'A harmony or concord of several and diverse voices': Autonomy in 17th-Century German music theory and practice

Abstract

As a classic example of musica poetica, Christoph Bernhard’s Tractatus compositionis augmentatus exhibits a rhetorical mode of thought. But while rhetoric informs an aesthetic in which music is bound to specific purposes, it also gives the foundation for theoretical, aesthetic, and social principles of musical autonomy. Autonomy and functionality are not mutually exclusive. This article tracks the emergence of concepts and practices of autonomy in the late seventeenth century, and, secondly, redefines aesthetic autonomy as linked to a particular type of function— the use of music to strive toward »the good life,« as Aristotle termed the goal of human existence.

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