René Rusch (University of Michigan)
‘Schubert’s Enharmonicism Revisited’
SMA Zoom Colloquium, Thursday 3 April 2025, 6.00-8.00pm BST
Meeting ID: 917 3694 9866 Passcode: 447629
Abstract:
How might have Schubert conceived of enharmonicism during the dawn of quasi-equal and equal temperaments in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century musical keyboard practice? This presentation proposes that, while these temperaments helped facilitate a sense of closure of harmonic space by enabling keys with five to seven accidentals to become acoustically and conceptually equivalent to their enharmonic counterparts, Schubert’s music appears to convey a more complex view. In an effort to unpack some of these intricacies, the presentation will present close studies of selected musical passages and works from his oeuvre, suggesting that their resultant, distinct paths through harmonic space (many of which appear to dramatize, or bring into relief, the enharmonic seams that conjoin sharps with flats) might be seen as a consequence of additional factors that reined in the newly-found freedoms afforded by (quasi-) equal temperaments: an historical consciousness of mean-tone and well-temperaments, a regard towards the perception and cognition of more novel harmonic relationships, musical-formal processes, notation, and a hermeneutics revolving around key. Such speculations will altogether suggest that Schubert’s harmonic paths convey a judicious approach to enharmonically-related pitch phenomena, one that is cognizant of the past and that, at the same time, reexamines this past within the context of the musical affordances of the composer’s present.
Bio:
René Rusch (she/her) is an associate professor of music theory at the University of Michigan. Prior to joining the faculty at U-M, she taught at McGill University (2007–15). In addition to specializing in Schubert studies, René’s research interests include late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century music, jazz theory and analysis, and critical theory. Her work appears in several refereed journals, and her book, Schubert’s Instrumental Music and Poetics of Interpretation, was published by Indiana University Press in fall 2023.