Applications of partimento towards present-day compositional practices

The technique of partimento developed in eighteenth-century Italy with the purpose of instructing students in improvisation, composition and general musical knowledge. Partimenti took the notational form of a single staff wherein a variety of clef changes could be employed. Within this single staff contained all of the necessary information to produce an entire improvisation or composition for keyboard. Partimenti had a dual purpose of serving as a pedagogical device as well as a tool that composers would use for artistic purposes in their own works. Generally, the tradition of partimento instruction was an oral one. As a result, much of the information on the subject remains unknown. What survives are treatises that provide partimento rules along with the partimenti themselves, but these texts do not provide exact information on how to complete the partimenti. This dissertation considers ways in which partimento can be used in contemporary musical practices. It traces the history of partimento from its origins in Italy to its development as a significant teaching method used to great effect by a collection of Neapolitan conservatories known as the Neapolitan School. It also places partimento within the greater context of music theory with the aim of anticipating the challenges that modern-day composers may face when attempting to adapt this technique for contemporary purposes. With the help of recent research that has shed some light on this oral tradition, it outlines the manner in which an existing partimento can be used to create a composition. Finally, it studies the use of partimento in Lost City, a work of mine for chamber orchestra, and the role that partimento plays in that work as it exists within a larger environment of contemporary modality. Lost City undergoes a formal analysis with the purpose of discovering how a modern musical context can change the manner in which eighteenth-century textures derived from partimento are heard, understood and experienced.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical reference