In Search of New Scales: Prince Edmond de Polignac, Octatonic Explorer

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Introduction: Edmond de Polignac and the Discovery of Octatonicism
Chapter 1: Childhood and Education (1834-1859)
Chapter 2: A Young Composer (1859-1877)
Chapter 3: Scales A, B, C: Polignac's Invention of Octatonicism (1877-1879)
Chapter 4: "Nothing of the Usual Tonality" (1880-1888)
Chapter 5: The Unexpected Woman (1889-1894)
Chapter 6: Alexandre de Bertha and the Guerre des gammes (1894-1896)
Chapter 7: Years of Plenty (1894-1899)
Chapter 8: Endings and Echoes (1900-)
Chapter 9: Edmond de Polignac's Octatonic Music
Afterword
Preface to Polignac's Octatonic Treatise
Polignac's Octatonic Treatise, "A Study on the Alternating Sequences of Whole Steps and Half Steps, (and on the Scale Known as Major-Minor)"
Edmond de Polignac, "Etude sur les successions alternantes de tons et demi-tons (Et sur la gamme dite majeure-mineure)"

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The first publication and exploration of a pathbreaking treatise on what would become a crucial element in the music of Stravinsky and Ravel: the octatonic scale. In 1879, French amateur composer Edmond de Polignac (1834-1901) painstakingly devised a new way to create melodies and harmonies using a scale that alternated half and whole steps. This scale -- known today as octatonic -- was animportant element in the music of Liszt and Rimsky-Korsakov, and would later figure prominently in the works of Ravel, Stravinsky, and many others. Sylvia Kahan, author of Music's Modern Muse: A Life of Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac, here publishes the Prince's octatonic treatise for the first time -- in both the original French and in English translation -- and comments extensively on what the treatise, and the Prince's little-known compositions, reveal about musical thought in late nineteenth-century Paris. Given his aristocratic lineage, Polignac might seem an unlikely precursor of musical modernism, yet he was known as an advocate of "advanced ideas." Late in life, he married wealthy heiress Winnaretta Singer, who sponsored prestigious public concerts of her husband's bold works, interpreted by the greatest musical artists in Paris. Debussy and Fauré were admirers of Polignac's music, especially the 1879 octatonic oratorio Pilate livre le Christ (Pontius Pilate Hands Christ Over). Marcel Proust lauded his compositions and the "essence of genius of their author." In Search of New Scales is based on bibliographic material in private archives, as well as letters and other documents in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Sylvia Kahan's new book will become a permanent point of reference for all future studies of post-Romantic and twentieth-century composition. Sylvia Kahan is Professor of Music at the Graduate Center and College of Staten Island, City University of New York. Her previous book, Music's Modern Muse, was published by the University of Rochester Press in hardcover and paperback.

Reviews

Revue de musicologie

One can only admire the mammoth research that S. Kahan has carried out regarding [Polignac's] life. . . . Polignac surveys the possibilities of a new musical language more deeply than did his contemporaries. . . . I should emphasize how excellent the translation is of Polignac's treatise. . . . The numerous musical examples have been set with great skill. -- Rene Champigny

Tempo

Fulsome indexes [in this book and Kahan's 'Music's Modern Muse'] make them easy to dip in and out of. . . . Real digestible coffee table books. -- Anthony Gritten

Music and Letters

Kahan's musical analysis, and her publication and translation of Polignac's treatise alone are sufficient to position this volume as an important addition to octatonic scholarship

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