sanguinetti review ma

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Giorgio Sanguinetti, The Art of Partimento: History, Theory, and Practice(Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). xiv + 385 pp. 32.50.

ISBN 978-0-19-539420-7.

The most remarkable thing about this excellent and authoritative monograph on

the Neapolitanpartimento tradition is that it is the first.For over 40 years scholars have acknowledged (with varying degrees of reluc-

tance) that professional music making in eighteenth-century Europe was domi-

nated by Italians, rather than Germans, and notably by alumni of the four

Neapolitan conservatories.1 During the same period, unease over the historical

foundations of the Romantic heritage has led to widespread scepticism of its

claims to universality, its canon of serious music and its ideologies of aesthetic

autonomy and progress. The process of reappraisal began in earnest at least three

decades ago, when Joseph Kerman laid bare the emperors new clothes by

pointing out that the origins of music analysis were bound up with German

nationalist passions.2 Subsequent reactions to Carl Dahlhauss project (to

maintain the hegemony of the Romantic canon of masterworks over scholarly

discourse) helped to set in motion the turn towards new musicology which has

proved to be its legacy.3 Given that so much scholarship of the past twenty years

has sought to challenge or broaden the old grand narrative with a multiplicity ofmicro-histories and contextual studies, it seems worthy of note that the Nea-

politan tradition, which reigned supreme over European music from Pergolesi to

Bellini and which did so much to shape the compositions and performances of

innumerable musicians over the course of two centuries, has only recently begun

to emerge from the shadows and attract the attention of more than a handful of

specialists. Could the general lack of engagement be explained, as Giorgio

Sanguinetti suggests (p. vii), by the innate reluctance ofMusikwissenschaftler todeal with teachings and practices which were transmitted orally? Or could there

be deeper reasons?

Ironically, the revisionist view of a Naples-dominated eighteenth century wasshared by the founders of the familiar Bach to Beethoven version of music

history. Adolph Bernhard Marx, for instance, one of the chief apostles of the new

Romantic ideology, never denied the pre-eminence of earlier Italian traditions.

On the contrary, overcoming their popularity and prestige was a driving force

behind his lifes work, as evinced by the call to arms with which he began his first

book (1826): We find ourselves today at the close of a period of music history

in which every country, including Germany, was filled with Italian music, and

which almost made us forget what German art and German music are.4 Only

later in the nineteenth century would the figure of Sebastian Bach (drawn from

DOI: 10.1111/musa.12009

Music Analysis, / (2013) 1 2013 The Author.

Music Analysis 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK

and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA


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Johann Nikolaus Forkels 1802 biography) become magnified to such planetary

dimensions that it distorted space and time,5 creating the illusion that Leonardo

Leo, Francesco Durante and just about everyone else belonged to a periphery of

mediocrity around a Saxon core. Current musicological consensus appears to

have returned full circle to Marxs viewpoint in acknowledging the historical

significance of the Neapolitan schools while at the same time remaining reso-

lutely focused on the superior music of the Romantic canon.

Sanguinetti is keenly aware of these broader historiographical issues. Why else

would he begin with a sideswipe at Dahlhauss ludicrous dismissal of Italian

theory after Giuseppe Tartini and Padre Martini (p. 9) and conclude with a

provocative recomposition of Bachs B major Prelude from WTC1 as a parti-mento (pp. 3426)? In general, however, Sanguinetti is careful not to lose sight

of his main task: to provide the English-speaking reader with a meticulously

researched and impressively detailed study of the history, theory and practice of

Neapolitan partimenti.A partimento was an instructional exercise in composition to be realised at the

keyboard. Originating in early seventeenth-century thoroughbass practice, it

usually consisted of an unfigured bass line which included changes of clef to

indicate the progress of other parts. Sanguinetti offers the following general

definition:a partimento is a sketch, written on a single staff, whose main purpose isto be a guide for improvisation of a composition at the keyboard(p. 14; emphasis inoriginal).

The first part of the book sets out essential background information, including

an account of the probable origins of the partimento in the bassetto or basso

seguenteand its relation to teaching methods at the conservatories;6 a guide to thebewildering array of manuscripts and archives; and biographical summaries of

the main maestri, from Bernardo Pasquini (16371710) to Fedele Fenaroli

(17301818). We learn that the realities of life for young orphans and foundlings

at the Neapolitan conservatories were tough. They typically spent ten gruelling

years as lowly apprentices. In return for rendering them potentially employable,

the institution recouped the costs of their board and lodging by hiring them out

for local musical events. They received most of their instruction from advanced

students, called young masters ormastricielli. Only the most gifted and capablewere offered the chance to learn directly from the primo maestro and to earnpocket money by passing on the days lesson to a team of junior part-time tutors,

who would in turn transmit it to the rest of the student body through a kind of

pyramid structure or monitorial system (p. 43). This explains the abundance of

surviving manuscript copies of lessons and the difficulty of accurately determin-

ing their authorship and provenance. Standard partimenti and other teachings

were written out so often that the name of the maestro came to indicate more a

school or trademark than an individual.

Although Sanguinettis account of daily life at the Neapolitan conservatories

is the best available in English, he makes clear that he considers it incomplete

and reliant on outdated sources (pp. 334). An authoritative history which cuts

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through the myths propagated by Francesco Florimo (188183) and Salvatore

Di Giacomo (192428) is badly needed.7

The second part of the book is devoted to a survey of the regole or ruleswhich governed partimento realisation, supplemented by a more detailed

synoptic compendium with audio examples on the accompanying website

(www.oup.com/us/theartofpartimento; note that the username is Music1, not

MusicI). Because maestri rarely provided written explanations for anything more

than the most basic lessons and when they did, they often arranged them in

confusing and sometimes contradictory ways Sanguinetti has scoured the

sources to compile a more or less comprehensive collection of 97 rules, arranged

into five classes: cadences, rules of the octave, suspensions, bass motions and

scale mutations. Much of this will be familiar to scholars of thoroughbass.

Regional and national differences notwithstanding, the regole of the greateighteenth-century Neapolitan maestri testify to a shared heritage which spread

from Italian centres at least a century before. Professional success rested, ofcourse, not on commonplace guidelines, such as Durantes when the [bass]

ascends by a half step, it needs the sixth (p. 112), but on the quality of their

realisation in performance. In this respect, the waifs and strays who endured

punishing years on the treadmill of the Neapolitan educational regime had a

distinct advantage over their rivals, which they exploited to the full to dominate

music making in courts and chapels throughout Europe.

Reconstructing this art of realisation, reviving this lost practice, is at the heart

of the book. Its third and fourth parts present a progressive series of case studies

on which Sanguinetti brings to bear not only his knowledge but also his expert

keyboard skills to demonstrate plausible and (more important) artistic ways inwhich to realise partimenti, from basic chords to advanced techniques of dimi-

nution, imitation, rhythm and motivic coherence. In a sense he takes the place

of an eighteenth-century maestro, and the reader would be well advised to work

through his instructions at the keyboard.

One of the guiding themes of the book, as suggested by its title, is that

partimento was not simply a pedagogical exercise or a craft to be mastered. It

was an art. Sanguinetti dismisses Karl Gustav Fellerers sharp distinction

betweenKunstform andSchulform as grounded on an outmoded Romantic ideathat every school exercise is only a preparatory work, a sort of gymnastic exercise

for the fingers and brain, and in no way to be confused with Art, which is

inspired by the Spirit (p. 16).8 He stresses instead the eighteenth-century reality

of a fluid continuum between learning and art, in which masterpieces such as

ScarlattisEssercizior BachsClavier-bungen could be built upon precisely thesame basic materials as were taught to beginners. Towards the end of the book,

however, Sanguinetti occasionally relaxes this ontological stance, giving the

impression that the single staves recorded on partimento manuscripts remained

constant as foundations for improvisation, and that, as a consequence, [p]arti-mentiare only potential musical works (p. 167). While it is true that they could

form the basis of fully notated compositions, to regard these as inviolable texts in

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accordance with the ideology of Werktreue runs counter to the historicallygrounded argument of the book as a whole. The few contemporary realisations

which have survived testify to a remarkably free treatment of partimenti (see Ch.

15), in which the given part could itself be varied and altered to fit with the rest.

Like the rudimentary outlines of melodies and basses which occasionally crop up

in the autograph solo parts of Mozarts keyboard concertos, partimenti provided

expert players with suggestions for performance rather than a fixed framework to

build on. Only beginners would have needed to stick rigidly to the score, as I

have argued elsewhere.9

Given the emphasis on art over craft, it seems a shame that the accompanying

audio files on the website realise the examples electronically. Their uniform

beeps hardly inspire the kind of creativity celebrated in the text. It seems ironic

that the wonderfully evocative instruction a suo genio (roughly, give free rein

to your genius) which appears in a contemporary realisation of one of Durantes

partimenti should reach our ears as a mechanically measured pause (pp. 2278;Ex. 15.9). Perhaps in time these files could be replaced with recordings of live

performances?

But these are minor quibbles. Sanguinettis painstaking research has filled a

glaring gap in the literature on the history of Western music. It will take many

more years for its full import to become apparent. One of the main issues for

future scholars to address concerns the precise workings of the elite artisan

network which connected professional musicians throughout Europe in the

eighteenth century. Partimento training was obviously crucial to the Neapoli-

tans success, but how, exactly, did it inform or differ from keyboard (i.e.

composition) training elsewhere? On the page there is little to separate Durantespartimenti numerati e diminuiti from the instructional basses found in JohannMatthesons Organisten-Probe (1719) or Carlo Cotumaccis partimento fuguesfrom those of the Langloz manuscript.10 J.S. Bach seems to have used continuo

parts as instructional partimenti.11 Indeed the basic schemata which made up

partimenti can be identified in compositions all over Europe, as Robert Gjer-

dingen has demonstrated.12

Sanguinetti sets the Neapolitan tradition apart by declaring that [a]partimentois a solo piece, whose goal is teaching composition via improvisation, whereas

the aim of a basso continuo playing [sic] is accompaniment (p. 98). Thisdivision seems overly prescriptive in light of the long history of thoroughbass

as a technique for improvising solo compositions at the keyboard. Partimento-

like methods reached German lands long before Georg Muffat brought

Pasquinis refined version of the tradition from Rome to Salzburg and Passau

in the 1680s.13 Italian basso continuo techniques informed, for instance, the

teachings of the German friar Spiridion a Monte Carmelo (known in the world

as Johann Nenning [16151685]), who lived in Rome from 1643 to 1655 and

published a four-partNova Instructio pro Pulsandis Organis Spinettis Manuchordiis(Bamberg, 167071; Wrzburg, 167577) which sets out a series of short figured

or unfigured bass lines as foundations for entire keyboard textures.14

Although

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this source does not contain extended partimenti, it recommends techniques

which are comparable to later Neapolitan practices, as do thoroughbass manuals

such as Friderich Erhard NiedtsMusicalische Handleitung(170021). The termaccompagnamento(orAccompagnementin French- and German-speaking regions)could signify the addition of right-hand accompanying parts to a bass that is,

skills in solo keyboard playing, as well as basso continuo accompaniment. The

term Generalbass was used to refer not just to elementary skills in practicalharmony or the accompaniment of ensembles, but also to composition through

improvisation at the keyboard, in the manner of the partimento. Johann Friedrich

Daubes General-Ba in drey Accorden (1756), for instance, which included Art ofPreluding (Kunst zu prludiren) in its title, specified three levels ofGeneralbass:1) the simple or common; 2) the natural, or that which comes closest to the

character of a melody or a piece; and 3) the intricate or compound.15 That

thoroughbass realisation did not always call for clunky chordal accompaniments

is also borne out by experience. Since 1994 the Schola Cantorum in Basel hasoffered courses in practical partimento playing using exercises by Handel, Niedt

and a host of others, including Durante.16 All this suggests that by the late

seventeenth century Italian partimento methods had been incorporated into the

training of apprentice musicians in many parts of Europe. While the Neapolitans

may have brought the art of partimento to an unsurpassed degree of perfection,

they were not alone in practising it.

Unravelling the complex network of interrelationships which drove the devel-

opment of professional music making in eighteenth-century Europe is not the

only challenge to issue from Sanguinettis groundbreaking study. The parti-

mento formed part of a larger educational system which placed equal emphasisoncontrappunto teorico e praticoand solfeggio. Interactions between the disciplinescan be seen in Vincenzo Fiocchis 1804 realisation of one of Fenarolis parti-

menti (p. 184), which owes more to thesolfeggiof Nicola Porpora (see especiallyms. Solfeggio 333, INc) than to keyboard diminution techniques. Reconstruct-

ing the Neapolitan method as a whole and determining the extent of its impact

remains a daunting task although one which now, thanks to Sanguinettis

impressive study, can finally be said to have begun in earnest. This book holds

the promise of a radical reappraisal of an entire century of music history.

NICHOLASBARAGWANATH

NOTES

1. See e.g. the seminal collection of essays in honour of Paul Henry Lang in

Current Musicology, 9 (1969).

2. Joseph Kerman, How We Got Into Analysis, and How to Get Out,

Critical Inquiry, 7/ii (1980), pp. 31415.

3. See in particular James Hepokoski, The Dahlhaus Project and Its Extra-

Musical Sources, 19th-Century Music, 14/iii (1991), pp. 22146; Sanna

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Pederson, On the Task of the Music Historian: the Myth of the Symphony

after Beethoven, Repercussions, 2/ii (1993), pp. 530, and A.B. Marx,Berlin Concert Life, and German National Identity, 19th-Century Music,18/ii (1994), pp. 87107; Stephen Rumph, A Kingdom Not of This

World: the Political Context of E.T.A. Hoffmanns Beethoven Criticism,

19th-Century Music, 19/i (1995), pp. 5067; Celia Applegate, HowGerman Is It? Nationalism and the Idea of Serious Music in the Early

Nineteenth Century,19th-Century Music, 21/iii (1998), pp. 27496; DavidGramit, Cultivating Music: the Aspirations, Interests, and Limits of German

Musical Culture, 17701848(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Cali-fornia Press, 2002); Celia Applegate and Pamela Potter (eds), Music andGerman National Identity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002);and Anne C. Shreffler, Berlin Walls: Dahlhaus, Knepler, and Ideologies of

Music History, Journal of Musicology, 20/iv (2003), pp. 498525.

4. Adolph Bernhard Marx, Die Kunst des Gesanges, theoretisch-praktisch(Berlin: Schlesinger, 1826), prologue: Wir befinden uns jetzt am Ausgang

einer Periode der Tonkunst, in der italische Musik alle Lnder, und auch

Deutschland, erfllt und fast vergessen gemacht hat, was deutsche Kunst

und was dem deutschen Musik sei.

5. Johann Nicolaus Forkel, Ueber Johann Sebastian Bachs Leben, Kunst undKunstwerke(Leipzig: Hoffmeister und Khnel, 1802).

6. According to Tharald Borgir, The Performance of the Basso Continuo in

Italian Baroque Music (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI, 1987), p. 17, partimentioriginated inbassetti(orbassi seguenteorBassetgen), which were drawn fromthe lowest parts of existing compositions and could be used as guides for

accompaniment or for practice. Sanguinetti (p. 356, second of two nn. 17)

observes that these terms occasionally appear as synonyms for partimento

in manuscripts.

7. Francesco Florimo,La scuola musicale di Napoli e i suoi conservatorii, 4 vols(Naples: Morano, 188183); Salvatore Di Giacomo, I quattro antichi Con-servatorii di musica di Napoli, 2 vols (Palermo: Sandron, 1924, 1928).

8. Cf. Karl Gustav Fellerers seminal but limited study, Der Partimento-Spieler: bungen in Generalbass-Speil und in gebundener Improvisation(Leipzig: Breitkopf & Hrtel, 1940), p. 4.

9. Nicholas Baragwanath, The Early Chamber Music with Keyboard: Tra-

ditions of Performance, Composition, and Commodification, in Martin

Harlow (ed.), Mozarts Chamber Music with Keyboard (Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press, 2012), pp. 2544.

10. See Johann Mattheson, Exemplarische Organisten-Probe, im Artikel vom

General-Ba, welche mittelst 24 leichter, und eben so viel etwas schwerer

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Exempel ... (Hamburg: Schiller & Kissner, 1719); later expanded into theGrosse General-Bass-Schule(1731). On the Langloz manuscript see WilliamRenwick,The Langloz Manuscript: Fugal Improvisation through Figured Bass(Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). On the differ-

ences, see Maxim Serebrennikov, From Partimento Fugue to Thorough-

bass Fugue: New Perspectives, Bach, 40/ii (2009), pp. 2243.

11. When Heinrich Nicolaus Gerber took lessons with J.S. Bach in 1724, he

was given the bass of Albinonis Violin Sonata Op. 6 No. 6 to realise (see

David Ledbetter,Bachs Well-Tempered Clavier: the 48 Preludes and Fugues[New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002], p. 130).

12. Robert O. Gjerdingen, Music in the Galant Style (Oxford and New York:Oxford University Press, 2007).

13. Cf. Felix Diergarten, (Re-)making the Cadence Dissonant: Remarks onthePartituraTradition, paper presented at the VII European Music Analy-sis Conference, Rome, 2011.

14. See Michael Callahan, Techniques of Keyboard Improvisation in the

German Baroque and Their Implications for Todays Pedagogy (PhD

diss., University of Rochester, 2010), p. 72. On pp. 10466 he describes a

continuous lineage of teachings on how to realise single lines of music at

the keyboard through diminution, from Conrad PaumannsFundamentumorganisandi (Nuremberg, 1452) to Michael Wiedeburgs Der sich selbstinformirende Clavierspieler(Halle and Leipzig, 176575).

15. Johann Friedrich Daube, General-Ba in drey Accorden, gegrndet in denRegeln der alt und neuen Autoren, nebst einem hierauf gebaueten Unterricht: wieman aus einer jeden ausgegebenen Tonart, nur mit zwey Mittels-Accorden, ineine von den drey und zwanzig Tonarten die man begehret, gelangen kann, undder hierauf gegrndeten Kunst zu prludiren, wie auch zu jeder Melodie einenBa zu setzen, da also durch diese neue und leichte Anleitung, zugleich auchzur Composition unmittelbar der Weg gebahnet wird (Leipzig: J.B. Andrae,1756), p. 195: 1) die simple oder gemeine; 2) die natrliche, oder die der

Eigenschaft einer Melodie oder eines Stcks am nchsten kommt. 3) Die

knstliche oder zusammengesetzte. OnGeneral-Bassas a foundation (Fun-dament) for composition, see Thomas Christensen, Thoroughbass asMusic Theory, in Thomas Christensen, Robert Gjerdingen, Rudolf Lutz

and Giorgio Sanguinetti, Partimento and Continuo Playing in Theory andPractice, ed. Dirk Moelants (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2010), pp.3641. Also relevant is Callahans thesis (Techniques of Keyboard

Improvisation, pp. 4686) that the rhetorical category ofElaboratio indi-cated a commonplace skeleton of right-hand parts attached to a bass, while

Decoratioconcerned the techniques required to transform it into a unique

piece with character and style.

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16. Cf. Rudolf Lutz, The Playing of Partimento, in Christensen, Gjerdingen,

Lutz and Sanguinetti, Partimento and Continuo Playing, pp. 11327.Further insights into these practical methods of partimento playing can be

found in the superb commentaries and realisations added by Ludwig

Holtmeier, Johannes Menke and Felix Diergarten to their modern edition

of Giovanni Paisiello,Regole per bene accompagnare il partimento o sia il bassofondamentale sopra il Cembalo(Wilhelmshaven: Florian Noetzel, 2008).

NOTE ON CONTRIBUTOR

NICHOLAS BARAGWANATH is Associate Professor in Musicology at the University

of Nottingham and the author ofThe Italian Traditions and Puccini: CompositionalTheory and Practice in Nineteenth-Century Opera (Bloomington, IN: IndianaUniversity Press, 2011).

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