Introduction

I’m so delighted to talk to my guest today, Musicologist, Music Theorist, Composer and Educator, Peter van Tour!

He is the author of Counterpoint and Partimento: Methods of Teaching Composition in Late 18th century Naples 2015, The Editor of a 3 volume series entitled, “The 189 Partimenti of Nicola Sala” published 2017 and has published many peer-reviewed articles.

He earned his Phd in Musicology/Music Theory at Uppsala University, Sweden.

He is also a Moderator of a popular, fast growing Facebook Group called “The Art of Partimento” which is dedicated to the compositional school of Naples and the art of partimenti, a very rich resource for interested people.

He has an upcoming book coming out: ““The Italian Fugue: Investigated through Young Apprentices in Eighteenth-century Naples and Bologna.”

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2:00 - What's the latest research on Partimento?

4:17 - Did Neapolitan students have to sing for 3 years before playing instruments?

5:08 - What type of solmization did they use?

7:15 - How difficult does Solfeggio get?

8:10 - Where do we get Solfeggio exercises?

8:48 - Is Solfeggio unaccompanied or accompanied?

9:36 - Do Neapolitan students keep singing after the 3 years?

10:43 - Differences between Southern and Northern Italian pedagogy

11:20 - Does everyone have to learn the keyboard when learning Partimento?

11:56 - Was it common for students back then to play a little keyboard, even if it wasn't their main instrument?

13:40 - Is the Neapolitan approach to Counterpoint different from Fux?

15:06 - How do the Neapolitan students navigate the rules of Counterpoint without getting bogged down?

16:33 - Cadences, Rule of the Octave, Bass Motions

19:02 - Are Cadences about Chords moving or something else?

20:21 - The 3 types of Cadences and their variations

21:42 - How do you know when to raise the 6th and 7th degrees of the melodic minor scale when using it in Partimento?

22:58 - Written Counterpoint vs Performed Counterpoint

27:08 - What's the average amount of Partimenti that would accumulate in a student's notebook?

28:06 - Is the Partimento method applicable to modern tonal music?

29:15 - The drawbacks of typical music analysis

30:09 - How early can a student begin improvising and composing using the Partimento method

31:02 - The Clef's that you should learn for Partimento

31:36 - There are no G clefs in historical Partimento manuscripts

32:10 - Peter's music pedagogical recommendations

34:10 - Is it possible to self-teach counterpoint?

35:21 - Is the Paris Conservatory tradition related to the Partimento tradition?

36:41 - How would you teach a music student from the very beginning with Partimento?

38:00 - What materials are good to start with for Partimento?

39:35 - Using Partimento towards non-partimento based compositions

40:27 - Talking about Gjerdingen's Schema

41:06 - What surprised Peter most about his Partimento research

43:34 - During the 18th century, were Italians composers famous across Europe?

44:42 - Richard Wagner and the Progressive nature of Partimento

45:58 - Beethoven and Partimento

46:39 - The modern reaction today to the recent research in Partimento

47:41 - Talking about Peter's upcoming book, The Italian Fugue.

48:56 - How good were the Italians at Fugal writing?

51:26 - Who were some famous Italian masters of the fugue?

52:06 - The School of Leo vs The School of Durante

54:39 - Did they write or improvise Fugues, or do both?

55:30 - Upcoming projects

56:22 - Mentiparti 2019 teaching