I nuovi mondi di Albert Simon: ipotesi di una nuova tonalità

The theoretical works of the Hungarian musical theorist Albert Simon (1926-2000) – a very eclectic musician, orchestra conductor and analyst – are thus far unpublished. Only German musicology has been dealing with him: Bernhard Haas, who was his student, wrote a book about his thought (2004), and the German journal, «Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie», has published many theoretical contributions. This essay deals with the essential lines of Simon’s theory, a multidimensional New Tonality based on Pitch-Fields (Tonfelder), in the large scenario of the western musical theory. The aim is to argue about the possibility of employing forms of description or interpretation, born inside a “first practice” of tonality, with respect to a repertory (as the music of Romanticism) depending on a “second practice”. Indeed the author thinks that a particular theoretical look is able to bring to life or to disappearance its “objects”: they – as Foucault says – do not preexist the theory, but are direct emanations of it. Besides a discussion of several analyses from German bibliographic area, the article indicates some new perspectives showing how, starting from a Chopin’s work analysed by Schenker, Simon’s theory highlights otherwise not recognizable features.