origin-fetis · yust2024-tonality-racism

Before there was a concept of atonal music, and hence of tonality as a means of sorting classical and modern music, Alexandre-Étienne Choron and François-Joseph Fétis introduced “tonalités” as a way of sorting and valuating ancient and modern music with an evolutionary lens. ... The term first appears in print in Choron and Fayelle 1810 ... Fétis linked biological racism with his concept of tonality most explicitly in his last major project, the multivolume Histoire générale de la musique (Fétis 1869). ... While most music theorists know Fétis as the originator of the concept of tonality, his racism (unlike Heinrich Schenker's) is less discussed.