Tobias Cramm studied fortepiano with Edoardo Torbianelli and Geoffrey Lancester in Basel/CH (Schola Cantorum) and Canberra/Australia and holds a Bachelor of Arts in musicology and social sciences from the university of Basel. He has been involved in exploring partimento-based approaches to improvisation and composing as a performer, researcher, and teacher since 2010.
Cramm is gaining a stellar reputation as a music teacher with a proven track record of teaching some truly astonishing students.
From July 7 to July 16, 2019, Tobias will be running a summer academy “MentiParti 2019” for exploring improvisation and composition based on the Neapolitan Partimento method in Basel, Switzerland with other faculty members including Lydia Carlisi, Peter Van Tour and Ewald Demeyere.
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1:57 - What’s your background in music? 3:51 - Did you have a study of Figured Bass while playing Organ? 4:42 - When did you seriously begin studying improvisation? 6:31 - How did Rudolf Lutz practice improvisation before Partimento-based methodology and schema? 7:44 - How would Rudolf Lutz teach you these Partimento methods? 9:07 - What’s the youngest age that you accept students? 10:03 - What is your approach to teaching young children? 11:47 - Do you use any books when teaching? 12:08 - What specific musical concepts would you start off with? 13:59 - Do these melodies tie to Solfeggio? 15:05 - Do you teach Solfeggio or solmization? 15:22 - Does it matter if a student has Absolute Pitch? Does it change how you teach? 16:02 - When do you introduce new keys to students? 17:02 - Week to week, what kind of things do you want your students to work on? 18:22 - Can you give an example of solutions that students come up with? 19:50 - What Partimenti would you recommend for students to tackle first? 21:06 - Since there any many things to learn, what is a good order of things to learn in Partimento? 24:26 - Is it a mistake to memorize the Rule of the Octave without really understanding the individual voices? 25:23 - How do you deal with parallel 5ths and octaves? 26:47 - Can you explain how you improvise with your students on Skype? 27:59 - How do you tie these improvisations to Partimento? 30:02 - Is this kind of improvisation only for advanced students or can even beginners do this? 30:53 - This kind of improvisation is very approachable with a little practice 31:23 - What kind of things you need in order to do this kind of improvisation? 34:16 - How do you develop the ability create diminutions? 36:12 - What are some common mistakes students make when learning Partimento? 37:49 - What’s your approach to teaching composition? 39:34 - How does Partimento inform the way you teach repertoire? 40:47 - Can you give an example of taking a piece and creating variations or new ideas? 42:12 - mentiParti 2019 and how it’s run 45:14 - Are you seeing a big growth in interest in Partimento? 46:08 - How does Partimento affect how you teach popular music? 47:31 - On 20th century music being based more on stacking 3rds 49:25 - How would you reform music education? 51:58 - Wrapping up