Introduction

Summary

When Hugo Riemann died on 10 July 1919, only one week before his seventieth birthday, it was evident that the young discipline of musicology had lost one of its cornerstones. A special issue of the recently founded journal Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft, which had been planned as a congratulatory volume for him, now had to double as his obituary. Its editor Alfred Einstein appraised Riemann's achievement, with what appears like uncanny prescience, in terms of its historic significance:

In Hugo Riemann, a piece of the history of musicological research of the past half-century is embodied. Of all the great names, if his is ignored, it becomes virtually impossible to conceive of this history.

It goes without saying that the celebratory-commemorative occasion for which this eulogy was written called for a certain degree of honey-mouthed exaggeration. But even if we treat Einstein's superlative assessment with some caution, what remains nonetheless is that even during his lifetime, Riemann's work was considered a milestone in the history of musicology. His prodigious output encompassed over fifty books, and countless articles and editions. His music dictionary – compiled entirely by himself – became the standard reference work for generations. And his theories of harmony and metre suggested that the basic codes of music had finally been cracked. In short, Riemann was a key player in what is easily stylised into a heroic pioneering age of the history of the discipline.