At the height of the Enlightenment, four conservatories in Naples stood at the center of European composition. Maestros taught their students to compose with unprecedented swiftness and elegance using the partimento, an instructional tool derived from the basso continuo that encouraged improvisation as the path to musical fluency. Although the practice vanished in the early nineteenth century, its legacy lived on in the music of the next generation. In The Art of Partimento, performer and music-historian Giorgio Sanguinetti chronicles the history of this long-forgotten Neapolitan art. Sanguinetti has painstakingly reconstructed the oral tradition that accompanied these partimento manuscripts, now scattered throughout Europe. Beginning with the origins of the partimento in the circles of Corelli, Pasquini, and Alessandro Scarlatti in Rome and tracing it through the peak of the tradition in Naples, The Art of Partimento gives a glimpse into the daily life and work of an eighteenth century composer.
The Art of the Partimento is also a complete practical handbook to reviving the tradition today. Step by step, Sanguinetti guides the aspiring composer through elementary realization to more advanced exercises in diminution, imitation, and motivic coherence. Based on the teachings of the original masters, Sanguinetti challenges the reader to become a part of history, providing a variety of original partimenti in a range of genres, forms, styles, and difficulty levels along the way and allowing the student to learn the art of the partimento for themselves at their own pace.
As both history and practical guide, The Art of Partimento presents a new and innovative way of thinking about music theory. Sanguinetti's unique approach unites musicology and music theory with performance, which allows for a richer and deeper understanding than any one method alone, and offers students and scholars of composition and music theory the opportunity not only to understand the life of this fascinating tradition, but to participate in it as well.

Presents thirteen studies that engage with the notion of formal function in a variety of ways Among the more striking developments in contemporary North American music theory is the renewed centrality of issues of musical form (Formenlehre). Formal Functions in Perspective presents thirteen studies that engage with musical form in a variety of ways. The essays, written by established and emerging scholars from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the European continent, run the chronological gamut from Haydn and Clementito Leibowitz and Adorno; they discuss Lieder, arias, and choral music as well as symphonies, concerti, and chamber works; they treat Haydn's humor and Saint-Saens's politics, while discussions of particular pieces range from Mozart's arias to Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht. Running through the essays and connecting them thematically is the central notion of formal function. CONTRIBUTORS: Brian Black, L. Poundie Burstein, Andrew Deruchie, Julian Horton, Steven Huebner, Harald Krebs, Henry Klumpenhouwer, Nathan John Martin, Francois de Medicis, Christoph Neidhoefer, Julie Pedneault-Deslauriers, Giorgio Sanguinetti, Janet Schmalfeldt, Peter Schubert, Steven Vande Moortele Steven Vande Moortele is assistant professor of music theory at the University of Toronto. Julie Pedneault-Deslauriers is assistant professor of music at the University of Ottawa. Nathan John Martin is assistant professor of music at the University of Michigan.

This volume reflects a multidisciplinary approach, with the accent on the interplay between music performance and music theory. Thomas Christensen, in his contribution, shows how the development of tonal harmonic theory went hand in hand with the practice of thoroughbass. Both Robert Gjerdingen and Giorgio Sanguinetti focus on the Neapolitan tradition of partimento. Gjerdingen addresses the relation between the realization of partimenti and contrapuntal thinking, illustrated by examples of contrapuntal imitation and combination in partimenti, leading to the "partimentofugue." Sanguinetti elaborates on the history of this partimentofugue from the early eighteenth until the late nineteenth century. Rudolf Lutz, finally, presents his use of partimenti in educational practice, giving examples of how reviving this old practice can give new insights to composers, conductors, and musicians.