Saturday, August 17, 2019

Henry Lemoine, Traité (1833)

Henry Lemoine's Traité d'harmonie pratique et théorique (1833) is a perfect foil to E. F. Richter's "modern" Harmony in that Lemoine holds closely to the thorough-bass instructional system of the partimento tradition that dominated 18th century musical training and was only beginning to fade away by the mid-19th century. The emphasis is certainly on "pratique" and not "théorique": Lemoine is not concerned with the generation of chords; he restricts himself to off-hand comments about the opinions of Catel and Reicha, authors of the two harmony textbooks used in the Conservatoire through the first half of the century. He presents the chordal vocabulary in the same order as other textbooks but follows—and in some case even precedes—each with keyboard-based exercises.

The dominant ninth chord is presented in the familiar way (see below) Inversions are ignored.


 Lemoine's table of usable chords is as follows and is of interest because it includes the MM7 and the chromatic augmented sixth chords (in other words, the complete set he had introduced in the preceding chapters; in most other textbooks of the era, the augmented sixths are presented along with or just after the ninth chords but not included in the chord table).


Following the table is a preliminary "omnibus" lesson presented first with written-out chords (see below), then in several keys in the familiar figured-bass style of the partimento (I show only the first of these, in G major). The appearances of chords figured with "9" are boxed; these are all dominant ninth chords, prepared and then resolved internally.



Much of the last quarter of the book is taken up by a series of partimenti, in two sections, the first presumably by Lemoine, the second by earlier masters Cotumacci and Fenaroli. The first half of no. 17 in the first series is shown below. Despite the earlier presentation and despite Lemoine's indication that the exercises are "progressive," the dominant ninth is almost entirely absent. What we do find instead are 9-8 suspension figures. Of the seven figures with "9" below (boxed), six are of this type. The one with the arrow is a dominant ninth but can't really be said to function as one in context (note that is has no seventh). Below the example I have written out the first five bars of the third system for reference.



Reference:
Henry Lemoine, Traité d'harmonie pratique et théorique (1833). Source: IMSLP; digital facsimile of a copy in the Bibliothèque nationale de France.