Partimento in Naples

A figured bass line on the page, realised at the keyboard, moved composition teaching onto the instrument.

Related

BaroqueClassicalFigured BassCounterpoint

A line with only a bass and some figures, and the student must supply a full texture at the keyboard. The conservatories of Naples taught composition this way, and harmony became something the hands could operate.

Time and place

Naples, from the late seventeenth century through the eighteenth. The four conservatories began as charitable homes for orphans and became training grounds for professional musicians. Alessandro Scarlatti, Francesco Durante and Leonardo Leo taught there; the exact curriculum and dates are still debated, so the story is usually told by century.

What happened

A teacher handed out a bass line, sometimes figured, sometimes bare, and the student realised the upper voices at the keyboard in real time, producing correct chords, passing notes and cadences. The material was called a partimento. Exercises began with the rule of the octave, which assigns a standard chord to each step of the scale, then moved to cadences, sequences, suspensions and fugal passages. Only after the harmony worked under the hands did the student write a score. The order of training was reversed: hear first, write later.

What changed

Harmony shifted from a set of rules into patterns held in the fingers. Students memorised hundreds of harmonic moves while playing and called on them while composing. Training became highly standardised, so a Neapolitan graduate could take up a post at most European courts and start at once. In the nineteenth century the Paris Conservatoire built its system around harmony and counterpoint classes, and the keyboard method faded from official curricula, surviving in private teaching. In the late twentieth century scholars catalogued the manuscripts, and partimento returned to classes in improvisation and historical performance.

Listen for the turn

Begin with Scarlatti's Sonata K.208, where the bass moves slowly and you can hear harmony changing step by step with it. Then K.27, dense with sequences and cadences, almost every move matching a textbook pattern. Finally a harpsichord sonata by Pergolesi, short sections framed by standard cadences, like an exercise a student has finished. Listen by following only the bass and imagining what could be added above it. That is how partimento was heard.

Related

This turn belongs to Baroque and leads toward Classical; see Figured Bass and Counterpoint.

Sources

• Grove Music Online, entry Partimento — Neapolitan teaching checked, not quoted
• Robert O. Gjerdingen, Music in the Galant Style (Oxford University Press) — schemata checked, not quoted

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.