Partimenti in Their Historical Context

8/13/2019 Partimenti in Their Historical Context

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Partimenti in Their Historical Context

Partimenti, or instructional basses, were central to the training of Europeancourt musicians from the late 1600s until the early 1800s. They had their

greatest influence first in Italian conservatories, especially at Naples, andthen later at the Paris Conservatory, where the principles of the "Italianschool" continued to be taught far into the twentieth century. Becauselearning the Italian style of music was a priority for almost any eighteenth-century musician, many well-known non-Italian composers, including Bach,Handel, Haydn, and Mozart, also studied or taught partimenti.

The oldest Italian conservatories were not established to conserve music.They were charitable religious institutions for the conservation of orphansand foundlings. Different conservatories specialized in the teaching ofdifferent crafts or skills, one of which was music. In a society where familyconnections and social rank were all-important, an orphan needed amarketable skill in order to make his way in the world. It was not enough tolearn "about" music. The child needed to become fluent in the courtly styleso that he could eventually perform at church, in an aristocratic chamber, orat the opera theater. Thus training in partimenti was practical, nottheoretical. By the eighteenth century, the best conservatories found thatthey could supplement their income by hiring out their well-trained youngmusicians. This income made possible the recruitment of ever more

illustrious teachers, with the result that the Italian conservatories becamemagnets for talented students and teachers from all over Europe. Theconservatories began accepting paying students, and slowly transformedinto institutions much like the music conservatories of today.

Even though the unfigured basses that constitute the bulk of eighteenth-and nineteenth-century sets of partimenti were centerpieces in the trainingof musicians, today few know of this tradition, and fewer still can "read"these documents, in the sense of hearing the multivoice messages encodedin their patterns. In the journalFonti musicali italiane(1997) GiorgioSanguinetti noted that "while other European countries developed morerational [music] theories, Italy was an operatic monoculture whosetheoretical basis was the time-honored Neapolitan tradition of thepartimento." In terms of communication theory, the "rational" approachesprivileged a "transmission" model amenable to reception by outsiders, whilethe partimenti favored a "ritual" model of shared symbolic practicesperformed best by insiders. Or in terms of the psychology of categorization,the rational approaches were "theory" driven while the partimentireinforced the formation of "prototypes" through the rote learning of

"exemplars." Confronted with a partimento, the insider heard a series of


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musico-ritual messages rich in associations. The outsider heard just a basspart. This difference is reflected in the divergent national traditions of musictreatises. Mid-eighteenth-century German-language treatises were largelydirected toward the cultivated amateur. These books featured verbose,

general descriptions of interest to music consumers ("outsiders" in relationto professional musicians). While it is true that the writings of J.J. Quantz,C.P.E. Bach, and Leopold Mozart contain a wealth of detail abouteighteenth-century music, one can hardly imagine a young boy developinginto a competent court composer through even the most careful reading ofthem.

Collections of partimenti, by contrast, contained very few words and oftenhundreds of pages of music. A collection might begin with a statement of therules or regole. Then there might be some pages of figured basses. Thefigures were like the training wheels on a child's bicycle; once the apprenticeachieved a measure of competence, the figures were removed. The bulk ofthe ensuing partimenti were unfigured, and hence largely incomprehensibleto musical amateurs. Even more restricted to insiders were the advanced,fugal partimenti that featured rapid changes of clef and required aknowledge of preferred contrapuntal combinations. Without access to acollection of the more explicit regole, like those of the great NeapolitanmaestrosFedele FenaroliandGiovanni Furnotranslated in this series, anoutsider might never realize that an awareness of the scale degrees in each

phrase or cadence was a prerequisite for understanding a partimento. Thekey changed rapidly in this repertory, and thepartimentistoneeded to beaware of conflicts and overlaps between local and more global contexts.

Though it outwardly resembled the bass part given to eighteenth-centuryaccompanists, a partimento was but one voice in a virtual ensemble thatplayed in the mind of the student and became sound through realization atthe keyboard. In psychological terms, the partimento, which as mentionedcould temporarily change clefs to become any voice in the virtual ensemble,provided a series of stimuli to a sequence of schemata, and the conditionedresponses of the student resulted in the multivoice fabric of phrases andcadences. From seeing only one feature of a particular schemaany one ofits partsthe student learned to complete the entire pattern, and in doing socommitted every aspect of the schema to memory. The result was fluency inthe style and the ability to speak this courtly musical language. During theeighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the elite ranks of courtcomposers across all of Europe were heavily populated with graduates ofpartimento instruction.

Of course a student needed an insider, a maestro, as a guide through thelabyrinth of partimenti, a point made in many of the regole. Partimenti
http://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/music/gjerdingen/partimenti/collections/Fenaroli/regole/index.htmhttp://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/music/gjerdingen/partimenti/collections/Fenaroli/regole/index.htmhttp://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/music/gjerdingen/partimenti/collections/Fenaroli/regole/index.htmhttp://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/music/gjerdingen/partimenti/collections/Furno/index.htmhttp://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/music/gjerdingen/partimenti/collections/Furno/index.htmhttp://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/music/gjerdingen/partimenti/collections/Furno/index.htmhttp://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/music/gjerdingen/partimenti/collections/Furno/index.htmhttp://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/music/gjerdingen/partimenti/collections/Fenaroli/regole/index.htm


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Work your way through the rule books, playing each musical example inseveral keys, both major and minor.Furno'sandDurante'sregolecontainsmall partimenti suitable for beginners. Your central task will be to studyeach partimento to see where you might employ three types of patterns: (1)

segments of the Rule of the Octave, (2) cadences, as specified inthe regole,and (3) special moves or movimentieither required or optionalfor various sequences. If you find yourself thoroughly perplexed by, forinstance, one of Furno's partimenti, you may wish to consult the editor'ssample realizations found in theAppendixto that treatise. This should be alast resort.

Even simple partimenti change key frequently. Often you may be able tochange keys through one of the three types of patterns mentioned above.Try to know the scale degrees of the three or four upcoming tones in the

bass. When there is a conflict between the old key and the new key, favor thenew key.

As you become more comfortable with simple partimenti, begin to learn thetypical right-hand patterns of decoration laid out in FrancesoDurante'sEmbellished Basses, orPartimenti diminuiti. In imagining anideal texture, think of Domenical Scarlatti's harpsichord sonatas, not J. S.Bach's chorales.

A variety of small partimenti, many with chromatic passages, can be foundin Mattei'sPiccolo Basso("Little Bass"). Each poses an interesting musicalproblem for the performer. Their brevity, however, helps to limit theirdifficulty. They also provide practice in reading more complex figures.

As you experiment with various partimenti on this website, you may beginto notice passages where the bass performs a motive and then pauses on along tone. This is often a cue to repeat that motive in the melody. The higherlevels of partimenti presume a polyphonic give and take between the bassand melody.

Among the most advanced partimenti are the partimento fugues. Though wehave relatively little historical information about how these works wereperformed by students, the best advice may be to keep the texture thin. Donot attempt to perform a four-voice fugue with all four voices sounding allthe time. This is bad practice even in written-out fugues, and almost surelyfatal for improvised partimento fugues.
http://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/music/gjerdingen/partimenti/collections/Furno/index.htmhttp://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/music/gjerdingen/partimenti/collections/Furno/index.htmhttp://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/music/gjerdingen/partimenti/collections/Furno/index.htmhttp://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/music/gjerdingen/partimenti/collections/Durante/regole/index.htmhttp://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/music/gjerdingen/partimenti/collections/Durante/regole/index.htmhttp://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/music/gjerdingen/partimenti/collections/Durante/regole/index.htmhttp://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/music/gjerdingen/partimenti/collections/Furno/regoleP10.htmhttp://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/music/gjerdingen/partimenti/collections/Furno/regoleP10.htmhttp://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/music/gjerdingen/partimenti/collections/Furno/regoleP10.htmhttp://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/music/gjerdingen/partimenti/collections/Durante/diminuiti/index.htmhttp://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/music/gjerdingen/partimenti/collections/Durante/diminuiti/index.htmhttp://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/music/gjerdingen/partimenti/collections/Durante/diminuiti/index.htmhttp://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/music/gjerdingen/partimenti/collections/Mattei/PiccoloBasso/index.htmhttp://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/music/gjerdingen/partimenti/collections/Mattei/PiccoloBasso/index.htmhttp://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/music/gjerdingen/partimenti/collections/Mattei/PiccoloBasso/index.htmhttp://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/music/gjerdingen/partimenti/collections/Mattei/PiccoloBasso/index.htmhttp://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/music/gjerdingen/partimenti/collections/Durante/diminuiti/index.htmhttp://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/music/gjerdingen/partimenti/collections/Furno/regoleP10.htmhttp://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/music/gjerdingen/partimenti/collections/Durante/regole/index.htmhttp://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/music/gjerdingen/partimenti/collections/Furno/index.htm


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An Illustrated Guide to the "Rule of the Octave"

The chart below shows in abstract and greatly simplified form howeighteenth-century musicians conceptualized the relative stability or

instability of the different scale degrees across an octave in the bass. The redboxes represent positions deemed stable points of arrival, and the greencircles indicate positions felt to be unstable and more mobile.

As a first approximation of the rule of the octave, we can imagine that the

stable scale degrees receive a 5/3 chord (as in do-mi-sol) and that theunstable degrees will take some form of a chord with a 6, perhaps 6/3 (asin re-fa-si). This simplified version highlights the great continuity in thetraditions of polyphonic music, inasmuch as the chart below is almostindistinguishable from late Medieval and Renaissance presentationsoffauxbourdonsinging in cathedrals.

Like the melodic minor scale, the rule of the octave is not quite the sameascending and descending. So for a better approximation, let us examinemovement up and down separately. Below is the ascending version.Dissonances (a clash between a "6" and a "5") were added to the scalesdegrees that precede the stable positions. So as one ascends the scale in the

bass, maximum instability comes just before a return to stability.

The same principle applies when descending, though the dissonances arenow between a "4" and a "3." In the descent from the sixth to the fifth scale


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degree, the "6" is raised a half step to create a leading-tone (Fin a C-majorcontext) to the stable fifth scale degree, thus giving scale degrees two and sixthe same sonority.

There is still one more complication. The third scale degree was deemedpartly stable, partly mobile. Following the principle of dissonance beforestability, musicians often added a "4/3" dissonance to a rising second scaledegree, and almost always added a "4/2" dissonance to a descending fourthscale degree.

"The" rule of the octave is thus not a fixed set of chords, but rather asummary or norm of the fluid and highly contingent practices of eighteenth-century musicians. In this series, the maestro Giovanni Furno details severalfurther and more particular contingencies dealing with departures fromsimple scalar movement (clickhereto go to Furno's presenation). BothDurante, Furno, and Fenaroli present the basic rule of the octave, for bothmajor and minor scales, in their respectiveRegole(Rules), and in this seriestheir prescriptions are given both verbally and in musical notation.
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Partimenti in Their Historical Context