[MWS 10.1 (2010) 101-120] ISSN 1470-8078 Witnessing a 'Process of Rationalisation'? A Review-Essay of Max Weber's Study on Music Michael Fend Keywords: Ethnomusicology, Harmonic, Music's anti-rational Character, Rational ization, Tonality. Max Weber's study on music1 confronts a twenty-first century global reader with the formidable problem of the author's appar ently irrefutable eurocentric vision. His aim was to devise a musi cal application for his famous universal-historical question, asking why '[non-European] developments in science, art, the state, and the economy did not follow the paths of rationalisation characteristic of the Western world'.2 His interpretation of the role of music in this evolution employed a similar dichotomy dividing 'musical hear ing which is apparently more finely matured among non-European people', from the 'rationally harmonised music existing only in the Western world', which was developed through specific forms of notation, counterpoint, chordal harmony, instrument building and musical genres.3 We may wonder why we should still study a text in which all the ingredients of musical culture, except for the refinement of hear ing, appear linked to Western European culture. It will hopefully become clear in the course of this essay and has been pointed out by previous authors that Weber's position was actually far more complex than the two quotes may invite us to believe. Confronting non-western musical cultures with an open mind and up-to-date 1. Max Weber, Zur Musiksoziologie. Nachlaß 1921, in Max Weber, Gesamtausgabe (Abteilung I, Band 14; ed. Christoph Braun and Ludwig Finscher; Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 2004), pp. XIV and 431. 2. M. Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie I (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr,19889), p. 11. 3. M. Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie I, p. 2.© Max Weber Studies 2010, Global Policy Institute, London Metropolitan University, 31 Jewry Street, London, EC3N 2EY. 102 Max Weber Studies research, the provisional results of which he was the first to admit,4 he developed doubts about the unilateralism and teleology of the process of rationalisation.5 Moreover, his method of studying music on a syn- and diachronically universal scope, which became less and less fashionable in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, should deserve reconsideration today, as it could contribute to an urgently needed response to a progress of globalisation which has become largely dictated by economic powers. Clearly, we should take up Schluchter's suggestion to 'reconstruct Weber's macro-sociological position, which includes acknowledging the problem that he posited but does not accept all the solutions he offered to that problem'.6 I. The historical origins of Weber's study on music When in the summer of 1912 Max Weber first tested his musical study by inviting colleagues and students to private lectures at his sump tuous Fallensteinsche Villa in Heidelberg, the visitors already had difficulty in deciphering the invitation: '"Sociology of the Muses?" What is he up to! To our complete amazement he went to the piano, demonstrating some parts of the theory of harmony and from there moved to the most extraordinary things. Until now he has done nothing as astonishing as this, we said afterwards'.7 If most of the visitors did not even have a smattering of music theory, Marianne Weber had her own particular concerns. She wrote to her mother-in law that Weber had lectured to his visitors, including the future soci ologists Paul Honigsheim and Karl Loewenstein, the philosophers Georg Lukâcs and Ernst Bloch, and the ecclesiastical-historian Hans von Schubert, for 'two and a half hours like a waterfall on the most difficult topics in music theory and their connections with econom ics and sociology', so that she had to 'use her authority to rescue the visitors and the waiting asparagus'.8 Weber had recently bought a 4. See M. Weber, Letter to Mina Tobler, 10.8.1919, quoted in Max Weber, Zur Musiksoziologie. Nachlaß 1921, p. 132. 5. See W.J. Mommsen, 'Max Webers Begriff der Universalgeschichte', in J. Kocka (ed.), Max Weber, der Historiker (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986), p. 65f. 6. W. Schluchter, Rationalismus der Weltbeherrschung. Studien zu Max Weber (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp...