Pre-partimento Practice. Deriving Pre-Partimento Activities from Historical Partimenti for Current Beginner- and Intermediate-Level Piano Students

Abstract

As a central part of music education in eighteenth-century Neapolitan conservatories, partimenti were often written with pedagogical intent to develop improvisation and composition skills. My project aims to integrate the pedagogical benefits of partimento realization into current piano pedagogy by adapting specific aspects of partimenti into pre-partimento activities, a new concept established in this thesis. Pre-partimento activities are practical activities that support the development of partimento-related musical skills in a form accessible to beginner- to intermediate-level piano students. I define three creative mindsets associated with creative musical modalities—the interpretational creative mindset, the improvisational creative mindset, and the compositional creative mindset—and use these three mindsets to explore the pedagogical benefits of partimento realization. To create pre-partimento activities that reinforce partimento-related musical skills while maintaining these pedagogical benefits, I design pre-partimento activities by adapting materials from partimento manuscripts, published partimento materials, and late Baroque repertoire. Pre-partimento activities support current directions within music education research, such as the recent expansion of research into Neapolitan partimento methods and an increasing interest in combining music theory pedagogy with improvisation and composition.