Partimento

Recent archival discoveries have begun to alter longstanding assumptions about the methods and materials of J. S. Bach’s pedagogy. Contrary to the widespread belief, it was not the ornate, four-part, vocal Choralgesang style that played the central role in Bach’s teaching. Rather, it was the Choralbuch style, where relatively simple thoroughbass chorale harmonizations were improvised at the keyboard. This two-volume series makes these findings accessible to scholars, teachers, and students by providing translations and modern editions of relevant sources from Bach’s circle.

Volume one provides a modern pedagogical edition of the thoroughbass chorales in C. P. E. Bach’s New Melodies for Some Chorales in the New Hamburg Chorale Book (1787), thoroughbass exercises from the anonymous “Precepts and Principles” (1738; attributed to Bach’s circle), the first English translation of David Kellner’s enormously popular treatise, True Instruction in Thoroughbass (2nd ed. 1737), a list of thoroughbass rules by J. S. Bach, and a newly created Thoroughbass Primer for Beginners. Volume two is a modern edition of the anonymous Sibley Chorale Book, which has been recently attributed to J. S. Bach’s circle of pupils in Dresden, c.1735.

Questo volume nasce da un’esigenza: fare il punto della situazione dello stato degli studi musicologici sulla didattica del partimento (la cui pratica discorsiva è oggi assodata e consolidata) e più in generale della composizione in Italia e in Francia fra Settecento e Ottocento e riproporre alcune indagini concepite a partire dagli anni ’80 del secolo scorso a tutt’oggi con l’obiettivo di verificare quanto tali studi siano ancora attuali e quanto necessitino di aggiornamento, rimodulazione e nuovo inquadramento, tenendo conto del fatto che tali indagini hanno preso l’avvio nell’era predigitale.
Il titolo del volume, La didattica del partimento, ricalca quello di un saggio pubblicato nel 1993 che ha proposto all’attenzione della comunità degli studiosi un concetto, un modello, una tipologia di insegnamento, uno stile di apprendimento invalso nei conservatori napoletani a partire dal XVII secolo. Da Napoli le indagini si sono estese gradualmente, proficuamente e senza soluzione di continuità ad altre ‘piazze’ d’Italia e d’Europa. Le tappe della disseminazione progressiva dell’attenzione e dell’interesse possono essere descritte in sintesi seguendo un filo costante. Il volume ripropone nove saggi (pubblicati nella loro veste originaria fra il 1993 e il 2013) rivisti, corretti e aggiornati alla luce di nuove acquisizioni documentarie, di approfondimenti d’indagine e della più significativa bibliografia recente.

Read online to see the complete examples:

https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.20.26.3/mto.20.26.3.remes.html

ABSTRACT: This article provides the first English translation of a little-known manuscript treatise by the central-German composer and Capellmeister, Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel (1690-1749), titled Kürzer und gründliche Unterricht (Brief and Thorough Instruction, ca. 1719-49). Stölzel's method frames speculative theory (trias harmonica and the tabula tradition) practically in terms of thoroughbass in order to provide simple instruction on how to invent the bass and middle voices to an original chorale melody. In the second half of the treatise, Stölzel uses thoroughbass to describe not only harmony, but also counterpoint. He does so by explaining various dissonant intervallic constellations in terms of the traditional terms "agent" and "patient," which describe the two voices involved in a dissonant syncopatio. Stölzel's treatise thus has both historical and practical value, since his method of chorale harmonization can provide welcome guidance for today's students and pedagogues.

Complete publication available for purchase here: https://derekremes.com/teaching/historicalimprovisation/

In recent decades a growing number of musicians, scholars, and pedagogues have come to recognize the foundational importance of thoroughbass in eighteenth-century music. This has created a demand for historically informed teaching materials. Yet very often, historical treatises are too foreign, verbose, and abstract for today’s students. J. C. Kellner’s Grundriss des Generalbasses (Kassel: 1783) represents a notable exception. Since his target audience is absolute beginners, Kellner’s instruction is cogent, concise, and decidedly practical. The goal of this publication is thus threefold: first, to call attention to Kellner’s treatise; second, to make Kellner’s instruction accessible to English-speaking musicians; and finally, to provide historically informed models for the realization of Kellner’s exercises. Those readers seeking further instruction in thoroughbass are encouraged to consult my 2019 book and my 2020 dissertation. My website also contains many free materials.

https://theleupoldfoundation.org/product/remes-derek-the-art-of-preluding-deconstructing-and-reconstructing-the-preludes-in-j-s-bachs-well-tempered-clavier-volume-i-ii/

According to J. S. Bach, the fundamental principles of composition are derived from thoroughbass and the keyboard—The Art of Preluding: Deconstructing and Reconstructing the Preludes in J. S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier I & II demonstrates how. Each prelude is furnished with a reductive analysis of its thoroughbass background and voice-leading patterns. Following this deconstruction phase, a simplified figured bassline is presented to aid the reader in reconstructing an original work using Bach’s harmonic framework. To facilitate comparison, all preludes are transposed either to C major (Vol. 1) or A minor (Vol. 2). An extensive preface, which is divided between Vols. 1 and 2, provides the reader with detailed guidance and historical context. Finally, various appendices present C. P. E. Bach’s rule-of-the octave harmonizations and modulations, which played a central role in his understanding of improvisation. This historically oriented, pedagogical, and practical work will thus be of value particularly to teachers, students, and performers interested in eighteenth-century music.

This is an unpublished talk given in 2010 in celebration of Chopin's 200th birthday. No updates have been made. The text represents the stage of affairs back then. Some elements of this text have been published subsequently in my articles «Romantic thoroughbass» and «Handwerk und Weltengrund».

This article traces a brief history of a schema from Corelli to Mozart, here designated the Fonte-Romanesca, in order to clarify certain foundational principles in schema theory's conception of a model, particularly as it relates to the creative act. Models are not theoretical abstractions, but cultural artifacts that inform the compositional process through (near-)literal copy, (creative) imitation, variation, and problem solving—both combinatorially and developmentally. Such a re-evaluation of schema theory is simultaneously an opportunity to reflect on larger disciplinary changes surrounding the study of music from the long eighteenth century over the last few decades.

Based on an investigation of Chopin's musical education, the education of Parisian »Pianistes Compositeurs« of the 19th century, and a large number of historical sources, this article aims at reconstructing the unwritten parts of Chopin's unfinished »Méthode de Piano«. The first part discusses Chopin's musical education in Warsaw (focusing on music theory, improvisation and composition), his pianistic ideals and his teaching methods. The second part is a an educated guess/a reconstruction of what could have become Chopin's »Méthode de Piano« based on important historical facts and treatises.
It was Chopin's last will that his friends Henri Reber and Charles-Valentin Alkan complete his »Méthode de Piano«. Chopin also hoped that his student Thomas Tellefsen would continue the unfinished work. However, Tellefsen did not get much further than Chopin himself and unfortunately Alkan and Reber never worked to continue the »Méthode«. Taking a closer look at treatises like Reber's »Traité d'Harmonie«, the monumental »Encyclopédie du Pianiste Compositeur« by Alkan's teacher Pierre-Joseph-Guillaume Zimmerman, and other sources of the time, it becomes possible to get a clearer insight into what the training of 19th-century piano virtuosos looked like and what Chopin might have intended when he started to write his own »Méthode«.

https://de.schott-music.com/shop/musiktheorie-und-improvisation-no275561.html

In the second volume of his Kritische Briefe (1763), Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg mentions "eine besondere Art von ganzer Cadenz", which he considers to be typical for "[d]er galante Styl". This cadential schema features a dominant 6/4-chord with the first scale degree in the top voice. The resulting 'dissonant' fourth (considered against the bass), does not resolve by a descending diatonic semitone, but instead moves up a whole tone before coming to a final resolution into the tonic chord. The distinctive voice leading pattern in the melody thus consists of 1-2-1.

First, I will outline the originating history of this 'Marpurg cadence' in the galant repertoire from ca. 1730, the point in history which Marpurg himself indicated as its genesis. Three variants of Marpurg's (rather abstract) schema will be exemplified and discussed, together with their role in the development towards a distinct cadential scheme.

Second, I will examine in how far partimento and solfeggio practice contributed to the widespread dissemination of this 'Marpurg cadence' in both vocal and instrumental galant music. Solfeggi by e.g. Leonardo Leo, Nicola Porpora, and Giuseppe Aprile at least seem to demonstrate that this cadential schema was undoubtedly an integral part of the Neapolitan musical training from the 1730s on.

Finally, I will propose to include 'Marpurg's galant cadence' as a full-fledged schema in existing partimento and galant cadence typologies. Analogous to Gjerdingen's Do-Si-Do and Mi-Re-Do, I will suggest to subsume this schema under the category of Do-Re-Do cadences. Because of its peculiar combination of upper voice and bass, however, the 'Marpurg cadence' deserves its specific designation.

As observers within the field of music theory will have noticed, our understanding of the subjects of counterpoint and harmony are in a period of slow but steady change. Recent research into the history of contrapuntal and compositional instruction has shown that improvisation and practical instruction were far more important up to the eighteenth century than what the nineteenth-and twentieth-century textbook tradition let us to believe. 1 One of the most recent changes in our understanding of these subjects concerns the way in which practical keyboard skills and improvisation were integrated into compositional instruction (especially in the Italian counterpoint tradition) and how figured bass exercises (called bassi numerati or partimenti in Italy) were regarded as the first necessary steps in this training. In Italy, composition was taught not primarily through textbooks, but rather by example. The most famous traditions-those in Bologna and Naples-began with a practical methodology of learning composition at the keyboard, followed by extensive written studies. The aforementioned change in our understanding has generated an entire new field of research into partimenti, solfeggi, and counterpoint notebooks over the last two decades, which in its turn already has started to affect our modern music theory curricula. In counterpoint, for example, an increasing number of recent textbooks integrate improvisational skills today. This development has driven the subject of Renaissance and Baroque counterpoint towards a more historically informed type of practical counterpoint, which was in fact the term that was used in Italy: contrappunto pratico. 2 Where previous counterpoint treatises by authors such as Fux (1725), Bellermann (1862), Dubois (1901), or Jeppesen (1930) essentially proposed an elementary written approach leading us up to the stairs of Parnassus, more recent textbooks-such as those by Peter Schubert (2002) or Barnabé Janin (2012)-encourage students instead to realize their counterpoint exercises through a more practically oriented "learning-by-doing" approach via singing or with the hands on the keyboard. Likewise, in the field of harmony, keyboard playing is increasingly seen as an invaluable step towards mastering such skills that were previously acquired primarily through textbook rules and written exercises. 3 This growing momentum of integrating improvisational skills into counterpoint and harmony and the changes it has generated in the teaching and learning of these subjects also profoundly affects the training of aural skills today. In this article I will address the implications of these developments for the subject of aural skills in higher music education. I will do this by giving an overview of some basic historical methods, particularly those used in eighteenth-century Neapolitan conservatories. In doing so, I will show how this pedagogy can contribute to the integration of counterpoint, harmony, variation, and improvisation in aural skills instruction today.

Please visit <derekremes.com/publications/> to download Vol. 2: Examples, Appendices, and Bibliography. (The file is too large for the Academia website.)

The present work investigates the compositional pedagogy of J. S. Bach and his circle. According to Bach, the Fundamental-Regeln (fundamental principles) of composition are derived from thoroughbass and the keyboard. I have discovered that, in an autograph manuscript likely used in  his lessons, Bach used the words licentia and fundamental to rationalize a contrapuntal phenomenon known as anticipationes transitus in precisely the same manner as J. D. Heinichen did in his treatise, Der General-Bass in der Composition (1728). Given that Bach knew Heinichen’s treatise and that both men associate thoroughbass with composition, this study posits that Bach’s Fundamental-Regeln are related to Heinichen’s rationalization of modern contrapuntal licenses in relation to a “fundamental,” stile antico background. Additional support for linking Bach and Heinichen comes from my discovery that the anonymous “Vorschriften und Grundsätze” (1738), which originates from Bach’s circle, includes the same table of “fundamental” thoroughbass figures as Heinichen’s earlier 1711 treatise. For these reasons, Heinichen’s conception of thoroughbass, which differs significantly from late-eighteenth-century thoroughbass theory, plays a foundational role in this reconstruction of compositional pedagogy in Bach’s circle.

Based on an account by C. P. E. Bach, his father’s teaching involved three topic areas: thoroughbass, chorale, and fugue, each of which receives a chapter in this study. Chapter One argues that the primary reason thoroughbass emerged in Germany c.1700 as the dominant pedagogical and compositional method is that thoroughbass promotes an understanding of compositional relationships in a manner that tablature does not. Bach may have attributed such significance to thoroughbass because it enables a single player to control a polyphonic texture in real time through the simplification, synthesis, and embodiment of traditional contrapuntal teachings. Chapter one also explores the two most significant aspects of Heinichen’s thoroughbass theory: what I call “contrapuntal function” and “scale-degree function,” which are combined in Heinichen’s method of improvising a prelude. Next, Chapter Two explores the implications of the recent attribution of the Sibley Chorale Book to Bach’s circle and calls for a greater awareness of a generic distinction between chorale harmonization in the ornate, four-part, vocal Choralgesang style and the simpler, thoroughbass- and keyboard-centered Choralgesang style, which is in essence only two-voice (soprano and bass). A growing body of sources from Bach’s circle containing multiple basslines under each chorale support the hypothesis that Bach’s teaching also included this technique. Finally, Chapter Three begins by examining the relationship between chorale and fugue and by suggesting a possible pedagogical method of transitioning between the two. Next, thoroughbass fugues from Bach’s circle are explored, including two such works that Bach apparently used in lessons. Chapter Three closes with an investigation of the techniques of invertible counterpoint and canon as they relate to Bach’s teaching and presents some of their underlying principles in mathematical form.

The present database UUPart, also called The Uppsala Partimento Database, represents the work of cataloguing and linking the repertoire of the Italian partimento for the time span roughly between 1700 and 1850. Initially, it was developed as a research tool at a doctoral dissertation project called "Counterpoint and Partimento: Methods of Teaching Composition in Late Eighteenth-Century Naples," recently published as nr. 25 in the series Studia Musicologica Upsaliensia of the Swedish publisher Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis.

Through an identification string of the first ten pitches, UUPart facilitates the searching and identification of concordant sources within the repertoire of the Italian partimento. For a list of sources of this database, click here.

You can search for a partimento by using the "Partimento Note String" scroll bar on top of the search menu, or you can enter a number of pitches manually in the fields "begins with" or "contains." Click search to find the matching partimenti. The content of a source can be investigated by scrolling the "RISM Siglum / call number" list.

Citations of The Uppsala Partimento Database UUPart should be made in the same style as for printed books in a series. It should include the URL, followed by the date of access. We provide the following as a model:

Peter van Tour. UUPart, The Uppsala Partimento Database. Compiled and edited by Peter van Tour. Launched 2015, Uppsala. http://www2.musik.uu.se/UUPart/UUPart.php; accessed 9 May 2015.

In his autobiographical sketch Joseph Haydn claims to have learned the ‘true fundamentals of composition’ from Nicola Porpora. Porpora (1686–1768) was a student of Gaetano Greco at the Conservatorio dei Poveri in Naples and later himself became a maestro at the Conservatorio di San Onofrio, where Francesco Durante also taught. That Haydn’s teacher Porpora came from the centre of the partimento tradition, which has attracted increased scrutiny by music theorists in recent years, justifies examining Haydn’s relationship with this long-standing pedagogical method and compositional practice. In this essay I analyse the sources that shed light on Porpora’s relationship to the partimento tradition and on Haydn’s relationship to Porpora. Focusing on partimento counterpoint, I examine several of Haydn’s fugues in contrasting genres in order to illustrate how the principles of thoroughbass and partimento help to explain particular structural procedures in Haydn’s music, as well as the compositional processes that produced them.

During the second half of the eighteenth century, the city of Naples had three music conservatories: the Conservatorio di Santa Maria di Onofrio, the Conservatorio di Santa Maria di Loreto and the Conservatorio di Santa Maria della Pietà de’ Turchini. The students at these institutions received highly professional training in singing, instrumental playing, and composition. This study reveals new evidence that partimenti were used not only as exercises in keyboard playing, but also as exercises in written counterpoint; partimenti were used either as bass lines over which students wrote one or several contrapuntal parts, or as notational devices that facilitated the sketching of fugues. Musicologists have previously encountered considerable difficulties in identifying and describing differences between the schools of Leonardo Leo and Francesco Durante, represented by the terms Leisti and Durantisti. This study shows that these schools are primarily defined through different methods of teaching counterpoint. Contemporary counterpoint notebooks show that the maestri at Sant’Onofrio and Santa Maria di Loreto followed Durante’s teaching methods, while the maestri at La Pietà followed Leo’s teaching methods. The school of Durante emphasized the writing of melodic lines over a hexachordal scale or a partimento bass, using different methods, such as the moti del basso and prescribed conditions. The school of Leo favored the use of invertible counterpoint, emphasizing skills in sketching and writing choral fugues from subjects and countersubjects. For the first time, the partimento and solfeggio repertoire used at the Neapolitan conservatories has been systematically investigated through the creation of two research tools, the databases UUPart: The Uppsala Partimento Database and UUSolf: The Uppsala Solfeggio Database, published online on two companion websites.

https://acta.mamutweb.com/Shop/Product/0025-Counterpoint-and-Partimento/diva2:795801

Du 18e siècle à la première décennie du 19e siècle, l'enseignement des conservatoires napolitains semble avoir donné aux jeunes compositeurs un avantage sur la plupart de leurs contemporains européens. Au coeur de cet enseignement, la formation au partimento (exercice de basse légèrement ou non chiffrée) a pu jouer un rôle déterminant dans la promotion de l'excellence en matière de composition et la transformation de jeunes garçons italiens en compositeurs capables d'improviser tout un tissu polyphonique au départ d'un seul fil. Si les méthodes didactiques insolites des conservatoires napolitains (à l'origine nés comme institutions caritatives) s'attirèrent le scepticisme de visiteurs étrangers tels que Charles Burney, les élèves qui en sortaient avaient le don de composer avec une rapidité et une fluidité hors du commun. Au terme d'une formation ancrée sur l'assimilation minutieuse et laborieuse de schémas musicaux au moyen des partimenti, ces compositeurs pouvaient imaginer et exécuter de la musique à plusieurs voix avec une facilité déconcertante. Fedele Fenaroli (1730-1818) fut le codificateur de cette tradition non verbale emblématique de l'école napolitaine. Utilisés par de nombreuses générations de musiciens italiens (parmi lesquels Giuseppe Verdi et Luciano Berio), ses ouvrages pour l'apprentissage de la composition - Regole (1775) et Partimenti (c.1800) - connurent un succès éditorial sans précédent, en Italie et au-delà, jusqu'aux premières décennies du 20e siècle. Ses compositions, principalement religieuses, tombèrent quant à elles dans l'oubli, bien que la plupart des manuscrits autographes aient été conservés. Notre étude s'est attachée à retracer l'historique des conservatoires napolitains et caractériser les méthodes d'enseignement de l'école napolitaine au tournant du 18e au 19e siècle ; proposer une synthèse des éléments biographiques connus de Fedele Fenaroli et de son école ; inventorier l'ensemble de ses compositions ; définir la nature et la fonction des partimenti - replacés dans le contexte des récents développements de l'histoire de la théorie musicale en général, et de la tonalité en particulier - et analyser la contribution spéciique de Fenaroli dans la transmission et perpétuation de cette tradition ; circonstancier l'héritage de l'oeuvre fénarolienne aux 19e et 20e siècles et la réévaluation moderne de la tradition du partimento au tournant du 20e au 21e siècle.

Throughout the 18th century, the practice of partimento flourished in Italian conservatories, spreading eventually to Paris where it functioned as a key pedagogical tool of the “Italian school.” Partimenti can be understood to be instructional bass lines, and was used by thousands of classical composers and improvisers across Europe, a fact that is often overlooked. As a music educator who studies improvisation pedagogy, the obsolescence of the practice in the modern pedagogical landscape seems lamentable. Based on my own belief in the potential of this lost tradition to inspire new creative means to musical fluency, the present paper seeks to answer some important questions: What are partimenti? Why do we know so very little of them? How does the practice fit into improvisation pedagogy more broadly? Can a practice of partimento become a part of musical pedagogy in the 21st century?

Over the past decade or so, historically informed theory, pedagogy, and (more recently) composition have emerged fully as outgrowths of the historically informed performance (HIP) movement, for which Bach’s music has been instrumental. In this light, “Bach in the music theory classroom” is a metaphor for a broader HI initiative, one where, in my own teaching, historically informed theory (HIT) becomes the basis for structuring a curriculum centered on period composition. In this article, I discuss the materials, process, rationale, and philosophical implications for a mini-curriculum that constitutes the first of a three-course HIT sequence. My aim with this first leg is to change students’ thinking from the “know-what” types of knowledge characteristic of present-day music theory curricula to a “know-how” mind-set consistent with eighteenth-century pedagogy.

The goals of music theory today approximate the reading knowledge of a language acquired in graduate school. Enough about its syntax, grammar, and vocabulary is learned to supply a translation, but without ever acquiring the knowledge and experience to speak, think, or write in the language itself. Score annotations and analyses, as ends in themselves, are like metalinguistic translations. In Bach’s day, on the other hand, music theory was the business of training musicians to speak the language, on the performance-improvisation-composition continuum that defined their daily activities. To implement a “know-how” curriculum in an environment designed for “know-what,” however, is not without its challenges, not least because of limited time and often resources.

I narrate how Bach himself offered me a solution through his own music and pedagogical materials. Rather than throwing students into the proverbial deep end, my mini-curriculum engages them actively and continuously in creative work. The goal is not to compose a self-standing composition, but to get students thinking in Bach’s language in terms of musical schemata, the everyday patterns and conventions of Bach’s day. I do so through a series of creative problem-solving activities that impart knowledge of schemata, particularly as they are used in Bach’s hands. Students are placed in Bach’s shoes as both a teacher and composer, by exploring the connections and differences among Bach’s figured basses from the Vorschriften und Grundsätze zum vierstimmigen spielen des General-Bass, the partimento-preludes of the Langloz manuscript, and certain preludes from the Well-Tempered Clavier as well as selected fantasias. Through realization, analysis, and (class) composition exercises, students encounter a number of recurring schemata as a familiar cast of characters in these materials, all fashioned together into a modern-day Notenbüchlein or zibaldone (musical notebook), which tells a story about Bach’s schema usage—his compositional strategies employing schema development, elision, nesting, extension, and expansion.
The story culminates with Bach’s unique canonic treatment of a particular sequence, the 9/7–8/6/5. After ten weeks, students are able to realize a complex Bach partimento (BWV 908) and compose a continuo part for the Sanctus of the Mass in B Minor, for which no figures survive. These advanced creative problem-solving activities fill the last pages of the students’ Notenbüchlein, which is organized nearly single-handedly by Leipzig’s beloved Thomaskantor himself.

I interpret Robert O. Gjerdingen’s Music in the Galant Style (2007), using one of his
favorite phrases, as an opening gambit: both he and other scholars should feel free to
change his list of voice-leading schemata (which I call his schematicon, by analogy with
the word lexicon) as our knowledge of the music they describe changes. In this paper,
part of a larger project to expand the schematicon, I discuss a schema that Jean-Baptiste Lully used at the beginning of several overtures, including Georges Dandin (1668), Thésée (1674), and Roland (1685). It unfolds in four stages. Stage 1: the bass
on scale degree 1, the melody on 1, 3, or 5. Stage 2: while the bass on 1 is sustained, the
melody moves to 4 or 2, creating a dissonance. Stage 3: the dissonance is resolved when
the bass descends from 1 to 7. Stage 4: the melody proceeds to 3 or 1 while the bass
returns to 1. Throughout the eighteenth century composers used this schema, which I
propose we name after the composer who demonstrated it so often and effectively. No
one used it more brilliantly than Mozart, who deployed it on a massive scale at the
beginning of the Piano Concerto in C, K. 503. Even in the last year of his life, in
La clemenza di Tito, Mozart turned to the Lully to evoke the grandeur and splendor of
absolute monarchy.

For a Youtube compilation of examples of the Lully, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqDR4hkszoY

The Lully was among the many galant schemata imported to the New World and used by composers in Mexico, Brazil, and elsewhere. For some early nineteenth-century Brazilian examples, see Guilherme Aleixo da Silva Monteiro, "Análise das schematae galantes nos seis responsórios fúnebres de João de Deus de Castro Lobo (1794–1832)," Universidade do Estado do Amazonas, 2017.

Inspired by new evidence about J. S. Bach’s teaching method, this article offers an historically informed perspective on teaching part writing while striving to achieve the College Music Society’s curricular goals of integration, creativity, and diversity. The key is an emphasis on transferrable skills, which are honed in the simplified context of hymn tune harmonization and then applied to more diverse settings through analysis and model composition. Transferrable skills sharpened in this method range from basic (figured bass, chord spelling, voice-leading, harmonic analysis, and vocal and keyboard experience) to more advanced (formal and cadential analysis, ornamentation, composition with compound melody, and reductive analysis). The resulting method is historically informed, pedagogically appropriate, internally consistent, fundamentally musical, and always contextualized.

This article outlines a three-phase method for exploring the compositional potential of eighteenth-century keyboard thoroughbass via modular, graphically layered realizations. Phase one is the acquisition and internalization of common baroque voice-leading patterns (cadences, rules of the octave, and sequences) by playing them in different positions, singing while playing, and transposition. The most important dissonant patterns contain the discant and tenor clausulae. Phase two is the application and concatenation of voice-leading patterns in thoroughbass realization. Phase three reduces the number of voices to make space for ornamentation, transforming previous settings from four-voice Griffnotation accompaniment (lowest staff) to embellished instrumental textures in two or three voices (upper staves). Roman numerals and functional symbols are eschewed, since identification of chordal roots and root progressions is in this particular context an unnecessary, anachronistic distraction.

Complete article available in:

2020. “Exploring the Compositional Potential of Thoroughbass in Today’s Classroom.” In Das Universalinstrument: “Angewandtes Klavierspiel” aus historischer und zeitgenössischer Perspektive / The Universal Instrument: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on “Applied Piano,” ed. Philipp Teriete and Derek Remeš, 179–215. Schriften der Hochschule für Musik Freiburg. Band 9. Hildesheim: Olms.

An original Compendium of baroque and classical voice-leading patterns offers a wealth of historically informed teaching materials for today's pedagogues. Drawing from recent scholarly trends in the German-language music-theoretical community, the historical approach offered here is at odds with many aspects of current Anglo-American music theory pedagogy. Chief among these is the absence of any reference to Roman numerals, chordal roots, or chordal inversion in the Compendium. Instead, a thoroughbass-centered approach is favored, in which the scale degree of the bassline is the primary analytical annotation. This encourages contrapuntal, rather than harmonic, considerations to come to the fore. The voice-leading patterns are divided into three categories: cadences, rules of the octave, and sequences. Each patterns is given in C-major and A-minor in a variety of upper-voice spacings. The student internalizes these patterns by playing, singing, and transposing them at the keyboard. Thus, the Compendium takes a decidedly practical, and less discursive approach than many current textbooks on baroque music.

Johann David Heinichen's treatise Der General-Bass in der Composition (Dresden, 1728) is the most comprehensive study of thoroughbass ever written, yet it has been continually overshadowed in historical accounts by works published in the same decade by Jean-Philippe Rameau (Traité de l'Harmonie) and J. J. Fux (Gradus ad Parnassum). Despite Heinichen's nuanced treatment of a wide variety of musical subjects, Der General-Bass has yet to receive wide acclaim, in large part because it lacks a reductive pedagogical framework that can rival Rameau's basse fondamentale or Fux's species in simplicity and immediate appeal. Yet fortunately, the 'partimento renaissance' of the last decade has brought renewed scholarly attention to the centrality of thoroughbass is the only acceptable break in eighteenth-century music-making. Thus the time is ripe for a reappraisal of Heinichen's monumental work. On at least one occasion, Heinichen does indeed outline a pedagogical method of eminent simplicity: his four-step instruction in how to improvise a prelude at the keyboard. According to Heinichen, this method, which seems to be completely unknown today, is to be understood not only as instruction in improvising, but also as training for beginning composers. In explicating the pedagogy of one of eighteenth-century Europe's leading composer-theorists, this article contributes to both the historically informed analysis and the practical teaching of baroque music today.

In attempting to determine how Johann Sebastian Bach taught composition, this article draws on recent archival discoveries to claim that it was not the ornamented, vocal Choralgesänge, but the simpler, thoroughbass-centered Choralbuch style that played a central role in Bach’s pedagogy. Fascinatingly, many newly-rediscovered chorale books from Bach’s milieu contain multiple basses under each melody, suggesting that Bach too may have employed this technique. What theoretical perspectives shall we bring to bear on this long-lost multiple-bass chorale tradition? This article asserts that it is a fallacy to assume that any pattern-yielding methodology offers a valid window into Bach’s teaching. Rather, an attempt is made to recover modes of music-theoretical understanding that existed contemporaneously with Bach. Such a coterminous theoretical “paratext” potentially offers more insight into Bach’s pedagogy because it establishes a horizon of possibilities from which we can draw when examining multiple-bass composition. Foremost within this paratextual horizon is the centrality of thoroughbass for Bach’s understanding of composition. In particular, Bach was immersed in the pre-Rameau thoroughbass tradition as represented by the writings of Johann David Heinichen. In contrast to many modern harmonic perspectives, chordal roots and root progressions played little to no role in the pre-Rameau thoroughbass tradition. Dissonance was understood not harmonically, but dyadically in terms of syncopatio (suspension) and transitus (passing and neighbor) figures. Drawing from a variety of sources from Bach’s circle, particularly those of his pupil, Johann Christian Kittel, this article posits that Bach may have understood multiple-bass chorale harmonization in terms of interlocking clausulae – that is, as a series of overlapping cadential modules. In sum, this article contributes to an ongoing revisionist project of recent years that aims to elevate early eighteenth-century thoroughbass from mere “pre-theoretical” accompaniment practice to its true place as the theoretical and practical basis of compositional understanding in Bach’s day.

In der Absicht zu rekonstruieren, wie Johann Sebastian Bach Komposition unterrichtete, und ausgehend von Archivfunden aus jüngster Zeit stellt dieser Artikel die Behauptung auf, dass nicht die reich ausgestalteten, vokalen Choralgesänge, sondern der einfachere, generalbassbasierte Choralbuch-Stil in Bachs Pädagogik eine zentrale Rolle spielte. Faszinierenderweise enthalten viele neu aufgefundene Choralbücher aus Bachs Umfeld mehrere Bassstimmen unter jeder Melodie, was nahelegt, dass auch Bach diese Technik angewandt haben könnte. Welche theoretischen Perspektiven sind aus dieser lange Zeit aus dem Blick geratenen Tradition des Choralsatzes mit multiplen Bässen abzuleiten? Dieser Artikel bezweifelt, dass eine auf historisch späteren Denkweisen basierende Methodik tragfähige Perspektiven auf Bachs Unterricht gewähren kann. Stattdessen wird versucht, musiktheoretische Konzepte nutzbar zu machen, die aus Bachs Zeit stammen. Solch zeitgenössischer theoretischer »Paratext« bietet möglicherweise einen besseren Einblick in Bachs Pädagogik, da er einen Horizont von Möglichkeiten bietet, auf die man sich bei der Betrachtung der Komposition mit multiplen Bässen beziehen kann. Besonders wichtig ist die zentrale Rolle, die innerhalb dieses paratextuellen Horizonts der Generalbass für Bachs Verständnis von Komposition spielt. Insbesondere war Bach von der vor-Rameau’schen Generalbasstradition geprägt, wie sie in den Schriften Johann David Heinichens repräsentiert ist. Anders als viele moderne, von der Harmonielehre informierte Zugänge spielten Akkordgrundtöne und Grundtonfortschreitungen in der vor-Rameau’schen Generalbasstradition kaum eine bzw. gar keine Rolle. Die Dissonanz wurde nicht harmonisch, sondern als zweistimmiges Phänomen, als syncopatio (Vorhalt) oder transitus (Durchgang oder Nebennote) verstanden. Auf der Grundlage einer Auswahl von Quellen aus Bachs Umkreis, besonders denen seines Schülers Johann Christian Kittel, postuliert dieser Artikel, dass Bach die auf multiplen Bassstimmen basierende Choralharmonisierung im Sinne ineinandergreifender Klauselkombinationen, also als eine Folge einander überlappender Kadenzmodule verstanden haben könnte. Im Ergebnis trägt dieser Artikel zu einem seit einigen Jahren laufenden Projekt bei, das darauf abzielt, den Generalbass des frühen 18. Jahrhunderts vom Status einer bloßen ‚vor-theoretischen‘ Begleitpraxis zu befreien und ihn in seiner wahren Bedeutung zu würdigen, die ihm als der theoretischen und praktischen Grundlage des Verständnisses von Komposition zur Bach-Zeit zukommt.

When I think about 12-year-old Alma Deutscher, the budding English composer, violinist, and pianist, I cannot help but be reminded of Robert Schumann’s first public statement about Frédéric Chopin: “Hats off, gentlemen, a genius.”... 
But, for this author, that which most reveals the inner workings of Alma’s musical creativity, is hearing her improvise, either alone, or in a musical dialogue with her teacher, Tobias Cramm, starting at the age of 5.
Alma thinks and breaths music—beautiful, classical music, which modulates (between keys, between major and minor), develops, surprises, moves, and delights. She has developed her power of imagination to such a degree, that she can close her eyes and let her imagination develop musical ideas, while keeping the all-important “Il Filo,” or red thread, in mind. Il Filo, a metaphor used by Mozart’s father Leopold, among others, is “the cognitive thread that, like Ariadne’s thread which led Theseus through the labyrinth, guides the listener through a musical work.”
This article also explores the Italian partimenti tradition, in which Alma was educated.

The role of Partimento and Italian teaching methods in the eighteenth century has been the subject of several important studies. However, there are still significant gaps in the literature and debates related to the solid legacy or the relevant changes and decline of these pedagogic traditions of the nineteenth-century compositional training. The available surviving manuscript sources, such as student notebooks, sketches, counterpoint exercises, canons, and fugues, and partimento’s source could provide crucial insights.

The contribution of this research lies in the exploration of the legacy of Italian traditional compositional theory and practice in early nineteenth-century Italy through a survey of uncovered and previously unanalysed rare primary source, dated 1891, attributed to the student years of the opera composer Vincenzo Bellini, the Corso di Contrappunto (Counterpoint Course).  The examination of this unpublished counterpoint course aims to investigate a new manuscript that is a source of evidence in support of still-alive and revered pedagogical traditions under which Italian composers were trained, in contrast to the innovative developments taking place elsewhere. In fact, this manuscript testifies that these methods have not declined or are dead but are very much alive and still present in the training curriculum of early nineteenth-century Italian operatic composers.This study  fully describes and analyses a manuscript document for the first time, which attests to the importance of the partimento’s patterns and the predominance of the counterpoint, the art of diminution, and the study of canons and fugues in the first half of the nineteenth-century Italian musical training.
The study of compositional exercises such as Corso di Contrappunto are valuable in enabling new perspectives on early nineteenth-century Italian pedagogic traditions and compositional praxis, and it highlights aspects that have not been considered before, including the confrontation between the survival of this legacy and the influence of Bellini on the compositional activities, which stimulates further interest in this topic to become a major field in musicological research.

Giovanni Paisiello (1740-1816) was one of the most famous composers of his time. His «Regole per bene accompagnare il Partimento» was published 1782 in St. Petersburg. This CD features partimenti from the Regole, which are recorded here for the first time. Just as jazz musicians today use lead sheets (indicating only melody and harmony), so classic musicians once used partimenti - figured or unfired bass lines - in order to learn how to improvise and compose at the harpsichord.

... Page 11. 147 Rosa Cafiero Partimento Theory in France ... 27 “Il faut se nourrir de la lecture des bons écrivains en pratique comme en théorie, examiner attentivement les exemples qu&amp;#x27;ils citent, et surout étudier Marcello, Scarlatti, Durante, Leo, Pergolesi, et Jom[m]elli ...