Harmonic Theory <i>(d’)après</i> Debussy: René Lenormand’s <i>Étude sur l’harmonie moderne</i>

ABSTRACT Étude sur l’harmonie moderne, René Lenormand’s 1912 survey of the ‘young French school’, illustrates the disarray brought to harmonic analysis and aesthetics by the avant-garde. It captures a moment at which Parisian musicians, now heavily exposed to forms unknown to theoretical and practical literature, were growing receptive to the idea of new harmonic principles; yet this notion of a revolution in harmonic logic, seemingly latent in contemporary composition, remained vague. That feeling of transition gave rise to analytical and practical dilemmas. Lenormand relied basically on traditional theory, but had to stretch the categories and tentatively admit novel ones; his hybrid approach catalysed a debate on the continuing applicability of ‘classical’ precepts. Though he claimed to offer only observations and generalizations about the state of practice, his work was interpreted as an attack on traditional rules, and in that respect exemplifies the turn to ‘empiricism’ in contemporary theory.