Partimento pedagogy and its modern application

The purpose of this doctoral dissertation is to examine and advocate for the use of a historical keyboard improvisation pedagogy in both modern educational settings and individual learning environments as a self-contained, all-encompassing approach that is capable of producing a total musician who can successfully improvise, compose, and perform. My intent is not to discuss or advocate for reviving idiomatic historical improvisation; rather, I wish to examine how the theory of improvisation and interpretive performance support each other, and how learning improvisation can help fill gaps in the current classical training. Recently, there has been a growing awareness of the value of improvisation pedagogy which could compensate for the problems encountered in modern musical education; however, a concrete approach has yet to be established. My focus is on the pedagogical system called “partimento” and its modern application and adaptation. The partimento type of pedagogy was the standard procedure for learning music in the eighteenth century, but has only recently come to light as such. A more thorough investigation of partimento pedagogy reveals that musicians in the past, especially in the eighteenth century, learned music through a time-consuming but linear, logical, and efficient method, and everyone was destined to become the improviser-composer-performer as a reward for a fixed number of years of rigorous training. Currently, research on partimento is underway in a few North American universities and European conservatories that possess advanced music students; however, to date only a few texts targeting ordinary keyboard learners are available. In this project, I intend to create a sample curriculum for an undergraduate keyboard-skills class based on the integration of partimento pedagogy, and create a modern guide to partimento and classical improvisation for independent amateur learners. Then, I will use select organ compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach as case studies through which to demonstrate the effectiveness of musical analysis based on partimento pedagogy from a performer’s perspective.

Name thesis:degree_name

A.Mus.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Music

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2018

Author dc:creator

• Endo, Yohei

Contributors dc:contributor

• Solis, Gabriel
• Robinson, Dana
• Carrillo, Carlos
• Tsitsaros, Christos

• Partimento
• Music education
• Keyboard pedagogy
• Improvisation pedagogy
• Interpretive performance

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2018 Yohei Endo

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/100933

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/100933