Essais sur les principes de l'harmonie - Serre, Jean Adam 1704-1788 (Paris Prault, 1753)
Published during the Querelle des Bouffons by a painter, physicist, chemist and musical theorist whom Burney met in Geneva
Serre studied painting at the academy of Geneva, and at the university, after studying natural sciences, defended a thesis in physics under the direction of Jean-Louis Calandrini. He worked as a miniaturist in Marseille, Vienna and Paris, where he settled in 1751. He published several articles in the Mercure de France which he reused in his Essais sur les principes de l'harmonie in 1753, entering into debate with Charles-Henri Blainville, Rameau and Leonhard Euler. In 1756, he stayed in London and returned to Geneva where he published his Observations sur les principes de l'harmonie [...] in 1763: he challenged the musical theories developed by d'Alembert in the article "Fondamental" in the Encyclopédie, the 'Trattato di musica secondo la vera scienza dell'armonia' by Giuseppe Tartini and the 'Dictionaire harmonique' by Francesco Geminiani.
It was translated and commented on in German by Johann Adam Hiller in 1767 and quoted several times in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Dictionnaire de musique.
https://www.esm.rochester.edu/integral/32-2018/pau/https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272586787_Jean-Adam_Serre_un_juste_milieu_entre_Rameau_et_Tartini
où l'on traite De la Théorie de l'Harmonie en général, Des Droits respectifs de l'Harmonie & de la Mélodie, De La Basse Fondamentale, Et de l'Origine du Mode Mineur
Keywords: 18th Century (1701-1800); Music theory; Harmony; France