Partimento
A good definition is a metaphor: a partimento is a thread that contains in itself all, or most, of the information needed for a complete composition...
[4] Partimenti evolved in the late 17th century in educational milieus in Bologna, Rome, and Naples, originally out of the tradition of organ and harpsichord improvisation.
[6] The earliest dated collection of partimenti with a known author is attributed to Bernardo Pasquini in the first decade of the 18th century.
[7] The golden age of partimento was presided over by Alessandro Scarlatti and his pupils Francesco Durante and Leonardo Leo.
[8] Many important Italian composers emerged from the musical institutions in Naples, Bologna, and Milan, such as Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Giuseppe Verdi, Domenico Cimarosa, Vincenzo Bellini, Gaetano Donizetti, Gaspare Spontini and Gioachino Rossini.
[10] Princess Anne's music lessons with Georg Frideric Handel included the use of partimenti exercises.
The resulting multi-voice counterpoint in Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Bass clefs were called a realization (réalisation).
A student would begin by playing basic material as a 10- or 11 year-old but would eventually mature to write complicated four-voice counterpoint full of distant modulations and chromatic embellishments.
Partimenti gained increased recognition due to being part of Alma Deutscher's early musical training, with her studies with Tobias Cramm and Robert Gjerdingen.
[a][15] Several Neapolitan teachers such as Fedele Fenaroli, Giovanni Furno and Giaocomo Insanguine published collections of regole (rules) and partimenti that were popular pedagogical materials across Europe.
[16] To begin with, one will play all unfigured basses with simple consonant chords: from that performance the Master will clearly understand if his pupil has correctly understood the principles thereof.
Lastly, one shall shape the properly said imitation.Partimenti were typically used as exercises to train conventional models of voice leading, harmony, and musical form, such as the so-called rule of the octave (the harmonized scale), cadences and sequences (the movimenti, or moti del basso).
The beginners’ partimenti treatises usually present rules, which are then followed by exercises of increasing difficulty, presenting figured bass as well as unfigured bass lines, and culminating in the advanced exercises of imitative partimenti and partimento fugues.
The 5th and 8th were perfect consonances because, at the time, it was believed that one couldn't make distinctions between them by expanding them with a sharp or diminishing them by altering a natural or an accidental.
[23] One can give an 8ve to all the degrees of the key, as well as to their consonances, provided that one does not create parallel 8ves, seeing that two 5ths or 8ves, whether above or below, by step or by skip, the one after the other, are prohibited because they make bad harmony.
After learning cadences, students at the Neapolitan conservatories were immediately taught the rule of the octave, or scale as they were termed in Naples.
Notable partimento collections were written by Alessandro Scarlatti, Francesco Durante, Leonardo Leo, Fedele Fenaroli, Giovanni Paisiello, Nicola Sala, Giacomo Tritto, Stanislao Mattei.
