On Catalogues of Figures in Baroque Music Theory

After the music scholars of the second half of the 20th — the early 21st century ceased to believe in the existence of the only possible concept of Baroque musical and rhetorical figures (Figurenlehre), they naturally immersed themselves into the theories of figures formulated separately by certain experts. In this article based on the references dating back to the 17th— the first half of the 18th centuries the author is focused on the methodically critical but disputable issues arising in the attempt to make the list of essays containing catalogues of the musical figures. With specific reference the article dwells on various approaches to the concept of “the catalogue of figures”; it points out that the authors of the concepts do not always stick to the declared principles of listing or classification of figures, tend to mix up or play with the concepts of “figures”, “manners” or “decorations”, etc. Thus, the phenomenon of the catalogue of figures looks like something heterogeneous; every author follows his or her own ideas offering his or her own version of the theory of figures (Figurenlehre), due to particular contexts, purposes of the catalogue of figures and the motives for its creation.