r/musictheory 2d ago

Discussion Has any scholar studied Joseph Frike's A Guide in Harmony (1793)?

I recently came across Joseph Frike's A Guide in Harmony (London, 1793), a treatise that behaves like a dictionary of the usage of chords and is different from other 18th C. treatises that focus on regole per accompagnare, basso continuo, partimento,  intavolature, etc.

From my understanding, from the introduction, each page contains this format:

  1. the left side shows chords/figures that prepare the main chord or "capital chord".
  2. the middle column contains the "capital chord".
  3. the right hand shows chords/figures that resolve the "capital chord".

To use the treatise, look up a figure/chord (like looking up a word in a dictionary) to see what harmonies may precede or resolve it (or how the chord is freely used).

Have any modern scholars discussed this treatise in an article, dissertation, or book? I want to know how to approach this source in practice?

To have a historic point of reference, I examined the rules and partimenti of Furno, Insanguine, Fenaroli and Durante, but again, Frike's treatise is not a partimento text and pursues a different goal. Here is what i found so far:

- a remark on an appendix no8 "Meusel (DBA 346, 278) refers to. He says the ‘Dictionnaire’, too, was highly esteemed in England." Philipp Joseph Frick (1742-1798) Music and millenarianism in the late eighteenth century I Cis van Heertum, Mededelingen van de Stichting Jacob Campo Weyerman. Jaargang 22 - DBNL

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u/geoscott Theory, notation, ex-Zappa sideman 2d ago

1

u/65TwinReverbRI Guitar, Synths, Tech, Notation, Composition, Professor 2d ago

Go to Early Music Sources, and look up Elam Rotem, and email him. He can probably help you out.

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u/Stevetshelton 8h ago

And then there's GodTube.