Hearing the Origins of Music, <i>c</i> .1785: Chabanon on Harmony, Language, and the Music Itself

ABSTRACT Michel-Paul Guy de Chabanon has long been recognized for his ‘double life’ as musician and man of letters. Contemporary and modern readers alike cite this dual identity to explain his position on the relationship between music and language. But Chabanon leads yet another double life. Having been born in the French colony of Saint-Domingue before relocating to Paris for his education, he brings a distinctively ‘West Indian perspective’ to his musicological reflections. His arguments about music and language contain essential references to the music of Black and Indigenous peoples, challenging beliefs central to European music and its aesthetic identity. This article contextualizes Chabanon’s emerging sense of musical autonomy and aesthetic experience as it relates to intercultural musical exchange. Using points of critical contact between these overlapping perspectives, I ultimately argue that Chabanon’s multivalent positionality provides us with a powerful heuristic to rework eighteenth-century debates concerning harmony, language, and the ‘music itself’.