Question

In his landmark 1722 treatise Traité de l'harmonie, French composer and theorist Jean-Philippe Rameau sought to reorient musical theory from a system governed by contrapuntal voice-leading rules to one anchored in physical acoustics and harmonic generation. Prior to Rameau, music instruction relied heavily on thoroughbass (figured bass) pedagogical traditions, which treated vertical sonorities largely as ad hoc collections of intervals measured above a given bass line. Rameau posited that chords possessed an intrinsic identity independent of their surface inversions, introducing the concept of the basse fondamentale—an abstract root bass that tracks generative chord roots rather than literal lowest sounding notes. By demonstrating that a triad in first inversion was functionally equivalent to its root-position origin, Rameau unified seemingly disparate chordal structures under universal acoustic principles derived from string division ratios. However, contemporary detractors, notably proponents of the traditional Italian contrapuntal school, argued that Rameau’s reductionist framework prioritized static vertical alignment at the expense of dynamic horizontal voice independence. They contended that strict adherence to fundamental roots obscured the linear logic essential to fugal composition, reducing subtle contrapuntal tension to mere chord progressions.

Based on the passage, which of the following can be inferred regarding music theory instruction prior to the publication of Rameau's Traité de l'harmonie?