Did Bach “invent” the rules of music theory?
Oh boy. Music theory, as such, has no &quot;rules,&quot; and so of course Bach did not invent them. Music theory is a descriptive enterprise, which aims to make sense of music as composed&#x2F;performed&#x2F;enacted by humans. (I have a PhD in music theory.)<p>Bach&#x27;s chorales were functional music for the Lutheran church, and to the extent that they form any sort of &quot;rules&quot; in music theory, it comes from the fact that they have been used to teach harmony for a long time (since at least the 1940s, as evidenced by this article). The reason for that isn&#x27;t so much that they&#x27;re prime examples of Western common-practice harmony, but rather that they have a homogeneous texture that&#x27;s easy to use in classrooms, because they&#x27;re easy for one person to play at the piano or for students to sing.<p>Recent music theory pedagogy has largely been moving <i>away</i> from the reliance on Bach chorales to teach harmony, especially as music theory has taken a broader perspective on what music we should be studying anyway. Studying the Bach chorales is just fine if you want to know about how Bach used harmony, but there&#x27;s a whole lot of music in the world, and there&#x27;s no meaningful sense in which Bach&#x27;s music intrinsically defines a set of rules any more than Mozart&#x27;s or Clara Schumann&#x27;s or AC&#x2F;DC&#x27;s or Meredith Monk&#x27;s defines a set of rules.