Musical Conceptions of Rousseau in Notions of Music by Antonio Rayol (1902)

Abstract

This work addresses Rousseau's musical conceptions found in Noções de musica, the textbook by Antonio Rayol (1863-1904), from Maranhão, published in 1902 for use by his students at the School of Music and the Normal School in São Luís. Rayol explained that he based the content of his book on several authors. However, he prioritized certain works: Raphael Machado's Diccionario musical (1842), Nicolao Cattaneo's Grammatica da musica (1861), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Dictionnaire de musique (1781a, 1781b). Rousseau was also cited in the aforementioned works by Machado and Cattaneo, thus highlighting the relevance of this author in musical literature. Therefore, we pose the following question: how are Rousseau's concepts of music found in Rayol's book? Therefore, the objective of this work is to analyze Notions of Music to identify how Rayol appropriated Rousseau's musical conceptions. As a methodological procedure, a bibliographic research was carried out on the cited authors and works, with theoretical grounding in Rousseau (2021, 2008, 2005), understanding his musical conceptions. In the analysis carried out, we found references to Rousseau in the textual contents of Notions of Music, but we identified a more extensive dialogue with the Genevan philosopher in the preface of this book, entitled "To the Readers". We found that this text by Rayol is a discourse with aesthetic reflections on music, in which the author presents several concepts common to Rousseau, showing that music has a magical power to represent the feelings of the soul, elevate feelings, excite human passions, awaken affections and imagination.