The Recognition of Major and Minor Keys in German Theory: 1680-1730

Abstract

German theory on modes and keys during the 17th and early 18th centuries is rife with paradox. It was a German theorist who first presented a comprehensive theory of majorminor polarity and who differentiated two types of mode almost exclusively according to the quality of tonic triad (Johann Lippius, in works from 1610 to 12). Yet his German contemporaries and several generations of succeeding German theorists persisted in maintaining the traditional modal theories as the basis of contemporary music during their gradual but total demise in several other countries. Second, several theorists writing in German who did begin to recognize keys as opposed to modes around the turn of the 18th century related those keys to foreign practices (Antoni Berthali to French practice,1 and Johann Mattheson to Italian2). Yet the earliest presentation of 24 keys as equally original (not with some keys considered transpositions of other more original ones) and the earliest recognition of the circle of fifths appeared in German theory. And finally, despite these firsts in German theory, it is only in Germany that a major