Counterpoint and Partimento: Methods of Teaching Composition in Late Eighteenth-Century Naples by Peter van Tour (review)

The compositional, cognitive, and pedagogical history of eighteenth-century music and musicians has experienced a groundswell in contemporary scholarship. Still in its nascence a few short decades ago, several important studies have propelled these challenging topics to a position of prominence in the field (Robert O. Gjerdingen, Music in the Galant Style [New York: Oxford University Press, 2007]; Rosa Cafiero, “The Early Reception of Neapolitan Partimento Theory in France: A Survey,” Journal of Music Theory 51, no. 1 [2007]: 137–59; and Giorgio Sanguinetti, The Art of Partimento: History, Theory, and Practice [New York: Oxford University Press, 2012]; to name but a few). As the de facto nucleus of eighteenth-century musical training, Naples and its population of teachers and composers have garnered particular attention. Unlike their French and German contemporaries, who penned lengthy treatises, Neapolitan musicians left precious little prose or explication concerning their work for posterity; an eighteenth-century Neapolitan treatise often contains little more than opaque examples and exercises in composition or improvisation, rendering a rich historiography exceedingly difficult.

A portion of this historiography is precisely what Peter van Tour constructs in his 2015 dissertation, Counterpoint and Partimento: Methods of Teaching Composition in Late Eighteenth-Century Naples, published by Acta Universitatis Upsalienis as number 25 of the series Studia Musicologica Upsaliensia. This important volume elucidates complex relationships among a web of eighteenth-century primary sources and historical accounts, many of which have been previously misunderstood, misattributed, or given little attention. The clarification and nuance that Counterpoint and Partimento provides is essential to a deep understanding of the methods and materials of Neapolitan musical training.

As Giorgio Sanguinetti admits in The Art of Partimento, the very act of defining “partimento” is a tricky endeavor, given that Italian treatises rarely provide satisfactory definitions themselves. The effective working definition that he proposes is “potential musical works”; that is, while a partimento is most often a bass line, it also contains complex implications for voice leading, melody, and even imitation (Sanguinetti, pp. 167, 11). Van Tour defines his primary terms (counterpoint and partimento) as follows:

By ‘counterpoint’ I mean the process of conceiving independent melodic progressions according to principles fixed beforehand, both written and improvised, in two or more parts, freely or against pre-existing material, such as a cantus firmus, or a soggetto cavato, a partimento bass, a melody, the hexachordal scale, etc. ‘Partimento’ is understood as a notational device, commonly written on a single staff in the F clef, either figured or unfigured, applied both in playing and in writing activities, and used for developing skills in the art of accompaniment, improvisation, diminution and counterpoint.

(p. 19)

In light of its various purposes and deployments, van Tour traces the essential paths toward partimento, including practical exercises at the keyboard, diminution, and acquiring contrapuntal skills such as invertible counterpoint, imitation, and fugue (p. 20).

As he situates his research in the context of existing scholarship, van Tour argues that previous studies of various methods and materials utilized at Neapolitan conservatories have, in some cases, reached insufficient depth. In particular, he addresses Jesse Rosenberg’s 1995 dissertation, in which Rosenberg tackles the specific characteristics of the two rival Neapolitan schools: one following the teachings of Francesco Durante (1684–1755) and the other following the teachings of Leonardo Leo (1694–1744) (Jesse Rosenberg, “The Experimental Music of Pietro Raimondi” [Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1995]). Van Tour finds Rosenberg’s explanations lacking—Rosenberg admitted to having trouble illustrating an incontrovertible distinction with the resources at hand—and van Tour therefore promises to deliver a more decisive ruling (p. 50). He also rejects Sanguinetti’s notion that “the [partimento] tradition had a coherent and continuous existence that transcended the individual subjects” (Sanguinetti, p. vii), and argues persuasively that the schism between the so-called Durantisti and Leisti...