The Influence of Scientific Research on Nineteenth-century Musical Thought: the Work of Richard Wallaschek

The scientific study of music blossomed in the second half of the nineteenth century, particularly in Germany and Austria. Researchers such as Hermann von Helmholtz and Carl Stumpf investigated the physiological and psychological bases of music but did not focus on higher-level musical topics. It was not until the early twentieth century that scientific methods were applied to the study of large-scale musical issues, such as musical style or compositional techniques. However, one late nineteenth-century scholar, Richard Wallaschek, addressed musical issues from a scientific perspective. Wallaschek used empirical methods to develop two theories, one of music perception and one of music expression. He used his theory of music perception to characterize musical style, an issue of importance to the new discipline of musicology. He argued that Classical style music requires a process of mental representation that Abstract — Résumé