abstraction from measured interval and durations, instead focusing on relative order of events in pitch and time. While this approach taps into the abstract machinery of American twelve-tone theory and other postwar compositional techniques, Marvin (1987) and Quinn (1997) crucially also give it a psychological interpretation, providing "similarity measures" for contour.

Through a close reading of its theoretical texts on the background of contemporaneous discussions in cognitive science (e.g. Marr 1982 vs. Gibson 1979) and the analytical philosophy of mind (Fodor 1975, 1983), I show that the psychological interpretation of contour theory presupposes a computational perspective on perception that decouples listeners from their environment; this is notably at odds with more recent concerns about dynamics, embodiment, or motion in music, and also with longer-term trends in cognitive science since ca. 1990. This case study thus hopes to contribute to a historical contextualizaton of the enterprise of American post-tonal music theory.

On the 31^st of January 2025, composer Caspar Johannes Walter (b.1964) brought his Labialklänge V-Helmholtz im Chaos to premiere. The performance was a part of the third biennial for contemporary music in the Rhine-Neckar region of Germany dedicated to the physicist Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894). Under the slogan “Hören mit Helmholtz,” the KlangForum commissioned five composers to incorporate their own takeaways from the physicist’s seminal book Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen als phsysiologische Grundlage für die Theorie der Musik (1913)

As a consequence of the divided subject in the 19th century, music steadily became the preferred medium to communicate ideas. Erlmann (2010) posited that this is due to "hearing posing the least amount of obstacle to the mind." This could explain Helmholtz's positivist approach of illustrating intervals through ratios and diagrams (using music to communicate math), yet, it could also be symptomatic of Helmholtz's need for concepts in order for his book to work. Based on this point, Helmholtz finds himslelf within the debate of 'Anatomy or Affect' when it comes to sensual arrousal from music– does Helmholtz agree with a rational Helmholtz or sensual Hanslick... a devided subject with Herz or a conceptual Blumenberg?

How is this best heard in music? Well, Walter's composition best illustrates this through his orchestration of the Archiorgano, wood blocks, metal screaching, and vocalists that either sing sensually or speak out statements. Therefore, Helmholtz's psychogram is put to music whereby the music amplifies how Helmholtz relates to sensuality, conceptuality or the ear's anatomy to move the soul.

The piece is all about the anatomy of the ear, but how the piece sounds and how we listen to it says a lot more about the role of the ear and musical listening both in the 19th and 21st century.