The Rules That Set Us Free: Adolph Bernhard Marx as Theorist, Thinker ...

Adolph Bernhard Marx (1795-1866) may be the single most influential music theorist before Heinrich Schenker; he is also among the least understood. Although he is chiefly known today as the first to codify the elements of sonata form, his four-volume Lehre von der musikalischen Komposition, praktisch-theoretish (1838-47) covered a wide range of subjects and was of enormous impact. But a full understanding of Marx's influence has been hampered by misinterpretation, often itself the result of mistranslation. Patrick Wood Uribe here offers close readings of Marx's writing as a corrective to these misapprehensions and re-evaluates the assumptions resting on previous readings.