CHILD COMPOSERS

in the
old conservatories

Find the Videos

Accompanying this Book
by searching
YouTube™
for
“Child Composers”
CHILD COMPOSERS
in the
old conservatories

How Orphans
Became
Elite Musicians

Robert O. Gjerdingen

1
 3
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 To my first teacher of solfège,

Gaston Dufresne (1898 –1998)

Lille Conservatory (1907–1918)

First Prize in Contrabass
First Prize in Cornet
Second Prize in Trumpet
Second Prize in Solfège

Paris Conservatory (1919 –1923)

First Prize in Contrabass
First Medal in Solfège
Third Medal in Music History

Boston Symphony Orchestra (1927–1957)

Contrabass

Chicago Symphony Orchestra (1951–1952)

Principal Contrabass
Special thanks to:

Catherine Gjerdingen, editing

Petya Kaltchev, proofreading

Mikki Leung, digital instruments

Rebecca Dixon, typography

 Contents

Preface 3
1 Introduction  9

PART I Children in Need

2 Little Boys on Their Own  19
3 Masters Take Up the Challenge  33
4 Child Labor  49
5 Institutionalized Apprenticeship  59
6 Social Class  73

PART II Technologies of Training

7 Schemas, Exemplars, and the Treasure Trove of Memory  83
8 Solfeggi and the Acquisition of Style  99
9 Partimenti and the Power of Improvisation  113
10 Counterpoint and Collocation  129
11 Intavolature and the Techniques of Instruments  145
12 Dispositions and the Mastery of Complexity  159

PART III Trial by Contest

13 Little Masters, Real Masters, and Masterpieces  179
14 The Contest Piece as a Probe of Memory  191
15 Affordance and the Musical Habitus  207
16 Predicting Creativity within a Tradition  221
17 A Sickly Young Woman Speaks Elegant Harmony  233

PART IV Transforming Commonplaces

18 The Oval and Cross  251
19 A Framework for Elaboration  259
20 The Beaux-Arts Framework  275
21 A Beaux-Arts Framework for Music  289
22 Learning Old Music in a New Age of Digital Reproduction  311

Appendix A: For Further Study  325

Appendix B: Movimenti, Schemas, and Exemplars  331
Notes 339
Index of Names  347
Table of Topics by Chapter 349
“Choir Boys in the Cathedral of Rouen” by W. F. Yeames, R. A., 1891
CHILD COMPOSERS
in the
old conservatories
@
 PR EFACE

LE A R NING W I Z A R DRY IN MUSIC

Your author was a bookish child raised in a Norwegian-American farming village and
apprenticed at age fourteen as a farmhand. My parents were not musicians, but thanks to
the encouragement of an older sailor aboard a destroyer in the Pacific toward the end of
World War II my father had developed a taste for classical music. After the war he built a
stereo system from a kit and I grew up feeling that the sound of classical LPs blaring from
his speakers was as pure a form of magic as was possible. So I left farming behind and grew
up to become a professor of music history and theory. A deep love
for music of nearly every kind motivated what turned into fifty
years of concentrated study. My focus was always directed at the
question of how it was possible for composers to conjure in their
minds the symphonies, sonatas, quartets, concertos, and all the
other products of musical magic that have amazed generations of
listeners. More than thirty years into this quest I learned to my
great surprise that centuries ago, in Italy, four special schools had
been set up to train future wizards of music. These schools, each
a musical Hogwarts, took in young children as apprentices and
gave them intense and prolonged training in all the musical arts.
They learned to sing, to play one or more instruments, to impro-
vise at the keyboard, and to compose. In particular, they learned A Vision of Hogwarts School
a language of musical patterns in which, by the end of their teens,
they would become fluent, imaginative “speakers” of elegant music. My previous book,
Music in the Galant Style (Oxford, 2007), offered a glimpse into their training. In this new
book I want to explore their wizarding world in more depth, both at its source in eigh-
teenth-century Italy and in nineteenth-century France. Teachers at the Paris Conservatory
adopted nearly the entire range of Italian methods and elevated standards to an unbeliev-
ably high degree.
Do those old methods have relevance for us today? For much of my career as a uni-
versity professor that question was comfortably academic. Then, about nine years ago, a
noted linguist named Guy Deutscher contacted me from England about the training of

3
 4 child composers in the old conservatories

his precocious daughter Alma. Deutscher had read Music in the Galant Style and thought
that the methods outlined there might be effective with someone as talented as five-year-
old Alma. With the help of Tobias Cramm, an able keyboard player in Switzerland who
gave Alma lessons via Skype video, she
began working in earnest on the old
Italian methods. Now fourteen, Alma
has become a celebrity, appearing on
television all over the world, writing two
operas and a number of chamber works,
performing with major orchestras,
improvising in the classical style before
live audiences, and greatly impressing
even professional musicians. You can
watch and listen to Alma perform on her
own YouTube™ channel, where she has
hordes of appreciative listeners (search:
Alma Deutscher taking a bow after a production of her opera Cinderella
“Alma Deutscher”).
The old Italian methods seem to work wonders, especially for music students who are
not prodigies. Imagine those early schools in Italy where children were trained to be musi-
cians. The teachers, known as masters or maestros, held children’s lives in their hands.
Failure could mean a boy thrown out of school to beg on the street—many of the boys
were orphans. So the maestros needed to develop a more or less foolproof scheme to satu-
rate the children in music. The students would sing, play, listen to, copy, compose, and
improvise music six days a week. Children as young as seven began their training with the
simplest musical tasks. As they advanced in their skills they were asked to do more. Soon
they helped make money for their schools by singing in churches. Later they might play
in an opera orchestra. Eventually they could help teach the beginners—Naples seems to
have invented the “teaching assistant.” So a scheme born of necessity reliably turned even
orphans and foundlings into solid professional musicians. Though the world today is far
different, maybe elements of that old scheme still have value and can help transform the
learning of music from a tedious chore into something creative and joyous. For young
children, the old methods offer a refined form of structured play. For college students, the
old methods provide an authentic engagement with the great European tradition as it was
acquired by its “native speakers.” And for students of all ages the emphasis on learning
through creative problem solving in real time—improvisation—marks the old methods as
fostering a type of mental development that is both productive and empowering. Simple
lessons well learned can lead to miraculous results.
As mentioned, my work as a scholar had focused on the mental development needed
to express oneself as a composer in classical music. Knowing scales and keys was not
enough to become a minor Mozart, nor was it enough to know how to organize musical
ideas into a sonata or an aria. One first had to know what to “say.” If aspiring composers
 preface  5

could not learn how to form a musical phrase, and especially phrases of the type then
fashionable, they could never be a real composer. So I carefully examined the phrases in
thousands of compositions, mostly from the 1700s, observing the behaviors of successful
composers. I reached the conclusion that composers had learned a secret repertory of
dozens of stock types of phrases—jazz musicians might call them “licks.” These phrases
formed a musical vocabulary that allowed for improvisation and rapid composition, exactly
the skills that composers needed in those days. It was a secret repertory only in the sense
that professional musicians would be hard pressed to describe it in words to outsiders, and
even if they tried, the outsiders would almost certainly fail to understand. In the following
chapters and accompanying videos, you will come to learn parts of this language, and in
experiencing its secrets you will begin to hear classical music as an insider.
Although I achieved some professional recognition for uncovering this repertory of
phrase types, I had no general explanation for how young musicians in the past would
have learned it. They could, of course, have learned a great deal by direct exposure. If a
young mind listens to enough music, it can figure out something of how phrases work. But
learning to recognize types of musical phrases is far easier than learning to produce techni-
cally perfect, entertaining examples of them. An entirely new explanation opened up in
the winter of 2003, when a fellow professor, Jesse Rosenberg, showed me an example of a
“partimento,” one written in 1782 by a Naples-trained composer teaching music at the
imperial Russian court. I had never heard the term partimento, even though I had read a
wide range of books and articles on nearly every aspect of music theory covering the last
thousand years. The term, as I soon learned, refers to Italian exercises where a student
would play a written-out bass with the left hand while improvising a right-hand part.
Because I had spent decades listening to and studying the standard phrases of the 1780s, I
immediately recognized the bass patterns in this partimento as belonging to simple exam-
ples of several of the most common stock phrases. Amazed, I quickly realized that I was
staring at an authentic lesson on the very repertory of phrase types that I had been studying
for so long. This lesson and hundreds of similar ones taught the apprentice composer what
to “say.” It taught what was needed to improvise and compose. The hundreds of manu-
scripts of partimenti and related exercises still preserved in European libraries would con-
firm that professional musicians had developed a sophisticated language of musical pat-
terns, a language systematically taught to young apprentices. Much of this book will
describe both this special musical language and how it was taught to children and young
adults.
This book is scholarly, in that it presents the results of many years of archival research.
But I hope it will not therefore be boring. Much of the material discussed here will be new
even to researchers who are experts in classical music. In particular, the music lessons
found in old conservatory manuscripts tell a clear story that departs significantly from what
many authors and authorities had previously imagined about the training of future com-
posers. A number of chapters will present extensive technical evidence that, from the time
of Bach and Handel to that of Ravel and Debussy, there was a common approach to teach-
6 child composers in the old conservatories

ing children how to improvise and compose. That approach, a largely nonverbal, artisanal
method of instruction, had escaped academic scrutiny until quite recently. Now that we
have “cracked the code” of the old lessons, so to speak, we can eavesdrop on the artful
interactions of long-dead music masters and their onetime child apprentices. In a few
cases we can follow the whole arc of a composer’s career, observing how simple patterns
learned as a child blossomed into meaningful artistic expressions in adulthood.
At the same time, this book is unlike many scholarly publications. It is loaded with
color pictures (the extra cost courtesy of the Kaplan Institute at Northwestern University),
it has references to a hundred YouTube™ videos where one can hear all the music shown
in the text, and it does not try to exclude readers who are not themselves experts in this
area. So you will see “Paris Conservatory” rather than Conservatoire de Paris, or worse,
Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris. Some readers may have
excellent abilities in various European languages, but for those who do not, rough guides
to pronunciation have been inserted in the Index of Names found at the back of the book.
Classical music can be a minefield of pronunciation errors, and the experience of people
encountering the difficult spelling and sound of my own surname (Gjerdingen = YAIR-
ding-en) has taught me that human memory for a name can be unstable without a clear
sense of its sound. Even Italians today do not agree, for example, about whether the last
name of the old master Pasquale Cafaro should be pronounced “kah-FAHR-oh” or “KAFF-
a-row.” The fact that Mozart, when visiting Naples as a boy, wrote the name out by ear as
“Caffaro” suggests that “KAFF-a-row” was correct. Of course the further fact that we have
just spent fifty words on the pronunciation of a three-syllable name only highlights how a
little help in this area may not be superfluous.
Note also that the mention of Mozart writing the name Caffaro is not followed by a
footnote that goes on to say that the fourteen-year-old Mozart wrote “Caffaro” in a second
postscript addressed to his sister, which in turn was attached to a letter written by his father
to the boy’s mother on May 19, 1770, from the city of Naples, Italy. Scholars of Mozart
already know where to find this information, and anyone with access to a modern search
engine can arrive at the equivalent data by typing “Mozart Naples Cafaro.” Citations are
provided, of course, for direct quotes or for assertions that warrant a mention of their
source. Additional materials that might be useful for those who wish to explore certain
topics in more depth or to try the old methods for themselves can be found listed in the
appendix “For Further Study.”
More important than any detail of Mozart family correspondence is the fact that
young Mozart traveled to Naples precisely because Naples in the 1770s was the center of
the musical world. Our story too will travel to Naples, where we will be introduced to the
four schools of musical wizardry and learn about their pupils, masters, and methods. Every
large music school today is in some way a descendant of those four schools in Naples.
Memory of Neapolitan success in teaching children to improvise and compose, which led
to a century of domination in classical music, has faded with time and is now largely for-
gotten. What you will see in the following chapters and hear in the many videos may
 preface  7

hopefully bring back an appreciation for what those old masters and their students accom-
plished. The lessons completed in their classes on harmony and counterpoint go far
beyond what most students of classical music can manage today.
Children love to play with dinosaurs—not real ones, of course. To small children the
Jurassic era was just a long time ago, well before their grandparents were born. The past
for children is part of a general yesterday. They can have as much fun with music from
eighteenth-century Naples or Vienna as with any current style. And while popular styles
will come and go with alarming frequency, a classical style will remain a source of delight
and solace for one’s whole life. Once associated with aristocrats in Europe or its colonies,
the tradition of classical music has become thoroughly international and democratized.
Talented Middle Eastern
musicians play Mozart con-
certos, and the background
music at Beijing International
Airport features many of the
same classics enjoyed by
Queen Victoria or Albert
Einstein. It is a past that still
has a living presence. When I
posted a video on YouTube™
to test the format of the vid-
eos accompanying this book,
I was greatly heartened by the
An automated message to the author from YouTube.
automated message shown to
the right.
A cynic might imagine that someone had appropriated Bach’s user name. I prefer
to imagine that this incredible maestro was curious to listen in as a professor from the
twenty-first century attempts to give an honest account of how hundreds of children from
his time learned to improvise and compose music in the classical tradition.
8 child composers in the old conservatories

@
 1

IN T RODUCT ION

T HE W HEEL OF MISFORT UNE

Th e pa i n t i ng bel ow is t i t l ed “The Guard at the Foundlings’ Wheel.” In Italy

prior to the 1880s, an unwanted infant could be brought, under cover of darkness, to an
opening in the back wall of a church or orphanage. The opening gave access to the
“wheel” (It.: ruota), a wooden turntable with a basket into which the infant was placed.
Turning the wheel would close the outside opening and ring a small bell. Awakened by
the bell, a female attendant would open doors to the wheel (in the painting the doors are
marked by two bright knobs), retrieve the baby, and bed it down for the night. On the
outside, the baby had been an illegitimate castaway. On the inside, it was now a protected
ward of the church, often with a new last name: Esposito (“the exposed or abandoned
one”). At dawn the immediate need would be to secure a wet nurse. Many months later,
past infancy, the Church would still have important questions to answer—“What do we
do with it?” “How can we give this little thing bereft of a family a chance at success in a
world dominated by close family alliances?”

“La guardia alla ruota dei trovatelli” by Gioacchino Toma, 1877

9
 10 child composers in the old conservatories

To the left you see a basilica where abandoned

children could find refuge in the southern Italian city
of Naples. Centuries ago a wealthy noblewoman had
provided funds to establish a special place where
foundlings could be protected in the back of the build-
ing. People began calling it the “conserving place,”
which in Latin and Italian was a conservatorio, or in
English a conservatory.
The painting below, from around 1700, hints at
why Naples produced a lot of orphans. It was a port
city with hundreds of sailors on shore leave. The forti-
fications housed large cohorts of soldiers supporting
the Spanish or Austrian rulers, and the active com-
merce between the Middle East and Europe attracted
visiting merchants of all kinds. The liaisons of all these
itinerant men with the women of Naples, combined
with frequent plagues that carried off adults, often
resulted in large numbers of abandoned children. The
genius of Naples was to view these children not as a
problem but as a resource. In establishing 200 orphan-
The Basilica of Saint Mary Major, Naples ages (about one for every 1,500 citizens), philanthropic
men and women, working with the Church, created
what were, in effect, urban trade schools. The city fathers (and mothers) had discovered
that if orphans had useful skills in valuable trades, people would overlook their question-
able parentage. Different orphanages specialized in different trades and crafts. At an
orphanage for boys a child might learn leatherwork or ironwork; at an orphanage for girls
a child might learn needlework, embroidery, or the business of laundry. And at a special
group of four orphanages, boys were taught the craft of music.

“The Arsenal of the Galleys,” Naples, by Caspar van Wittel, ca. 1700
 Chapter 1 introduction  11

Naples did at one time have orphanages for training girls in music, but for one reason
or another those institutions failed during the 1600s. In Venice, by contrast, the city’s
orphanages, called ospedale (“hostels”), trained girls exclusively, providing them not only
musical training to raise their value in the marriage market, but also a cash dowry. Because
the Venetian plan was to marry the girls off, few of them became independent professional
musicians (though there were notable exceptions). This may explain why so few manu-
script lessons of the type used to prepare future composers have been found in Venetian
libraries. Out of necessity, then, we will focus on the boys in Naples and the thousands of
preserved documents that detail what they studied and practiced.
Shown in red are the full names of the four orphanages—conservatories—that taught
music in Naples. Following each name you will see the nickname that we will use in this
book, and a rough guide to pronunciation.

SANTA MARIA DI LORETO (the Loreto; Luh-REH-tow)

SANT’ONOFRIO A PORTA CAPUANA (the Onofrio; Oh-KNOW-free-owe)
I POVERI DI GESÙ CHRISTO (the Poveri; POE-ver-ee)
LA PIETÀ DE TURCHINI (the Pietà; Pee-ay-TAW)

These four institutions seem to have been superior to the typical orphanage. Life in
most orphanages was awful, so awful in fact that by the late twentieth century almost every
industrialized nation had replaced orphanages with systems of foster care in homes. Not
surprisingly, The Orphanage, a Spanish motion picture directed by J. A. Bayona (2007), is
a horror film. Yet against all odds, the Naples music conservatories were incredibly suc-
cessful and served as models for the training of musicians in many other countries. What
factors contributed to their success?
Details will come in later chapters, but here is the broad organizational outline shared
by each of the four conservatories. A board of goverors managed the finances and hired the
staff and instructors. The children were brought in as indentured servants. That is, they or
their guardians signed contracts binding them to the school for a period of years, often ten.
In that way the school, as it invested in the professional development of the child, would
not lose him as soon as his skills became valuable. Trained boys could be rented out or
leased to various churches or ensembles, thus bringing in income to support the institu-
tion. The boys lived and worked in the institution, and as they progressed in their training
they might be called upon to teach younger boys, thus augmenting the teaching staff.
For admission, boys had to be at least seven and show musical promise, so the music
conservatories were spared the raising of infants and toddlers. The new boys, as beginners,
did not have many marketable skills. Nonetheless a school might put them to work as
angioletti (ahn-joh-LET-tee; “little angels”). Angioletti figurines are still found today in
Italy as Christmas decorations and in nativity scenes, often with musical instruments (see
12 child composers in the old conservatories

the photograph). You might be thinking, “Oh, they could dress the boys for a Christmas
pageant.” The reality was many shades darker. A group of the younger boys, dressed as
seminarians, were fitted with little angel wings on their backs and then marched to a
church where they would take part in the funeral of a dead child. The macabre scene of
the little angels processing up the
aisle as the grieving parents dissolved
into tears offers us a glimpse into the
working life of an eighteenth-century
orphan apprentice. The boy had no
“plan B” beyond begging in the
streets. If he wanted to eat, he had to
do as he was told, even if that meant
service at child funerals. At the same
time, the grim experience could help
transform the boy into a young profes-
sional. He was part of the cast, not the
audience. He observed the audience
and learned what it took to move
Angioletti or “little angels” them. The work might be unpleasant
but he was paying his own way and
doing his part. We might think that his job bordered on child abuse, but the experience
created shared bonds with his classmates, who would become his true family.
Perhaps the three factors that contributed most to the success of these early conserva-
tories were leadership, money, and quality instruction. First, these schools had generally
good governance. At the Pietà, for instance, the Rules of the Conservatory set down in 1746
addressed child abuse directly. On the very first page of the Rules, under the heading “The
Purpose of the Institution of This Royal Conservatory,” the governors announced:

Let it be noted that the primary scope and principal purpose envisioned by the first
Founders of this sacred place was to put into practice that doctrine of Wisdom Incarnate—
Jesus Christ—taught by word of mouth to the Holy Evangelist Matthew in chapter 18 of
his Gospel:

[5] And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. [6] But whoso
shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a
millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.

Considering seriously how much a child’s state of innocence pleased the Lord, and how
much a child’s maltreatment was abominated, the Founders thought to endow, through
their support and through the charitable contributions of the city’s faithful, a place of
piety—a conserving place (Conservatorio).1
 Chapter 1 introduction  13

A second factor was the relative wealth of these institutions. Because their boys per-
formed all over the city and participated in high-profile processions and musical contests,
the schools were well known and admired. Over the centuries rich donors had bequeathed
to the conservatories properties that produced endowment income, and royal patronage
sometimes meant regal gifts. The image below shows the interior of the church associated
with the Pietà. Boys at that conservatory would sing and pray there every day. As they fidg-
eted and looked around they would see Spanish gold from the New World adorning the
columns and the items on the altar. Considering the wretched situations some of the boys
had left before entering the conservatory, they had now come to a land of plenty. And even
if accommodations for the boys may have been spartan, things were nonetheless clean,
dry, and well maintained.
The third factor is
both the most important
and the most difficult to
describe. It encompasses
the quality, quantity,
intensity, and duration of
instruction. The heyday
of these conservatories
was in the 1700s, the era
of Bach and Mozart. By
that time the schools had
been employing profes-
sional musicians as
instructors for more than
a century. During that
long period, generations
of teachers had had to An interior view of the Church of the Pietà dei Turchini, Naples
confront squarely some
fundamental questions of means and ends. Given a group of boys, many of whom had
only average musical talents, given the resources of the conservatories, and given the situ-
ation of musical employment in Italy in the days of powerful princes and cardinals, what
could be done so that at the end of a decade of instruction a clueless little boy could be
transformed into a young professional musician with bright prospects? The question was
practical, to be sure, but also moral, because these teachers were in loco parentis—they
had a parent’s obligation and responsibility to do their utmost for the welfare of the chil-
dren under their care.
There were around 3,000 parishes in Naples alone, and hundreds of thousands across
all of Italy. Most needed a maestro di capella (“chapel master” or music director), they
might need an organist, and they might need a choir director. So training in the conserva-
tories was planned so that graduating students would qualify for one or more of those
14 child composers in the old conservatories

positions. Before the 1800s, Italy did not have an active music-publishing industry. Church
musicians worked from handwritten manuscripts or they improvised. So it was important
that conservatory students knew how to compose quickly or to improvise at the keyboard.
That would make them qualified music directors or organists. And the students needed to
sing well and be able to hear what each part was singing in an ensemble. That would make
them qualifed choir directors. All these skills were related, and the genius of the teachers
in Naples was to create lessons that reinforced each other as the students slowly gained
mastery of the material.
The diagram on the facing page shows a little boy dressed in his conservatory uniform.
Anyone in Naples would have recognized him as being from the Pietà because the color
of his cassock marks him as one of the “turquoise boys” (It., turchini). He is surrounded by
the types of lessons taught there, and above his head is the goal—mastery of adult music
(It., musica). The real music of orchestras and choirs would be too complex for a boy to
learn directly. Instead, his teachers created various simplifications of it for him. In the
lower right of the diagram are the lessons known as partimenti (par-tee-MEN-tee), where
the teacher would write out a bass line to be played at a keyboard with the student’s left
hand. The right-hand, treble part was meant to be improvised. Where would a student
learn the melodies for such a part? Melodies were learned in the lessons called solfeggi
(sole-FEDGE-ee), shown in the lower left of the diagram. Solfeggi had basses and harmo-
nies played by the master as the student read and sang the melodies. Solfeggi helped stu-
dents know how to “realize” partimenti, meaning to complete the unwritten parts.
Solfeggi and partimenti might be thought of as the core curriculum. They were sim-
plifications of musica that involved the student’s voice, hands, and imagination. Keyboard
lessons, shown between musica and partimenti, helped a boy learn how his small fingers
could create musical textures that approximated the sound of an orchestra or choir. On
the other side of the diagram, “counterpoint” is shown between musica and solfeggi. The
bass-and-voice duets in solfeggi were models of counterpoint, which is the fitting of one
melody to another. The arrows on the diagram show how every lesson is related to other
lessons, and more arrows could have been drawn to show, for instance, that a good realiza-
tion of a partimento involves not only selecting an interesting keyboard texture (the dashed
arrow) but also making sure that the left- and right-hand parts make good counterpoint.
Notice how arrows from every type of lesson and from musica itself lead to the boy’s
head. Hopefully something happened in the boy’s mind to tie everything together. If the
boy’s lessons had contained nothing but random sequences of tones and chords, he would
have had a difficult time learning anything. A child’s mind is highly sensitive to things that
recur frequently, especially in the same context, so the repetition of similar patterns is very
important if one wants to enhance learning. In the Naples conservatories they taught a
small repertory of musical patterns that occurred, in one form or another, in almost every
lesson. The patterns were the ones most used in musica, so by learning them a boy was
preparing himself for the real world.
Psychologists often use the term “schema” to describe a general pattern that we have
learned and stored in our memory. A musical schema could be the gist of how a particular
 Chapter 1 introduction  15

Vi deo 1.1

A child at the Pietà and his network of lessons

melody and bass went together to form a small phrase. By the end of his training a conser-
vatory boy would get to know hundreds of such patterns inside and out. He would have
sung their melodies in numerous solfeggi, played their basses in dozens of partimenti,
written out both their parts in counterpoint, and played fancy versions of them at the key-
board. Indeed, after he had internalized these patterns in all their detail he would be able
to recognize them in concert music and to follow exactly what was happening. His lessons
provided him with structured knowledge in the form of schemas, and those schemas
sharpened his perceptions. He heard more detail than an untrained listener because he
had already memorized all the schemas that he was likely to encounter at a concert. In the
professional world of music, he was becoming an insider.
This program was so effective that musically talented boys from stable, prosperous
families began to apply for admission. The families would pay tuition for them to attend.
Over the course of the 1700s the paying students began to outnumber the true orphans.
To the right of the diagram above you will see a marker for “Video 1.1.” That video can
be found on YouTube™ by searching for the channel “Child Composers” and then con-
sulting the playlist index. Most chapters in this book are supplied with a YouTube™ play-
list of one or more videos, and these videos will allow you to experience in sound some of
what the conservatory boys experienced as they learned their art. So instead of reading
 16 child composers in the old conservatories

about partimenti or solfeggi, looking at musical examples, and then moving on to the next
paragraph or chapter, please take the time to hear what those lessons were actually like.
There are important things in the videos that do not appear in the text. For example,
Video 1.1 plays examples of musica by the great Neapolitan master Leonardo Leo. Those
excerpts present instances of the same musical schema that is then illustrated by a parti-
mento, also by Leo, and by a solfeggio by Leo. He taught at the Pietà, so one gets to expe-
rience the actual sound of what one of his turquoise boys might have heard and studied. It
would be a great shame to read this book about how children learned music without shar-
ing in the sounds that filled their days. Music in Naples was learned primarily by ear, not
by sight, and so there is a nonverbal understanding to be gained in the videos that cannot
be duplicated in text alone.
The mastery of musical patterns involving two or more simultaneous vocal or
instrumental parts—counterpoint—was a central goal in the training of young composers.
The study of counterpoint has so atrophied during the intervening centuries that today
many young musicians find it baffling. They keep trying to find the “right chord,” when in
truth the art of counterpoint is only incidentally about chords. Because so much of the
story of the old conservatories will concern training in counterpoint, musical examples in
the earlier chapters have been kept intentionally easier than in later chapters. The hope is
that a motivated reader will gain a strong enough sense of the “rules of the game” in the
earlier chapters so that the advanced material in later chapters will still be tractable. If a
paragraph is too detailed and technical in its description of a musical example, feel free to
just skip that text and listen to the associated video. Your ear will probably capture what I
was laboring to describe in words. The advanced lessons just mentioned, although the
daily fare of conservatory students in the later 1800s, go far beyond what a college music
major will encounter today in North America. Students may be more talented today than
ever before, but the curriculum in classical music has been seriously dumbed down. My
hope is that by demonstrating what students were once able to do, bright students and
their teachers today will not want to settle for something far less.

Many of the miraculous abilities of Mozart to compose in his mind were shared by
other professional musicians in the past, and the conservatories taught the skills required.
Vi deo 1. 2 Today it may all seem like science fiction. Video 1.2 uses clips from the 1956 movie
Forbidden Planet to illustrate how the abilities of a lost alien civilization and of children in
the conservatories both depended on great mental discipline and training. The training of
two such boys, who each lost his father, entered a conservatory, and grew to become a
famous musician, will be the subject of the next chapter.
 PA RT I

CHILDR EN IN NEED
a nd
T HEIR A DULT BENEFACTOR S

Ch a p t er s 2 t h rough 5 introduce our cast of characters. Little boys whose

only worldly treasure was a talent for music lived in conservatories. We will look into the
lives of two of them who lost their fathers but found good masters and became composers,
one of them world famous in his day, the other more famous as a conductor. The masters
of such boys faced a weighty challenge. With few tangible resources, they needed to trans-
form illiterate urchins into musical courtiers capable of rubbing shoulders with the high
and mighty in cathedrals and palaces. They did this through an imaginative and pro-
longed development of the boys’ musical minds. For the boys it was full-time work, and
today we might think of them as victims of child labor. After all, they toiled from dawn to
dusk, with the institutions that housed them taking all their wages. Yet these were chari-
table institutions founded for the boys’ protection and training. In those aims the institu-
tions succeeded spectacularly. The boys learned a valuable craft and entered the world of
work as skilled artisans in high demand. Artisans were not, however, counted among the
social elite.

17
@
 2

LI T T LE BOYS ON T HEIR OW N

DOMENICO CIM A ROSA

A ND
HENR I BUSSER

Eu rope e x per i enced enor mous ch a nges between 1749, when Domenico
Cimarosa was born in Naples, and 1872, when the city of Toulouse in southern France
welcomed little Henri Busser. The French Revolution, the industrial revolution, vast colo-
nial empires, railroads, steamships, and the telegraph all appeared between those dates.
And yet the two boys had almost identical experiences as students. Let us begin with the
story of Cimarosa, the son of an Italian stonemason who had come to Naples to work on
the king’s new palace. That palace, shown below, still stands.

The Palace of Capodimonte, Naples, begun in 1738

19
 20 child composers in the old conservatories

The king, Charles I of Naples (1716–1788) and later Charles III of Spain, wanted to mark
his conquest of southern Italy with a huge building set on a hilltop overlooking the port of
Naples. Although construction went on for decades, slowed by the steep location and a
frequent lack of funds, the resulting palace of Capodimonte (“mountaintop”) displays all
the magnificence Charles had intended. It still maintains one of its original functions,
which was to exhibit his family’s enormous art collection.
As suggested, the glittering palace was costly, and not only in treasure. Part of the
human cost was Domenico’s father, Gennaro, who perished in a fall from the high palace
walls. In the lower ranks of European society the death of a breadwinner could leave the
widow and children destitute. Gennaro’s widow Anna, however, found refuge with
Franciscan monks who worked from the church of
St. Severo. In return for food and shelter she did
their laundry. As an added benefit, the monks let
Domenico attend their grammar school.
Specialists in the history of eighteenth-century
music will recognize this boy as a very famous com-
poser. Though little known today, he rose to courtly
positions much higher than any ever attained by
Mozart or Haydn. Catherine the Great, Empress of
Russia, would appoint Cimarosa head of music
(maestro di capella) at her court in St. Petersburg
(1787), and Leopold II of Austria would later recruit
him to the same top post (Kapellmeister) at his court
in Vienna (1792). Cimarosa had a knack for writing
comic operas loved by the upper crust. He had his
first operatic success at age twenty-three (1772; see
his grainy likeness to the left) and remained a com-
poser in high demand until the day he died, early in
Domenico Cimarosa, ca. 1772
1801.
How was it that the hungry urchin of a widowed
laundress became the very well fed and smartly dressed figure shown in the portrait on the
following page? His rags-to-riches ascent could have been the stuff of Romantic fiction,
like the novels of Charles Dickens or Horatio Alger. Such a treatment, focusing on a
plucky protagonist who with the help of kind souls along the way eventually triumphs
thanks to innate talent and determination, would obviously focus on Cimarosa himself,
depicting how he had bested the world in single combat. Hollywood movies about the
lives of composers often take that route.
There were, of course, some kind souls along the way. The Francisans who rescued his
mother were vitally important. And among them one could single out a Father Polcano
who noticed that Domenico had musical talent, probably from hearing the boy sing.
Great singers in eighteenth-century Italy were like the football stars of our day, and local
 Chapter 2 little boys on their own  21

scouts could be counted on to call attention to a promising prospect. A ten-year-old boy

did not, however, enter the premier leagues of music directly. Many years of training were
required first, and because a boy’s voice would change unpredictably during puberty, all
the expense of that training might be for naught.
Between the talented little boy and the world-class composer stood the institution of
the Conservatory of Santa Maria di Loreto (henceforth “the Loreto”). It was founded as an
orphanage in 1535 in the fishermen’s district of Naples. “Orphanage” had a broad meaning
at that time. An orphanage might care for children with deceased parents, but they also
took those with only one parent (like Cimarosa), or with living but destitute parents who
would abandon a child in hopes the foundling might be accepted and given a better
chance in life. The Loreto originally took in both boys and girls until a separate school for
girls opened in 1543. As mentioned in the pre-
vious chapter, the children were taught vari-
ous trades, one of which was music. Music
began to dominate the training after the hir-
ing of professional music teachers (ca. 1630–
1640). From 1644 onward, boys able to pay
tuition could also enroll. The paying students
got more and better food, could sometimes
leave the school building, and did not have to
dress in a white, priest-like uniform as was
required of the indigent boys. Though
Cimarosa was one of those indigent boys, he
seems to have prospered in his new home.
From the surviving accounts of instruc-
tion at the Loreto we can presume that
Cimarosa would have received group lessons
in solfeggi (see Chap. 8), in singing, in parti-
menti (see Chap. 9), in counterpoint (see Domenico Cimarosa, 1785
Chap. 10), in keyboard playing (see Chap. 11),
and in violin playing. Later he also received private instruction in the violin, keyboard,
and voice. His gift for composition was recognized, and he finished his eleven years at the
Loreto in the special class for those qualified to become a music director (maestro di
capella). He was in that class when the fifteen-year-old Mozart visited Naples in May 1770.
Though it may be hard to imagine today, Cimarosa became the more famous composer
during his lifetime.
Hundreds of boys were taught at the Loreto over the decades. Yet relatively few of
those thousands of lessons can be traced to a particular boy at a particular stage of his train-
ing. By a happy historical accident, a dated notebook of Cimarosa’s lessons has been pre-
served at the Estense library in Modena, Italy. It contains Cimarosa’s early lessons in the
art of partimento.1
 22 child composers in the old conservatories

The library seems not to have known what to make of this notebook. It clearly is by
Cimarosa because he signed it in several places “Cimarosa Pne” (i.e., “Cimarosa Padrone”
or “Property of Cimarosa”). And it is explicitly dated 1762, when Cimarosa was twelve or
thirteen years old. But the library, in its catalog, wonders if it could be a work for violin
and/or keyboard. This uncertainty may be due to lapsed knowledge of what a collection
titled “partimenti” was meant to contain. A partimento was usually written on a single staff
in the bass clef, and a boy would play that part on a harpsichord with his left hand. Musical
patterns in this bass were meant to jog a boy’s memory and imagination so that, with his
right hand, he would complete (“realize”) the missing melody and accompaniment.
Calling the end result a “realization” served to highlight the sense that the music in all its
glory was already implicit in the partimento. Through performance the boy would bring
it to life and make it fully audible.
The connection between a particular bass pattern and its proper realization was
intended to become habitual; a boy would be conditioned to associate the musical stimu-
lus with a musical response. How this worked should become clearer with a few examples
from the notebook. Example 2.1 shows the opening measures from one of the most obvi-
ous of Cimarosa’s lessons.

e x . 2 .1   T
 he opening of a C-major partimento from Cimarosa’s notebook (Naples, 1762)

This excerpt begins with the same type of bass pattern used in Pachelbel’s Canon in
D, or in the major-mode refrain of the Christmas carol “Greensleeves,” or in a hundred
other seventeenth- and eighteenth-century works. It ends with a conventional cadence.
The sequential pattern of the bass­—falling a fourth (notes in red: C to G), rising a second
(G to A), and then falling again—was of great utility for accompanying melodies that
descended stepwise, often with a parallel alto line a third below. In Naples, teachers would
describe the pattern in practical terms: “cala di quarta, sala di grado” (fall a fourth, rise a
step). In other cases musicians might associate the pattern with part of an old aria called
Vi deo 2 .1 La romanesca (Franz Liszt arranged a version of it in the 1840s). Video 2.1 presents this
Romanesca schema both in simple, illustrative examples and in actual compositions.
In a further historical accident, one of the very few fully notated realizations of an
eighteenth-century partimento involves this same lesson (right-hand realizations were
usually just improvised).2 Comparisons with other manuscripts reveal that this lesson and
most of the other lessons in Cimarosa’s notebook were written by the great Neapolitan
master Francesco Durante (1684–1755), a close contemporary of J. S. Bach, Handel, and
Domenico Scarlatti. At present it is unknown whether the preserved right-hand part—the
realization—is also by Durante. It could also have been written by an advanced student or
Vi deo 2 . 2 even by another master. The complexity of the realization (see Video 2.2) and its strong
 Chapter 2 little boys on their own  23

melodic-contrapuntal profile indicate that the end goal of partimento realization was not
a simple series of right-hand chords. Instead, an advanced realization was almost indistin-
guishable from a fine composition. The preserved realization of the Durante partimento
is far closer in style to a Bach two-part invention or a Scarlatti sonata than to the Germanic
tradition of four-voice chorale harmonization.
A second bass in Cimarosa’s notebook is the widely known La folia (Ex. 2.2), though
Cimarosa did not label it as such. Video 2.3 plays this version of the La folia bass repeat- Vi deo 2 .3
edly. Simple realizations appear first, followed by excerpts from important compositions
that use related versions of La folia as a theme for variations.

e x . 2 . 2  The opening of a D-minor partimento from Cimarosa’s notebook (Naples, 1762)

If one looks only at the tones on the downbeats of each measure in the above La folia
(the notes in red), those tones move up or down fourths or seconds from measure to mea-
sure. As mentioned, music masters in Naples taught their boys to describe a partimento
bass that way, by its pattern of intervals up or down. Cimarosa had to learn a whole set of
these patterns. Masters called this set the movimenti or moti del basso (“moves” or “motions
of the bass”). Learning all the bass motions was like learning the moves of all the pieces on
a chessboard. And just as a game of chess can be replayed from a transcript of its moves, so
a partimento, viewed as a transcript of musical moves, can be realized and replayed as real
music. Later chapters will detail some of the many different moves taught in the conser-
vatories of Naples and how they were realized by a boy like Cimarosa.
No sounds survive from Cimarosa’s world. The improvised chords and melodies of his
time have been silent for centuries. We can only make educated guesses about how a
twelve-year-old boy would realize a Romanesca or Folia schema, given that there could be
a hundred different but still excellent ways to realize either one. Sometimes, however, a
partimento would pose a puzzle-like musical problem with a very specific solution. If such
a puzzle has only one good solution, then the solution is the realization. In other words, if
we solve the puzzle correctly, our solution and Cimarosa’s solution should be almost iden-
tical, just as two people who correctly solve the same crossword or sudoku will arrive at the
same result.
Cimarosa’s notebook contains no overt clues to which partimenti contain puzzles
and which do not. But if one practices these lessons repeatedly, one notices that several of
them share an odd feature: they begin normally but then suddenly introduce an incongru-
ous and unexpectedly boring passage. It is as if one switches from the musical foreground
to the background. The incongruity begs for an explanation, and the explanation turns out
to be “counterpoint.” The boring passage and the interesting passage fit together in two-
part counterpoint. Take the passage shown below in Example 2.3. This is the opening
 24 child composers in the old conservatories

section of a G-minor partimento in Cimarosa’s notebook. This partimento immediately

follows the Romanesca partimento seen earlier in Example 2.1, and is the first of several
similar puzzle partimenti. If Cimarosa could solve this puzzle, he would learn the trick for
solving the others.

e x . 2 .3   T
 he opening of a G-minor partimento from Cimarosa’s notebook (Naples, 1762)

The interesting material and a cadence extend to the middle of measure 3, for a total
of 2.5 measures. The boring material (notes in red) and its cadence begin in the middle of
measure 3 and last for 2.5 measures. Can the boring background serve as melody to the
Vi deo 2 . 4 interesting foreground, and vice versa? Video 2.4 demonstrates that the answer is a quali-
fied “Yes.” The boring passage fits perfectly as contrapuntal foil to the interesting passage.
The cadences, however, must each be realized separately. So the solution is schema-by-
schema. We can be confident that we know how Cimarosa would have realized the special
contrapuntal combination, but we do not know exactly how he would have realized the
cadences. For a twelve-year-old, puzzles were games. He could play with passages to see if
they fit together, much as a child today might play with Legos™. But Cimarosa was also
learning what is called “double counterpoint,” which means that either voice can serve as
the bass or melody to the other. And double counterpoint was precisely the skill one
needed to advance to the writing and improvising of fugues. So through structured play
with partimenti, core concepts of advanced counterpoint became second nature to the
boys. They played the game of composition.

Henri Busser

Henri Busser was born in Toulouse, France, in 1872. When he was just seven years old his
father died suddenly. His mother then gave young Henri up to a local conservatory where
he began the full-time study of music. He later rose to fame in Paris. The course of his life
thus follows the broad outlines of Cimarosa’s. Busser, however, wrote an autobiography
(1955), and lived to be 101 (1973), so we have considerably more detail about what he did
and how he felt about his life as a student in the late nineteenth century. With Cimarosa
we only know that his mother gave him up to the Loreto. With Busser we have a first-
person account of a scene where his mother came to check on him after his first night
away from home.

Someone called out, “The new one! Where is the new one? Someone wants him in the
parlor.” The new one was me, Henri Busser. I hurried toward the parlor where I found a
 Chapter 2 little boys on their own  25

sweet young woman deep in mourning. It was my dear mama who, as she told me, had
cried the whole night because her eldest son had left her for the first time: the day before,
she herself had taken me to the cathedral boarding school where I would learn music and
do my secondary studies—I was seven. . . . After leaping into my mother’s arms and hug-
ging her over and over I said to her, “You know not to be sad, Mama. I think I will be happy
here. I already have good friends and our professors are very good.” . . . My mother dried
her red eyes and, after having embraced her little boy who then dashed off to play, she
went on her way reassured.3

His recollection of the scene more than seventy years after the fact may contain some
reconstructed dialogue, but the human situation is completely plausible. His mother had
been recently widowed and would now be losing her eldest son. The boy, by contrast, was
blissfully upbeat as he anticipated new adventures and new playmates. As it turned out,
Busser’s optimism was well-
founded. His later fame as a musi-
cian would validate his assessment
of an institution that formed a per-
fect match to his passions and
aptitudes.
His mother had brought
Henri to a “maîtrise” (may-
TREEZ), a word related to “mas-
ter” and “maestro.” In France it
signified a cathedral choir school.
Most larger cities had one. A maî-
trise was a conservatory in all but
name and gave musical training to
the choristers who sang for masses,
weddings, funerals, and all the Interior, the Cathedral of St. Stephen, ca. 1840s
other services required. Busser’s
father, originally Swiss (hence the not-quite-French pronunciation of the family name),
was an organist at the Cathedral of St. Stephen. When he died it would have made sense
for the institution to take in one of his sons, and Henri was just old enough. In Naples, the
Poveri was explicit in accepting no boys younger than seven. It was felt that younger boys
needed a woman’s care, and women had no official place in these Catholic instititutions.
The same beliefs prevailed in France.
Once settled in, young Busser was assigned a part in the choir. His music master,
Aloÿs Kunc, put him with the contraltos, remarking that he had “a good ear but a shrill
voice.” The daily regimen at the maîtrise was as long and thorough as Cimarosa’s had
been at the Loreto. In Busser’s words, “We certainly weren’t idle!”

6 : 0 0 a m (7 : 0 0 i n w i n t er)
Rise, then one hour of study, then breakfast
26 child composers in the old conservatories

8:00 am
Recess, or practice at the piano or harmonium
9:00 am
Sing daily mass for the clergy, either from notation or in fauxbourdon
10 : 00 am
Music class with Maestro Kunc
11: 00 am
Lessons in French, history, Latin, etc.
1 2 : 0 0 No on
Lunch, then recess in the cathedral courtyard. Games between the maîtrise
boys and the boys from the charity school.
2 : 0 0 pm
Practice the services of vespers and compline in plainchant (Gregorian chant)
3 : 0 0 pm
Recess, or practice at the piano or harmonium
4 : 0 0 pm
Music class emphasizing solfège [sohl-FEHZH; French for solfeggio]
5 : 0 0 pm
An hour of study or a class
6 : 0 0 pm
Supper
7 : 0 0 pm
Recess, or practice at the piano or harmonium
8 : 0 0 pm
Bedtime

In a modern class in music history, students may encounter the word fauxbourdon
(FOE-bur-doan) in connection with music of the 1400s. So it can be surprising to read
Busser listing fauxbourdon as an option for singing the 9:00 a m mass in the late 1870s.
Fauxbourdon comes from a once thriving tradition of improvised counterpoint. Centuries
ago ordinary monks or priests would sing a sacred chant as they read the notation from a
large book set before them on a stand. If the chant had importance to the faith, a musically
trained member of the group might improvise a second melody to complement and
enhance the experience. Over time the practice of singing improvised counterpoint “on
the book” was largely replaced by notated polyphony. “On the book” (sur le livre) meant
that the improviser sang a new, unwritten part while still looking only at the orignal chant
melody on the stand. The improviser saw how the chant moved up or down, and then
matched his improvisation to those moves.
Recent research by Vincent Rollin4 has found transcriptions of the same type of faux-
bourdon that Busser would have sung in the maîtrise in Toulouse. In his day fauxbourdon
was sung in four parts, but the basic principles remained the same. Example 2.4 shows the
 Chapter 2 little boys on their own  27

e x . 2 . 4   From the second verse of the Dies irae, the tenor part in chant notation (Paris, ca.
1860s). The Latin text reads “How fearful is the future.” The first note is D.

old form of notation that Busser and the other choir boys would have seen for the second
verse of the Dies irae (“The day of wrath”), a well-known chant from the mass for the dead.
“Taille” means “tenor,” the voice that sang the original chant (or the local version of it; Ex.
2.4 differs from the official version used today). Example 2.5 then shows what results when
the three other voices join in. The taille (tenor), as mentioned, sings the chant, and its
notes have been circled to indicate how they functioned as points of reference for the
other voices. The “dessus,” which was the part sung by young Busser, sings a third above
(dessus) each note of the tenor. If taille and dessus had been the only voices involved, the
result would be termed gymel (“twins”). But in addition to the gymel we have an “haute-

e x . 2 .5  The fauxbourdon realization of the chant shown in Ex. 2.4 (Paris, ca. 1860s)

contre” (countertenor), which sings tones a fifth or sixth above the tenor (never two fifths
in a row). Those three voices constitute a standard fauxbourdon. The optional “basse”
(bass) sings unisons or lower thirds in relation to the tenor, completing a four-voice tex-
ture. You can hear the voices added one at a time in Video 2.5. Vi deo 2 .5
The bass in Example 2.5 is almost note for note the bass of La folia (cf. Ex. 2.2). Both
La folia and the bass of this fauxbourdon likely evolved as similar solutions to problems
that emerge if one improvises a bass to a voice-pair (gymel) that rises and falls stepwise. For
28 child composers in the old conservatories

young Busser, the singing of fauxbourdon provided constant practice in improvising con-
trapuntal combinations of patterns of intervals. He may have been born in the late nine-
teenth century, but his training involved the same skills taught to European choirboys
since the early Renaissance. They were practical skills used to aid daily worship in the
cathedral, skills that gave the choirboys a productive role in society.
Not long after taking up residence at the maîtrise, Busser witnessed the pomp of a
major ecclesiastical ceremony. The archbishop of Toulouse, recently appointed a cardinal
in Rome, returned to the city in triumph and rode in state to the cathedral. Busser remem-
bers that “a solemn Te Deum was sung in fauxbourdon, in four voice parts, and with the
maîtrise choristers reinforced by numerous other singers—[adult] tenors and basses.” Six
years later, this same cardinal would underwrite Busser’s initial study at the École
Niedermeyer, a prestigious conservatory in Paris.
As an adult, Busser looked back with fond memories at his time at the maîtrise.

To train our young minds in music we never opened a book of solfège or music theory.
Lessons were given orally, at the blackboard, and maestro Kunc played the examples and
dictations at the harmonium. We did not learn music slavishly at the maîtrise; music com-
pletely penetrated our beings, and we lived it from morning till night.5

In October of 1885, still only thirteen years old and still with his high child’s voice,
Busser got off the train in Paris and made his way to the École Niedermeyer. He was met
by the director, Gustave Lefèvre, and given a tour of the building. He was shown the dor-
mitory where he would sleep and the room where he would practice.

My stupefaction was at its peak when I entered a large rectangular hall with fifteen upright
pianos aligned side by side against the walls, all playing different music at the same time:
a frightful din that did not stop for our arrival. An imperious gesture by the director, how-
ever, brought the fifteen pianists to a halt, giving Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart a brief
respite from this loud amalgamation of an ultra-polytonal symphony.6

A strikingly similar experience befell the Englishman Charles Burney when he was
given a tour of the Onofrio in Naples, one October day in 1770.

I went with young Oliver to his Conservatorio of St. Onofrio, and visited all the rooms
where the boys practice, sleep, and eat. On the first flight of stairs was a trumpeter, scream-
ing upon his instrument till he was ready to burst; on the second was a french-horn, bel-
lowing in the same manner. In the common practicing room there was a Dutch concert,
consisting of seven or eight harpsichords, more than as many violins, and several voices,
all performing different things, and in different keys: other boys were writing in the same
room; . . . The beds, which are in the same room, serve for seats to the harpsichords and
other instruments. Out of thirty or forty boys who were practicing, I could discover but two
that were playing the same piece: some of those who were practicing on the violin seemed
to have a great deal of hand. The violoncellos practice in another room: and the flutes,
 Chapter 2 little boys on their own  29

hautbois, and other wind instruments, in a third, except the trumpets and horns, which
are obliged to fag, either on the stairs, or on the top of the house.7

Busser spent four years at the École Niedermeyer, happily studying solfège, harmony,
counterpoint, and fugue with Lefèvre. According to Busser, all of Lefèvre’s lessons were
“completely oral.” In time Busser progressed to win several prizes “without ever opening
a textbook or method.” By the time he was seventeen he had finished most of the courses
at the École before his mother’s money ran
out.
Always the optimist (note his cheerful
photograph), Busser began auditing the har-
mony class of Théodore Dubois at the Paris
Conservatory, which was the leading conser-
vatory in all of Europe. He took the first test,
which required realizing a partimento that
alternated between bass and soprano, and was
promptly “blackballed.” Dubois looked at him
and said in a sugary voice, “My friend, you
have not learned very much at the École
Niedermeyer: you need to start over with your
harmony book.” Busser “stood speechless.” He
had never had a harmony book. Undeterred,
he sought outside advice. A family friend
referred him to a successful graduate of the
conservatory, who in turn steered him to
Henri Busser, 1895
Ernest Guiraud, a conservatory professor of
composition. Guiraud, who was a teacher of
Claude Debussy, liked Busser. He could understand that the problem may have been
Dubois and Dubois’s test, not Busser’s lack of understanding harmony. Guiraud inspected
his portfolio and then admitted him to his composition class. With that success under his
belt Busser went to audition on the organ for César Franck. After hearing the audition,
Franck said, “Not bad, not bad. You are a musician. I’ll take you as an auditor and you can
pass the final admissions examination in January.” Busser had been saved, because not
only were Guiraud and Franck teachers of great distinction, but admission also came with
a stipend for room and board.
With entry into the Paris Conservatory, Busser’s career began to take shape. He won
prizes, not in harmony, but in fugue (1891) and, most importantly, a second prize in the
Rome Prize (Prix de Rome) competition of 1892 and a first prize in 1893. That last prize
came with a fellowship for two years of study in Italy (1894–1896). He returned to a job
teaching harmony at the École Niedermeyer, took over as conductor of Debussy’s opera
Pelléas et Mélisande (1902), and became the chief conductor of the Paris Opera (1905), a
30 child composers in the old conservatories

post he held, minus an interlude for World War II, until 1951. So successful was his con-
ducting career that it overshadowed his continuing activities as a composer.
Success led to an appointment to teach at the conservatory (1921), a professorship
there in composition (1931), and election to the Académie française. In prewar France,
members of Academy were called “the immortals” and regarded as cultural icons. Perhaps
because of this high honor, where he took the seat once held at the Academy by his friend
Charles Gounod, a partimento by Busser himself was chosen as the “given bass” (basse
donnée) for the harmony competition (concours) in 1938 at the conservatory. More spe-
cifically, his bass was for the women’s competition because there was one competition for
women and one for men. The two genders had separate classes and different professors (all
of whom were male until the twentieth century). A winner of that examination was Colette
Boyer. Her realization, Busser’s own realization, and the nature of these competitions will
be the subject of Chapter 17.
The competition in fugue was not segregated by gender. The first woman to win the
top prize, Marie Renaud, achieved that distinction in 1876. Busser competed in 1891, win-
ning a first prize along with his classmate Madeleine Jaeger. In the four years leading up
to Busser’s effort (1887–1890), half of the firsts had been won by women. From this period
onward one sees only general equality in the awards.
Fugue was the apex of the conservatory’s efforts regarding counterpoint. And the core
skill that needed to be imparted was how to invent a second melody “to complement and
enhance the experience” of the fugue’s theme or subject. The quotation is from the above
discussion of fauxbourdon and is intended to emphasize how the art of fugue grew from
an ancient craft. Busser and many others in his class had learned fauxbourdon as little
choristers, and if they studied some of the same partimenti used by Cimarosa (which were
still known at the Paris Conservatory in Busser’s day), they would have refined their skills
by solving those puzzles in how to combine melodies.
In the fugue competition, a student was placed in a cubicle or room with no keyboard
or other instrument. He or she was given the subject (theme) of the fugue, pen and ink,
score paper, and eighteen hours in which to transform the subject into more than a hun-
dred measures of elaborate four-voice counterpoint. The writing began by inventing a
voice to pair with the subject, and that voice was called the “countersubject.” This kernel
of two-voice, double counterpoint was at the heart of the fugue. Almost every time the
subject would appear in the contestant’s fugue, the countersubject would appear with it.
So getting the countersubject right meant solving the contrapuntal problems implicit in
the subject. If two contestants really understood the subject’s affordances (see Chap. 15)—
what the subject suggested or demanded—then they would respond to each cue in the
subject with an approved response in their countersubject. Their countersubjects could
end up being quite similar if they shared a similar understanding of the subject.
As director of the conservatory, Ambroise Thomas wrote the subject for the fugue
competition of 1891. The three staves of Example 2.6 show annotated copies of the Thomas
subject (“S.”) on the top staff, Busser’s countersubject (“B.”) in the middle, and Jaeger’s
 Chapter 2 little boys on their own  31

countersubject (“J.”) at the bottom. From a close comparison of the contestants’ counter-
subjects we can infer that these young adults interpreted Thomas’s subject in much the
same way. Their two countersubjects are remarkably similar, especially since neither
heard nor saw what the other was doing.
(Readers with a low tolerance for the technical jargon of counterpoint may skip this
paragraph—the issues involved will be revisited more leisurely in Chapter 10.) The num-
bers in black circles have been added to highlight important scale degrees of D minor, the
key of the subject. The competitors would have noticed how the subject quickly descends

e x . 2 .6   F
 rom the fugue competition, 1891: S=subject, B=Busser’s countersubject, J=Jaeger’s

stepwise from z to w before retracing much of that descent in a more leisurely and chro-
matic fashion over the next three measures. This outline of the subject’s tonal plan sug-
gests a provisional close on w (the circled F4 in measure 2) followed by a second, more
definitive close on the same degree (the circled F4 of measure 5). The competitors also
knew that suspensions, where a tied dissonance on a strong beat descends a step to a con-
sonance on a weak beat, were favored by the judges. So prior to the downbeat of each
measure they added a tied note if the subject lacked one (the E4 marked by a square at the
end of measure 1 tied to measure 2), or an implied tie (the repeated D4s from measure 2
to measure 3), or created the needed dissonance if the subject already had a tie (the coun-
tersubjects’ B3 on the downbeat of measure 4 forces the subject’s A4 to become a disso-
nant “7” that resolves downward to a consonant “6”). Both competitors also chose to
match the chromatic descent in the subject (i.e., A–G#–G§, m. 4) with an extended chro-
matic descent in the countersubject (D–C#–C§–B–Bb–A).
Video 2.6 plays each countersubject with the Thomas subject, and then plays the Vi deo 2 .6
entire fugues of Busser and Jaeger. Both fugues demonstrate a phenomenal level of skill,
astonishing fluency, and great musical imagination. Counterpoint of this sophistication,
especially when written under the stress of a timed competition, signified a transition from
apprentice to young master. In truth, few classical musicians today could compete at this
level in a contest of counterpoint.
32 child composers in the old conservatories

Cimarosa underwent a remarkable transformation as he grew from the ten-year-old

fatherless boy at the Loreto in Naples to become the composer of Il matrimonio segreto
(The Secret Marriage, 1792). It was the only opera the Austrian emperor ever ordered to be
encored in its entirety (one pities the exhausted performers). Busser experienced a similar
transformation. He started his musical life as a fatherless seven-year-old chorister at the
maîtrise in Toulouse but finished well ensconced at the heights of French musical society.
Today when we hear Debussy’s Petite Suite performed in its orchestral garb, we are listen-
ing to the deft orchestrations of Busser. When we watch the 1960s films of the French
“New Wave” (e.g., Truffaut’s Jules et Jim, 1962) we are often listening to the elegant scoring
of Busser’s pupil Georges Delerue. The successes of Busser and Cimarosa were due in
part to their talent, initiative, and perseverance and in equal measure to the charitable
institutions that fostered them, to the dear classmates who joined in their musical games
and competitions, and to the generous teachers who guided and inspired them. In the
next chapter we will look at this world through the eyes of these teachers.
 3

M A ST ER S TA K E UP T HE
CH A L LENGE

DUR A N T E , LEO, FENA ROLI

Wom en w er e e x pr es sly e xc lu ded from the male-dominated world of the old

Italian conservatories. Yet the music composed and taught by Durante, Leo, Fenaroli, and
all the other masters in Naples owed a great deal to one of the most remarkable women of
the seventeenth century, Queen Christina of Sweden. She was raised in a Europe torn by
decades of religious wars between Protestants and Catholics. Her father, Gustavus
Adolphus, was the great military champion of the Protestant north, and he bequeathed to

Queen Christina of Sweden, ca. 1650, by David Beck

33
 34 child composers in the old conservatories

his daughter the crown of a triumphantly Lutheran kingdom. Yet in what became the
scandal of the century, she abdicated her throne, switched sides from Protestant to
Catholic, and moved to Rome, where, under the protection of a series of Popes, she pre-
sided as patroness over one of the most intellectually
and artistically advanced courts in all of seventeenth-
century Europe.
Christina supported artists of all kinds. Well edu-
cated, wealthy, and well connected, she could spot
great talent and then provide the resources to nurture it.
She gathered around her musicians who were among
the finest in Europe. Most famous today was the violin-
ist and composer Arcangelo Corelli, seen to the left.
During the 1700s virtually every violinist in Europe
played Corelli’s sonatas and trios. Even in the distant
English colonies the young Thomas Jefferson played
Corelli, likely accompanied at the harpsichord by his
future wife Martha Skelton. Less famous today, but
more important for our story, was Corelli’s accompa-
nist, the harpsichord virtuoso Bernardo Pasquini, shown
below.
Arcangelo Corelli, 1698, by Hugh Howard
Pasquini attracted many students who would later
become important composers, performers, and music
masters. Francesco Durante and Leonardo Leo, the two
most important masters in Naples during the first half of
the 1700s, are believed to have studied with him. I say
“believed” because musicians from Pasquini’s era left
few written records of their lives. Students came to study
with Pasquini privately and so no institutional docu-
ments can be used to fix their time of study, much less
anything about what they studied. Historians are left try-
ing to piece together the stories of musicians’ lives from
scattered and incomplete mentions in people’s diaries,
in records of payments from churches or noble courts,
in notices of important performances, or in brief com-
ments scribbled on music manuscripts. Pasquini left
behind two kinds of intriguing musical manuscripts
Bernardo Pasquini, ca. 1680, by Andrea Pozzo that, given how the course of music training developed
after his death in 1710, suggest that he was an important
model for later masters. His old manuscripts contain some of the first collections of what
came to be known as regole and partimenti.1
 Chapter 3  masters take up the challenge  35

REGOLE — In the early conservatories the Italian word for “Rules” (regole, RAY-go-
lay) was heard all the time. Each conservatory had a set of written rules to guide it, anala-
gous to how the Rule of St. Benedict regulated the behavior of Christian monks in monas-
teries. Here, translated into English, is the title page of the regole of 1746 for the Pietà:2

RULES
AND
STATUTES OF THE
ROYAL
CONSERVATORY
OF LA PIETÀ DE TURCHINI
to be observed by the
Administrators, Masters, Students,
and Servants

A.D. 1746

The rule book then presents twelve small chapters on “general rules,” whose titles are:

1. On the purpose of the Institute

2. On the way to admit and graduate students
3. On the way to dress
4. On the daily Spiritual exercises
5. On the other Spiritual exercises
6. On the annual Spiritual exercises
7. On the schools of grammar and of music
8. On concerts, processions, funerals, and other circumstances
9. On leaves and consultations
10. On the dining hall
11. On recreation
12. On silence and repose

Then follow twenty-three additional chapters of “individual rules and statutes” that
cover every job or “office” from the “Lord Father Rector” down to “Barbers and Sweepers.”
Twenty-four similar rules decreed for the Loreto will be presented in Chapter 5.
As one can infer from these titles, regole were meant to regulate and control human
behavior, and it is in that spirit that one should read the regole for music. Pasquini’s rules
for music begin with generalities, as did the rules for the Pietà. “First Rule: [When accom-
 36 child composers in the old conservatories

panying at the keyboard] One should take care to move the hands in contrary motion,
united by consonances if possible.” After only a few general rules he moves on to describe
much more particular musical behaviors. In a set of regole called “Rules for Walking by
Step” (meaning “how to accompany stepwise basses”), Pasquini labors through a prolix
description: “When you find three notes that ascend by step and a last one that leaps down
a fifth or up a fourth, make [the interval of] a sixth over the first note, a fifth and sixth over
the second note, and a fourth then a third over the third note, and by ‘fourth’ one also
intends a fifth, as for example . . .” He then clarifies things by notating the intended bass
in five different major and minor keys (see Ex. 3.1).
As a famous virtuoso performer, Pasquini
attracted young-adult students who were already
highly capable. When they saw this notation, with
the interval figures over the bass (a “figured bass” or
“thoroughbass”), they immediately would recognize
a common cadence that is presented first in the key
of C major and then replicated in the keys of A
minor, F major, D minor, and Bb major. Pasquini’s
method of teaching was actually quite subtle. By
drawing attention to this pattern he set it apart as a
distinct musical object that required a particular
behavioral response from the player. Each of its rep-
lications uses the same scale degrees, so a performer
begins to associate this cadence with scale steps l,
m, n, and j. In Video 3.1 you can hear Pasquini’s
bass played in its five different keys, with perfor-
mances of student-like additions of right-hand key-
board parts (from easy to difficult), and a recording of
this important seventeenth-century pattern in a com-
position for lute printed in 1650. That year Queen
e x . 3.1   Pasquini’s rule for certain basses
Christina was only twenty-four, still on the throne in
Sweden, and her future harpsichordist Pasquini was
Vi deo 3.1 only an apprentice musician, age thirteen. In other words, this was the type of music that
the nobility and their musicians heard when growing up in the mid-1600s. It relied on
stock bass patterns supporting elegant variations in treble parts, and it fostered a way of
listening and sets of expectations that would remain important in European art music for
centuries to come. To prosper in this style, apprentice musicians needed to learn all of
those bass patterns.

PARTIMENTI — Each of the five cadences presented in Pasquini’s rule (see Ex. 3.1)
is a miniature partimento (par-tee-MEN-toe, plural par-tee-MEN-tee). A partimento
notates only one thread of a musical fabric, a bass to be played by the apprentice’s left
 Chapter 3  masters take up the challenge  37

hand at the keyboard. It asks the young player to supply one or more of the other threads
from his memory and imagination, to be performed by his right hand. Across Europe
beginning in the early 1600s, basses supplied with figures to cue the intended chords, as in
Example 3.1, were common aids used by keyboard accompanists playing in ensembles.
What is different about partimenti is that they were intended to be independent composi-
tions (no other players needed). Even when partimenti lacked any numerical figures, their
basses contained clues to patterns learned in the regole, and those clues allowed the stu-
dent player to complete or “realize” the piece intended by its composer, who was often the
student’s master. Thus, through partimenti, masters and apprentices conversed musically
in a language of musical patterns encoded in a bass.
Some of Pasquini’s partimenti were for two players and would have provided excel-
lent opportunities for an apprentice to perform with his master. A simple adagio in D
minor (Ex. 3.2; the music actually suggests a faster tempo) illustrates the pedagogical util-
ity of these partimenti. The lead player or primo begins with a first motive (marked here
with a red A). The secondo answers with motive B. If the secondo had studied Pasquini’s
rules he would realize that motive B is like the cadence from Example 3.1. The modern
annotation of scale degrees should make the resemblance clearer. The type of call and
response pattern in this movement, where the players see each other’s basses but not their
improvised upper parts, forced the apprentice to listen closely to what the master would
play. A recreation of a master-and-apprentice performance can be heard on Video 3.2. Vi deo 3. 2

e x . 3. 2  Pasquini, a partimento for two players (Rome, ca. 1690)

DURANTE — Francesco Durante (1684–1755) was a contempo-

rary of Bach and Handel. He entered the Poveri as a little boy, proba-
bly in the early 1690s, and later transferred to the Onofrio where he
studied with Alessandro Scarlatti. Scarlatti had been at Queen
Christina’s court and may have helped Durante obtain lessons from
Pasquini in Rome. Sources vary on this point, but it would have been
normal for a musician at the journeyman stage to travel in search of
new experiences and masters. In the 1720s he succeeded Scarlatti at
the Onofrio, and later he succeeded Nicola Porpora as head of the
Francesco Durante
 38 child composers in the old conservatories

Loreto. In the teaching of counterpoint he was important for using contemporary parti-
menti, rather than plainchant, as a foundation for lessons. And in the teaching of parti-
menti he was a great innovator.
If the young Durante had studied with Pasquini, his own virtuosity on the harpsichord
would have joined his master’s to make for exciting performances. But in returning to
Naples to teach, Durante would have realized that little boys could not play at that level.
Regole would be useful in teaching a repertory of stock patterns, but the boys would need
help in learning how to turn a partimento into an artistic performance. What had been
only a loose connection between regole and partimenti with Pasquini and Scarlatti became
more focused with Durante. He left behind forty-one rules for partimento basses, all of
them illustrated with partimento exemplars of from two to fifty-five measures in length. He
wrote many independent partimenti and, most importantly, more than a hundred parti-
menti diminuiti. “Diminished” partimenti meant partimenti whose upper part(s) featured
elaborated figurations, often with short (“diminished”) note values. They gave a boy con-
crete suggestions for what to play with his right hand when encountering a given pattern
in his left hand.
These Durante partimenti imply a three-stage process of discovery for the student.
Vi deo 3.3 The first stage involves analyzing a partimento (see the bottom staff in Ex. 3.3) to deter-
mine which rule applies to it. If the student could see the leaping octaves as just repeti-
tions of the same note-names, then this partimento goes
from E down to C, from C up to D, and so forth. The mas-
ters called this “down a third, up a step” (cala di terza, sala
di grado), which matches Durante’s rule (regola) no. 34
shown on the top staff. Observe that in this case the exem-
plar of the rule has the exact pitches of the beginning of the
partimento, though this was not always the case. In the sec-
ond stage, one studies and practices the three separate
“styles” (modi) that Durante provides. Style “A” is typical of
church music, Style “B” of the newer Galant style, and
Style C of an advanced player. A third and final stage
involves a return to the original partimento and an attempt
to incorporate the modi into the flow of the complete work.
All these stages can be heard in Video 3.3.
Viewed from the outside, these three stages may seem
mechanical and uninspiring. But young performers were
on an exciting path of musical discovery. For them a first
e x . 3.3   Durante, A partimento diminuito
glance at a Durante partimento could be terrifying. But the
“Aha!” moment of recognizing a known bass motion began
a process of familiarization and understanding. Mastering Durante’s styles allowed young
performers to play at an adult level of complexity, and making the whole thing work in
performance could be an exhilarating and highly memorable experience.
 Chapter 3  masters take up the challenge  39

A feature of ornamentation and elaboration in Naples was

that the core tones implied by a rule tended to be played at salient
moments. Thus in Ex. 3.3, the red “6s” in the rule, if performed
as plain quarter-notes, would fall on the beat just as do all the red
notes in the modi. The elaborations decorate but do not funad-
mentally obscure the rule.

LEO — Leonardo Leo (1694–1744) was trained at the Pietà

under Nicola Fago, whom he replaced as first master in 1741. In
his lifetime he was best known as a leading composer of opera,
both serious and comic. His success in that difficult arena was
due in part to his mastery of melody. In his sacred music, he
composed elegant melodies that he then wove into beautiful tap-
estries of sound. His counterpoint was respectful of older Italian Leonardo Leo
traditions going all the way back to Palestrina, but he could shape
the flow of voices into the clear phrases of the newer Galant style, whose ultimate master
would be Mozart many decades later.
The instructional works penned for his teaching at the Pietà show Leo to have been
preparing his boys for work in church music. His strategy was practical. As mentioned in
the Introduction, jobs in church music were far more numerous than jobs as a court musi-
cian or opera composer. And church jobs were steady. Every day there was some sort of
service, the Sunday services required a great deal of music, and major feast days like
Christmas and Easter were practically music festivals. With the Church as target employer,
a master like Leo still had to determine what churches wanted from musicians. The place
of music in Christian worship has been a subject of long dispute. Churchmen typically
want the music to be subservient to the liturgy, but congregations usually want attractive
music in a contemporary style to divert and entertain them.
Leo taught a sacred musical style that symbolized reverence and propriety through
supple melodies and carefully crafted polyphony. Each voice moved gently, “obediently”
with few leaps or harsh intervals. And at least one voice tended to waft downward in long,
slow lines, giving a sense of forward motion toward musical “perfection” in a cadence. The
fragment of a Leo partimento shown in Example 3.4 contains sufficient thoroughbass fig-
ures to suggest the counterpoint of imaginary upper parts. As indicated by notes in red,
each suspension (tied notes that become dissonant) in the partimento can be answered by

e x . 3. 4   Leo, partimento in G major and 3/8 meter (Naples, ca. 1735)

 40 child composers in the old conservatories

an imagined suspension in the upper voice. The entire partimento and a likely realization
Vi deo 3. 4 can be heard in Video 3.4. As you will hear, Leo’s simple bass line conceals an enchanting
contrapuntal fabric of gentle voices all wafting slowly downward.
Video 3.4 also contains a likely realization of one of Leo’s partimento fugues. In a
partimento fugue at least one voice of the multivoice texture is notated, with the performer
adding in the other voices. You might say, “What other voices?,” given their absence from
the score. But a partimento fugue contains a lot of clues to the combinations of voices that
will be needed. The apprentice had to study the partimento, memorize important melodic
material, and then be able to replay that material in any key when needed. Players who
can do well in realizing these fugues attain an almost Zen-like state of intense concentra-
tion as their minds orchestrate the coordinated movements of two, three, or even four
voices, only one of which may be written down. Many years of training are needed to
reach this level, and partimento fugues were the capstone in improvisation training for
apprentice church musicians at Leo’s Pietà. While partimento fugues seem not to have
been a focus for Durante, they were widely taught elsewhere and contributed to the train-
ing of J. S. Bach and Handel. In comparison to fully notated fugues, the conservatory
fugues in Naples were smaller, thinner in texture, and simpler, in part because they were
meant to be improvised by students, not great masters.

FENAROLI — Sometimes a master’s name may be remembered not for his bril-
liance in performace or composition but for his usefulness to students. The name Fedele
Fenaroli (1730–1818) was of that type. As a boy he studied par-
timenti with Durante at the Loreto, remaining there as a
teacher after graduation. Beginning in 1775 and continuing
over the next forty years, he completed a series of manuscripts
and small publications—Fenaroli’s “six books”3—that
became the bible of later partimento training. The partimenti
of earlier masters had been composed to fit the needs of par-
ticular students at particular stages in their training. Such
partimenti were hand copied by or for students who already
knew what their master intended. Fenaroli was the first con-
servatory master in Naples to think beyond his own institu-
tion and to envision publications for students not attending a
conservatory. He arranged his lessons so that a talented ama-
teur or a precocious child far from Naples could still begin
Fedele Fenaroli
work and slowly progress from Book 1 through Book 6.
Compared with a modern textbook, Fenaroli’s books are
almost entirely in music notation. Instructions are very brief or missing completely, and
help from a local musician might be needed from time to time if one were studying alone.
Nevertheless, by arranging the lessons in a progressive series from the very easy to the very
difficult, he singlehandedly created a market for partimento books. His little volumes were
 Chapter 3  masters take up the challenge  41

in print continuously from the early nineteenth until the mid-twentieth century and could
be purchased in every possible format from small study editions to beautiful leather-
bound, annotated volumes.
His Book 1 presents simple figured basses, Book 2 adds in a few suspensions, Book 3
restates all the rules of his first publication (1775) and provides simple partimenti as prac-
tice for each rule, Book 4 introduces unfigured basses, Book 5 contains a few partimenti
diminuiti à la Durante and then advances to partimento fugues à la Leo, and Book 6
continues with complex counterpoint in more remote keys. In Naples, Book 1 might have
been appropriate for a ten-year-old, with Book 6 used by advanced students eighteen to
twenty years old. Any student who could realize the partimenti of Fenaroli’s Book 5 or 6
would have attained a mature understanding of the language of eighteenth-century har-
mony and counterpoint. Or put another way, completing Book 5 or 6 closed off the realm
of school lessons and opened up the direct study of musical masterworks.

Masters like Durante, Leo, and Fenaroli found in partimenti a wonderful means of
connecting a boy’s musical imagination with the physical acts of playing the keyboard. By
giving the boy only part of a musical whole, they forced him to engage his aural and motor
memories to complete it. Every act of completion, of matching improvised right-hand
movements to written-out left-hand movements, helped to reinforce one of the rules, and
collectively those rules formed the building blocks of a musical language the boy was
actively learning to speak. Partimenti gave the masters a relatively foolproof way of taking
little boys and slowly transforming them into professional musicians who could improvise
and compose. These were valuable skills that could outweigh the social stigma that would
always be attached to abandoned children.
Although partimenti were the integrative, embodied center of a boy’s maturation as a
musician, they were only one facet of the curriculum. The masters saw to it that at least
five additional types of musical knowledge were taught to the boys. Part 2 of this book will
discuss all of these in some detail. But for the present a short summary of each should give
a general idea of what one needed to learn.
1. Schemas
Musical knowledge is stored in memory. Young preprofessional musicians
needed to fill their memories with dozens if not hundreds of musical patterns (i.e., struc-
tured mental representations that psychologists term “schemas”). Model patterns were
provided to them by their masters, who listed them in regole, included hints of them in
partimenti, and gave lovely melodic examples of them in solfeggi.
2. Solfeggi
Learning to read music was the first job of a conservatory boy. Each note was
given a syllable (e.g., do, re, mi), helping to transform fleeting sounds into things with
names and characteristics. A boy would prepare and perform textless melodies known as
solfeggi, with the master accompanying at the harpsichord. That way a vocabulary of
 42 child composers in the old conservatories

melodies was learned in the full context of harmony and a bass. Knowing a melodic vocab-
ulary would help the boy complete partimenti and assignments in counterpoint.
3. Counterpoint
Eighteenth-century music almost always involved two or more parts or voices. An
old name for a graphic notehead was a “point.” So when one point sounds against another
there is “point contra point” or “counterpoint.” Counterpoint involves learning how to
match one part of a melody against another in such a way that they sound good together.
The basics of this art were learned in partimenti, but the fine points were learned in
advanced classes where exercises were written out, each voice or part on a separate staff.
4. Intavolaturas
These were completely written-out pieces for organ or harpsichord. They gave
the boys examples of what contemporary keyboard music sounded like, how it felt in the
hands and fingers, and how the complexities of orchestral music could be simplified so
that a boy with only ten little fingers could play a facsimile of the real thing.
5. Dispositions
Adding the right-hand part to a partimento was called a “realization,” because the
boy realized the musical potential of the left-hand bass part. When learning to write for
ensembles, the boys would distribute or “dispose” voices onto individual staves. For a choir
that meant a “disposition” into parts for soprano, alto, tenor, and bass. The same parti-
mento that one might realize in keyboard improvisation could be given a disposition
where each of its imagined upper voices was written out on its own staff with its own clef.
Three or four voices (counting the given bass) was the norm for a disposition, the result
being described as a dispositione à 3, or a dispositione à 4.

In some respects the Naples conservatories were closed systems where boys were
taught by masters who had themselves been taught there as boys. The whole system
appeared self-evident to those who had grown up on the inside. For us today, we are fortu-
nate that some outsiders took the time to describe things that the insiders
took for granted. The Englishman Charles Burney’s description of the
Onofrio was mentioned in Chapter 1. This chapter continues with a descrip-
tion of the efforts of the Frenchman Choron to salvage classical music from
the destructions of the French Revolution.

CHORON — Alexandre-Étienne Choron (1771–1834), son of a prosper-

ous government official, had a number of talents. In mathematics he rose to
become a tutor in descriptive geometry at the École Normale when he was
only twenty-four. He also had talent for music, but given his social status,
employment as a musician would have been well below his station. He nev-
ertheless took lessons that seem to have included partimenti and counter-
point studies by Nicola Sala, a pupil of Leo at the Pietà. What makes Choron
Alexandre-Étienne Choron important today was his third talent—administration. In a chaotic era of
 Chapter 3  masters take up the challenge  43

revolution and unstable French governments, his skills in creating or safeguarding institu-
tions devoted to music, especially sacred music, have earned him the respect and gratitude
of historians.
Prior to the Revolution (1789) hundreds of choir schools (maîtrises) taught choirboys
to sing plainchant and sacred polyphony. Given that the maîtrise in Toulouse was still able
to take in the seven-year-old Henri Busser (see Chap. 2) ninety years after the Revolution,
one might think that the political upheavals of that era had little effect on educating sing-
ers. But in fact the Revolution killed music education in France. Everything came to a
standstill. All of the people who funded training in music—bishops, cardinals, princes,
marquises, counts—had been put to flight or worse. Without these benefactors the schools
for musicians floundered and soon failed. Only when the National Guard began to run
short of bandsmen was the Paris Conservatory established (1795) to begin training them.
What is known to historians today as the Concordat of 1801 ended an undeclared war
between the Revolution and the Catholic Church. The agreement was signed by the new
strongman, Napoleon. He also maneuvered the Church to support his coronation as
Emperor in 1804. In return the Church obtained imperial permission to reestablish many
of its institutions. Choron, well connected politically and passionate about church music,
was ready to help put music education back on its feet. By 1804 he had already prepared
and published a large volume containing an edited collection of regole and partimenti
from the Naples conservatories, in cooperation with the Fenaroli student Vincenzo
Fiocchi. Here is a translation of the long and flowery
title page shown to the right:

Principles of Accompaniment
of the Schools of Italy
Extracts from the Best Authors:
Leo, Durante, Fenaroli, Sala, Azopardi, Sabbatini,
Padre Martini, and others
A Classical Work
Serving as an Introduction to the study of
Composition
Translated from the Italian,
and arranged in an order most appropriate to
facilitate both the intelligence and practice
and dedicated to Monsieur Tarchi
by Alexandre Choron
and by
Vincenzo Fiocchi
formerly Organist at St. Peter’s, Rome
and Master of Music for His Highness Ferdinand II,
Grand Duke of Tuscany. Choron, Principes d’accompagnement . . . , 1804
 44 child composers in the old conservatories

The names Leo, Durante, and Fenaroli should sound familar, and both Sala and
Azopardi were trained in Naples. The other masters—Sabbatini and Martini—were
important figures in Bologna. Citing these authoritative masters bolstered Choron’s claim
to having produced “A Classical Work” (Ouvrage Classique), by analogy to the classical
works of ancient Greece and Rome. It is in this period that the idea of “classical music”
begins to take hold. The Rome of Palestrina and Corelli takes the same place in music
that the Rome of Cicero and Virgil had taken in literature. As we will explore later, the
highest prize awarded to a composer at the Paris Conservatory would be the Rome Prize
(Prix de Rome), which included a multi-year fellowship at the Villa di Medici in Rome.
“Harmony” was never an important subject in Naples. The masters saw particular
chords as the byproducts of voices engaged in counterpoint. The movements of voices
were primary, chords were secondary. In France, by contrast, harmony had been a topic of
academic discussion since the 1720s. The great French composer Rameau, for instance,
tried to conceive of harmony as an unseen, all-pervasive force akin to Newton’s gravity.
That French approach explains something of the organization of Choron’s next publish-
ing venture. The title page, shown below, looks much like that of his earlier project, shown
on the previous page. But Choron’s Principles of Composition of the Schools of Italy (1808),
in three folio-size leather-bound volumes, was a far grander undertaking with imperial
support and a Who’s Who list of subscribers (including Haydn and Beethoven):

Principles of Composition
of the Schools of Italy
Adopted by the Government of France
to serve the instruction of Students in
Cathedral Choir Schools
A Classical Work
Complete with the most perfect models
in their genres,
enriched by a methodical text edited according to the
instruction at the most celebrated Schools and the
most highly esteemed authors
of instructional material
Dedicated
to His Serene Majesty the Emperor and King
by Alexandre Choron
Volume I
Containing the Preface
and the First Three Books.

Choron, Principes de composition . . . , 1808

 Chapter 3  masters take up the challenge  45

This magnum opus was like an elaborate note in a bottle flung onto the seas of
Napoleonic France in the hopes that a choir school (maîtrise) would receive it and thus
preserve the great classical tradition of sacred music. Choron put in everything one might
need. Its six books not only provide manuals in harmony, partimenti, and fugue, but they
also contain extensive models of masterworks in all the needed genres under the heading
“Musical Rhetoric”:

Book 1. Harmony and Accompaniment

A harmony text followed by 210 (!) Neapolitan partimenti and a
chromatic fugue by Leo
Book 2. Basic Counterpoint
Species (= basic) counterpoint followed by the counterpoint treatise of Sala
Book 3. Double Counterpoint
More complex counterpoint followed by more Sala
Book 4. Imitation and Fugue
An adaptation of a treatise by Marpurg followed by more Sala
Book 5. Canons
More advanced counterpoint and still more Sala
Book 6. Musical Rhetoric
380 pages of music stretching from plainchant to contemporary works
by Viotti and Boccherini

His publishing ventures drew attention to Choron’s interests and abilities. Napoleon
made him director of music for public festivals, and Napoleon’s successor, Louis XVIII,
put him in charge of reorganizing the maîtrises. These posts led circuitously to his found-
ing (1818) a school devoted to sacred music, the Institution Royale de Musique Classique
et Religieuse. While Choron’s focus and energy directed toward sacred music never
waned, the finances of his school did. It fell on hard times until revived by Louis
Niedermeyer in 1853 as the École de Musique Religieuse Classique, later renamed
L’École Niedermeyer. And that was the school to which Henri Busser transferred from the
maîtrise in Toulouse (see Chap. 2).

THE GOVERNORS — In 1972 Michael F. Robinson published a study and transla-

tion of selections from the Governors’ minutes at the Loreto.4 The Governors were the
conservatory’s ruling council. They hired, fired, and paid employees, including the music
masters. They set admissions procedures, wrote the rules for different types of students,
and established standards of behavior for both students and their overseers. The head of
the six-man council was ex officio the president of the Appeals Court in Naples, and he
represented the Spanish Viceroy (Spain ruled Naples for much of the eighteenth century).
The other five governors were appointees of that court. For two months a year each gover-
46 child composers in the old conservatories

nor was responsible for day-to-day problems at the conservatory, and each governor had an
area of general responsibility. In 1759 these were described as:

The duty of managing the sacristy and church

The duty of managing the collection of taxes and revenue

The duty of managing the upkeep and rents of the houses

The duty of managing the lawsuits

The duty of managing classes, musical performances, funerals, clothing, fees to hire
student musicians, privileges, and food

The duty of managing the reform of backward students

If Choron had had a politically well-connected and powerful set of governors like
those who ran the Loreto, his music school would likely have prospered. A conservatory
was partly a charitable institution, but also partly a business involved in staging perfor-
mances, renting its donated properties, collecting revenues from tolls and taxes assigned
to it by the monarch, renting out student performers, and managing the clothing, feeding,
housing, and training of a hundred or more boys. The governors provided the business
experience and connections to make all of this function smoothly. Indeed, the Loreto was
long considered the best run, best financed of the four conservatories in Naples.
Robinson’s organizational chart of the Loreto is reconstructed on the facing page.
What he terms Groups A and B are the support staff, those who have few daily contacts
with students. Group C and especially Group C1 deal with students constantly. Those in
Group C are primarily administrators and supervisors. And those in Group C1 are teach-
ers, with the music teachers being the ones who made the institution and its students
famous. It was in Naples, in four orphanages, that governors’ councils were able to hire
brilliant masters to teach talented boys. The world had never had institutions like these
before. And when, by the early 1700s, the institutions had reached a critical mass of boys
(about 600 in total) and the masters had developed a curriculum that engaged the boys’
minds, hands, and voices from multiple angles, the graduates literally began to take over
the world of music. When Charles Burney named the four greatest opera composers in
the early 1770s, three out of four were graduates of a Naples conservatory.
 Chapter 3  masters take up the challenge  47

President of the S. R. C.

GROUP A 6 Governors

Governors’ secretary
and accountant

Attorney Architect Rent Tax 3

Collectors Collectors Shopkeepers

Rector GROUP C
GROUP B

Doctor Surgeon Vice Rector

Domestic Prefects Spender Chaplains Sacrist Servants

bursar (spenditore)
(maestro
di casa)

GROUP C1

Schoolmasters Head music Science master

teacher
(maestro di
“Under” masters cappella)
(sottomaestri)

Deputy head
music teacher
(vicemaestro di
cappella)

Instrumental
teachers

“Under” masters
(sottomaestri)
48 child composers in the old conservatories

@
 4

CHILD L A BOR

LI T T LE A NGELS
A ND
PRODIGIES

Na pl es wa s a se a p ort, a c a pi ta l , a n d a cro s sroa d s . People had been

drawn there for thousands of years. Below, in the foreground of an old tinted photograph
we see some of the attractions: a protected harbor, blue waters rich with sea life, and, look-
ing through the rigging of the tall ship, Mount Vesuvius, whose rare but violent eruptions
had given the surrounding countryside rich volcanic soils. For a long time it was one of
Europe’s premier cities, and it drew all sorts of people willing to work hard for a better life.

Early photochrome print of the harbor in Naples, 1890s

49
 50 child composers in the old conservatories

It was normal for children to work as soon as they

could, and families often needed the help or small
earnings from their offspring. Looked at positively,
working children were contributing to their own
upkeep and education. Work was a way to learn the
operations of the family business. The sons of carpen-
ters learned how to fashion wood. The children of
tailors and seamstresses learned needlecraft and how
to cut cloth. In the picture to the left one can see
women and girls working at a communal laundry.
Imagine that a ten-year-old girl lived in one of the
neighboring apartments and that her mother was a
laundress who worked in the square. In that world a
girl would be expected to spend the day with her
mother, helping with small tasks and chatting with
the children of the other women. Each such day was
part work, part play, part socialization in the commu-
nity, and part education in a trade. It was child labor,
but in a form no more pernicious than any of the
Washerwomen, Naples, 1890s
other patterns of family life. Today we might imagine
the little girl missing out on educational opportuni-
ties, but in truth the child’s day was all about education as she learned the forms and
practices of adult life.
The picture opposite of boys who toiled all day in Pennsylvania coal mines and the
sad picture of the little girl spending her childhood minding whirring machines in a textile
factory in the Carolinas show the darker side of child labor. Parents are no longer in con-
trol. The pace of work is now set by machines and distant bosses. The social dimension has
been lost, replaced by a Darwinian struggle for survival. No wonder Upton Sinclair titled
his 1906 novel about meatpacking in Chicago The Jungle. Sinclair describes a Lithuanian
immigrant boy of fourteen, taken into a meatpacking plant to begin full-time work:

And so Stanislovas [the boy] went down a long stone corridor, and up a flight of stairs,
which took him into a room lighted by electricity, with the new machines for filling lard
cans at work in it. The lard was finished on the floor above, and it came in little jets, like
beautiful, wriggling, snow-white snakes of unpleasant odor. There were several kinds and
sizes of jets, and after a certain precise quantity had come out, each stopped automatically,
and the wonderful machine made a turn, and took the can under another jet, and so on,
until it was filled neatly to the brim, and pressed tightly, and smoothed off. To attend to all
this and fill several hundred cans of lard per hour, there were necessary two human crea-
tures, one of whom knew how to place an empty lard can on a certain spot every few sec-
onds, and the other of whom knew how to take a full lard can off a certain spot every few
seconds and set it upon a tray.
 Chapter 4  child labor  51

And so, after little

Stanislovas had stood gaz-
ing timidly about him for a
few minutes, a man
approached him, and asked
what he wanted, to which
Stanislovas said, “Job.” . . .
Then [this same man] set
someone else at a different
job, and showed the lad
how to place a lard can
every time the empty arm
of the remorseless
machine came to him; “Breaker Boys,” Pennsylvania Coal Company, Jan. 1911, by Lewis Hine
and so was decided the
place in the universe of little Stanislovas, and his destiny till the end of his days. Hour after
hour, day after day, year after year, it was fated that he should stand upon a certain square
foot of floor from seven in the morning until noon, and again from half-past twelve till
half-past five, making never a motion and thinking never a thought, save for the setting of
lard cans.1

Work on farms or in
family trades had always
been hard, and people
expected to work hard for a
living. But something about
industrialized factory work
seemed to rob people of
hope for their own lives and
especially for the lives of
their children. Sinclair
reported that at the time of
his novel (1906) there were
1,750,000 children working
in American factories, and “A Little Spinner,” Mollahan Mills, Dec. 1908, by Lewis Hine
at a wage like Stanislovas’s—
five cents an hour.

LITTLE ANGELS — Life for a boy in one of the Naples conservatories lay at some
distance from either the idealized image of a farmboy tending sheep alongside his kindly
father or the dystopian picture of Stanislovas in perpetual single combat with legions of
lard cans. The conservatory served as a boy’s parent—in loco parentis—and as his parent
52 child composers in the old conservatories

had the right to set him to work. Like a good parent, the conservatory chose work related
to the boy’s education as a musician, and work suitable to his age and abilities.
The typical ten-year contract of indenture was meant to guard a conservatory’s future
investments in training a boy. Years of food, housing, clothing, medical care, and lessons
would be required before a boy could participate in adult musical ensembles. When that
level of accomplishment was reached, the boy’s wages as a working musician could begin
to pay back the conservatory’s costs. Those costs were partially defrayed by various endow-
ments of property, but the endowments were insufficient to cover all the costs. So a boy’s
long-term indenture ensured that he did not go out on his own as soon as he learned
enough to have a marketable skill. Instead he would stay in the conservatory for a few
more years, sing or play when and where needed, and in some cases teach the younger
boys by serving as a “little master” (a mastrino or mastricello), essentially a teaching assis-
tant. Boys with exceptional musical talent could be quite valuable. The boy Giovanni
Battista Pergolesi (1710–1736), for example, received payments as a singer and violinist
that rivaled what adult professionals might earn. In his short life he would go on to become
one of the most important composers of the eighteenth century.
Naples was proud of the conservatories and their boys. The city had turned a prob-
lem—surplus and abandoned children—into a valuable resource. People thought of all
sorts of ways to use that resource, and the conservatories were only too happy to oblige if a
suitable donation was forthcoming. For the youngest boys, employment began even before
they had progressed very far as musicians.
As described in the Introduction, the littlest boys could serve as angioletti or “little
angels.” As depressing as service at children’s funerals might seem to us today, it nonethe-
less gave the boys real experience in performance. They had a simple but important role
to play in the world of adults, one requiring that they behave and remain in character. As
they aged and grew bigger they could graduate into the paranze (paw-RAHN-dzay, roughly
translated as “crews”). Paranze were large groups of older conservatory boys who per-
formed in important processions. The conservatories held special rehearsals to ready the
boys to march and play, and almost all the boys were forced to participate in these religious
and civic events dedicated to the veneration of patron saints. Poor Pergolesi, mentioned
above, still had to march as a capoparanza (“head of a crew”) even though his left leg was
crippled. Extra efforts were made to have paranze at full strength because these proces-
sions were a significant source of income.
On the facing page the image of St. Mark’s square in Venice shows a religious proces-
sion of the type popular in Naples. The various religious orders are “color coded” by their
vestments. This was true of the conservatories as well. They dressed their boys in uniforms
of the type worn by future priests in seminaries. Each conservatory had the same general
type of outfit but with distinct colors, as the illustration indicates. The panoramic image
below shows the Bay of Naples, Vesuvius in the distance, and a royal procession of the type
that would have involved the paranze of the four conservatories.
.
 Chapter 4  child labor  53

“Procession of the True Cross,” St. Mark’s square, Venice, 1496, by Gentile Bellini

Th e L or e t o Th e O nof r io Th e Pov er i Th e P i e tà

“The Royal Procession to Piedigrotta,” Naples, ca. 1770, by Antonio Joli

54 child composers in the old conservatories

At each school, uniforms greatly simplified the process of clothing a hundred or more
boys who grew out of their clothes practically every year. The uniforms also helped instill
a kind of team spirit as the boys paraded through Naples (though there are reports of
brawls between passing teams). And since the citizens knew, for example, that a boy
dressed in turquoise was a student at the Pietà, the uniforms functioned somewhat like
prison garb and helped to suppress runaways or nighttime escapades.
The final type of work to which the conservatories set their students depended very
much on a boy’s voice, instrument, or ability in composition. The Church and the royal
court in Naples had huge appetites for new music, and advanced students could find
casual employment in helping to serve those appetites. As with apprenticeships today,
casual employment could, for a talented student, turn into a permanent position after a
student completed his studies. Students with ambition who found their hoped-for jobs
already filled could emigrate from Naples to other European cities and courts (and even
as far afield as the New World or the Orient). There they could rely on an elaborate net-
work of conservatory alumni who could help them find positions. So many highly trained
Italian musicians moved northward that scholars have termed it a “diaspora.”2 As one
might imagine, local musicians resented the foreign competition, and other cities eventu-
ally established conservatories to help their countrymen compete with the Italians. The
Paris Conservatory was the first such school, and it would eventually grow to eclipse its
Italian models.

PRODIGIES — For the most talented and marketable boys—ones like the previ-
ously mentioned Pergolesi—a conservatory could provide a defense against excessive
commercial exploitation. A rector, who did not personally profit from a boy’s fees for per-
formances, could just say “no” to a request that might not be in the boy’s best interests. But
as conservatories became famous and began to attract paying students, the financial needs
or desires of a boy’s relatives could sometimes pose problems.
In the realm of music performance the words “prodigy” and “child prodigy” are inter-
changeable. When the rare child exhibits precocious progress in music, the too common
impulse is to exploit that rarity through public exhibition. The young Mozart is the classic
case. His father dragged both him and his sister across Europe to be exhibited to the
wealthy and powerful, who in turn subsidized the family through honoraria or sponsored
concerts. A test or challenge of some kind featured prominently in these exhibitions.
Much as later audiences would marvel at the great Houdini as he escaped from some
devilish predicament, Mozart’s audiences would delight in his besting the most fiendishly
difficult musical challenge. The English jurist Daines Barringdon set down his recollec-
tion of a test he himself had sprung on the eight-year-old Mozart in London.

Upon leaving Paris, [Mozart] came over to England, where he continued more than a
year. As during this time I was witness of his most extraordinary abilities as a musician,
both at some publick concerts, and likewise by having been alone with him for a consider-
 Chapter 4  child labor  55

able time at his father’s house; I send you the following account, amazing and incredible
almost as it may appear.

I carried to him a manuscript duet, which was composed by an English gentleman to

some favourite words in Metastasio’s opera [libretto] of Demofoonte. The whole score was
in five parts, viz. accompaniments for a first and second violin, the two vocal parts, and a
bass. I shall here likewise mention, the parts for the first and second voice were written in
what the Italians style the Contralto clef; the reason for taking notice of which particular
will appear hereafter.

My intention in carrying with me this manuscript composition, was to have an irrefragable

proof of his abilities, as a player at sight, it being absolutely impossible that he could have
ever seen the music before. The score was no sooner put upon his desk, than he began to
play the symphony in a most masterly manner, as well as in the time and style which cor-
responded with the intention of the composer. I mention this circumstance, because the
greatest masters often fail in these particulars on the first trial. The symphony ended, he
took the upper part, leaving the under one to his father. His voice in the tone of it was thin
and infantine, but nothing could exceed the masterly manner in which he sung. His
father, who took the under part in this duet, was once or twice out, though the passages
were not more difficult than those in the upper one; on which occasions the son looked
back with some anger, pointing out to him his mistakes, and setting him right.

He not only however did complete justice to the duet, by singing his own part in the truest
taste, and with the greatest precision: he also threw in the accompaniments of the two
violins, wherever they were most necessary, and produced the best effects. It is well known
that none but the most capital musicans are capable of accompanying in this superior
style.3

The above narrative fits what became the standard account of an exhibited
Wunderkind. More than a century later we can hear echoes of it in another account pub-
lished in London (1881) of the Italian prodigy Cesarino Galeotti performing in Paris.

I have twice heard this week the pianoforte improvisations of an Italian boy, who will prob-
ably take, in some years, a foremost rank among the great composers of the age. This boy
is just nine years old. His name is Cesarino Galeotti. . . . Today, Cesarino played the organ
at vespers in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, at the request of the organist, M. Lefébure
Wély. The youthful Galeotti is not only a child, but looks one. . . . He has still the round
cheeks of infancy, but the upper part of his head is phenomenally developed, and projects
far out both in back and front. The hands appear of almost babyish size, and are too small
for long chords. But their dexterity on the piano keyboard is almost bewildering. One of
the prodigy’s ears is very well-shaped, the other is like the orifice of a hearing-trumpet.
Cesarino’s music memory is no less prodigious than his execution. If he is shown a written
air, or even an intricate piece, and allowed to glance over it, he can go and play it by heart
without hesitation and mistake. A feat of this kind is accomplished without apparent
effort. The first time I heard him, the Directors of the Opera and Opera Comique, several
professors of the Conservatoire, and the Austrian Ambassador were standing round the
56 child composers in the old conservatories

piano at which he was performing. At the beginning they thought he was an artificially-
created prodigy. But this idea was soon abandoned. Motifs, which he could not have pos-
sibly known, were played with a single finger by musical auditors who had never before
seen the boy. He was asked to arrange and develop them. This he did with a richness,
variety, breadth of style, and delicacy of shading which astonished and charmed. Three
airs of totally different charcater and on different keys were given in their most elementary
form. Cesarino was told to work them into a whole, without changing the keys. One of
them was a Tsigane [Gypsy] tune, a Magyar [Hungarian] lady hummed it. Another was an
unpublished nocturne, by Count Von Beust. The third was a plaintive air, which a Creole
lady had heard negroes sing in a coffee plantation of La Martinique. The boy did not
appear to listen more intently than anybody else, or to be taking thought as to the manner
in which he would execute the tour de force. If he had been studying for months he could
not have displayed greater skill than he showed in bringing out the distinct character of
each tune, and in managing the transitions. . . .

Cesarino Galeotti is not one of the unfortunate Italian children who are sold to impresarii,
and taught by dint of cruelty to outrun nature. He is a little worn-looking about the eyes,
but gave me the impression of a boy whose childhood has been a happy one, and he
appears very fond, and not at all afraid, of his father, with whom he is making a tour round
Europe. . . . At the request of General Oialdini, Madame Adam has taken Cesarino by the
hand. She has a gift for fortune-telling, and predicts that the little Italian boy will prove
“the Mozart of the Nineteenth Century.”4

The narrator’s sense of wonder is tempered by acknowledging how horrible the life of
a working prodigy could be. Galeotti was fortunate to transition to full-time study at the
Paris Conservatory, where his great talent led to first prizes in piano (1885, age thirteen),
organ (1887), accompaniment (1889), and fugue (1890, age eighteen). He did not, as
Madame Adam had predicted, become “the Mozart of the Nineteenth Century,” but he
did go on to have a respectable career as a pianist, conductor, and composer.
A difficulty in evaluating the treatment of prodigies is that successful careers were
sometimes achieved both by those who had been exploited and by those who had been
sheltered. Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921), one of the greatest prodigies of all time, was
carefully sheltered. César Franck (1822–1890) and Eugène Ysaÿe (1858–1931) were not.
Franck, from Liège in modern Belgium, was brought to Paris as a child to be exhibited as
a piano virtuoso. He entered the Paris Conservatory but appears to have withdrawn due to
the pressures of concerts managed by his father. Ysaÿe, the famous violinist, enrolled in
the Conservatory of Liège at age seven, but eventually withdrew to maintain his positions
in two orchestras, one of which was conducted by his father.
Galeotti, Franck, and Ysaÿe are loosely connected by Franck’s Violin Sonata in A
Major, one of the greatest pieces ever written for that genre (i.e., violin and piano). One
day in Paris, Franck, a professor at the Paris Conservatory, grabbed his student Galeotti
and took him to the organ studio. Galeotti, that same prodigy just described, had Mozart’s
ability to read complex music at first sight, so Franck said, “Here, read for me this violin
 Chapter 4  child labor  57

part on the organ: I will play the piano part—I think it’s good.” This run-through gave
Franck a final check on the sonata before it was presented as a gift to Ysaÿe on the latter’s
wedding-day morning (Sept. 26, 1886) and performed by Ysaÿe and a pianistically gifted
wedding guest (Franck?) that same afternoon. Judged by modern standards, Galeotti,
Franck, and Ysaÿe had all been shamelessly exploited as children by their fathers. Yet the
sonata was a triumph and has held its position as a centerpiece of the repertory ever since.
(The final movement of this sonata can be heard in Video 4.1.) Vi deo 4 .1
Child musicians did not (and still do not) have the legal safeguards on their hours of
practice and performance that child actors enjoy on the Broadway stage or in Hollywood.
Intense preparations for music performances can easily squeeze out school subjects and
even playtime. For the most highly talented and precocious musicians, the great conserva-
tories not only provided access to the finest masters but also prevented or at least limited
their contacts with promoters, impresarios, the press, and an admiring public. The conser-
vatories sheltered these children from the well-meaning adulation showered on perform-
ing Wunderkinder and gave them a chance to find their adult selves before they gradu-
ated.
58 child composers in the old conservatories

@
 5

INST I T U T IONA LI ZED A PPR EN T ICESHIP

LONDON A ND NA PLES

Th e i l lus t r at ion of a m edi eva l ba k ery shows a baker—the master—about to

place a loaf of bread into the oven, with his younger helper—the apprentice—shaping the
dough for the next loaf. As in most trades, a master baker would take in a small number of
apprentices, often just one or two. They came to him as boys and lived much like mem-
bers of his family. He fed and clothed them, and just as with his own children he did not
pay them a wage. Was this fair? What did an apprentice get in return for leaving his family
and spending the remainder of his childhood working for the master? In the terminology
of apprenticeship, the payment received bought the child initiation into the “mystery” of

“A medieval baker with his apprentice,” The Bodleian Library, Oxford

59
60 child composers in the old conservatories

the craft. So valuable was the mystery that a father would sign his child over to the master
via a contract of indenture. For seven to ten years the apprentice would be a legal slave of
the master and subject to his will, his rules, and any punishments he might decree. Below
is the indenture (1708) signed by William Selman as he apprenticed his son Richard to the
weaver Thomas Stokes for seven years. Note that Richard must agree to protect the trade
secrets of his master.

This Indenture made the sixteenth day of January in the Seaventh yeare of the Reigne of
our Sovraigne Lady Anne of Greate Brittaine ffrance and Ireland Queene Defender of the
ffaith ex Anno q° Dom 1708 Betweene William Selman of the pish of Corsham in the
County of Wiltes Husbandman And Richard Selman son of the sd William Selman of the
one pte And Thomas Stokes holder of the pish of Corsham aforesaid Broadweaver of the
other pte Witnesseth that the said Richard Selman of his owne voluntarie will and with
the consent of his sd ffather William Selman Hath put himselfe an Apprentice unto the
said Thomas Stokes and with him hath covenanted to dwell as his Appntice from the day
of the date hereof untill the full end and terme of Seaven Yeares fully to be compleate and
ended during all which tyme the said Richard Selman shall well and faithfully serve him
the said Thomas Stokes his master his secrets lawfully to be kept shall keep his
Commandments lawfull and honest shall doe and execute hurt unto his said Master hee
shall not doe nor consent to be done Tavemes or Alehouses hee shall not haunt Dice
Cardes or any other unlawfull games hee shall not use ffornication with any woman hee
shall not committ during such tyme as he shall stay in his Masters service Matrymony with
any woman hee shall not Contract or espouse himselfe during the said Terme of Seaven
yeares The goods of his said Masters inordinately hee shall not wast nor to any man lend
without his Masters Lycence from his Masters house or business hee shall not absent
himselfe or plong himselfe by Night or by day without his Masters leave, but as a true and
faithfull servant shall honestly behave himselfe towards his sd Master and all his both in
words and deedes And the said Thomas Stokes doth for himselfe his Executors and
Administrators promise and Covenant to and with the sd William Selman and Richard
Selman his Appntice to teach or cause the said Richard Selman to be taught and instructed
in the trade Art science or occupacon of a Broadweaver after the best manner that he can
or may with moderate Correction finding and allowing unto his sd Servant meate drinke
Apparrell Washing Lodging and all other things whatsoev fitting for an appntice of that
trade during the said term of Seaven yeares And to give unto his sd Appntice at the end of
the sd terme double Apparell (to witt) one suite for holy dayes and one for worken dayes,
In witness whereof the said pties to these psent Indentures interchangeably have sett their
hands and seales the day and yeare first above written Sealed and Delived in the psence of
his marke

Thomas Stokes1

Apprenticing to a lawyer was, for many centuries, the normal path to the legal profes-
sion in England. An important advance in legal education came with the founding in
London of four institutions—the Inns of Court. These institutions, part lawyers’ guilds,
part schools, took in groups of boys, gave them both a general and a legal education, and
 Chapter 5  institutionalized apprenticeship  61

qualified them for legal practice. The picture below shows one of these institutions,
Middle Temple, as sketched circa 1830. Inside, the massive vaulted timberwork of its Great
Hall hints at the institution’s roots in the late Middle Ages, and indeed the first records for
Middle Temple date from 1501. In the intervening years the Inns of Court went through
good and bad times, but their significance for our narrative is in demonstrating that special
training institutions, particularly when situated in a capital city and given state sanction,
were superior to private appren-
ticeship. British law and its law-
yers became the world’s standard
of excellence.
Compared to an appren-
ticeship with a single master, a
boy taken in by an institution
had access to significantly
greater resources. The institu-
tion might have a well-stocked
library, students with a wide
range of backgrounds and expe-
riences, teachers who were
acknowledged experts, and an
administrative structure that
Middle Temple, ca. 1830, by Thomas Shepherd
could help ensure fair treat-
ment. A large group of boys
could reach a critical mass, where peer-group competition and cooperation could help
the more ambitious ones reach their full potential. And after finishing their training, grad-
uates of such institutions had the benefit of an extensive network of former students now
working professionally.
What the four Inns of Court did for legal education, the four conservatories of Naples
did for musical education. But before describing the conservatories in more detail, let us
first note the pitfalls that could endanger children both in private apprenticeship and in
apprenticeship to an institution.
Charles Dickens, who had been apprenticed as a bootblack and later, after gaining
more education, had been admitted to Middle Temple (1839), had seen both kinds of
training at first hand. Private apprenticeship depended critically on the quality of the mas-
ter. In the ideal case the master was benevolent, balancing the necessary drudgery of
repetitive work with tasks that led to increasing knowledge of the craft, tasks that could
lead to journeyman status and eventual mastery. But in many cases a venal master would
only exploit his apprentices. The etching on the following page, from the 1850 edition of
Dickens’s David Copperfield, shows little David returning home to find his mother now
nursing a new infant. As a stepson, David no longer fit in and would soon be apprenticed
to wine merchants. Here is Dickens’s account:
62 child composers in the old conservatories

I know enough of the world now, to have almost

lost the capacity of being much surprised by any-
thing: but it is a matter of some surprise to me,
even now, that I can have been so easily thrown
away at such an age. A child of excellent abilities,
and with strong powers of observation, quick,
eager, delicate, and soon hurt bodily or mentally,
it seems wonderful to me that nobody should
have made any sign in my behalf. But none was
made; and I became, at ten years old, a little
labouring hind [rustic] in the service of Murdstone
and Grinby.
Murdstone and Grinby’s warehouse was at
the waterside. . . . It was a crazy old house with a
wharf of its own, abutting on the water when the
tide was in, and on the mud when the tide was
out, and literally overrun with rats. Its panelled
rooms, discoloured with the dirt and smoke of a
hundred years, I dare say; its decaying floors and
staircase; the squeaking and scuffling of the old
grey rats down in the cellars; and the dirt and rot-
tenness of the place; are things, not of many years
ago, in my mind, but of the present instant. They
are all before me, just as they were in the evil
David Copperfied, 1850
hour when I went among them for the first time,
with my trembling hand in Mr. Quinion’s.2

And things went downhill from there. Instead of learning the mystery of a valuable
craft, young David spent his days checking used wine bottles for cracks. “When the empty
bottles ran short, there were labels to be pasted on full ones, or corks to be fitted to them,
or seals to be put upon the corks, or finished bottles to be packed in casks. All this work
was my work.” Work of this sort did not lead anywhere. It was dull and endlessly repetitive,
leaving the young worker, after thousands of repetitions, no more valuable than the day he
had first been led in, with “trembling hand.”
If the danger of private apprenticeship lay in the quality of the master, the dangers in
institutional apprenticeship often lay in one’s fellow students. The same British public
that eagerly read David Copperfield also read Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857), a novel by
Thomas Hughes about his experiences in the 1830s at Rugby, a “public” school (meaning
a private boarding school for boys). Today we might describe the subject of Hughes’s novel
as bullying, the very word that Hughes used in the preface to the sixth edition (Tom Brown’s
Schooldays, while not the literary equal of David Copperfield, was nonetheless enormously
popular and influential). In that preface Hughes quotes at length from a letter sent to him
by “an old friend”:
 Chapter 5  institutionalized apprenticeship  63

The fact is, that the condition of a small boy at a large

school is one of peculiar hardship and suffering. He is
entirely at the mercy of proverbially the roughest
things in the universe—great [older, bigger] school-
boys; and he is deprived of the protection which the
weak have in civilized society; for he may not com-
plain; if he does, he is an outlaw—he has no protector
but public opinion, and that a public opinion of the
very lowest grade, the opinion of rude and ignorant
boys. . . .

Why should the laws of civilization be suspended for

schools? Why should boys be left to herd together
with no law but that of force or cunning? What would
become of society if it were constituted on the same
principles? It would be plunged into anarchy in a
week.

. . . Now I agree with you, that a constant supervision

of the master is not desirable or possible—and that
telling tales, or constantly referring to the master for
protection, would only produce ill-will and worse
treatment. . . .

A timid and nervous boy is from morning till night in

a state of bodily fear. He is constantly tormented when Tom Brown’s Schooldays, 1857
trying to learn his lessons. His play-hours are occupied
in fagging [serving older boys], in a horrid funk of
cricket-balls and footballs, and the violent sport of creatures who, to him, are giants. He
goes to his bed in fear and trembling—worse than the reality of the rough treatment to
which he is perhaps subjected.3

NAPLES — In the conservatories, the above-mentioned dangers were compounded

for the castrati. Those boys were human geldings altered for the sake of their voices. One
day they would be able to combine near-male strength and stature, female vocal range and
agility, and intense training to become the unquestioned musical stars of their era (ca.
1550–1820). But in the conservatories, in the eyes of the other boys, they were merely weak
and queer. The bullying of castrati became so severe and persistent at the Loreto that the
castrati were eventually moved to a separate wing for their protection.
Private apprenticeship with a music master could be successful. The case of J. S. Bach
apprenticing with his uncle demonstrates what was possible. But private apprenticeship
could not, in general, provide the range and richness of experiences gained by the boys in
the Naples conservatories. They lived in the middle of one of Europe’s great cities and got
to hear the best performers of their era. The San Carlo opera theater in Naples, built in
1737 to demonstrate Spanish wealth and power, seated an audience as large as today’s
Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. A conservatory boy, hearing 3,000 passion-
64 child composers in the old conservatories

ate attendees cheering a great singer performing a role written by a conservatory graduate,
must have been thrilled at what the alumni of his school could accomplish. For the young
apprentice, the road from beginner to working professional musician may have seemed
long, but its path was clearly laid out and successfully traversed by most of the boys ahead
of him.
There were, of course, additional dangers and temptations associated with living in a
great urban center. And the schools did try to face up to these dangers as best they could,
allowing for the frailties of the boys and their adult minders. An excerpt addressing child
abuse, taken from the regole governing the Pietà (1746), has already been quoted in the
Introduction. You may remember that it threatened drowning and damnation to anyone
who would abuse the boys.

Even if the conservatories could prevent the worst sorts of infractions, any camp coun-
selor, middle-school teacher, or scout leader will tell you that controlling one or two hun-
dred boys is a major undertaking with no absolute guarantee of success. At the Loreto,
twenty-four rules were published in an attempt to limit the chaos. They were issued
December 30, 1763 (the very week when a seven-year-old Mozart was performing for Louis
XV and his entourage at Versailles). I provide the rules here in the translation of Michael
Robinson.4

Some regulations for the good government of the Royal Conservatory

of Santa Maria di Loreto,

1. No boy may exit without the express permission of the rector who must note
whom he gives such permission to and be very chary of giving it, especially on
school days when he must not give it without very grave reason.
2. Everyone must be back in the Conservatory by 24 hours [midnight], and before
the first half hour of night check must be made on the students, and the
Conservatory gate is to be locked and the key given by the doorkeeper to the
rector who will not let it be reopened without urgent cause.
3. At the sound of the first half hour of night, a check shall be made on the students
and on those missing; and anyone found absent shall be punished by the rector,
who shall not again give him leave (to exit) until he is sure he will not commit
the same offence.
4. Eunuchs [castrati] may exit only when they are accompanied by the prefects. The
others should likewise be accompanied by the prefects if possible, otherwise by
boys who are reliable and prudent.
5. Eunuchs who are foreigners cannot get permission to have meals away from the
Conservatory or to stay away at night.
 Chapter 5  institutionalized apprenticeship  65

6. At the prescribed hours all dormitories must be locked as is the custom, and the
rector go to visit them to see if there is any unruly behaviour. If there is, he shall
punish the guilty ones severely.
7. No boy may ever go into the kitchen; nor may he go into the refectory [dining
hall] except at the times of lunch and dinner.
8. No boy may enter the office, except the person in charge and his deputy.
9. Only those who are ill may stay in the sickroom, after receiving a written note
from the doctor or surgeon. Anyone in the sickroom must be treated with great
care, and may not exit or wander about the Conservatory during his illness.
10. Attention should above all be paid to the good character of those attending the
sick. Attendants must be the most proven, charitable, and prudent boys (in the
Conservatory). Alternatively, a prefect is to assist, or else the vicerector.
11. If it occurs that big boys and small, and eunuchs, are all in the sickroom together,
(each group) must be put in a separate part.
12. No one who is neither sick nor an attendant may from today enter the sickroom
to visit or for any other reason.
13. The rector must try above all to maintain his dignity and his upright mode of
conduct, never letting the boys stand with their hats on or indecorously before
him. He is not to arrange confidential matters with anyone in his rooms or on his
balcony, nor may he permit the boys to spend their time there seeking favours;
but must order all to go about their duties in those areas of the Conservatory allot-
ted to them.
14. No woman may pass through the courtyard to enter the church. The doorkeeper
shall see this is obeyed by keeping the gate locked. If he fails, he is to be sus-
pended the first time and sacked the next. The small door from the courtyard to
the church shall be locked to reinforce this rule.
15. No boy may descend to the courtyard or the entrance gate without permission
from his superiors.
16. No one may absent himself from the general classes. Whoever has no aptitude
must still learn what he can and attend school. During the hours following that
are set aside for the study of letters or music, everyone shall apply himself, and no
one is permitted to spend his time in the rector’s rooms or elsewhere for any
reason.
17. Everyone must make their confession every fifteen days, or at least kneel at the
feet of the confessor.
18. There shall be a day of spiritual retreat every month when all shall ponder on
how to save their souls.
19. The music, to be taken out for use, must be taken from the rector or maestro di
casa. At the same time care must be taken not to damage the Conservatory’s good
name and send the boys into places that are unsavoury and unpleasant. All
musical performances are to be noted in a book that records the day, the month,
and the price.
66 child composers in the old conservatories

20. Exact note must be taken in a special book of the days when the music masters
come to give lessons. This is so that, when they are missing, their pay may be
deducted and suitable measures taken.
21. The violin master must teach not only this instrument but also the violoncello
also, as is customary in all the other Conservatories.
22. Any errands for the rector, maestro di casa, and masters, must be carried out by
servants and not by boys. Nor can the rector, maestro di casa, and masters employ
particular boys in their own service.
23. Permission for the boys to stay out at night can only be given by the governor
mensario [the governor on duty for that month].
24. No outsider is to come into the Conservatory to give lessons. All lessons shall be
given by the masters and mastricelli of the institute. The rector and prefects are
to see that this rule is strictly kept.

No doubt many of these rules were added to deal with specific problems, and over the
centuries the same infractions probably reoccured on a regular basis. Viewing the rules as
a whole, it would seem that they had the boys’ best interests at heart. Of course they
restricted the boys’ freedom to explore the city or to skip school, but they also strongly
limited the ability of the staff to exploit or abuse the boys.

MUSIC MASTERS — The success of a conservatory depended crucially on the qual-

ity of the rector and the skill of the music masters, especially the maestro di capella (chapel
master) who was the head teacher. This is reflected in the pay scales. At the Loreto, the
rector received 12 ducats a month, and a top master like Fenaroli received 10. Converting
Neapolitan ducats into dollars or euros is difficult, given how markedly the economic
circumstances of that world differed from our own. But comparisons to other salaries can
give an idea of what was large or small. The assistant chapel master received 6 ducats a
month, and masters of wind instruments received 4 ducats a month. The accountant for
the board of governors received 10 ducats a month, so we might consider the salary of the
head teacher to be the equivalent of a low-level professional today. I say “low level” because
high government or military officials might receive 100 ducats a month or more.
The conservatories tried to keep two or three music masters on staff at all times. The
first master (primo maestro) and second master (secondo maestro) were assisted by senior
boys called little masters (mastricelli or maestrini), who qualified for their positions through
special examinations. The little masters taught the youngest boys the basic subjects of
solfeggio, which included the notation of pitches and rhythms.
The masters taught daily lessons of two hours except on Sundays. At the Loreto one
master would come in the morning and one in the afternoon. The first and second masters
did not give lessons on instruments (not counting keyboards). Instead they taught singing,
partimenti, and counterpoint. Counterpoint, considered the capstone skill, was usually
taught by the first master, and partimenti, a skill leading to counterpoint, by the second
master. The general plan of their teaching for the senior boys is preserved in students’
 Chapter 5  institutionalized apprenticeship  67

paper copies of lessons. Gaps in our knowledge still exist about what was taught in the
more elementary classes, where students wrote their lessons on a cartella (an erasable
tablet covered in thick donkey hide on which were drawn staff lines).
The teaching of lessons remains to this day a major component of a music teacher’s
job. What set the masters of the old conservatories apart is that they also had to compose
sacred music for the use of the institution. In today’s terms the music masters were both
teachers and composers. In teaching some of the senior boys to write advanced counter-
point and to compose masses and motets, the masters were merely showing their appren-
tices how to do the tasks that they themselves and other chapel masters were expected to
do as a matter of course in their chosen trade.

DAILY LIFE — Boys are active to a fault. That is a truism that plagues many schools
today. In Naples, the conservatories erected sturdy defenses against the worst traits of their
wards: they scheduled nearly every minute of a boy’s day, they enforced periods of silence,
they had monitors (“prefects”) who watched over the boys like hawks, and they made good
behavior habitual. Here is the daily routine for the paying students at the Pietà, as pub-
lished in the Regole of 1769 (my translation):5

When the signal of the wake-up bell is heard (which one of the Prefects will strike to
sound at dawn), the Prefect will intone the psalm Laudate pueri Dominum, which all the
boys in that dormitory continue antiphonally, and which when finished (while the boys go
to dress) they slowly say the psalm Miserere mei Deus.

After the Miserere ends and they are dressed, they will take care of their bodily needs
and wash themselves, each being studious in the cleanliness of their clothes, which reflect
on that of their spirit.

After the Prefect will give the sign to go to the oratory, where each one takes his place
(which is always the same according to the different situations of the groups), there will be
a quarter hour of silent oration, and another quarter hour in prayer, and litanies, and then
they will hear the Holy Mass with devotions, kneeling, and only the Prefect can give a
dispensation for necessary cause to remain standing.

After hearing the Mass, each one goes to pick up his books; and immediately returns to
his place in the oratory, and then, being together again, modestly and without noise, the
Prefect places them in the order of their group, starting with the littlest boys up front, and
in the same order they will go, not leaning on or touching one another, nor jumping on
the stairs, but with every holy modesty: concerning those who commit mischief and are
warned by the prefects, who have authority to castigate those immodesties, punishments
will be light, with the more serious ones having to be referred to the Father Rector; And so
they go directly to grammar school, where each one puts himself in his place, which is
always the same, and when the master will command that he wants to begin the lessons,
one first sings Veni Creator Spiritus, along with its verset, and prayers, which when said,
68 child composers in the old conservatories

he turns the hourglass, which is punctually observed, so that the two hours of scholastic
lessons run their course.

During these lessons, no one dare leave the class without urgent cause, and permission
of the master; and when a call for someone comes to the porter during the class, he will
first seek permission and quietly discuss the call with the master.

Everyone takes care of, and has to account for his books, lest they be written in, or ink
stained, or any other damage, and he must guard his inkwell, and pen, making sure not to
be caught negligent by the Father Rector.

If, during class, one of the Governors, or the Father Rector, or any priest, or person of
quality and respect should enter the room, all should rise suddenly to their feet, and thus
stand until their master should give the sign to sit down, and being questioned, they should
respond with good manners.

When the hourglass runs out, it is immediately understood that the class is over, not
only for the senior boys, but also the juniors who depend on the masters and prefects, and
are obedient to the seniors, and one of the boys says the Tu autem Domine etc. along with
Agimus tibi gratias, and right away the Prefect makes way to the door, arranges the boys as
previously mentioned, to return to the rooms, where they arrive, each one going to his
place, who then applies himself to instrumental or vocal music, revisiting his lessons, to
give account to the Masters of Music, who must be ready in their classes, to recognize
each one’s lessons, to teach them individually, and then to make a concerto of all the musi-
cians, both vocal and instrumental.

Near the end of the music lesson, there sounds a little bell, that brings everyone together
to say the third part of the Rosary, in which, when the third Mystery is said, one of the
Prefects has the porter sound the little bell, first signal for the dining hall, while the dining-
hall staff and servants make preparations for the midday meal.

After the third part of the Holy Rosary each one returns to his dormitory to take up the
cutlery, and napkins, and after the second signal ends, all the paying students, in the order
of their group in the manner described above, go right down to the dining hall where they
accommodate each one in his place, the Father Vice Rector makes the blessing, and while
eating, one goes up to the pulpit to do a lesson of some spiritual book or of the lives of
saints, to which all, eating, in silence are provided with food for the soul.

In the setting out and distribution of the food, one observes exact equality, and partiality
has no place here, all being equally the children of the same Holy Mother. One only finds
introduced the custom of a first and second table for the most deserving, for the paying
students to emulate more profitably in their dress and in their music.
 Chapter 5  institutionalized apprenticeship  69

If some boy feels burdened, he should not feel sad, but rather should complain to a
superior, to give the right punishment to those found guilty, but without clamor, or noise,
so as not to interrupt the silence of the others, which must be most accurately maintained.

Thus the dining hall staff, and others that serve, like the boys while they dine, will be
diligent in cleanliness, lest they spill soup, or something else on their clothes, thus mind-
ing their own like the others.

With the noon meal finished, and the thanksgiving said, they return to their rooms,
where they have recreation, and rest for half an hour, and when the sound of silence is
heard as intended, each one retires to his bed for repose.

During the silence, no one dare to move from his bed, except for the most urgent cause,
and with the permission of the Prefect, and moving, I warn you not to annoy the commu-
nity, but to tread lightly, so as not to interrupt the silence, which would be a serious crime.

When the period of silence ends, the Prefect gives the signal to wake, and as intended,
each boy hurries to attend the grammar school, where things proceed in the manner
mentioned above, with a notice to the Prefect to make a second inspection of the dormi-
tory, so that no one remains behind, but that everyone goes to school, which when it fin-
ishes, things proceed as before, both in the procession and in the stay in the dormitory.

With school finished, one finds the Chapel Master ready to start the music school
again, to make a concerto, observing what was said above.

Near the end of the music lessons the maestro gives a signal that the boys should go into
the oratory all together according to the groups in the dormitories, and it is neither permit-
ted ever to argue, nor to talk with any person, even a father or mother; for which the
Prefects are very strict and will give an account of infractions to the Father Rector. And in
the oratory, with great attention, one hears for a quarter of an hour a lesson of sacred his-
tory, or of the works of Saint Francis de Sales, or of others, or even a certain life of a saint,
at the choice of the Father Rector: And once each week in this quarter of an hour lessons
are given by civil servants, and it is a good habit, to be consistant, that the offices of a good
citizen do not contradict those of a good Christian: and once per month in this quarter of
an hour they read the rules of the conservatori to be followed by the paying students; so
that they do not fall into forgetfulness, and lead each to the exact observance of the same
rules, which are enforced impartially, because from little sparks great conflagrations can
arise.

Near the end of that lesson the two altar boys go down with the Father Sacristan to open
up the church, and that being done, the Prefect will arrange the boys as mentioned above,
to go down to the church to recite the usual litanies before the images of Saint Anne, Saint
Nicholas, and the Cross, according to the usual days of obligation.
70 child composers in the old conservatories

With the said litanies finished, they go down to their dormitories to pick up the cutlery
for supper, and as with the noon meal with complete modesty.

When they come back from supper, the Prefect gives the signal that everyone should go
to their beds, to have time for a quarter of an hour, and then go out into the oratory, to do
the examination of conscience, and say, with deliberation, and devotion the acts of the
Christians, and recite to blessed God, to His Holy Mother, and to the guardian angel, and
to the saintly intercessors. Therefore, each one having done with the necessities of the
body, he immediately retires to sleep, deeply feeling the silence, about which much was
said earlier, and each Prefect takes care, after seeing everyone to sleep, to close the dormi-
tory, where the night lamps stay lit until the morning.

SITUATED LEARNING — In twenty-three years of teaching at a music school that

boasts members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on its faculty, I have never heard a
member of that famous ensemble use the academic terminology of chords (e.g., “ii6/5 of
V”), even though that terminologiy is taught in almost every American music-theory class-
room. Apparently those classes are preparing students for a different, unspecified reality.
In the 1990s some leading researchers who study how people actually learn began to ques-
tion whether passive attendance in classrooms to learn abstract subjects with only indirect
relevance to students’ lives was the best or only way to develop expertise. And they began
to take a second look at apprenticeship, both in the European past and in other parts of the
world today. In their 1991 book Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation,
Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger described an optimal situation for learning, one that
sounds a lot like what the boys experienced in the Naples conservatories. A foreword by
the linguistic anthropologist William F. Hanks provides a concise description of what
Lave and Wenger proposed.

Situated Learning contributes to a growing body of research in human sciences that

explores the situated character of human understanding and communication. It takes as
its focus the relationship between learning and the social situations in which it occurs.
Rather than defining it as the acquisition of propositional knowledge, Lave and Wenger
situate learning in certain forms of social coparticipation. Rather than asking what kinds
of cognitive processes and conceptual structures are involved, they ask what kinds of social
engagements provide the proper context for learning to take place. . . .

The individual learner is not gaining a discrete body of abstract knowledge which (s)he
will then transport and reapply in later contexts. Instead, (s)he acquires the skill to perform
by actually engaging in the process, under the attenuated conditions of legitimate periph-
eral participation. This central concept denotes the particular mode of engagement of a
learner who participates in the actual practice of an expert, but only to a limited degree
and with limited responsibility for the ultimate product as a whole. There is no necessary
implication that a learner acquires mental representations that remain fixed thereafter,
nor that the “lesson” taught consists itself in a set of abstract representations. On the con-
 Chapter 5  institutionalized apprenticeship  71

trary, Lave and Wenger seem to challenge us to rethink what it means to learn, indeed to
rethink what it means to understand.6

From the day a conservatory orphan strapped on his wings as an angioletto and
marched with others into a funeral, he was legitimately participating in a sacred service,
albeit at the periphery. As he rose through the ranks of the conservatory his activities
became less peripheral and closer to those of adult experts. A master would write a parti-
mento and the boy would realize its unwritten upper parts, all in the presence of his class-
mates. When he sang a solfeggio, a master played the accompaniment. In Lave and
Wenger’s terms, these were acts of learning situated in forms of social coparticipation. And
what better model of social coparticipation than playing or singing in musical ensembles?
In their early years the music conservatories of Naples were faced with hundreds of
indigent boys whose identities as members of once intact families had been erased. They
needed new identities as musicians, and the conservatories worked out schemes to create
those identities over the course of years of situated learning. In Lave and Wenger’s words,

As an aspect of social practice, learning involves the whole person; it implies not only a
relation to specific activities, but a relation to social communities—it implies becoming a
full participant, a member, a kind of person. In this view, learning only partly—often
incidentally—implies becoming able to be involved in new activities, to perform new
tasks and functions, to master new understanding. Activities, tasks, functions, and under-
standings do not exist in isolation; they are part of broader systems of relations in which
they have meaning. These systems of relations arise out of and are reproduced and devel-
oped within social communities, which are in part systems of relations among persons.
The person is defined by as well as defines these relations. Learning thus implies becom-
ing a different person with respect to the possibilities enabled by these systems of relations.
To ignore this aspect of learning is to overlook the fact that learning involves the construc-
tion of identities.7

Through long apprenticeship boys learned a set of skills and acquired a new identity.
The daily lessons were not just frequent opportunities to ask questions or be corrected.
They were opportunities to practice and polish one’s evolving identity and persona. Given
the times in which they trained, the boys were also adjusting to their position in the system
of social classes. That is the subject of the next chapter.
72 child composers in the old conservatories

@
 6

SOCI A L CL A SS

A RT ISA NS, A RT IST ES,

A ND
A CON T INUING SCHISM

I f moder n s o ci e t i es s t i l l m a i n ta i n dis t i nc t ions between social classes,

the distinctions tend to have uncertain boundaries influenced by wealth, education, and
other factors partly under an individual’s control. In the eighteenth century, by contrast,
class distinctions were obvious, rigid, and more influenced by birth. An unnamed citizen1
of eighteenth-century Montpellier, France, was certain that his readers were eager for
details about the social levels in his city. He noted that one wore one’s rank. As the faithful
marched into Montpellier’s Cathedral of St. Peter (below), an observer would likely have

Cathedral of Saint Peter, Montpellier

73
 74 child composers in the old conservatories

been able to tell someone’s station in life just by his or her manner of dress. Social mobil-
ity, to the extent it was possible at all, meant moving up within one’s rank, because rank,
at least in its major categories, was generally determined by the rank of the family into
which you were born.
In French terminology there were three broad “estates.” Clergy populated the first
estate, and of course they had an elaborate hierarchy extending from the pope down to the
lowliest parish priest. The second estate contained the nobility, and again there was a clear
hierarchy of ranks from king down to petty local lords. Members of these two estates paid
no taxes and frequently received incomes from rents, pensions, or shares in the production
of the peasantry. The third estate included every-
one else. Between the laundress shown here, who
received a wage of perhaps 30 French pounds a
year, and the Duke of Orléans shown opposite, who
took in about three million a year, there was a huge
range of occupations and incomes, all with associa-
tions of class. Wealthy financiers and tax officials
might be richer than 90 percent of the nobility, but
they remained commoners stuck in the third estate.
The modern historian of French culture
Robert Darnton devoted a chapter of his delightful
book The Great Cat Massacre2 to the above-men-
tioned description of Montpellier. Its anonymous
author was likely in the middle of the class system.
He wrote like a business-oriented city dweller
whose class was lower than a nobleman’s but higher
than an artisan’s. Thus he was likely a member of
“The Laundress,” 1761 by Jean-Baptiste Greuze the bourgeoisie. With that worldview, he recast the
scheme of estates, writing the clergy out of the pic-
ture. His first estate became the nobles and high royal officials. His second estate became
something like a modern middle class with educated specialists: doctors, lawyers, profes-
sors, financiers, and other businessmen. His third estate included, from the top down,
master artisans known as artistes, regular artisans, farmworkers, and domestic servants.
Where were musicians in this scheme?
Musicians were born into Montpellier’s third estate as artisans. The more prosperous
artisans were organized into offical guilds. Our author lists the guilds of silversmiths, wig-
makers, surgeons, druggists, upholsterers, locksmiths, carpenters, plasterers, glaziers,
plumbers, lantern makers, tinsmiths, weavers, and twenty-four other trades. Then follows
a list of forty-two artisanal trades without organized guilds (e.g., chocolatiers, millers), and
nineteen trades exclusive to women (e.g., spinners). In this exhaustive list of more than a
hundred trades, “musicians” do not rate a distinct category. The production of objects
used in making music does receive two mentions. The first, “luthiers,” names an Italian
 Chapter 6  social class  75

man who had set up a shop selling and repairing instruments. The second, “Makers of
Violin Strings,” mentions that although the trade was banned from inside or outside the
city by the police (this was the era of violin strings made from catgut), one shop could be
found just outside one of the city gates.
Montpellier was an ancient and historically important city. In 1768 it was also an
administrative center for a large area of southern France. But its population was small by
modern standards. I am writing this chapter from Watertown, South Dakota, whose popu-
lation of 22,000 is almost exactly that of eighteenth-century Montpellier. To say that
Watertown is the fifth largest city in South Dakota is to bring a smile to the face of anyone
who associates the word “city” with
London, New York, or Tokyo. The cul-
tural aspirations of Montpellier similarly
outstripped its resources. It was not big
enough to attract a permanent group of
professional musicians. But our author
does give some hints about where musi-
cians fit into the social order in his descrip-
tion of a local society called the Academy
of Music:

This society is made up of almost all the

better class of people drawn from the first
and second orders of residents. The num-
ber of the Academicians is not set; it usu-
ally runs to two hundred and fifty people,
who name the Directors and a Treasurer.
A membership is for three years, but one
renews it before its expiry. Every
Louis Philippe d’Orléans, Duke of Orléans
Academician pays sixty pounds a year.
Children still at home, and quite young,
are admitted under their father’s membership. Resident foreigners are charged six pounds
a month. Those who are in the city for only a brief period are given free admission to the
concerts. All the women and young ladies of the city, even the foreign ones, are allowed
into the assembly, which is very well constituted. Those residents who are not Academicians
are not allowed to come. This Academy pays for a Master of music, a number of male
singers, female singers, and symphonists or players of all sorts of instruments. The concerts
are set for Mondays and Fridays each week, at five in the afternoon. There they perform
operas, motets, and other musical works. The hall where the concert is held is located
above the peristyle of the theater. The city built both the one and the other.3

Class comes first in the description. Artisans might be performing on stage but neither
they nor their family members would be welcomed in the audience. The members, the
“better class of people,” numbered around 250 male heads of households. Women, chil-
76 child composers in the old conservatories

dren, and foreigners could be allowed in at the members’ discretion. All told, perhaps 5
percent of the city’s population could attend these concerts. Both class and cost were a
significant barrier. Dues for the attendees were sixty French pounds a year, which would
have been twice the annual salary of a laundress. An equivalent figure in modern dollars,
perhaps $700, would not be too far below what a season’s subscription to a symphony or
opera series might cost two attendees today. The idea that a laundress might make only
$350 in modern dollars for a year’s work puts the extreme poverty at the lower end of the
artisanal class into stark perspective. Many of Montpellier’s singers and “players of all sorts
of instruments” would, by modern standards, have been living in poverty unless they had
other, better-paying jobs.
Performers, as music artisans, worked with their hands, thus placing them in the mid-
dle of the hierarchy of the third estate, above farmworkers but below the artist level of
music directors and composers. Our author, who did not believe in the mixing or even the
blurring of social levels, was opposed to the children of manual laborers gaining any sort
of higher education in order to rise above the level of their parents. In the rigid system
advocated for Montpellier, how might the city deal with orphans and foundlings?
Under the heading “Houses of Charity,” the first mentioned is the Hôpital Général or
“General Hospital.” This was a poorhouse for eight hundred unfortunates split between a
permanent home for the disabled and an orphanage for abandoned children. Because the
conservatory orphanages in Naples are so important to our story, and because our anony-
mous author is such a meticulous guide to every institution in Montpellier, let us explore
in some detail his description of this orphanage:

As to the orphans, when the boys reach sixteen, they are given a trade; As to the girls, either
they are married, or put into domestic service; the dowry is 50 pounds. Those who want to
stay in service at the orphange are retained. The uniform (habit) is blue in the winter and
a lighter gray cloth in the summer. The boys who will work at the looms, at dressmaking,
and handkerchief production are taught to read and write. The girls are employed at knit-
ting, the older ones at spinning. The boys’ and girls’ quarters are separate.

[After a description of the administrative structure, our author returns to the subject of the
orphans.]

Although nothing is spared in order to inspire proper feelings in these poor children that
one educates and teaches their religion, nevertheless it is sad to see that they never, boy or
girl, make a good student. We can only attribute this to the fatal flaw which all public
institutions have of being good in general and bad in particular. In truth, the great number
of children who are received there are almost all bastards, who know no parent; the others
belong to wretches, who have no feelings. The regimented life, the forced inclinations, a
certain horror, or at least a marked rejection, that people have to live in this house, the
embarrassment in which one is obliged to hold this agglomeration of rabble, all this con-
tributes to making them unruly, destructive, idle, greedy, and generally bad.4
 Chapter 6  social class  77

His initial description of the boys fits the Conservatorii in Naples quite well if one
substitutes his phrase “when the boys reach sixteen, they are given a trade” with the more
likely “the boys finish basic training in a trade at sixteen and leave for full-time work.” And
the initial description of the girls fits the Ospedale in Venice, where marriage was similarly
the preferred career path and the city contributed a dowry. Children at all these institu-
tions wore uniforms, lived a highly regimented life, and learned a valuable trade as a
defense against their pitifully low social rank. The author’s dark view of the children’s
character may be connected with his insightful and very modern advocacy of foster homes
as a replacement for orphanages. That is the path that all industrialized nations have fol-
lowed, though the change has taken two centuries. He recognized that even the best
intentions were sometimes no defense against the frequent abuse of children in large
institutions.
The view that musicians were manual laborers in the artisan class was widespread,
with exceptions made for those who rose to the level of artiste. The social status of those
exceptions, however, was fluid and subject to definition by analogy. In Montpellier our
author placed “Poetry, Music, etc.” within a chapter titled “Works of Literature,” as if the
production of books was the defining factor. But his chapter devolves into a Who’s Who of
famous sons, regardless of whether or not they published anything. Only at the very end of
this list do we find five musicians. There is a father-and-son pair who were music directors
at the Cathedral, an Abbot Morel, canon of the Cathedral, who merited the naming of
three of his sacred compositions, and finally an organist and a violinist who had become
famous and left Montpellier to take higher positions elsewhere. Judging from this list, the
production of written compositions (viewed as a kind of literature), the achievement of
fame, or the attainment of a high position could elevate one from artisan to artiste. But
even an artiste of significant fame and accomplishment would still be expected to marry
within the class of artisans.

HIGH STATUS, LOW CLASS — Across human history and across a broad range of
cultures, musicians have been highly regarded but generally deemed to belong to the
lower social orders. Parents in the Victorian era might say of a musician that they wanted
him to have a role at their daughter’s wedding, just not as the groom. The presence of
talented musicians would raise the status of an expensive ceremony, but such a ceremony
was usually for the benefit of higher social classes. Even today, when a wealthy rock star
might be offered a million dollars to play for the wedding of a Gulf State princess, that
same musician would never be welcome as the groom or as a new member of the local
ruling elite.
Class prejudice can often be found behind otherwise puzzling aspects of music his-
tory. Take, for example, the general absence of female instrumentalists from the concert
stage prior to the twentieth century. It was certainly not for lack of talent, since middle-
and upper-class women were the ones most likely to have had the time and training neces-
sary for real excellence in performance. Today we tend to forget that “courtesan” was an
78 child composers in the old conservatories

established class in many cultures. In Japan they were called geishas, and in Korea,
kisaeng. Europe had them too, and in all of these cultures they were highly skilled female
performers who entertained men for money. Their cultural importance aside, courtesans
were barred from the marriage market of the upper classes. And women of any social
standing would suffer a catastrophic loss of status if they crossed into the domain of the
courtesan. Depending on the mood of the time, there were rules for or against them. The
theaters of Shakespeare or of the Noh drama in Japan barred women entirely from their
stages. The eighteenth-century philosopher Voltaire had to wage a ten-year campaign to
force the Church to allow the burial of a famous French actress in the hallowed ground of
a churchyard. The Church assumed that an actress and a courtesan were in the same
general business, a notion that extended to opera singers and other female performers.
The very free life of the late seventeenth-century opera singer Julie d’Aubigny only
strengthened those convictions. Although there were notable exceptions (e.g., Robert
Schumann’s widow Clara), a middle- or upper-class woman could risk her place in society
if found to be a paid performer.
Class prejudice was also built into the culture of a university. The children of artisans
were, as mentioned, not generally welcome at the university in Montpellier. Universities
conferred degrees that validated a young man’s status in the upper levels of the middle
class—as doctor, lawyer, priest, or other type of “white collar” specialist. Artisans, if they
were to have any kind of advanced training in elite institutions, would pursue that training
outside of a university. For musicians this meant “vocational” training from an early age in
a maîtrise or conservatory. And as we read in the account of the Montpellier orphanage,
the upper classes held in general disdain the “agglomeration of rabble” who received
vocational training.
The new type of German university, which appeared in the early nineteenth century
and became the model for research universities all over the world, had no place for the
rote learning of a craft. A university subject should have theories, proofs, conjectures, and
big ideas that could be tested through written examinations. A bright young upper-class
student should be able to take a semester’s study of a subject and emerge a minor expert
in its issues. One could take a semester of geology, for instance, and learn about minerals
of various kinds. Such a class would never teach the trade of coal mining. Similarly, the
son of a German nobleman could take a semester or two of music classes with the aim of
becoming able to converse intelligently about different musical eras and styles. Those
courses might help him in choosing musicians to teach his future children or to play for
local court ceremonies or civic celebrations. In the university system, actual training in
music performance was considered an extracurricular activity like swimming, tennis, or
team sports.
Even a moment’s glance at the two images on the facing page will reveal for us which
is education for an artisan and which is for the elites. The upper image shows a master
cobbler training a young apprentice. The tools of the trade are laid out on the workbench
and their proper use is an integral part of the training. The apprentice learns through
guided work. The lower image depicts the great English scientist Michael Faraday deliver-
 Chapter 6  social class  79

ing a public lecture on

Christmas Day (ca. 1856).
Various items are spread out
on his lecturn, but they are
there only for the purpose of
demonstration. The fine folk
in his audience do not expect
to employ those items in any
productive enterprise.
In the mid-twentieth
century, the career paths of
young musicians in the
United States were diverted
away from conservatories and
toward colleges or universi-
An apprentice shoemaker, after Louis Émile Adan, ca. 1914
ties. Government policy may
have played a part, as when
the postwar GI Bill sent mil-
lions of veterans to college.
The desire of parents for
their children to “hedge
their bets” by pursuing music
while also “getting an educa-
tion” may have been a fur-
ther factor in steering stu-
dents toward mainstream
schools. Whatever the
causes, the end result is that
today only a few fully inde-
pendent music conservato-
ries remain in the United Michael Faraday delivering a Christmas lecture, ca. 1855
States (Juilliard in New York
and Curtis in Philadelphia
being among the oldest and best known). Future professional musicians train in colleges
and universities, where they take a curriculum developed for European dilettantes (and
that curriculum is spreading to American conservatories). In Europe, where conservato-
ries remain prevalent, there is a program afoot (the “Bologna Project”) to normalize them
as regular degree granting colleges. This international effort to make music a “subject” or
“course” rather than an identity and a long-term project in cognitive and motor condition-
ing has led to a number of problems. The final chapter of this book will make some sug-
gestions for improvements, at least in the realm of classical music.
80 child composers in the old conservatories

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 PA RT II

T ECHNOLOGIES OF T R A INING

in the form of
music lessons

Ch a p t er s 7 t h rough 1 2 try to explain what was being taught inside the old conser-
vatories. The discussions will not venture to describe instruction on particular instru-
ments. In many respects that kind of training has changed little in hundreds of years.
Instead we will focus on what today is sometimes called “general musicianship.” That
includes learning to read music, to sing from notation, to sense the distances between
tones, to recognize counterpoint and harmony, and to improvise at the keyboard. Many of
these skills are today taught superficially as “music theory” in colleges and universities.
What distinguished training in the early conservatories was the intense application of a
fully integrated curriculum over the span of a decade. Graduates of that training had
advanced abilities to imagine multi-part compositions in their minds or to sit at a keyboard
and improvise whatever a listener might wish to hear. Administrative records from the
1700s make it clear that every so often a student might need to be expelled for disciplinary
reasons or for a serious lack of talent. But in the main it would appear that any child will-
ing to make the effort could develop sufficiently to become a professional musician.
Success depended as much on hard work as on any kind of natural gift.

81
@
 7

SCHEM A S, E X EMPL A R S,

A ND T HE

T R E A SUR E T ROV E OF MEMORY

I ow e m uch of m y educ at ion t o Wa lt Dis n e y. His comic books helped me

learn to read, and his gift to artists—the California Institute of the Arts—granted me a bac-
calaureate degree. The best of Disney’s films teach important lessons to huge audiences,
as for instance the tens of millions who viewed Inside Out (2015, by Pixar). It tells the story
of a girl, Riley, and her emotions from the point of view of her brain. Shown below, we can
just make out the tiny figure of Joy (one of Riley’s emotions) standing inside the labyrinth
that stores Riley’s memories. No such physical structure exists in the human brain, but the
pictorial metaphor is nonetheless apt. The brain catalogues memories (the little colored
spheres) by similarity, and the curved blue structures in the image are like flexible library

Screenshots from Inside Out courtesy of Pixar.Wikia.Com

83
84 child composers in the old conservatories

shelves holding books and other media on

related subjects.
On the left we see Joy in a green dress as she
carries one memory past row upon row of other
memories. Note that those memories are color
coded by emotion: angry reds, joyful greens, sad
blues. Human memories combine facts and feel-
ings and all the other aspects of experience that
warrant remembering. In the second frame we
see Joy seated with Sadness (with the blue face),
as they consider a memory that was once a happy
recollection of Riley’s time on a sports team.
That memory is now sadder because Riley’s fam-
ily has moved to San Francisco and Riley feels
the loss of her former friends. As courts of law
learned to their distress in the 1980s from psy-
chologists like Elizabeth Loftus, human memo-
ries are subject to modifications and revisions.
We may be eyewitnesses to events, but our mem-
ories of events can change as we recall them in
new circumstances.
When Joy peers into one of Riley’s memo-
ries she sees details. The memory is not simply
“playground” but an assortment of details about
a particular playground where Riley enjoyed the
swing set and slide. Such a memory has internal
structure because its parts are in themselves
memories. Riley remembers the whole—the
playground—but also the slide, the swing set,
the sand beneath them, the feeling of all those
materials, and the memorable experiences that
she had while there on different occasions.
Lastly, the bottom frame shows Riley’s emo-
tions sitting down to watch a memory unfold as
if it were a motion picture projected in Riley’s
mind. Memories can contain the record of a
sequence of events. Not only does this mean that
we can remember lists and stories, but it means
that we can remember music. We can play all or
part of a piece of music back to ourselves in our
minds.
 Chapter 7  schemas and exemplars  85

Artists involved in live performance—actors, jugglers, musicians, comedians, danc-

ers—often face the same problem. The routines, gestures, tricks, or steps that they choose
to perform in what appears to be spontaneous flights of imagination may be quite difficult
and need to have been worked out and carefully rehearsed ahead of time. In the early to
mid-seventeeth century when the conservatories in Naples were first hiring professional
musicians as teachers, two Italian writers independently mentioned the need for pre-
rehearsed, memorized material in the training of improvising comedians. Pietro Maria
Cecchini wrote that “the actor must see to it that his mind controls his memory (which
dispenses the treasure of memorized phrases over the vast field of opportunities constantly
offered by comedy).”1 And Niccolò Barbieri echoed him, writing that aspiring comic
actors “should study and fortify their memory with a wide variety of things such as sayings,
phrases, love-speeches, reprimands, cries of despair, and ravings, in order to have them
ready for the proper occasion.”2 Although the professional musicians hired as new masters
in Naples may not have read those authors, they seem to have come to similar conclusions
about what young performers and improvisors needed to learn.
Judging by the manuscripts left behind by the masters, the conservatories in Naples
began stuffing the boys’ memories full of “a wide variety of useful things” quite early in
their training. When a boy began to learn harmony through exercises at the keyboard, he
was quickly made acquainted with four classes of patterns above a bass. Different masters
ordered these subjects differently, but they all introduced them early. They were:

1. The Three Types of Cadences: Simple, Compound, and Double

in first, second, and third positions.
2. The Rule of the Octave: Major and Minor
in first, second, and third positions.
3. The Preparation of Suspensions: 4ths, 7ths, 9ths, and 2nds
as prepared by 3rds, 5ths, 6ths, and 8vas.
4. The Standard Bass Motions: Scales and Sequences
with and without dissonances.

CADENCES — Like many Neapolitan masters, let us begin with cadences. Musical
cadences are partly like punctuation marks, in that they articulate and sometimes close off
the flow of tones, and partly like miniature compositions, the smallest possible statement
of a key and its scale. It was this latter aspect that motivated the master Fenaroli’s first pub-
lished statement (1775) about cadences: “A cadence is when the bass goes from the first
tone of the scale to the fifth, and then returns from the fifth to the first.”3 (For the sake of
brevity, I will henceforth replace “the first tone of the scale” with “j”.)
In many respects Fenaroli’s statement is demonstrably false. Relatively few cadences
have a bass that goes j–n–j, and the majority of j–n–j motions in eighteenth-
century basses are not cadences. But Fenaroli was addressing himself figuratively to a ten-
 86 child composers in the old conservatories

year-old boy at the Loreto, a boy who might be seated at a small harpsichord attempting to
perform the type of exercise shown in Example 7.1. The example is taken from a manu-
script copy of Fenaroli’s rules, where the boy is challenged to play correct upper voices
over j–n–j basses in nine different keys in three different positions (“position” refers to
the scale degree of the highest initial tone in the player’s right hand: u, w, or y). The
manuscript showed only basses with figures. Example 7.1 shows a solution or “realization”
for three positions of only the first key, G major. We see what the boy saw—the bass staff
and the accidentals and figures above it—and what the boy probably played with his right
Vi deo 7.1 hand (the treble staff). The circled numbers represent scale degrees and are modern anno-
tations. All these cadences
can be heard on Video
7.1.
Each of the positions
uses the same bass, but
some of the upper three
voices change octaves as
e x . 7.1  The Simple Cadence or cadenza semplice (Naples, ca. 1775) the position changes. A
boy playing these three-
chord cadences over and over in the nine different keys might soon notice that certain
voice-paths recur frequently. In Example 7.1 the imaginary voice that moves F#–G (tinted
red) seems always to be present, at least in the key of G. Given the older form of solfeggio
taught in Naples (see Chap. 8), that semitone interval would be sung mi–fa. As you will
shortly see, it is one of the core features of all of these cadences.
Immediately after presenting the above example, Fenaroli notes that one can add the
interval “7” to the chord on n, and that the seventh over n should progress to a third over
the j. Example 7.2 shows these added sevenths (tinted blue) in three new keys, A minor,
B minor, and C major. The
descent from the dissonant
7th to the consonant 3rd (in
major) is in contrary motion
to the rising mi–fa (in red)
sounding against it.
If a master’s knowledge
of cadences would have a
e x . 7. 2   The Simple Cadence with added 7th (Naples, ca. 1775)
hundred levels, we are only
at level two. But it should
already be clear that the Simple Cadence was not so simple. The Italian word semplice
(SEM-plee-chay) could also be translated as “basic” or “plain,” and no doubt the masters
began with the Simple Cadence because it had a conceptual simplicity. In actual practice,
however, cadences depended greatly on rhythm, meter, the motion of voices, and impor-
tant cues like a rising mi–fa correlated with the resolution of a dissonant seventh.
 Chapter 7  schemas and exemplars  87

The second category of cadences taught to the boys was the Compound Cadence
(see Ex. 7.3), so called because its middle stage (over n) featured a combination of two
events: (1) a prolonged or tied keynote, which becomes a dissonant 4th over n, and (2) the
resolution of the dissonance down to the leading tone (i.e., the mi of mi–fa). Besides prac-
ticing it in three positions in many keys, the boys learned its two variants. In one, the figure
“6” over “4” (6/4) indicates two suspensions. In the other variant, “5/4,” only a single sus-
pension is present.
Finally, the boys
learned the very grand
Double Cadence, some-
times called the Royal
Cadence by musicians in
northern Italy. As shown
in Example 7.4, it fea-
e x . 7.3  The Compound Cadence or cadenza composta (Naples, ca. 1775)
tures four events over the
n. The twofold mi–fa
(shown in red) probably
accounts for the name
“double.” When one
adds in the optional 7ths
and their resolutions
(shown in blue), the
cadence becomes quite e x . 7. 4   The Double Cadence or cadenza doppia (Naples, ca. 1775)
contrapuntal.
The masters’ childlike explanations of these cadence were directed at children. The
master Giovanni Furno, himself once an orphan apprentice at the Onofrio, said that these
cadences differed by the length of the bass note holding the n. A quarter-note meant a
Simple Cadence, a half-note a Compound Cadence, and a whole-note a Double Cadence.
Unfortunately that only works if one uses Furno’s own lessons. In real music any of these
cadence types might have complicated basses with a range of different note values. Trying
to make a short list of essential features for each type of cadence was a fool’s errand.
“Cadence” is a mental category or schema. Its subtypes are distinguished by the overall
similarity of a set of exemplars. Fortunately for the boys in Naples, instruction did not end
with simple models. As soon as a model pattern was presented it was followed by a bass
line (a partimento) that implicitly included exemplars of the pattern. In working out a
realization of that bass, a boy would experience the pattern in a range of situations. Over
time the wealth of exemplars in his memory would coalesce into a flexible and mature
mental schema, one that could help guide both improvisation and composition. Like
Riley’s memory of her playground, a boy’s memory of “cadence” became full of detail and
mixed with recollections of what cadences felt like when played, sung, or heard. A boy
could play cadences back in his mind, focusing on any one of their shared features.
 88 child composers in the old conservatories

RULE OF THE OCTAVE — The second subject taught to beginners required

memorizing what chords were to be played above each tone of a complete octave scale in
the bass. There were actually two Rules because some of the chords changed depending
on whether the bass was rising or fall-
ing. Example 7.5 illustrates the effects
of the two series of figured-bass num-
bers. Degrees j and n and q (in red)
are the stable anchors and are given 5/3
chords. All the other chords are unsta-
ble (in green), each given a version of a
“6” chord (note the topmost figures).
Furthermore, chords that precede an
anchor tone have a dissonance (a 3-digit
figure) that resolves into the anchor.
e x . 7.5  The Rule of the Octave illustrated This is depicted by arrows from the dis-
sonance to the anchor. As the illustra-
tion implies, degree l was treated as partly stable, partly unstable. It was more stable than
Vi deo 7. 2 its surrounding tones (k and m), but less stable than the anchors. Video 7.2 contains
recordings of both major and minor versions of the Rule of the Octave.
To outsiders, the Rule of the Octave, which probably dates from the 1680s, has always
seemed like strange magic concealed in tangled ciphers. But when memorized and played
in a number of keys in all three positions (literally a “hands-on education”), a boy could
come to rely on the Rule as a useful guide to the harmonization of all or part of a scale in
the bass. The Rule creates an implicit linkage in a boy’s memory between four factors: (1)
scale step, (2) contour in the bass (up/down), (3) dissonance/consonance, and (4) perfec-
tion/imperfection. The last factor, perfection/imperfection, inherited a centuries-old asso-
ciation of intervals of a 6th with instability (“imperfection” meaning incomplete) and of
5ths with stable anchor points (“perfection,” meaning complete). The way in which all
these factors interact would have been very difficult to express verbally, but a conservatory
boy could absorb these complex relationships in the Rule through repetitive practice,
eventually embodying them in his fingers.

SUSPENSIONS — The subject of suspensions or prolongations (from the act of sus-

pending a tone’s progress to a new tone and thereby prolonging its duration) was required
early in a boy’s education. It concerned the patterns that set up and resolve dissonances.
Both the Compound and Double Cadences involve suspensions, and many of the disso-
nances in the Rule of the Octave would involve suspensions if composed in a sacred style.
Fenaroli’s own master, Francesco Durante (1684–1755), may have introduced suspen-
sions as the boys’ first subject at the keyboard, judging from some surviving manuscripts.
Durante’s approach probably owes a large debt to the seventeenth century, when he him-
self was a young apprentice at the Poveri in Naples. There are echoes of the old Aristotelian
doctrines of the four elements and four humors in the Italian tradition of naming four
 Chapter 7  schemas and exemplars  89

consonances (3rd, 5th, 6th, and 8va) and four dissonances (2nd, 4th, 7th, and 9th). For the
4th and 7th, which lend themselves to the widest array of uses, Durante shows how each
one can be prepared by each of the four consonances. As was seen with Fenaroli’s presen-
tation of cadences (Exx. 7.1–4), Durante would name the topic and then present a bass
with that topic played in different keys. Take, for instance, Durante’s rule (as these exem-
plars were called) for
the “fourth preparation
of the 4th, which stems
from the 6th” (see Ex.
7.6). He had already
shown three other ways
to prepare the 4th, and
this was his fourth. He
e x . 7.6   Durante, the 4th prepared by the 6th (Naples, ca. 1740s)
chose the context of a
Compound Cadence,
though contra Fenaroli, the bass does not begin with a j. Each dissonant 4th (in red) is
prepared as a consonant 6th over the preceding bass. Then the dissonance is resolved
downward one step (in blue) to touch the mi of the mi–fa cadential move over the n–j
bass. Durante only wrote out the bass. The student had to complete the right-hand part.
Durante’s manner was to generally give a bit more context in his rules than did
Fenaroli or Furno. Stated differently, one might say that Fenaroli and Furno preferred Vi deo 7.3
brief models followed by longer lessons that put the model in context. Durante tended to
blur that distinction. In
Example 7.7 we see
Durante’s second presen-
tation of a rule for a 9th
prepared by a 3rd. His
rule is fourteen measures
long, of which only the
first four are shown (all
can be heard in Video e x . 7.7  Durante, the 9th prepared by the 3rd (Naples, ca. 1740s)
7.3).
Durante’s extended context leads in measure 3 to the beginning of a cadence, and the
cadence extends the contrapuntal sequence. Had the last two quarter-notes in the bass of
measure 3 (D–E) been replaced by a half-note E, this would be Fenaroli’s Compound
Cadence. But by Fenaroli’s and Furno’s definitions, this is a Simple Cadence. Further
complicating matters was Durante’s habit of lumping Compound Cadences under Simple
Cadences. Again we see that the many affinities between exemplars could not be easily
categorized. In part such difficulties appear because, if we think of chapel singers perform-
ing sacred polyphony, cadences and other musical schemas were group efforts. There
were multiple parts to sing and those parts could interact in countless ways. Keyboard
accompanists numbered the intervals above the bass as if all the singers acted only in rela-
90 child composers in the old conservatories

tion to the bass. But often that was an oversimplification. In Example 7.7 there are “9s” in
relation to the bass, but from the singers’ perspective the salient intervals are the “7s”
between the soprano (the red dissonances) and the alto (a 7th below).

SEQUENCES — The last of the four basic subjects involved basses composed of a
core module of one or two intervals that was then transposed, up or down, repeatedly.
Musicians today call these sequences; in eighteenth-century Naples they were called either
movimenti (moe-vee-MEN-tee, bass movements) or moti del basso (MOAT-ee dell BAH-
sew, motions of the bass). The simplest to describe was the scale or scala. Its module was
a single step. Successively transposing that interval up or down created an ascending or
descending scale. Durante’s Example 7.7 on the previous page provides the case of a
movimento with a module of two intervals. Beginning on its second bass note (C), his bass
ascends one step (C–D) and then descends a 3rd (D–B). That module is then transposed
down a step three more times. Chapter 19 presents a complete set of movimenti and offers
numerous examples of how the boys learned schematic upper voices designed to fit a par-
ticular movimento. With all of these patterns stored in memory, a boy was then able to
progress to more challenging, more realistic musical tasks.

MORE COMPLEX SCHEMAS — The basic patterns discussed above could all be
described to the boys as particular note-to-note patterns in a bass. That was how Fenaroli
described cadences (“A cadence is when the bass goes from j to n, . . .”). In practice, of
course, the idea of a bass “going” from j to n could involve intermediate tones and other
figurations and diminutions. Thus an important part of a child’s musical education was
developing the ability to sense the gist of a musical passage. If a boy could play a passage
in a bass and think to himself, “Ah, j is going to n,” that meant he was able to judge the
bass in relation to learned templates or schemas, and that meant he could gauge the bass’s
function or implication, as in, “This could be leading into a cadence.” Fenaroli’s own
partimenti are full of frequently recurring patterns that the master did not explicitly name
in print (though he may have drawn attention to them or named them in his lessons at the
conservatory). But an alert boy who would study and perform these partimenti would
almost certainly notice that the gist of many passages was quite similar. At first he might
learn each partimento separately and memorize its patterns as a series of separate exem-
plars. But over time, as he became aware that his hands were making similar motions in
the different partimenti, he could hardly have escaped noticing the similarities, especially
when there were clues to the similarities hidden in the notation.
Sherlock Holmes was the great master at detecting hidden clues, and in 1946
Hollywood showed how closely skillful detective work could approach musicological
research. In Dressed to Kill (or The Secret Code as it was released in the UK), the last of the
series of wartime films starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, Holmes investigates mur-
ders connected with the theft of mechanical music boxes. Holmes is conveniently able to
hear the music played by each box. Given his acute musical memory (the character is
 Chapter 7  schemas and exemplars  91

often seen playing the violin), he notices

that although the music boxes seem to play
the same song, there are subtle differences.
He is at a loss to understand how to interpret
these differences until his friend Dr. Watson
mentions a music teacher who numbered
the notes to aid a beginner. With his superb
powers of deduction Holmes is then able to
decrypt a secret code hidden in the variant
notes. Video 7.4 presents a number of clips
from the movie.
Holmes’s method with the music boxes
is not that different from how a scholar
might go about ferreting out recurring pat-
terns that were important for eighteenth-
century music. Let us, in place of music
boxes, use some of Fenaroli’s elementary
Movie poster, UK, 1946
partimenti to see if they contain clues to the
more complex schemas learned by the boys in Naples. To limit our search (and guarantee Vi deo 7. 4
its success) we will look for passages that (1) begin with an accidental in the bass and (2)
are followed by a parallel passage transposed one step higher or lower.
Fenaroli’s partimento no. 3 (Gj 1303) contains two passages that meet both require-
ments, as shown in Example 7.8. The E# in measure 9 leads to an F#-minor tonic on the
downbeat of measure 10 (shown in red notes as a mi-fa interval). If, following Dr. Watson’s
hint, we number the scale degrees and if we pay attention to the gist of the bass (repre-
sented by the notes that fall on the strongest beats), the pattern that results is (starting with
the first E#): p – j – n – j in the minor mode. Let us call that “x.” Following the rest
in m. 11, the p – j – n – j pattern repeats, but one step lower in the key of E major.

e x . 7. 8   Fenaroli, partimento no. 3 from book one, measures 9–17 (Naples, ca. 1780s)
 92 child composers in the old conservatories

Let us call that “x' ” (x prime). After the notated rest in measure 13, the entire combination
of x and x' repeats, but now in the keys of B minor and A major. That “one step lower,
minor-to-major” pattern is a potential schema, as indicated by its verbose label on the
example. While the algebra-like symbology represents a twentieth-century, academic
approach to music analysis, one that likely overstates the extent to which musical patterns
are heard as separate and distinct blocks, the overall musical pattern is still something that
a small boy could feel and hear. Its relationships are audible, and the intervening rests help
to articulate its component parts.
In the next two partimenti, nos. 4 and 5, Fenaroli provides additional instances of this
possible schema (see Ex. 7.9). In no. 4 (the upper staff), the pattern gains a short prefix (the
descent E–D–C# shown under a curved line) but moves to j only once in each key (D
minor, C major) and lessens the role of n. But in partimento no. 5 Fenaroli returns to the
way things were handled in partimento no. 3, though he adds syncopations and the type
of prefix heard in partimento no. 4. The keys are more unusual—G# minor, F# major—
but they maintain the same one-step-lower, minor-to-major relationship.

e x . 7.9   Fenaroli, partimento no. 4 (upper staff) and no. 5 (lower staff) from book one (Naples,
ca. 1780s)

Three partimenti cannot settle the question of whether the boys in the conservatories
developed a generic memory—a schema—for this type of more complex musical pattern.
But if one looked at thousands of similar musical phrases and took note, just as did Sherlock
Holmes, of what was a central recurring feature and what was more incidental, then one
could begin to have some confidence that this pattern was, indeed, something stored in
the boys’ memories. It should be noted that it is not necessary to have a name for some-
thing for it still to be stored in memory. Most of us would have a hard time naming the way
we manage to stay upright on a moving bicycle, but knowledge of how we do it is some-
thing we learned when young and then securely stored in memory.
 Chapter 7  schemas and exemplars  93

Although not trained at a conservatory, Mozart as a boy nevertheless had a brain that,
like a sponge, soaked up everything that he heard. Because he heard the “one-step-lower,
minor-to-major” pattern in countless pieces by adults, he used it in his own pieces from an
early age. Around the time of his sixth birthday (January 1762, the year of Cimarosa’s note-
book; see Chap. 2) he wrote a simple minuet for the harpsichord, a piece given the desig-
nation KV 2. As Example 7.10 shows, in measure 9 (the very measure Fenaroli chose for
this pattern in his partimento no. 3) he penned the same type of pattern taught by Fenaroli.
And for the rest of his life Mozart would use this pattern over and over again, always in
slightly new ways. (Realizations of Fenaroli’s basses and Mozart’s complete Minuet KV 2
can be heard on Video 7.5.) Vi deo 7.5

e x . 7.1 0  Mozart, Minuet in F major, bass only (Salzburg, January 1762)

In the Mozart family library there was a book by the chapel master at Regensburg, a
Joseph Riepel (1709–1782). In this book Riepel wrote out short melodies to illustrate the
same type of one-step-lower, minor-then-major pattern given in Fenaroli’s and Mozart’s
basses. He used the exact phrase “one step lower” (though in German) and gave the whole
pattern the compact name of Fonte (PHONE-tay), an Italian word that he translated as
“going down a well.”4 Were this a Sherlock Holmes mystery, Riepel would be the star wit-
ness. He corroborates the deductions gleaned from the evidence and testifies that “Yes,
this pattern was an object in our world of music; it was a thing we all recognized and it had
a name and known characteristics.” He actually said, in an imaginary dialogue with a
music student, that the Fonte and Monte (a rising schema) were things that a student
needed to learn and maintain in memory his whole life. What was true in the provincial
German town of Regensburg was certainly true in Naples, one of the great cities of Europe,
and it explains why Riepel’s Fonte was taught in the conservatories.
The Fonte is but one schema. There were hundreds of them that one needed to learn
in order to become an accomplished musician in the eighteenth century. My book Music
in the Galant Style (Oxford, 2007) surveys a few dozen of them, and more are being
researched all the time.
 94 child composers in the old conservatories

WAS THERE AWARENESS? — Were musicians and audiences really aware of the
schemas used in their music? Answering the question partly hinges on what we mean by
“awareness.” If we mean “knew all the schemas in detail and had names for them,” then
only professional musicians would qualify, and perhaps not all of them. If, by contrast, we
mean “recognized the schemas as familiar contexts and had a good sense for what came
next as one proceeded through them,” then all professionals and their audiences probably
qualified.
As mentioned, Riepel discussed the Fonte schema in the 1750s, noting that the rep-
etition of its first phrase occurred “one step lower.” The same idea, though in French, is
detailed in a description of the Fonte given in 1799 in Paris by Honoré Langlé. And it is
very unlikely that Langlé had ever read Riepel—Langlé does not use Riepel’s term.
Langlé made a point of emphasizing his pedigree as a graduate of one of the Naples
conservatories. The Prince of Monaco had paid to send him as a fifteen-year-old to Naples
to study with master Cafaro at the Pietà. He stayed there eight years. Eventually he
returned to French territory, gave keyboard lessons to Marie Antoinette at the Palace of
Versailles, was appointed (1784) to the Royal School for Singing and Declamation, and
then transferred to the conservatory when it opened in 1795.
The portrait below depicts him at the keyboard, perhaps looking skyward for inspira-
tion, with his 1795 treatise on harmony sitting on his music stand. That text, with its rep-
lication of the Rule of the Octave, cadences, and the standard bass motions, helped to
transmit Neapolitan instruction to the conservatory. In a similar treatise from 1799, Langlé
talks about avoiding setting two similar cadences in a row. That brings up his discussion of
the Fonte, though that term is not used:5

Here is an opportunity to speak of a license that the greatest

composers allow themselves, especially those who write with
taste; this license consists in putting a dominant pedal-point
of a major key [e.g., G as n of C major] under a melodic
phrase that belongs to the dominant and tonic minor of the
second note [i.e., D minor] of the same major key, and then
to repeat the same phrase one tone lower, this is to say,
always in the tonic key [i.e., C major] of this same pedal-
point. This license is elegantly employed to avoid two final
cadences in direct succession.

I will finish this article by making known what is understood

in music by the term Rosalia.

A Rosalia is exactly the reverse of the preceding example; it

is the same melodic phrase repeated one tone higher. This
phrase, by means of this repetition, produces two final
cadences in direct succession, though this is no more a com-
Honoré Langlé by Louise le Brun positional fault than in the example above. But one needs to
 Chapter 7  schemas and exemplars  95

avoid these types of repeti-

tion of the same phrase
because they are monoto-
nous, flat, and boring, and
they announce the sterility
of the composer. I will per-
haps please my readers by
telling them the anecdote
that gave the name Rosalia
to these types of melodic e x . 7.1 1   Langlé, Fonte schema, two cadences in a row (Paris, 1799)
phrases.

An Italian composer
whose name escapes me,
to whom nature failed to
accord much genius, was
charged with setting the
mass to music for the feast
day of Santa Rosalia. The
music was filled from one
end to the other with flat
phrases repeated ad nau- e x . 7.1 2   Langlé, Fonte schema over a pedal-point (Paris, 1799)
seam. The Italian musi-
cians, naturally cheerful
and sarcastic, soon caught
on to the poverty of ideas and mocked it: a pair of them, more amusing or more wicked
than the others, told their neighbors that when familiar friends are met, good manners
demand that they be greeted. Consequently it was agreed that whenever this unfortunate
phrase, which had been repeated so often, was encountered, it would be warmly greeted.
The joke instantly spread from one end of the orchestra to the other, so that every time the
famous passage presented itself the orchestra nodded grandly. The audience soon caught
on to this pantomime; laughter was joined on both sides and produced a kind of scandal
that was greatly unsettling for the devout listeners and for the poor composer. And it is
from this anecdote that the name Rosalia has remained for any phrase repeated a step Vi deo 7.6
higher. See No. 25 [Ex. 7.13] for an example of a Rosalia. (Hear Langlé’s examples in
Video 7.6.)

As an organized mem-
ory of similar experiences, a
schema builds up associa-
tions with the valuations that
we place on those experi-
ences. In Riepel’s day, when
Mozart was still a small boy,
the associations that musi-
e x . 7.13  Langlé, Monte schema named Rosalia (Paris, 1799)
96 child composers in the old conservatories

cians had with the Fonte or Monte schema were generally positive. The clear sense of
order and structure that was conveyed by transposing similar blocks of music up or down
a step was in keeping with the aesthetics of that era. By the time of Langlé’s treatise, which
was written after the French Revolution, a straightforward presentation of a Fonte or
Monte had begun to seem a little hackneyed. And by the early twentieth century, when
Ravel was achieving fame as a young composer, his teacher André Gedalge felt that the
Rosalia (Riepel’s Monte) should be avoided at all costs.
A manuscript held at Northwestern University,6 dated June 4, 1904, contains Gedalge’s
corrections to, and comments about, a young lady’s exercise in two-voice sketches of free
composition. This would be the kind of sketch that one might make in preparation for the
Rome Prize competition. In his summary note to this unnamed “Mademoiselle,” as he
addressed her, he began by remarking that her themes were good. Later, as the image
below will verify, he said, “But they turn down the path of the Rosalia! and this is some-
thing you want to avoid.” In other words, a highly trained conservatory graduate in 1904
should have the whole repertory of traditional schemas in mind, but their use in modern
compositions should be kept well below the musical surface. What had once been the
aesthetically pleasing clarity of simple schemes of transposition or patterns of two-voice
counterpoint that went up or down the scale had, after two centuries of usage, become
associated with simplistic, generic composition written mechanically and without origi-
nality.

A note from Gedalge to one of his students, June 1904

How did composers think about schemas in the time of, say, Beethoven? Beethoven
himself used all the eighteenth-century schemas in both standard and nonstandard ways.
But we do not have direct testimony from him about their merit in the composer’s art.
Luigi Cherubini was ten years Beethoven’s senior and someone he greatly admired.
Cherubini went on to become director of the Paris Conservatory in 1822, staying well into
the era of Chopin, Schumann, and Liszt, and his many pedagogical publications can give
us some insight into the opinions of composers from Beethoven’s generation. Cherubini’s
marches harmoniques—four-voice schemas built on bass motions—were published post-
humously (1851), and their defense in the book’s preface probably represents the profes-
sional sentiment of composers in the early 1800s.7

The book we are offering to the public has been in the hands of pupils of the Conservatoire
for more than twenty years, but it is only on a copy of the author’s manuscript that the
professors of this institution explain it to their disciples and apply it.
 Chapter 7  schemas and exemplars  97

This book, a true vade mecum for the harmonist, is

only useful to pupils already possessing the theoreti-
cal and practical knowledge of chords; Even when
they have come to the study of artificial harmony,
that is to say, when they are sufficiently advanced to
use passing notes, and such as appoggiaturas, antici-
pations, syncopations, and especially suspensions,
that the pupils of the classes of harmony at the
Conservatoire are engaged in the study of this col-
lection.

Although at first inspection it may seem rather

strange that specimens of ready-made phrases
should be learned, as it were, by heart; we may
observe, that these processes, which are, so to speak,
mechanical, are daily helpful, not only in specula-
tive compositions, but also in sacred and dramatic
Luigi Cherubini, 1842, by Ingres
music, where, by the intelligent use of a marche har-
monique, of a progression that a composer, a man of
taste, knows how to rejuvenate by concealing it in an elegant way, the ties that bind the
reproduction of a main motif, or the obligatory return of an important sentence, acquire
an interest which is not without charm.

It is sometimes in the most pathetic moments of the lyrical drama that one finds the use
of marches harmoniques: By opening the sublime score of William Tell, the more modest
one of La Sonnambula [“up 4th, dn 2nd,” rehearsal #3 in opening number], casting his
eyes on the tenor aria in the first act of La Dame Blanche [“dn 2nd, up 4th”], one will
acquire the proof of this truth. We could extend our quotations, but we shall conclude this
brief exposition by telling our readers that Cherubini’s posthumous work was, in the mind
of that learned composer, the indispensable complement of all treatises on harmony,
whatever the systems in which their different authors have conceived them; thanks to its
appearance, all those engaged in the study of the science of chords will possess a harmonic
compendium which will dispose them to the study of counterpoint or fugal style, and to
the more learned style of fugue, that true musical rhetoric of the art of composition.

So it seems that professionals knew that stock material had great utility even in the
most artful compositions if one went about “concealing it in an elegant way.” Listeners in
the age of Romanticism wanted to believe that their favorite compositions were totally new
and spontaneously inspired with no traces of recycled material. Ironically, when compos-
ers finally delivered totally new music, in the guise of the twentieth-century avant-garde,
listeners in the great majority were confused and disappointed. Languages, musical or
otherwise, depend on shared understandings. For centuries, musical schemas have helped
to facilitate communications between composers and their listeners. A schema, like a
colored globe in Riley’s memory, will find its way into our minds and later help us recog-
nize and respond to new musical experiences that draw upon its potential.
98 child composers in the old conservatories

@
 8

SOLFEGGI

A ND T HE

ACQUISI T ION OF ST Y LE

“ Wh en you si ng you begi n w i t h D o, R e , M i.” That was the advice given by

Maria von Trapp (played by Julie Andrews) to the von Trapp children in The Sound of
Music (1965). She was recommending that the children take a set of nonsense syllables
and apply them to various musical tones. In her world, the Latin syllables do (“doe”), re
(“ray”), and mi (“mee”) signified the first three steps of the musical scale. For young
apprentices in Naples or Paris the same syllables had somewhat different meanings
(described later), but the intended purpose was the same. By memorizing and pronounc-
ing the syllables a child could give physical embodiment to the incorporeal sounds of
music. What had been invisible tones would gain names and identities. What had been

An image from the 1965 movie The Sound of Music

99
 100 child composers in the old conservatories

abstract musical relationships could now be described by reference to named tones, whose
individual characteristics and names could become as well known as those of the child’s
playmates. Entering this world of music sung to syllables—solfeggi (sole-FEDGE-ee)—
was the first step toward musical literacy, meaning the ability to read and write musical
notation. And musical literacy opened a child’s mind to music written in other places and
times, locations to which living sound was unable to travel.
Job one for little choirboys was learning to read plainsong, also known as Gregorian
chant. Memorizing all the chants would have taken years, but if the boys could read chant
notation they could go directly to work as choristers. To that end Italian choirboys had for
centuries been using the Guidonian Hand, named after the Italian monk Guido of Arezzo
who proposed it in the twelfth century. As shown below in a fifteenth-century manuscript,
a boy’s left hand had notes of the scale assigned to
each crease in each finger and to the tip of each
finger. The text displayed on the palm begins “The
way to read the hand . . . ” and goes on to describe
the signs on the chart. The tip of the thumb is
Gama ut, labeled as note 1 (today this would be a G
at the bottom of the bass staff). “Gamma” was the
Greek letter “G.” “Ut” was a Latin word. On the
middle of the boy’s thumb was A–re (letter A, note
name re, and note 2), and at the base of the boy’s
thumb was B–mi (letter B, note name mi, and note
3). Thus, if the master touched the base of the boy’s
thumb, the boy was expected to sing mi at an appro-
riate pitch and to know that in notation it was on a
staff line above the notes ut and re. Engaging a
boy’s sense of touch probably helped him realize
that tones were an ordered set to which one could
apply descriptors like “up,” “down,” “step,” “leap,”
and so forth. Given that the syllable do replaced ut
An illustration of the Guidonian Hand, ca. 1480
in the later seventeenth century, these three thumb
positions on the boy’s hand—do–re–mi, 1–2–3—were just like the syllables used in The
Sound of Music. But that is about as far as the similarity goes.
It is at the fourth note, found at the base of the boy’s index finger, that we can recog-
nize some of the subtleties and complexities of the old system. That location, C–fa–ut
(letter C, note names fa and ut, and note 4) is given twin note names. The boy would learn
that C was not only a fourth note from the reference tone G but also a new ut. As a new ut
it could have a re and a mi above it, but those tones would also be the fifth and sixth notes
above the low G. So at the base of his middle and ring fingers the boy would have D–sol–
re (note 5) and E–la–mi (note 6). Note seven, F at the base of the baby finger, is both fa
 Chapter 8  solfeggi  101

from C and a new ut itself. And the note above it, G or note 8 at the second crease of the
baby finger, now has three names: sol from the C, re from the F, and ut from the new G.
Example 8.1 presents, in graphic form, the information embodied in a choirboy’s
hand. Sixteenth-century diamond-shaped noteheads show the pitches, numbers in green
show the ordinal position of those pitches, letters in blue show how notes an octave apart
have the same names (G . . . G, A . . . A, etc.), and the solfeggio names in red show the
repeated groupings of six notes (“hexachords”).

 he traditional scale of plainchant, transposed up an octave to better match the vocal range
e x . 8 .1   T
of young boys

In terms of the distances between tones, hexachords have a symmetrical pattern. For
the hexachord beginning on G, all the notes are separated by whole tones except for B and
C, which as mi and fa are a semitone apart and span the center of the hexachord. The
hexachords beginning on C or F are the same, so in musician’s parlance any note with a
semitone above it was a mi and any note with a semitone below it was fa. Thus a G# was a
mi and a Bb was a fa. Notice how in Example 8.1 this leads to two different Bs: when B is
mi (B§) it sounds a semitone higher than when it is fa (Bb).
The treatment of B distinguished the three types of hexachords. The “natural” hexa-
chord beginning on C requires no B at all. But the “soft” (Latin: mollis) hexachord begin-
ning on F required a soft B. That is, B as Fa was marked by a lowercase “b” with a rounded,
soft shape (b). The “hard” (Latin: durus) hexachord beginning on G required a hard B,
and that B as mi was marked by a “b” with an angular, boxy shape (§ or #). Although almost
no beginning music student today thinks in terms of hexachords, those old patterns still
echo through the centuries disguised as simple accidentals. And they explain why, in
some old eighteenth-century scores, a # might be used to cancel, for instance, an Eb. That
# did not mean “Play E a semitone higher (as F).” Instead it meant “Treat E as mi” (i.e., as
E§).
Different plainchants might have different focal or ending pitches. In the medieval
way of numbering the styles or “modes” of chants, those that would emphasize D as a final
pitch were called Mode 1 or Mode 2 (Mode 2 had a lower average range). Other similar
pairs of modes focused on E (nos. 3–4), F (nos. 5–6), or G (nos. 7–8). But the tones of the
scale and its hexachords remained relatively fixed. For example, in E modes (nos. 3–4),
 102 child composers in the old conservatories

the tone F was still fa, just as it was in all the other modes. Fa meant “A tone with a half
step below it and a whole step above it.” Fa did not mean “The fourth step or degree of the
scale.” Instead, the fourth step of the first E mode (no. 3) was A–la–mi–re, which triangu-
lates its location from the three hexachordal reference tones, C, F, and G, not from E.
Concert music of the type favored in the late 1600s was far more dynamic than plain-
chant. Melodies extended both higher and lower, rhythms were more complex and in
meters, stock patterns were frequently transposed (meaning they were incrementally
shifted up or down in pitch), and individual tones were giving up some of their local
meanings (e.g., A as la–re–mi) for a more global meaning (A as tone 6 in the key of C).
These and other factors led to a partial revision of the tonal system taught to the boys.
Example 8.2 shows the same scale as Example 8.1, but notice the many changes in
how it was conceptualized. The soft hexachord on F is gone. The scale is now a combina-
tion of only the natural and hard hexachords (C and G). When ascending beyond a single
hexachord, one shifts or “mutates” to re to enter the higher hexachord, and when descend-
ing one shifts to la (see the arrows on Ex. 8.2). Instead of being numbered from Gamma

e x . 8 . 2   The old scale adapted to meet the needs of a more dynamic tonal system. This was the
tonal system from ca. 1670–1830.

up to the very highest pitch, the pitches were now ordered in relation to a do on C. Boys
were taught that for a “key of C” the tone C was primo del tono (the first note of the key,
j), D was secondo del tono (k), and so forth from j to p. A secondary sense of scale
numbers from G, the hard hexachord, remained active but in the background. As we saw
with the Rule of the Octave (Chap. 7), scale degrees j and n became stable tonal cen-
ters and focal points (as graphically highlighted in Ex. 8.2). If other tonal references devel-
oped strongly in the course of a solfeggio, the boys were taught to shift the whole system
so that the scale degrees would realign to fit the new context. The up and down motion of
a melody had long been called its modulation. But in the newer tonal system of Ex. 8.2,
the word was now used to describe the shifting of tonal reference points and the realign-
ment of the scale. A new accidental, Bb for instance, could force an uscita di tono (oo-
 Chapter 8  solfeggi  103

SHEET-ah, an “exit from the key,” meaning a departure from the old key, one demanding
a recontextualization of the tonal order).
Many of the details of exactly how the boys prepared and performed solfeggi are
uncertain today, especially concerning music that was melodically complex and chro-
matic. While the basics of which syllables to use in plainchant are well documented and
reflected in the above discussion, the use of syllables in concertlike music remains a sub-
ject of research and debate. Nicholas Baragwanath at the University of Nottingham has
examined most of the surviving solfeggio manuals and is preparing a book on the subject.
For the purposes of the present discussion three things may be worth emphasizing. First,
the boys developed a heightened sensitivity to the location of the mi–fa semitones in the
current scale. This would prove to be valuable knowledge when improvising eighteenth-
century harmony and counterpoint. Second, an early nineteenth-century source claims
that the youngest boys in Naples began their solfeggio training by speaking, not singing,
the syllables of a melody.1 This was called solfeggio parlato (“spoken solfeggio”), and we
are told that this practice might continue for as long as three years while a conservatory
waited for a boy’s voice to drop in pitch to its new male register. Presumably the idea was
to allow a boy to become fluent in the syllables (and music notation) before adding in the
additional task of singing the right pitches. And third, as the following paragraphs will
demonstrate, solfeggi were usually of real musical interest and often quite sophisticated.
The exercises provided training in style, ornamentation, a melodic vocabulary, the feel of
suspensions and other dissonances, the contrapuntal interplay of a melody with a bass, and
the musical rhymes of larger, more complex schemas.
What proved wonderfully effective for illiterate children practicing this art every day
may, in the modern world, prove a serious impediment to college-age students who already
read music and practice solfeggi infrequently. See Appendix A for more on this subject.

STEPS AND LEAPS — The simplest solfeggi were designed to help students master
the basic melodic elements of steps, in the form of ascending and descending scales, and
of leaps, in the form of ascending and descending sequences. Today a teacher might play
a simple scale or sequence of leaps on a piano and then ask a student to sing it. At that
moment the student is like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming vehicle. Alone
and with no assistance likely to be forthcoming, the student attempts to sing a series of
musical intervals corresponding to what he or she heard the teacher play. And through this
encounter, sad to say, little or nothing is learned about a great musical tradition. The con-
servatories of Naples took a different approach. A master like Leonardo Leo would present
simple melodic materials but accompany them at the harpsichord in a full context of
harmony and counterpoint, as if the student were singing a slow aria accompanied by a
full orchestra. The student would sense each new note as it found its place in this world of
musical relationships, and the feel of that special place for each note was reinforced each
time the exercise was sung by different children in Leo’s class.
 104 child composers in the old conservatories

Let us take a look at an exercise that Leo created for learning the scale (Ex. 8.3, solfeg-
gio Gj 5001). The scale here is the “hexachord” of six notes, ascending and descending, in
a G-major context (the key signature looks like that of C major but it is actually an older
version of G major). For the first ten measures the singer performs nothing but whole-
Vi deo 8 .1 notes. (The entire solfeggio can be heard in Video 8.1.)

u y
Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Sol

w
Fa Mi Re Do

Cad. in G Do Re Mi
Cad. in D

e x . 8 .3   Leo, the opening of a solfeggio in G major (Gj 5001, ca. 1730s)

Leo presents a great deal more than a simple scale in this lesson. In terms of harmony,
the chords implied by the melody-bass duo follow the Rule of the Octave in the ascent and
the Prinner schema2 in the la–sol–fa–mi descent (with this schema’s fa–mi–re–do bass). In
terms of cadences, there is an implied Compound Cadence in G major, which leads to a
Tenor Cadence in D major (with a re–do bass taking the part often sung by the tenor). In
terms of counterpoint, we see a number of suspensions and their resolutions (the notes in
red in the bass), and an expert might notice that the whole opening section has been writ-
ten in “double counterpoint.” That is, the counterpoint allows for either part to be the bass
of the other. Leo realizes that possibility in measure 12, where the singer’s previous melody
now becomes the bass. There are also subtle interactions of these features. For instance,
in the opening measures the more stable melodic scale degrees u and y are not given
suspensions in the accompaniment, while the less stable degrees between them are.
Similarly the melodic w, as the termination of the Prinner schema, completes a Soprano
Cadence (leading tone to tonic in the bass) in G major while the la, sol, and fa tones
descending to w all initiate suspensions in the accompaniment. Finally it is worth noting
that re in measure 10, which is about to descend to do, is given a trill. That special caden-
tial function of degree v when trilled is so reliable an indicator of impending closure that
concerto soloists always use it to warn of the approaching end of a cadenza and the return
of the orchestra.

DUETS — When two voices sing together, each voice gets to experience the effects
of dissonances, the trading back and forth of melodic motives, and the coordination
needed to make a satisfying cadence. Some of the most widely copied solfeggi from Naples
 Chapter 8  solfeggi  105

were duets, which came in several distinct types. The first type might be called a plain
duet since only two voices are involved. The great master Francesco Durante wrote a few
such duos for soprano and bass. That would allow for a master and young pupil to sing
together, or the master could play the lower part on the harpsichord, or a senior boy could
sing with a junior boy. The duo shown in Example 8.4 has each voice first introduce the
theme, first in G major and then in D major, before beginning a rising schema—what
Riepel termed a Monte (MOAN-tay), as in “going up a mountain.” Each half of this
schema (x or x') features the lower voice rising mi–fa (the notes in red) while the upper
voice makes the complementary descent fa–mi (the notes in blue). The entire duo (which
can be heard in Video 8.2) presents a rapid interplay between cadences, the Monte Vi deo 8 . 2
schema, and the Fonte schema (see Chap. 7), with the voices frequently changing their
roles in each pattern. In singing this at a brisk tempo, boys could learn to recognize the gist
of harmony, counterpoint, and form, in spite of the torrent of fast notes. And in learning to
perform music organized not note-by-note but gesture-by-gesture, they were learning to
understand the fashionable musical style of the day.

e x . 8 . 4  Durante, the opening of a solfeggio duo in G major (Naples, ca. 1740s)

Durante’s solfeggio begins almost like a fugue as the upper voice states the subject in
the tonic key (G) and the lower voice then follows with the same subject in the key of the
dominant (D). But in a real fugue the first voice would not fall silent when the second one
enters, and there would be more equality of the parts. Beginning with the Monte, the
upper part clearly has the melodic focus of attention while the lower part has a supporting
role.
A second type of solfeggio duo involves true fugues, where the voices are of equal
interest and engage in many standard forms of contrapuntal interplay. These fugues served
a double purpose. Not only did they train boys how to sing in the contrapuntal style still
common in church music, but they also familiarized them with the elements of fugue in
preparation for lessons in advanced written counterpoint. Take for example a solfeggio
fugue written by Pergolesi, who as mentioned in Chapter 4, was an exceptionally talented
student. As shown in Example 8.5, this fugue adopts the same conservative notation in
 106 child composers in the old conservatories

long note values and long meter (4/2 time) that Palestrina might have used at the Vatican
in the late 1500s.

e x . 8 .5   Pergolesi, the opening of a two-voice solfeggio fugue in D minor (Naples, ca. 1730)

The lower, alto voice begins with the Subject, which opens by intoning the two tones
A and D that form the pillars of the key of D minor. The contralto then enters with the
Answer, reversing the order of the pillar tones and then continuing in the key of A minor.
While the Answer is sung by the contralto (upper staff), the alto continues with a counter-
melody or countersubject that ends with a cadence. A second cadence returns to the key
of D minor and leads into the first sequential digression or Episode. This passage alter-
nates intervals of 3rds and 6ths for each half-note and trades the same small melodic
motive between the voices. Other cadences and episodes follow, with each episode intro-
ducing a new contrapuntal pattern. In measure 19 a variant of the Subject returns, fol-
lowed by a variant of the Answer. (A recording of the entire solfeggio fugue can be heard
Vi deo 8 .3 in Video 8.3.)
For many people the word “fugue” recalls the colossal fugues of J. S. Bach, with their
four or more voices spinning out streams of sixteenth-notes. Pergolesi’s little solfeggio
fugue hardly seems in the same genre. But Pergolesi’s fugue is much easier for a boy to
understand, and it may have been written for conservatory boys to sing. The image in
Example 8.6, from an anonymous French manuscript3 that records a French student’s
study of fugue with an Italian master in the winter of 1789, shows how beginning lessons
in writing two-voice fugues looked very much like Pergolesi’s solfeggio. Even the cadential
figure from the lower voice of Pergolesi’s measure 5 reappears almost exactly in the middle
of the upper voice of the French student’s measure 3. One sees the same note values, the
 Chapter 8  solfeggi  107

e x . 8 .6   Lesson 15 from a French student’s private lessons in fugue (Paris, early 1789).

same meter, and the same melodic style. The main difference is the addition of a counter-
subject (contresujet) to accompany the initial entry of the subject (sujet), a practice seen
more with Handel, who trained in Italy, than with Bach.
Italian solfeggi, especially those from Naples, became well known in the eighteenth
century, and to fill the potential market two French court musicians published a large col-
lection of them understandably titled Italian Solfeggi (“Solfèges d’Italie”; Paris, 1772). The
preface claims that these solfeggi were used in training the boys in the king’s equerry (royal
attendants once connected with the royal stables), though it is possible the reference was
merely to add prestige to the publication. In any case the hundreds of solfeggi in its four
main sections were reprinted several times, and they were adopted for students in the early
years of the Paris Conservatory. The solfeggi were arranged in order from quite easy to
quite difficult. The final section contains a third type of duo: duets for two singers with
harpsichord accompaniment. All the solfeggi in this section were composed by the master
Davide Perez (1711–1778), who was born in Naples and enrolled at the Loreto when he
turned eleven. His solfeggi call for singers who can manage fast passagework and extended
phrases that cover a wide vocal range. Compared to the Monte schema by Durante shown
earlier in Example 8.4, the Monte in the excerpt below (Ex. 8.7) from one of Perez’s
accompanied duos is far more elaborate and not unlike what might be sung in one of his
operas for the royal court in Lisbon, Portugal. (A recording of the complete solfeggio duet
can be heard in Video 8.4.) Vi deo 8 . 4

Monte
x x’
x w x w

p j p j
n n

e x . 8 .7  Davide Perez, an excerpt from an accompanied solfeggio duet (Naples, ca. 1740s)
 108 child composers in the old conservatories

ADVANCED SOLFEGGI — Many of the accompanied duets by Perez would fit

comfortably in this category. To be performed well they would need to be sung by senior
students or professionals. The general level of singing required for solfeggi from Naples is
very high and suggests that conservatory boys trained for years as singers even if later they
would take up an instrument. An old Italian proverb said, “If you can sing, you can play”
(Si canta, si suona), and the conservatories took it to heart. Many composers were first
employed as singers (e.g., Cimarosa, Pergolesi), and as singers they gained personal insight
into the needs of professional opera singers. Some composers of widely used collections of
solfeggi had spent most of their careers as professional singers. A case in point is the cas-
trato Giuseppe Aprile (1731–1813). Trained in Naples, for many years he was a leading male
soprano in theaters across Europe. In his mid-fifties he retired from opera and returned to
Naples to teach. As part of his teaching he wrote solfeggi, and those lessons presume an
advanced student.
Aprile’s solfeggi were widely copied. Besides presenting a number of vocal challenges
as the lessons work different segments of a singer’s range, his solfeggi also give a student
practice in the repertory of phrase types encoded in various schemas. Example 8.8, Aprile’s
Vi deo 8 .5 allegro solfeggio in Eb major (heard in Video 8.5), is particularly clear in the way each
schema is set apart and marked through repetition or cadences. The singer begins with
bold half-notes on degrees u and y, which help to define the key and meter. In the
syntax of galant music, such an opening gambit is often followed by a Prinner riposte,

Opening Gambit Prinner Riposte Compound

u y u
Re

Cadence Fauxbourdon Half Cadence

Monte x w xw x w xw

p j p j p j p j
Fenaroli

p j k l p j k l

x w p j x w p j

e x . 8 . 8   Giuseppe Aprile, the opening of an advanced solfeggio (Naples, ca. 1780s)

 Chapter 8  solfeggi  109

which Aprile provides. Its characteristic parallel descending tones are marked in red.
Notice how they fall precisely at two-beat time intervals. After a Compound Cadence in
Eb (with a trill on re to mark impending closure), another set of parallel descents (the
fauxbourdon schema; see Chap. 2) leads to a half cadence. From there the Monte schema
(with each half repeated and the repeated melody made more emphatic) lifts the key up
to Bb major, at which point (m. 13) he begins a twofold presentation of the Fenaroli schema
(twofold presentation being the norm). Both the Monte and Fenaroli schemas play with
mi–fa (shown in red notes) and fa–mi (shown in blue). Singers who could feel the progres-
sion of these schemas would have an advantage. By sensing the gist of each passage they
could concentrate less on the details of the many rapid runs and more on the overall flow
of their performance.
Did advanced students still pronounce the do–re–mi syllables in such rapid and com-
plicated melodies? Opinions differ. On the one hand, it would have been possible, at least
based on the abilities of some modern singers, to pronounce the syllables accurately even
in the fastest passages. On the other hand, a remark in a preface to the third and more dif-
ficult section of the Solfèges d’Italie suggests that one could abandon syllables at that stage
and just sing a - a - a. . . . There is also some evidence in sources from Naples that only the
crucial notes might be given syllables in between rapid runs. In the Prinner schema shown
in Example 8.8, that might mean initiating new syllables only for the notes marked in red:
la . . . sol . . . fa . . . mi, and singing all the fast notes in between with the current vowel (i.e.,
la - a - a - a . . .). What look like slur markings over some ornamental passages in solfeggio
manuscripts may indicate a single syllable was intended. If this type of solfeggio singing
was taught, and Baragwanath’s research suggests it was, then it means that training in
solfeggio was also training in schemas and melodic analysis. Students needed to under-
stand the structure of a melody in order to properly assign the syllables, and that structural
understanding probably improved and stabilized intonation.
As a summary example of solfeggio singing in the old Italian manner, let us examine
a solfeggio duet (Ex. 8.9; Video 8.6) found in an autograph manuscript4 by Antonio Salieri, Vi deo 8 .6
chapel master to the Austrian court in Vienna during Mozart’s maturity and teacher of
musicians as famous as Schubert, Beethoven, and Liszt. What is remarkable about the
manuscript is that all the syllables are written below the melodies. To avoid making the
syllable names too small to read, the score below replaces the full names with their initials
(e.g., sol = S). The soprano voice begins in G major with—What else?—do–re–mi in G

e x . 8 .9   Salieri, solfeggio duet with syllables marked (Vienna, 1810s?) [continued on next page]
 110 child composers in the old conservatories

e x . 8 .9   [continued]

[major. The alto answers in measure 4 with do–re–mi in D major. The soprano voice had
already modulated to D major in measure 2, where the notes E–D–C#, are sung as sol–
fa-mi (i.e., from the “hard” hexachord of D major, which is a hexachord on A). Salieri
switches to the “natural” hexachord of D major on the last beat of measure 3 (S L F S etc.).
Salieri changes key frequently. In measure 7 he returns to G major, in measure 9 he
touches on D major before moving back to G major on the way to E minor in measure 10,
and in measure 13 he returns to G major before changing to C major in measure 14. The
solfeggio syllables do not change with every change of key. In measures 10–11, for instance,
the soprano uses the syllables of the G and D hexachords regardless of whether the har-
 Chapter 8  solfeggi  111

e x . 8 .9   [continued]

mony points to G major or E minor. And in this same passage (mm. 9–11) all half-steps are
sung mi–fa, which tends to simplify the choice of syllables in chromatic contexts.
This solfeggio, with its hundreds of syllable assignments, provides enough data to
validate the general outline of Italian solfeggio (or a Viennese dialect of it) as presented in
this chapter. Grace notes, for instance, do not take their own syllables. They are sung to
the syllable of the note that they decorate. The choice of syllables is based on hexachords,
but on a two-hexachord system of “natural and hard” on j and n (cf. Ex. 8.2). In Salieri’s
G-major composition, that means the default orientation is to a G hexachord (natural)
with a D hexachord (hard) added below. For the higher range when in D major, he uses
an A hexachord (the hard hexachord of the hard hexachord). Modulations to a closely
related key may or may not require a new hexachord­—much depends on the exact pattern
of melodic intervals. A persistent modulation to a more remote key (e.g., the B-major
sonority of mm. 18–20) will require resetting the syllables to the new orientation. Often the
particular syllable given to a note depends on the following context. So, for example, the
last note in the alto voice of measure 25 is a G sung as do. That same note, on the second
eighth of measure 26, is sung as fa because G descends to F# as a fa descending to mi. The
secret to knowing the right syllable was to know the local interval pattern and the upcom-
ing direction and register of the melody. This was knowledge that children could put to
good use in ensuring proper intonation in performance.
112 child composers in the old conservatories

@
 9

PA RT IMEN T I

A ND T HE

POW ER OF IMPROV ISAT ION

A r i a dn e h a s gi v en t h eseus a ba l l of t h r e a d to unwind behind him as he

enters the labyrinth. However bewildering and crisscrossing the underground paths may
prove to be, if he follows Ariadne’s thread our mythical hero can find his way back into the
sunlight. Partimenti were musical threads given to apprentice musicians to guide them as
they attempted to improvise music at the keyboard. By following these threads the young
apprentices would eventually learn how to make their way in the adult world of music.

“Ariadne and Theseus,” ca. 1800, by Jean-Baptiste Regnault

113
 114 child composers in the old conservatories

For part of my service in the US Army I was an instructor at the school for military
bands. Not only do such bands march in military and civilian parades, they are also
expected to play popular music for officers’ parties or civilian events like community fairs
and festivals. To support this latter role, the band school had file cabinets filled with alpha-
betically catalogued notecards, and each 3 × 5–inch notecard contained the melody and
chords for a popular song. Apparently this collection had been started decades earlier, and
I remember pulling out the card for “Blue Tango,” a popular instrumental recording of
1952 by Leroy Anderson (bass student of my solfège teacher Gaston Dufresne). A greatly
simplified lead sheet of “Blue Tango” is shown in Example 9.1. It could be intelligible to
professional danceband musicians even with only two chords indicated, “D” and “A7.”
But experienced musicians would not perform just those two chords. A lead sheet’s real
purpose is to serve as a memory aid, helping musicians recall the sound of the actual com-
Vi deo 9 .1 position or of something in its genre. Video 9.1 plays the original 1952 recording, a no. 1 hit
from that era. As you will hear, the important rhythms and countermelodies are nowhere
to be found on the lead sheet. Only when the musical patterns of “Blue Tango” have
already been stored in the performer’s memory is the lead sheet able to function properly.

D A7

D A7

e x . 9 .1   A simplified lead sheet for the beginning of Leroy Anderson’s “Blue Tango” (Boston, 1952)

A partimento, like a lead sheet, was also notated on a single staff and served to sum-
marize a composition that becomes fully realized in performance. But whereas a lead
sheet represents a known composition, a partimento only provides a thread that leads
through the phrases, sequences, and cadences of an unknown composition, something
that the performer will improvise at the keyboard or write down in a multivoice score. As
with a lead sheet, it is the content of the performer’s memory that determines success. One
first had to learn a vocabulary of musical patterns that one could recall when prompted by
the partimento. The richer those memories, the richer the realization of a partimento.
Imagine if you will a boy in Naples taking his first lessons in partimento performance.
What does he know? What memories can he draw upon? If he had been enrolled in a
conservatory for a few years he would have had lessons in solfeggio, so he would have
memories of melodies. And he probably would have memories of choral works sung in
church and organ pieces played there. All these memories would be of authentic music of
the period, which gives our boy an advantage over a beginner in partimento today.
 Chapter 9  pa rtimenti  115

Nevertheless a boy was not allowed to fumble around the keyboard trying anything that
might pop into his mind. The masters required a boy to operationalize memories of the
basic partimento patterns by playing them in various positions in various keys. As detailed
in Chapter 3, this involved learning three types of cadences, the Rule of Octave, some
simple suspensions, and a number of interval sequences for a bass. Practiced first were the
cadences and the Rule of the Octave. With those items securely in memory a boy could
venture to realize Fenaroli’s very first partimento (book 1, no. 1), as shown in Example 9.2.

# # # # 6 # #4 6
      
8 6 5 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6
  5    5
 
                
6 # n6 6 #6 6 6 # 6 6 6 6 5 6 5 5 58
 
9 4 5 3 5 5 3 4 4 3 3
  
     
           

e x . 9 . 2  Fenaroli, partimento no. 1, book 1 (Naples, ca. 1770s)

Fenaroli used the durations of tones as partial clues for which patterns to employ.
Stepwise quarter-notes (crotchets) suggest passages that can be harmonized by the Rule of
the Octave, and longer notes, which slow things down, suggest cadences. For the Rule of
the Octave in quarter-notes, the best exemplar begins in measure 12, where the complete
scale rises from G to another G an octave higher. For cadences in longer notes, good
examples are the Double Cadence in the penultimate measure and the Compound
Cadence in measure 9. Fenaroli is not completely consistent—the Simple Cadence in
measure 1 is in quarter-notes, and the Half Cadence in measures 6–7 is never mentioned
in his writings. But in their original context Fenaroli himself would have been in the room
answering a boy’s questions and demonstrating what to play.
The work of beginners in partimento training was almost never written down. But
some evidence points to the boys playing simple chords in time with the bass. Example 9.3
gives a plausible realization of the first measures of this partimento played in block chords
in first position (i.e., with the initial tonic note at the top of the first chord). A boy with
small hands might only play the upper three notes of each right-hand chord. Readers with
training in counterpoint will be surprised to see that little or no attention is paid to how the

e x . 9 .3   Fenaroli, partimento no. 1, book 1, realized in the manner of a beginner (Naples, ca. 1770s)
 116 child composers in the old conservatories

putative inner voices relate to the motion of the bass, which results in contrapuntally for-
bidden parallel octaves and fifths. In defense of little boys, one might note that classes in
counterpoint came later, and that the goals at this early stage were to be able to play simple
chords, develop associations between them and particular scale degrees, and respond
appropriately to cadences.
Partimento playing by a master or advanced student was something quite different.
Players at those levels had extensive experience with all kinds of music, especially with
advanced keyboard music, arias, fugues, and concertos. They were able to realize a parti-
mento so that it sounded like a real instance of music from one of those genres. It was
mentioned in Chapter 3 that Alexandre Choron, seeking to restart music education in
France, had published two important books based largely on the methods used at the
Naples conservatories.1 He was assisted by the master Vincenzo Fiocchi, who had been a
student first of Fenaroli at the Pietà and later of Padre Martini in Bologna. Fiocchi pro-
vided a number of sample realizations at the end of Choron’s first book (1804), and among
them is his transformation of Fenaroli’s first partimento into a melodically elegant aria or
solfeggio (Ex. 9.4; note the long pause in m. 10 where singers could catch their breath).
His realization is reproduced as it appears in Choron’s publication at the height of
Napoleon’s power. (Fenaroli’s bass, an imagined realization in simple chords, and
Vi deo 9 . 2 Fiocchi’s realized melody can all be heard in Video 9.2.)

e x . 9 . 4  Fenaroli, partimento no. 1, book 1, realized by Vincenzo Fiocchi in the manner of

an aria or solfeggio (Paris, 1804)

Until recently there were only two reliably authentic eighteenth-century realizations
of complete partimenti.2 Both were realizations of partimenti by Francesco Durante,
teacher of Fenaroli. In the one, heard earlier in Video 2.2, the same type of repeating bass
used in Pachelbel’s Canon supports a highly decorative melody suggestive of an advanced
 Chapter 9  pa rtimenti  117

player. In the other, which can be heard in Video 9.3, the bass opens with a rapid run of Vi deo 9 .3
sixteenth-notes that lead into a half-note. At that point the right hand can enter with the
same run of sixteenth-notes and they will fit perfectly with the continuation of the bass.
Both of these early realizations are technically flawless and highly inventive, suggesting
the work of a master or possibly Durante himself. Their textures are characterized by the
counterpoint of an active bass and melody, reminiscent of J. S. Bach’s two-part inventions,
Handel’s keyboard suites, or the many harpsichord sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti.
The discovery of a large cache of realizations of Durante partimenti from around the
year 1750, when Durante was still teaching, has made it possible to examine how an
advanced student might realize these lessons.3 I say “student” because there are mistakes
in the realizations—nothing so obvious as wrong notes, but here and there a subtle mis-
reading of what Durante’s basses were intended to convey. Let us examine in some detail
how this student realized the opening passages of partimento no. 38 from the Gallipoli
manuscript, so named from the location where it was found.
Example 9.5 presents the opening of partimento no. 38. I have colored certain note-
heads to show their membership in particular bass patterns. Recognizing how the gist of
the bass matches learned patterns is a central skill in partimento realization.

e x . 9 .5   The opening of an Eb-major partimento by Durante (Naples, ca. 1740s)

The red notes in the first three measures form a descending scale. Many ways existed
to harmonize a descending scale (the Rule of the Octave being one). In this case the best

# c EE E
choice is shown by Fenaroli (Durante’s
student) in Example 9.6, from his set of
& E EE EE EE EE
rules (1775). Below is Fenaroli’s verbal

#c E E
description, provided to demonstrate the 6 6 6
great specificity of his conception (the
E E E E
annotations of scale degree are modern ?
additions): j p o n m l
j p j p
The first note, which one takes to be the
e x . 9 .6 Fenaroli, Regole (Naples, ca. 1775)
tonic [j], should be considered from that
viewpoint, and for that reason accompa-
nied by a 3rd and 5th. The subsequent note, having descended a step, should be accom-
panied (as p) with a 3rd and 6th. The next descending note [o] should be newly consid-
ered as a j, and the tone after it [n] as a p. And thus one successively alternates between
these two accompaniments, one of a 3rd and 5th, and the other of a 3rd and 6th, continu-
 118 child composers in the old conservatories

ing down until the partimento will arrive at the l, to all of which the aforementioned rule
applies inclusively.

So the red notes should alternate 5/3 and 6/3 chords. The blue notes represent what
the masters called “down a 3rd, up a second” and should also alternate 5/3 and 6/3 chords.
The orange notes can be treated as the descending steps m and l of the Rule of the
Octave (4/2 and 6/3 chords respectively), and the green notes represent a Compound
Cadence.
With those rules in mind, let us now examine the eighteenth-century student’s real-
ization (Ex. 9.7) in comparison with my own realization (Ex. 9.8). The eighteenth-century
student follows the opening 5/3 chord (Eb major) with another 5/3 chord (D diminished)
and so forth. The student does alternate 5/3 and 6/3 chords for the bass’s blue notes (mm.
4–6), but approaches the 5ths on the downbeats awkwardly and fails to abandon the pat-
tern for the orange notes, leading to a nonsensical G-minor chord on the downbeat of
Vi deo 9 . 4 measure 7. (You can hear both versions in Video 9.4.)

e x . 9 .7  From the Gallipoli manuscript, no. 38 (Gallipoli, ca. 1750)

e x . 9 . 8  A modern realization of the bass in Ex. 9.5 following Fenaroli’s rules

 Chapter 9  pa rtimenti  119

Knowledge gained from solving the performance problems of one partimento can
carry over to facilitate the performance of a related partimento. So over years of practice a
student eventually would encounter and resolve nearly every problem that one day might
come his way as a professional musician. Take for instance the opening of partimento no.
47 from a different collection of Durante’s lessons (see Ex. 9.9). The modern marking of

e x . 9 .9   D
 urante, from his partimenti numerati, no. 47 (Naples, ca. 1740s)

the red notes shows that here, as in Gallipoli no. 38, the gist of Durante’s opening parti-
mento is a slow descending scale decorated by fast descending scales. Following Fenaroli’s
prescriptions, the initial D in the first measure will take a 5/3 chord, and the C# at the end
of the same measure will take a 6/3 chord.
Note the three checkmarks that I have added above Durante’s bass. These indicate
where the bass extends or is figuratively “tied over” from a weak eighth-note position to a
stronger position and then descends one step. There is a rule for that situation articulated
by Durante himself: “When the partimento is tied, it takes the 2nd and 4th above the tied
note.” In his musical examples of that situation, Durante shows a dissonant 4/2 chord
where the checkmarks are placed in Example 9.9, and a consonant 6/3 chord on the next
lower note. That 6/3 chord fits with the larger alternation of 5/3 and 6/3 chords, so the
smaller pattern of the syncopated bass can fit comfortably within the larger pattern of the
slowly descending scale. Example 9.10 shows an attempted realization where the right
hand imitates the left hand in alternation. Unfortunately that approach makes inferior
counterpoint. So Example 9.11 maintains that alternation of sixteenth-note activity
between the hands but focuses on placing the interval “2” (marked by red notes) above the
tied bass. (A comparison of both realizations can be heard in Video 9.5.) Vi deo 9 .5

e x . 9 .1 0   A (bad) modern realization of the bass in Ex. 9.9 using imitations

e x . 9 .1 1  A (better) modern realization of the bass in Ex. 9.9 following Durante’s rule for ties
 120 child composers in the old conservatories

Nicola Fago, eight years older than Bach and Handel, taught generations of students
at the Onofrio and the Pietà. His students Leonardo Leo and Nicola Sala would be
adopted as models of classical style at the Paris Conservatory. Since Fago and his main
students were active during the entire eighteenth century, one could choose many differ-
ent styles of realization for his partimenti. Take for instance his partimento bass shown in
Example 9.12. It begins by descending the octave in C major, and then it rockets up octave
scales of sixteenth-notes beginning on C, E, and G. One could realize his bass with large

e x . 9 .1 2   Fago, partimento no. 20 (Naples, pre-1740?)

vocal gestures in the style of Mozart or with intricate patterns of busy sixteenth-notes in the
style of Bach. By chance, this bass, alone out of a manuscript of twenty-nine partimenti, is
fully realized by Fago (or an associate) in a style midway between Bach and Mozart. On
the Bach side (see Ex. 9.13) there is a continous stream of sixteenths. On the Mozart side
Fago uses the simple schemas of the light, so-called galant style. The notes in red show the
core melodic tones of the Prinner schema, with its bass tones in blue. At the open, Fago
combines this schema with the descending version of the Rule of the Octave. On its sec-
ond presentation (mm. 9–12) he combines it with a bass that goes “down a third, up a
second” (notes in blue and green). Though rare, the complete or partial realizations that
can be found scattered within partimento manuscripts provide good evidence for what the
Vi deo 9 .6 masters expected their pupils to do. (Hear Fago’s realization in Video 9.6.)

e x . 9 .13   Fago, his realization of Ex. 9.12 above (Naples, pre-1740?)

 Chapter 9  pa rtimenti  121

When partimenti were taught in Paris, inside or outside of the conservatory, it was
often necessary to spell out what was meant by an artful realization. François-Joseph Fétis,
Paris Conservatory graduate and later the director of the Royal Conservatory of Brussels,
did just that in his book on basic harmony and partimenti (Paris, 1824).4

What I call the Elegance of Disposition consists in making the right-hand accompani-
ment sing, to the extent possible, by imitating the motifs of the Bass, when the occasion
presents itself, or by adopting some principle figure that is maintained until the end of the
exercise. Here, over a bass of Sala, is an example that I have created of this way of accom-
panying: [Ex. 9.14; hear it in Video 9.7] Vi deo 9 .7

e x . 9 .1 4   F
 étis, realization of a Sala bass (Paris, 1824)
 122 child composers in the old conservatories

PARTIMENTO FUGUES — The highest level of partimento training was devoted

to the realization of partimento fugues. A fugue is a composition for two or more voices,
and a partimento is usually written on a single staff, so in a partimento fugue the per-
former must imagine and play the other, unwritten voices. Again, the development of
musical memory is important. In an ordinary partimento, the crucial memories are of the
rules that match the gist of a bass. In a fugal partimento, one has to add in memories of the
fugue’s subject, its answer, and the countersubject or other countermelodies. Partimento
fugues thus pose significant problems for the student, and the skills required to achieve
proficiency can take years to develop.
As boys advanced from simple partimenti to more complex ones, some of the skills
eventually needed for partimento fugues would already have received some preparation.
For instance, many partimenti have extended rests or long notes alternating with active
and interesting passages. One learns to balance the interesting passages between the two
hands. If the order of material in the left hand goes “interesting, boring, interesting, bor-
ing,” chances are that the right hand should play the interesting material during the bor-
ing parts of the left hand. Example 9.15 shows the first sequential episode from the first

 enaroli, book 5, the first episode from partimento fugue no. 1 (Naples, ca. 1811). Note
e x . 9 .15  F
how the interesting and boring measures alternate.

partimento fugue of Fenaroli’s book 5. It has active and interesting measures alternating
with boring ones that contain single whole-notes. As shown in Example 9.16, the pairing
of an interesting right-hand measure with a boring left-hand one, and vice versa, works

 enaroli, book 5, the first episode from partimento fugue no. 1 (Naples, ca. 1811). Note
e x . 9 .1 6   F
how the interesting and boring measures alternate.
 Chapter 9  pa rtimenti  123

very well. Example 9.10 demonstrated that not every boring part in the left hand will go
together well with a more interesting part shifted to the right hand. In Example. 9.16, the
downbeats of each measure alternate “6s” and “3s”, the harmonies fall by fifths (a “circle
of fifths”), and the whole-notes of the lead voice (the bass) outline the melody of the
Prinner schema. So in this case the parts played by the two hands do fit well together.
Fully notated realizations of this partimento from the early nineteenth century confirm
that the combination shown in Example 9.16 was understood as the correct one. (This
passage and the whole fugue can be heard in Video 9.8.) Vi deo 9 . 8
When a boy played the bass of Example 9.15 for the first time, his short-term or work-
ing memory helped to fill in the space of the whole-notes with an echo of the active pas-
sage just heard. In other, more complex partimenti, the sound of a missing voice may need
to come from long-term memory. The partimenti of Nicola Sala, a student of Leonardo
Leo, were highly contrapuntal. Even his lessons that were not intended as fugues still have
melodic subjects that recur frequently in the course of a partimento. One has to retrieve
such a melody from long-term memory, and it has to be constantly available for deploy-
ment. A student would want to study such a partimento first, memorizing the prominent
melodies, so that when an attempt is made at a realization, a selection of good melodic
options stands at the ready.
Eighteenth-century sources in Naples do not give us much help in determining how
thematically and motivically unified a realization ought to be. For realizing Sala’s parti-
menti, valuable guidance comes from Paris in the harmony treatise (1834) of Victor
Dourlen,5 a harmony teacher at the Paris Conservatory from 1816 to 1842. The fifty-fourth
exercise in this book turns out to be a partimento by Sala (no. 35 in a recent edition edited
by Peter van Tour). The opening section of this long partimento lesson (120 measures in
total) is shown in Example 9.17. Because the French and Italians had different dialects of
figured bass notation, the caption reads, “The figures above the staff are by Sala, those
below are those used in this text and adopted at the Conservatory.”
Although the figures are so small in Example 9.17 as to be nearly illegible, they indi-
cate that a modulation from G major to D major begins during the dotted half-note in
measure 9 of the first staff. As in a fugue, in measure 10 one can transpose the opening
subject to the key of D major and play it over the partimento’s lower countersubject (try it,

e x . 9 .17   Sala, lesson no. 54, as printed in the harmony treatise of Victor Dourlen (Paris, 1834)
 124 child composers in the old conservatories

it works). The notated subject then reappears in D major in measure 18. Apparently play-
ing the subject in an upper voice of measures 9–17 was so obvious that Dourlen did not
think to remark about it. But other passages in Sala’s partimenti that can accommodate the
subject or countersubject are not at all obvious, and Dourlen added the intended voice
above or below the notated partimento. The remainder of his expanded edition is given
below (a continuation of Ex. 9.17), where he shows that the countersubject can be played
below the notated subject, the subject can be played above the countersubject, and, on
the third to last system, there is an intended stretto (where the subject follows itself after
only a two-measure delay). Dourlen’s edition shows graphically part of what goes on in the
Vi deo 9 .9 performer’s mind. (Video 9.9 plays a realization of Sala’s fugue.)

e x . 9 .17 [continued] Sala, lesson no. 54 (Paris, 1834)

 Chapter 9  pa rtimenti  125

ANNOTATION — The masters doubtless said useful things to their apprentices dur-
ing classes in partimenti. There are no transcripts of such helpful asides, but from two
types of sources we can be fairly sure of their having been spoken. One is the commentary
that nineteenth-century editors of collections of partimenti by Fenaroli began to include
in their editions. More than a century of experience with students, especially beginners,
had given masters and editors a good sense of the questions that students would ask. Such
questions were often focused on unfigured partimenti. What began as small prefaces to
editions of Fenaroli’s lessons grew into veritable essays on how to handle a range of prob-
lems. Perhaps the limit in helpful hints was reached in 1855 when Emmanuele Guarnaccia
edited a deluxe edition of all six books of Fenaroli partimenti containing complete realiza-
tions of Books 4–6.
In a manuscript dated 1789 and attributed to “Maestro Vignali” (probably Gabriele
Vignali in Bologna),6 there is a separate page for each key. As shown in Example 9.18, at
the top of the image is the Rule of the Octave for, in this case, the key of Bb major (“B fa
with major third”). Then follows an unfigured partimento in the same key, with footnote
numbers over the bass staff. The footnotes are explained at the bottom of the page under
the heading Annotazioni (“Annotations”).

e x . 9 .18  Vignali, the Bb-major page from his Rudimenti di Musica per Accompagnare (Bologna?, 1789)
126 child composers in the old conservatories

Vignali’s annotations are valuable because they tie his observations to exact locations
in a partimento and because they represent a contemporary eighteenth-century perspec-
tive. At the same time they restate many of the same questions a beginner might have
today. Here is a translation of his annotations to the Bb partimento seen above. My realiza-
tion of that partimento, closely following Vignali’s admonitions, is shown in Example 9.19.

1.
One could think of these four eighth-notes as a figure in Bb, but it will make a
better effect to accompany the last eighth with a 3rd and 5th, seeking to avoid the
parallel 5ths by using contrary motion in passing to “G,” which wants a 5th.
2.
The key of F major.
3.
A pause at the beginning of a quarter-note time value—see [the annotations for]
Scale #4 [“Be aware that when a bass stops striking the keys or raises the hand for a
pause of a quarter or an eighth, then you should start playing with the right hand
and strike the accompaniment of the bass that will come after that pause.”].
4.
[“C” is] The fifth of the key of F major and wants a major 3rd.
5.
The note G goes to Bb and wants a minor 6th [Eb].
6.
Consider “A” the 3rd step of F major, as it goes to make a cadence in that key.
7.
The “G” returns to the key of Bb major and wants a minor 6th [Eb].
8.
The bass’s melody takes up the motive discussed in annotation no. 1.
9.
The bass’s melody goes to the key of Eb major, and so “C” wants a minor 6th
[Ab].
10.
The note “C” wants a minor 6th because it goes to the key of Eb.
1 1.
Consider the note “D” as the 3rd of the key, because it goes to make a cadence in
Bb by way of the “F,” which is marked with a 6th and a 4th resolving to a 5th and a
3rd.

These annotations give us a sample of the issues that a student faced when asked to
realize an unfigured partimento. Numbers 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, and 11 all alert the student to
the current or upcoming key. This partimento was meant to exemplify the key of Bb major,
 Chapter 9  pa rtimenti  127

1. 2. 3.

4.

5. 6. 7.

Motive from m. 1

8. 9.

Key of Bb

10. 11.

e x . 9 .19   A modern realization of Ex. 9.18. The between-staves annotations are original but
have been translated to English (Bologna, 1789).

and of course it is customary to speak of any single movement of a composition as being

in one particular key. But the student performer of a partimento had to anticipate what
are in fact frequent changes of key (you can hear the partimento in Video 9.10). The other Vi deo 9 .1 0
annotations describe the treatment of rests (no. 3), the return of an important motive (no.
8), and the two most important cadences (no. 6, no. 11). Annotation no. 1 is somewhat dif-
ferent. Vignali describes two ways of treating the opening group of four eighth-notes. The
first way is to treat it as an arpeggiation of a Bb-major triad. That might cause parallel fifths
128 child composers in the old conservatories

if the interval Bb–F (in the realization) descended directly to G–D. He describes the alter-
native—putting an F-major triad on the last eighth—as solving a contrapuntal problem,
though as an experienced musician that solution would also have strongly resonated with
his many memories of the Romanesca schema (in red, “down a 4th, up a step”). One can
imagine Master Vignali giving a summary of his general advice to every student as follows:
“Pay close attention to keys, cadences, thematic motives, and stock bass patterns.”

Each partimento was a microcosm of the real world of eighteenth-century composi-

tion and improvisation. In understanding and performing its patterns a young apprentice
could begin to find his way out of the labyrinth of multivoice polyphony, and once he
emerged into the sunlight he could begin to take his place as a qualified musician. By
forcing boys to turn knowledge into live performance, the masters ensured that their les-
sons were well and truly learned.
 10

COUN T ER POIN T

A ND COL LOCAT ION

Th e mo s t di f f ic u lt j ig s aw pu z z l es have large areas of similar color with few

clearly defined lines or shapes. The person hoping to solve such a puzzle must be able to
scan all the unconnected pieces to find just the right shape to fill a certain spot. In the
blue puzzle below it is easy to see that the loose piece at the bottom right will fit in the
puzzle center, while the left-hand piece will fit at the right edge. But when there are hun-
dreds of loose pieces the task of finding just the right one can become quite difficult and
frustrating. If one thinks of brief melodies as musical puzzle pieces, and of the art of coun-
terpoint as the task of fitting those melodies together to complete a musical picture, then

“Puzzle with Pieces out of Place” by Lilla Frerichs

129
130 child composers in the old conservatories

the difficulties posed for the apprentice musician might seem insurmountable given the
fact that melodies come in millions of shapes. How could one ever figure out which ones
fit well together?
In the study of both music and language, the first—and wrong—approach was to try
a prescriptive grammar. In a prescriptive grammar an expert or authority sets out a series
of rules that dictate what people should do. The expert might say “adjectives must come
before the nouns that they modify,” which seems reasonable until one thinks of attorneys
general, surgeons general, or sergeants major. The expert might reply by saying,“Well,
those are just exceptions of French origin.” But if the exceptions are nonetheless all
instances of correct English, regardless of etymology, then it must be the rule that is wrong
or at least incomplete.
Problems with prescriptive grammars were already apparent in the eighteenth cen-
tury. In his The Doctrine of Correctness in English Usage, 1700–1800 (1929), the modern
scholar S. A. Leonard described two conflicting eighteenth-century approaches to decid-
ing what is right and wrong in the ways people speak or write:

The one assumes the power of reason to remold language completely, and appeals to
various principles of metaphysics or logic, or even makes pronouncements on mere indi-
vidual preference posing as authority, in the endeavor to “correct, improve, and fix” usage.
The other, while admitting the usefulness of purism in recommending what may be
regarded as improvements, recognizes language—even cultivated language—as a vastly
complicated and often haphazard growth of habits stubbornly rooted, the product of great
variation in social soil and climate, not more readily changed by fiat into clipped and for-
mal garden pattern than is any vast area of swamp and jungle and timber-line vegetation.1

Examples of the first approach can be found in old grammar books, where readers
who dwell in the “swamp and jungle” of real language are told that they can raise their
English to a higher level if only they would learn the right rules. The best minds of the
eighteenth century, however, recognized that such rules were often arbitrary, even if well
intentioned. Joseph Priestley (1733–1804), today most famous for having discovered oxy-
gen, was an eighteenth-century man of many interests. He advocated Leonard’s second
approach to usage in his influential Rudiments of English Grammar (1761):

It must be allowed that the custom of speaking is the original, and only just standard of any
language. We see, in all grammars, that this is sufficient to establish a rule, even contrary
to the strongest analogies of the language with itself. Must not this custom, therefore, be
allowed to have some weight, in favor of those forms of speech, to which our best writers
and speakers seem evidently prone; forms which are contrary to no analogy of the lan-
guage with itself, and which have been disapproved by grammarians, only from certain
abstract and arbitrary considerations, and when their decisions were not prompted by the
genius of the language; which discovers itself in nothing more than in the general propen-
sity of those who use it to certain modes of constructions?2
 Chapter 10  counterpoint  131

Focusing on “certain modes of contruc-

tions” is at the core of the modern approach to
language known as construction grammar.
Construction grammar is supported by hun-
dreds of computer-aided studies of actual lan-
guage usage. One of the pioneers of that
approach was the late John McHardy Sinclair
(1933–2007). Like many original thinkers,
Sinclair faced initial resistance to his ideas.
Speaking about his own career, he noted that
all of his published articles had been rejected at
least once. Yet the data that he saw emerging
from early computer-aided studies of English
usage told him a clear and unmistakable story,
which he elaborated in his book Corpus, John McHardy Sinclair
Concordance, Collocation (1991).3
A “corpus” refers to a set of utterances, whether it be the poems of Emily Dickinson,
the complete works of Shakespeare, the string quartets of Beethoven, or every comment
ever posted about any product sold at Amazon.com. A “concordance” was originally a tool
for the study of the Bible or the works of Homer. A scholar would find every single usage
of, for instance, the word “dawn” within a given corpus and prepare a list noting where
each instance was found. Obviously that type of work became much easier when comput-
ers entered the scene. “Collocations” depend on the data in concordances. Collocations
are combinations of words that occur together
(are “co-located”) more frequently than would
ordinarily be expected. In studies of Homer, for
example, scholars have long noted that the
word “dawn” is strongly collocated with “rosy-
fingered,” as in “rosy-fingered dawn,” and the
word “sea” is collocated with “wine-dark” as in
the “wine-dark sea.”
Albert Lord, author of The Singer of Tales
(1960),4 a classic study of Homer’s poetic lan-
guage, attributed these collocations to the needs
of traditional bards who, in memorizing and
then reciting long epic poems, found stock
combinations of words that fit the poetic meter
Albert Bates Lord
to be extremely useful. These “Homeric epi-
thets,” as they are termed, arise from the interplay of human memory, the cadences of
speech or poetry, and narrative frameworks that make use of many similar dramatic epi-
sodes. Thus, whenever a bard might sing a tale in which a hero awakes early and glances
132 child composers in the old conservatories

at the sky, it was both habitual and efficient (in ancient Greek) to slip in a reference to
rosy-fingered dawn. That ready-made construction fit both the poetic meter and the narra-
tive situation.
Lord’s work, inspired by his mentor Milman Parry at Harvard, was the product of
decades of painstaking study and involved some of the most highly revered works of
European literature. Sinclair, by contrast, used computers to study the humble corpus of
English as actually spoken or written by ordinary people. Yet both came to similar conclu-
sions about the utility and prevalence of prefabricated units of language. Lord called them
formulas, Sinclair called them idioms.
In Sinclair’s view, an old-style grammar book described an “open-choice principle” of
language production. “At each point where a unit is completed (a word, phrase, clause), a
large range of choices opens up and the only restraint is grammaticalness.” Sinclair pro-
posed an alternative based on evidence from studies of usage: an “idiom principle” that
views language as the employment of prefabricated combinations of specific words. “At its
simplest, the principle of idiom can be seen in the apparently simultaneous choice of two
words, for example, of course. This phrase operates effectively as one word.” Adults who
learn English as a second language must often rely on the open-choice principle, and
because they do, their speech can sound odd or even humorous. Learning a simple gram-
mar rule about the use of the or a before a noun (i.e., a rule about definite vs. indefinite
articles) might seem like a foolproof way to navigate a small corner of English, but it too
can fail. Speaking of illnesses, a native speaker may say, “My mother has the flu and my
sister has a cold,” but would never say “My mother has a flu and my sister has the cold.” In
those clauses, flu and cold are grammatically identical. So the native speaker’s usage must
be determined by having learned the collocations of the with flu and a with cold.
Prescriptive grammars for music are even less successful than their cousins for lan-
guage. Nevertheless, today they are what most music students encounter. In a typical col-
legiate harmony class, the students are taught what is essentially an open-choice principle
of composition. One writes a certain number of chords, and the next chord is then chosen
according to imagined rules of “chord grammar.” Like non-native speakers, the students
then make a series of choices that, to the trained ear, sound odd and generally clueless.
In Naples, training in counterpoint was not guided by imaginary rules and principles.
It was guided by accepted practice and tradition. A boy learned the idioms of eighteenth-
century music not as licenses or exceptions to general principles but as proper adult
behaviors to emulate. Because there were hundreds of idioms and dozens of well-known
constructions, the training needed was extensive and could last for some years. And
because counterpoint training took for granted prior training in partimenti and solfeggi,
the level of instruction was, compared with modern standards, very high.

COUNTERPOINT IN TWO VOICES — A manuscript titled (in Italian) Principles

of Counterpoint According to the School of Signore Don Francesco Durante5 was copied by
Giovanni Salini around 1760 (he would have been nineteen at the time) and represents
 Chapter 10  counterpoint  133

his training at the Onofrio. The phrase “the school of” means the tradition of teaching
counterpoint along lines laid out by Durante and continued by his students, most promi-
nently Fedele Fenaroli. Musicians in this lineage were known as Durantisti, in contrast to
the followers of Leonardo Leo, the Leisti. When Durante died in 1755 his student Joseph
(Giuseppe) Dol became second master at the Onofrio, so it is possible that Principles of
Counterpoint reflects Durante’s methods as transmitted through Dol to Salini (1739–1825).
The manuscript contains hundreds of lessons, beginning with sixty-three counter-
points (!) to an ascending hexachord in C major. The first few lessons will look familiar to
modern students of “species” counterpoint (see Ex. 10.1). Italian musicians had taught
counterpoint for centuries using a reference voice—often a chant in whole-notes—and a
counterpointing voice, often improvised by a student. The “appearance” (Latin: species)
of the counterpoint depended on the rhythmic relationship of the counterpointing voice
to the reference voice, and standard relationships—1:1, 2:1, 4:1—were called “1st species,”
“2nd species,” and “3rd species,” respectively. For instance, as shown Example 10.1, the first
two lessons in this manuscript are in 1st species (a 1:1 relationship between durations).
Lesson no. 12 is a variant of 4th species (the “appearance” of ties) and no. 23 is in 5th spe-
cies (which permits any rhythm). But no. 23 also requires “motion by sixths,” meaning
“find scalar segments of six notes that make adequate counterpoint.” And in no. 33 the
student is to make a “riposte at the 4th above,” meaning the melody for measures 1–3

e x . 1 0 .1   Selected lessons from Principles of Counterpoint (Naples, ca. 1760)

 134 child composers in the old conservatories

should be transposed up a 4th for measures 4–6. Nowhere in the manuscript is the student
told how to compose melodies that can be shifted around as directed and still make good
counterpoint. And for each of the tasks shown in Example 10.1 there are a dozen more
(“motion by thirds, motion by fourths, . . . riposte at the second above, riposte at the sec-
ond below . . .”). The student was forced to work out solutions to ever more challenging
contrapuntal problems.
Through extensive training in two-part counterpoint a student could begin to develop
a sensitivity to contrapuntal collocations. Collocations in language, as mentioned, are
words that we learn to prefer in certain constructions or idioms. If I say “It’s a [some noun]
waiting to happen,” native speakers of English know that the nouns “accident” or “disas-
ter” fit well in that construction and that the noun “cabbage” makes no sense whatsoever,
even though it is a perfectly good noun. No one taught us this, but we learn the idiom
from hearing it spoken in context. Similarly, in eighteenth-century counterpoint there
were preferred counterpoints to a particular construction in the reference voice. The
ascending hexachord in Example 10.1 begins with do–re–mi or C–D–E. The preferred
collocation was C–B–C (u–{–u) in the counterpointing voice. I have tinted those
tones blue in Example 10.1, and the reader can confirm that at the transition from the
lower-voice C to D, all five upper voices have C–B and that three out of the five complete
a C–B–C collocation. G–F–C would have broken no rules of counterpoint, but none of
the examples use it. To a “native speaker” of eighteenth-century counterpoint an “open
Vi deo 1 0 .1 choice” like G–F–C would sound like “It’s a cabbage waiting to happen.” (Video 10.1 plays
all the lessons shown in Example 10.1.)
After using a rising hexacord and its cadence as the reference voice, possibly for
weeks or months, masters in the Durante tradition moved on to assign partimenti as the
reference voice. Fenaroli used a set of tiny partimenti to teach or review the standard bass
sequences or movimenti (moe-vee-MEN-tee, meaning “moves” or “motions”). Example
10.2 shows Fenaroli’s fourth one, featuring the “down a fourth, up a second” (cala di
quarta, sala di grado) movimento or what is sometimes called the Romanesca bass (also
used by Pachelbel in his famous Canon in D).

ex. 10.2  A
 tiny partimento by Fenaroli used to practice a movimento (Naples, ca. 1780s)

When the movimenti were literally “well in hand,” since they were to be realized at
the keyboard, a student could progress to writing counterpoints above a longer partimento,
using that embodied knowledge to guide his thoughts. Example 10.3 shows a small parti-
mento by Fenaroli that was assigned to Vincenzo Lavigna circa 1791–1792.6 Every few
measures of this partimento provide the bass of a schema or construction for which
Lavigna was supposed to provide the proper collocation in the upper voice. For instance,
the opening whole-notes in Example 10.3 obviously relate to the “down a fourth, up a step”
 Chapter 10  counterpoint  135

 small partimento by Fenaroli used as a reference voice for lessons in

e x . 1 0 .3   A
counterpoint (Naples, ca. 1790s)

movimento presented in Example. 10.2. The standard collocation for that construction is
a descending scale that begins on E (l). Other tones might all be consonant and violate
no rules, but they would not be the choice of someone fluent in this style.
Lavigna’s homework is shown below in Example 10.4. For each construction he wrote
the preferred collocation. His Romanesca or “down a 4th, up a step” movimento receives
a descending scale that begins on l in the local key (C major), as does the Romanesca in
G major beginning in measure 10. His Commas match mi–fa basses with fa–mi trebles.
His Fonte uses the exact upper melody suggested by Riepel. When the bass goes do–re–mi

e x . 1 0 . 4  L
 avigna’s completed lesson. He wrote the upper voice to the Fenaroli partimento
of Ex. 10.3 (Naples, 1791–92). The verbal annotations are mine.
 136 child composers in the old conservatories

or do–re–do, Lavigna responds properly with preferred collocate (in blue), either C–B–C
or G–F#–G depending on the key. He was a star student and would later teach this art of
Vi deo 1 0 . 2 counterpoint to a young Giuseppe Verdi. (Exx. 10.2–10.4 can be heard on Video 10.2.)
The American linguist Noam Chomsky has argued that language is innate, and he
has noted that young children could not learn a language solely from experience because
of the “poverty of the stimulus.” It is quite true that a paper transcript of baby talk does look
impoverished. But babies do not learn a language from reading it. They hear utterances in
the context of social interactions, gestures, food rewards, touches, smells, and all the other
experiences of their young lives. Similarly, in a Naples conservatory a boy was immersed
in music. Counterpoint was all around him. A collocation overlooked in counterpoint
class could be learned in partimento or solfeggio. Take for example the solfeggio shown
opposite in Example 10.5. Little is known of the composer, and the imagined date could
be off by decades. But this work is in a manuscript collected by Fortunato Santini, an early
nineteenth-century Roman priest and important collector of early music manuscripts.
Given his connections and discernment, it is likely an authentic eighteenth-century
solfeggio.
This lesson begins much like the first lessons in Salini’s copy of the Principles of
Counterpoint (see Ex. 10.1). The bass, as the reference voice, begins an ascending scale. A
boy singing the opening measures of the upper voice would sing the preferred collocate,
u–{–u with u tied across the barline (the blue tinted notes). The Double Cadence
beginning in measure 8 would normally end on a D in the melody, but instead it ends
higher, on F#. Why? The answer is that F# —the l in D major—is the preferred collocate
to begin a Romanesca. The composer had to make a choice between D (favoring the
cadence) and F# (favoring the Romanesca) and chose the Romanesca. This is a “down a
4th, up a step” movimento that now goes “up a 5th, down a 7th” (see the notes in red). It
seems the inverted intervals (4 becomes 5, 7 becomes 2) were understood as being the
same pattern because both occur as exemplars of the same movimento in later treatises.
In measure 16, the voices switch their roles (m. 9’s bass becomes m. 16’s melody). This
is what is meant by invertible or “double” counterpoint. And it was another way for a boy
to learn these preferred pairings. In measure 26, for instance, the opening scale in the bass
becomes the melody, and so the j–p–j collocate to its do–re–mi opening is now found
in the bass. This same two-part composition, if found in a collection of counterpoint les-
sons, would be assumed to be a lesson in double counterpoint for ascending and descend-
ing scales. In a collection of solfeggi, it was probably assumed to be an exercise in singing
slow scales and long tones. And of course it is both.
In between the do–re–mi, j–p–j collocation of measure 1 and its inverted twin in
measure 26, there are similarly blue-tinted notes in measures 14–16. In the bass, the off-
beats of those measures contain a do–re–do pattern, which is also amenable to a j–p–j
melody. These different though related basses share a melodic collocate, one that happens
to be the alto voice in many counterpoints of three or more voices. The soprano voice in
those cases is indicated at the end of this solfeggio (mm. 55–58). The notated melody
 Chapter 10  counterpoint  137

e x . 1 0 .5   Carlo Venturini, solfeggio no. 3 (Italy?, ca. 1730s)

descends from G down to D, pausing for two counts on E. Note that the bass under that E
(m. 56) is identical to that in measure 15, and the melody of measure 15 would fit in mea-
sure 56 as an alto voice sounding just below the notated soprano voice. Cadences were
overlearned in the sense that a boy would hear a cadence every few measures in everything
he played, sang, or read. The bass, tenor, alto, and soprano parts of cadences became well
known and suggestive of their functions. (A performance of this solfeggio can be heard in
Video 10.3.) Vi deo 1 0 .3
 138 child composers in the old conservatories

In the “school of Durante” a student given a partimento bass was often expected to
provide multiple counterpoints for it. Salini, in the Principles of Counterpoint manuscript,
writes from three to seven counterpoints for each partimento bass. The bass is copied anew
for each new counterpoint, so it can be difficult to compare how one counterpoint differs
from the others. The beginning of one of these assigned partimenti is shown in Example
10.6. To give an impression of how the bass might look to a senior boy at the Onofrio, the
notes have been colored by pattern. Looking at the first two measures we see notes in red
that could serve as the bass for the notes in blue. A boy like Salini, who would later
became a master himself, would immediately recognize the game being played: measures
1 and 2 are collocates in double counterpoint. Everywhere the blue notes occur, the red
notes can be the counterpoint, and vice versa. The yellow notes mark a common mid-
century bass for the Double Cadence. The dark blue notes mark the “down a 3rd, up a
2nd” movimento, and the brown notes in the last two measures of the excerpt indicate a
Phrygian or Augmented-Sixth Cadence. The remaining passages in black (m. 6, m. 11)
involve Commas (brief articulations of an ascending mi–fa with a descending x–w).

e x . 1 0 .6   The opening of a partimento in D major, possibly by Dol or Cotumacci (Naples, ca. 1750s)

In this type of training, the master speaks to his apprentice in a language of musical
patterns transcribed in a partimento bass, and the apprentice responds by speaking a coun-
terpointing melody. Salini’s four efforts are shown in Example 10.7, in the order, top to
bottom, in which they are found in the manuscript. Below them is the partimento bass,
which they all shared. In general, Salini’s counterpoints demonstrate a three-voice con-
ception of each pattern. In measure 1, for instance, the primary pairing is shown by the
red and blue notes, with the upper staff showing a third path that goes A–G–F# (y–x–
w). The same primary pairing, now inverted, describes measure 2, with the third path
prominent in the second and third counterpoints. When the Double Cadence begins (the
partimento notes in yellow), all the counterpoints adopt a x–w–v–u descent (the
notes in orange), where the u marks the beginning of a do–re–mi (the red notes) in the
counterpoint. Of course that is matched by its j–p–j collocate in the partimento. This
interplay of red and blue, of partimento and counterpoint, continues throughout the sec-
ond system of Example 10.7.
When measure 2 transitions to measure 3, and the partimento C# goes to D, all the
counterpoints respond A–G–F# or just A–F#. Counting intervals above the bass, this pat-
tern is “6–5–3” or just “6–3.” The dark blue notes in the third system of Example 10.7
 Chapter 10  counterpoint  139

e x . 1 0 .7   Salini’s four separate counterpoints to the partimento of Ex. 10.6 (Naples, 1760)

present the “down a 3rd, up a 2nd” movimento, and in that pattern all the “lower” notes
(i.e., F#, E, D#) take 6/3 or 6/5/3 chords while the “upper” notes take 5/3 chords. A pattern
of 6–5–3 or 6–3 intervals fits perfectly here and appears in three out of four of the counter-
points (the yellow notes). Again, one counterpoint takes a different path. In the second
counterpoint, the alternate path (in maroon notes) shadows the partimenti a third higher.
An artful detail of this second counterpoint is a suspension over each of the “upper” notes
of the partimento, a suspension that resolves upward, which was rare. It is a telling sign of
 140 child composers in the old conservatories

the emerging “sentimental” style of music that would become the norm for Mozart and
Haydn. Niccolò Piccinni’s opera La buona figliuola (Rome, 1760) would have just pre-
miered and made a big impression with its simplicity and sincerity, and Gluck’s opera
Orfeo ed Euridice (Vienna, 1762) would have a similar success. One of the most famous
arias in Gluck’s masterwork is titled “Che farò senza Euridice?” (“What shall I do without
Euridice”; sung as Euridice has died and returns to Hades). As shown in Example 10.8, the
aria begins conventionally with a do–re–mi bass (the red notes) and its melodic u–{–u
collocate (the blue notes), although there is a hesitation in completing it as the singer asks
“What shall I do . . . .” That opening gambit completes as the second phrase begins, and
this is where, over the blue F in the bass of the third measure, Gluck places a G-to-A rising
suspension (notated as a grace note G and a regular note A). The bass then continues on
to make a cadence, but the melody (in maroon notes) behaves like the Prinner schema.
This whole context of a rising suspension to scale degree z over the bass scale degree m

e x . 1 0 . 8   “Che farò senza Euridice” from Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, opening phrase (Vienna, 1762)

at the beginning of the Prinner schema is shared by this aria and by Salini’s second coun-
terpoint (cf. Ex. 10.7), which is a long-winded way of demonstrating that counterpoint
instruction at the Onofrio around 1760 was quite contemporary. Fashionable turns of
phrase performed in current operas found their way into what at first glance might seem
to be the most pedantic lessons in counterpoint. That connection with the living world of
musical theater prepared the students for opportunities in the future. (Salini’s four coun-
Vi deo 1 0 . 4 terpoints and Gluck’s “Che farò senza Euridice?” can be heard in Video 10.4.)

COUNTERPOINT IN THREE VOICES — In relation to two-voice counterpoint,

it was mentioned that there was often a secondary collocate in addition to a primary col-
locate for a given bass pattern. If a student had learned both, then the transition to writing
three-voice counterpoint simply meant employing both collocates simultaneously for a
given pattern in the bass. There were, of course, lots of patterns in basses and two times as
many collocates to associate with them. Assimilating all this information could not be
accomplished overnight, and extended practice was required to make it operational in the
improvisation of partimenti.
Through training in partimenti and solfeggi, contrapuntal collocates found their way
into the students’ memories. So counterpoint became a way of thinking in music apart
from any particular arrangement or layout of the voices. “Arrangement” and “layout”
translate to the Italian word disposizione (diss-poe-zih-tsee-OH-nay), and in the conserva-
 Chapter 10  counterpoint  141

tories three-voice counterpoint was thus called a disposizione à tre, or “three-voice arrange-
ment.” Example 10.9 shows one of Salini’s three versions of a disposizione à tre involving a
partimento bass that has much in common with the one seen previously in Example 10.7.
It features the same do–re–mi gist in the bass (notes in red), a primary collocate of u–
{–u (notes in blue) and a secondary collocate that sounds thirds above the bass. Salini
begins with the secondary collocate in the alto voice (the middle staff). In the second
measure the bass of measure 1 enters in the soprano voice. In measure 3 the bass modu-
lates to G major, and begins the do–re–mi theme, which is taken up by the alto voice in
the following measure. Each statement of the do–re–mi theme is accompanied by its u–
{–u collocate in another voice. The remaining voice fills in the harmony.
While both soprano and alto voices might work well with the partimento bass, that
would not guarantee that they worked well with each other. On the second and third beats
of measure 2, for instance, Salini’s two upper voices each make good counterpoint with

e x . 1 0 .9   Salini, three-voice arrangement of a given partimento bass (Naples, ca. 1760)

the bass, but when the soprano goes C-to-D while the alto goes F-to-G below it, the result-
ing parallel fifths would have been considered a serious error. (Salini’s three-voice setting
can be heard in Video 10.5.) Vi deo 1 0 .5

FUGUE — Counterpoint in two, three, or four voices was considered preparatory to

the study of fugue. In fugue, all the skills of counterpoint are put to work to manage the
dispositions of a subject, its answer, and one or more countersubjects (for more on disposi-
tions, see Chap. 12). As with the types of two- and three-voice counterpoint already seen in
this chapter, a four-voice fugue required exceptional concentration and ingenuity to find
the most appropriate collocate(s) for its given subject. The difficulty in managing a given
subject, its collocate(s), and supporting voices in four active voices may explain why exam-
inations and contests in counterpoint often featured fugues. Students would be given a
melodic subject, locked in a room, and told to emerge up to eighteen hours later with a
fair ink copy of a four-voice fugue.
The pen-and-paper product of fugue examinations may overemphasize “writing”
when “transcribing” might be a better description. Fugues were not made on paper. They
were made in a student’s mind and then transcribed for the judges. This art of mental
 142 child composers in the old conservatories

composition had its clearest demonstration in the fugues of blind students, who fashioned
fugues in their minds and then employed sighted amanuenses to transcribe them for the
judges.
A French school for blind children was founded in Paris in 1794, a year before the
Paris Conservatory. What became the National Institute of the Young Blind (L’Institut
National des Jeunes Aveugles à Paris) quickly turned into a near conservatory after supervi-
sors learned how successfully blind musicians could manage as parish organists. One of
the organists employed at the Institute was none other than Louis Braille, of Braille nota-
tion fame. Students at the Institute learned to improvise counterpoint and fugues at the
organ. By 1886, Albert Mahaut, an alumnus of the Institute’s boys section, had enrolled in
the Paris Conservatory and won a first prize in the organ class of César Franck. Two years
later Joséphine Boulay, an alumna of the Institute’s girls section, achieved the same dis-
tinction. She stayed on at the conservatory to take harmony, counterpoint, fugue, and
composition from Lenepveu, Gedalge, Massenet, and Fauré, among the conservatory’s
most famous professors. She won a second prize in harmony and, in 1897, a first prize in
fugue, receiving praise from Fauré himself.
The subject of her fugue, shown below on the top staff of Example 10.10, was written
by the director, Théodore Dubois. Boulay’s first task was to determine its key or keys, and
the example shows the keys marked in the conservatory manner. The next task was to
analyze the subject’s structure. The second staff of Example 10.10 indicates many salient
features of the subject that Boulay would have needed to notice. In measures 1–2, for

The Subject as Given

Key of F minor Key of C minor

Analysis of the Subject

u y Cadence

p j
Countersubject by Boulay

Countersubject by Estyle

e x . 1 0 .1 0   Subject and Countersubjects from the fugue contest, Paris Conservatory, 1897

instance, we see the subject’s opening motive reduced to just two notes, F and C. Their
prominence as u and y means that the fugue’s answer will need to begin similarly, but
with tones y and u. The reversal of these tonal pillars will result in a “tonal” answer,
where not only do the keys of F minor and C minor switch places, but the ascending fifth
(F to C) from measure 1 to measure 2 will become, in the answer, an ascending fourth (C
 Chapter 10  counterpoint  143

to F). At the conservatory, that change in the size of an important interval was called a
“mutation.” And because the interval changed size, it was best not to begin the counter-
subject until after the mutation, thus not until measure 3.
A good countersubject responds to the contrapuntal possibilities of the subject. On
the second staff of Example 10.10, measures 3–6 indicate likely lead voices and their pre-
ferred collocates. In measure 3, for instance, the tones in red (l–k–j), representing a
simplification of measure 3 of the subject, would take tones in blue as the most probable
collocate (u–{–u). As shown on the third and fourth staves of Example 10.10, the col-
locate in the blue tones matches what Boulay and her fellow first-prize winner Abel Estyle
selected for their countersubjects, though they both introduce suspensions and elabora-
tions. The suspensions were likely suggested by the subject’s measure 4, which sounds a
collocate to a l–k–j motion imagined in a countersubject. Again, that is the gist of
what both Boulay and Estyle provided. Measure 5 of the subject suggests a cadence, and
the p–j termination of the subject would normally be paired with a y–x–w collo-
cate. Both Boulay and Estyle responded appropriately. Boulay’s entire fugue can be heard
on Video 10.6. Vi deo 1 0 .6
Back in Chapter 2, the discussion of countersubjects crafted by Henri Busser and
Madeleine Jaeger (see Ex. 2.6) suggested that gender played little if any role. Example
10.10 and the completed fugues of Boulay and Estyle similarly demonstrate that a sighted
student and a blind one could do
equally well in an art so dependent on
hearing, memory, and years of careful
training. After a long day of stressful
work on their fugues, contestants would
write their names at the end of their
scores, and then either they or conser-
vatory staff would paste small squares of
paper over the names. For the judges,
the fugues were identified solely by
number (Boulay’s was no. 3). Only after
the winning fugues had been selected
were the paper squares peeled off to
reveal the winners’ names. To the right
you can see what the judges then saw—
that one of the two best fugues in the
whole contest had been composed by e x . 1 0 .1 1  Boulay’s name in the fugue contest, 1897
the blind organist and gifted contra-
puntist Joséphine Boulay.
144 child composers in the old conservatories

@
 11

IN TAVOL AT UR E

A ND T HE T ECHNIQUES

OF INST RUMEN TS

A ngel s si ng i n h e av en. This painting by Jan Van Eyck, part of his Ghent Altarpiece,
was meant to make that common belief visually real. He painted eight angels likely sing-
ing in four different parts (notice that the orientations of the heads and the shapes of the
mouths come in pairs). Besides reflecting the practice of sacred music in his time and
place, Van Eyck was giving the faithful a visual metaphor of harmony, a symbol of indi-
vidual singers and divergent melodies united in a harmonious and heavenly whole. For
centuries the idea that refined music involved voices singing different parts remained a
bedrock assumption in the practice of European classical music, even when no human

Angels from the Ghent Altarpiece, ca. 1430, by Hubert and Jan Van Eyck

145
 146 child composers in the old conservatories

voices were involved.

The full-length panel
of singing angels on
the left of the altar-
piece was matched by
a full-length panel on
the right showing
angels playing instru-
ments. Captions in
Latin declare both to
be forms of praising
God, and musicians
freely replaced parts
written for voices with
parts played by instru-
ments of various kinds.
A child musician
faced a difficult task in
trying to animate mul-
tiple moving voices in
his or her mind. Useful
tools for helping young
musicians experiment
with the sound of
The singing angels The playing angels
multiple voices were
the organ (shown
played by the seated angel) and later the harpsichord (shown opposite). In the study of
partimenti, for example, the student’s left hand played the given bass while his right hand
played one or more imagined parts. The keyboard could also be used to try out combina-
tions of voices that would later be written down for assignments in counterpoint. The
two-manual harpsichord shown opposite was an expensive option, but well-suited because
the performer could set the instrument to play different sets of strings with each set of keys,
thus giving different tone colors to the imagined voices played by the two hands. In the
conservatories there was also a repertory of special teaching pieces for harpsichord or
organ—intavolature.
The term intavolature (in-TAV-oh-lah-TOO-ray, singular intavolatura) is confusing
for historians of music. A huge repertory exists of old pieces for guitar, lute, or keyboard
written not in standard musical notation but in a pattern of numbers and lines intended to
show how to perform a piece. These “tablatures” (“tabs” in modern guitar slang) were, in
Italian, tabolature, and so the practice in Naples of using the word intavolature for key-
board works in standard notation was bound to cause later confusion. Perhaps in conse-
 Chapter 11  intavol atur e  147

quence, intavolature of the Neapolitan kind are little studied and not easy to distinguish
from ordinary works for organists or harpsichordists. Even distinguishing organ music from
harpsichord music can occasionally be difficult in eighteenth-century Italy because few
Italian organs had pedalboards installed. J. S. Bach’s organ music was often written on
three staves representing the right hand, left hand, and feet. But Italian organ music was
mostly written on two staves only.
In Naples, lessons in keyboard playing appear to have been separate from lessons in
partimento. That would make sense given that the former is a necessary stepping stone to
the latter. What would a conservatory lesson in keyboard playing have been like? Today a
student beginning piano lessons typically knows nothing about music notation. In Naples
a student beginning keyboard lessons would have already learned to read and perform
musical pitches and rhythms in the solfeggio class. So the student in Naples can start with
musically more challenging material. On the other hand, modern piano students will
practice works or studies designed to prepare them for the virtuoso compositions of a
Chopin or Rachmaninoff. No such keyboard literature existed in the eighteenth century.
This is not to say that eighteenth-century keyboard music was always easy and simple. But
even in the monumentally complicated fugues of J. S. Bach, each hand may often play
just one note at a time. This was a decided advantage for young boys with small hands.
If notation was not a challenge for the student, and if keyboard playing predominantly
required just one note at a time per hand, what was to be learned through studying and
playing intavolature? The first benefit would be the embodiment of two-voice counter-
point in a boy’s two hands. The abstract changes of pitch could become more real through
physical action, supporting music metaphors like “step,” “leap,” and “run.” A boy who was
accustomed to singing his one part in an ensemble could learn to feel the give and take of
suspensions, where one hand moves to force a dissonance and the other hand acquiesces
by descending one step to a consonance. The shapes of melodies could become more
physical in his right hand, and he could learn melodic figurations that were faster and
more intricate than what he
could sing.
None of those benefits
address the phrase-by-phrase
progress of music and the artic-
ulatory effects of cadences. This
is a level of musical syntax akin
to clauses in speech. Performers
and composers in Naples
needed to be able to fashion
elegant musical phrases. They
needed to understand how
phrases worked and where in a
A two-manual French harpsichord (modern), after Goujon (ca. 1750)
particular phrase one ought to
 148 child composers in the old conservatories

place emphasis or an accent. Learning the phrases of contemporary musical styles may
have been the second benefit of lessons in intavolature. Compared to partimenti, intavol-
ature often have a more sectional construction and feature more fashionable patterns.

GRECO — The link to musical fashion gives intavolature the sound of a particular
era, more so than a partimento. Some of the earliest intavolature in Naples come from
Gaetano Greco1 (1657–ca. 1728), a pupil and later a master at the Poveri. He began his
teaching career in 1677, about the same time that his contemporary Corelli entered the
court of Queen Christina in Rome. The influence of well-known repeating bass patterns
can be heard in many of Greco’s intavolature. Example 11.1 has the “down a 4th, up a step”
bass of the Romanesca pattern and Pachelbel’s Canon. The lower two staves show the
intavolatura as Greco wrote it, while the upper staff, actually in 6/8 meter, notates the
second part of “Greensleeves,” a popular Elizabethan melody.2 Both Greco’s intavolatura
and “Greensleeves” are based on the same schema and can be played simultaneously.
Vi deo 1 1.1 (Video 11.1 has recordings of them played separately and together.)

e x . 1 1.1   Lower two staves: Greco, “Ballo della Torcia” (Naples, ca. 1690s); upper staff, the
tune of “Greensleeves” (London, ca. 1590s)

Greco, who would teach Durante and Domenico Scarlatti, both keyboard virtuosi,
also wrote more advanced keyboard works, but they were not titled “intavolature,” suggest-
ing that intavolature were limited to pieces for beginners. In any case, a simple piece like
that shown in Example 11.1 would certainly be appropriate for beginners, and their possi-
ble acquaintance with such a stock bassline might help them in learning the lesson.

LEO — Intavolature by Leonardo Leo,3 who entered the Pietà as a student in 1709,
are much larger and more modern than Greco’s. They combine a structure built from
 Chapter 11  intavol atur e  149

schematic blocks with a melodic surface of elegantly flowing eighth-notes. Leo was one of
the first masters to teach this newer style in his lessons. His first intavolatura (part of which
is shown in Ex. 11.2) could be described as beginning with an ascending D-major arpeggio

e x . 1 1. 2  Leo, intavolatura no. 1 in D major (Naples, ca. 1730s)

 150 child composers in the old conservatories

in the left hand answered by a scalar passage in the right hand. That two-bar opening
gambit leads to a Prinner riposte (the core melodic tones B–A–G–F# are tinted red) whose
final tone F# is the beginning of a second Prinner in the key of A major. If one summa-
rized this first section as “an opening gambit leads to two Prinners of different sizes,” one
would also be describing the opening section of one of Mozart’s best-known keyboard
sonatas, one once labeled (though not by Mozart) “For Beginners” (see Ex. 11.3). As in so
many lessons described in previous chapters, Mozart’s sonata opens with a do–re–do bass
(the red notes) and a u–{–u melody (the blue notes). The Prinner riposte (melody in
red notes) matches the length of the two-measure opening gambit, and is followed in turn
by a four-measure Prinner. (The Leo intavolatura and the excerpt from Mozart’s sonata
Vi deo 1 1. 2 can be heard in Video 11.2.)

e x . 1 1.3   Mozart, Sonata in C Major, 1st movement (Vienna, 1788)

Leo, born only nine years after Bach and Handel, was developing and teaching a style
that would come to dominate classical music for the next hundred years. Eighteenth-
century musicians and writers termed it “galant,” meaning a style of nonchalant elegance
and easy grace. Firsthand training in this style gave Leo’s students and others in the Naples
conservatories distinct advantages in the musical job market.
The genres of keyboard lessons were not clearly differentiated in eighteenth-century
Italy. Domenico Scarlatti’s sonatas were sometimes called “exercises” (esercizi), and
Bernardo Pasquini’s partimenti were called “sonatas.” Leo’s intavolature were sometimes
titled “toccatas,” and some of them begin as if they were ordinary partimenti. A case in
point is a C-minor intavolatura by Leo, where the opening five measures present a bass
with no right-hand part (see Ex. 11.4, top system). Not only is this the texture of a parti-
mento, but the content is typical of a partimento. The opening octave leap to a “C” held
over from the second to the third beat, with a subsequent step down to B§, is the classic
setup for a 4/2-chord dissonance on beat three. And the long string of eighth-notes that
follows cleverly conceals the “down a 3rd, up a 2nd” movimento (the tones in red). The
preferred melodic collocate for that movimento would alternate the intervals “3” and “6”
in contrary motion. After this movimento two cadences (a Phrygian Tenor Cadence [Ab–
G] and a large Compound Cadence) close the solo opening.
 Chapter 11  intavol atur e  151

In the next few measures Leo writes a realization of his own partimento (Ex. 11.4, bot-
tom system). The first measures of the previous solo bass are repeated again. Not only does
a dissonant 4/2 chord fall exactly where it should (the combined effect of the two notes in
orange), but the melodic collocate (the notes in blue) also places the alternating intervals
“3” and “6” at just the right moments. It is as if Leo is saying, “This is how it should be
done.” (Video 11.3 performs Examples 11.4 through 11.8.) Vi deo 1 1.3

e x . 1 1. 4   L
 eo, the opening of a C-minor intavolatura (Naples, ca. 1730s)

In some of Leo’s other intavolature the opening solo is not followed by its realization.
In Example 11.5, for instance, the solo announces the tones of G major (mm. 4–5 are in
the tenor clef, with the first note being middle C) before the right hand enters to perform
a Prinner (the notes in red) in D major. A second Prinner (mm. 11–14) has its melody in
the alto range with the high soprano notes making lovely suspensions. In measure 15 there

e x . 1 1.5   Leo, the opening of a G-major intavolatura (Naples, ca. 1730s)

could have been a cadence, but Leo delays his cadence with the Indugio schema (in-
DUE-gee-oh; Italian: “tarry or linger”). As the bass rises through steps m–n–o (the blue
 152 child composers in the old conservatories

notes), Leo keeps sounding the same dissonant tones D and E (in orange). Only when, in
the penultimate measure, the D resolves down to C# in the tenor range does the cadence
finally arrive, at least tentatively.
Every boy needed to learn the sacred style of church music. A marker of that style was
the frequent use of a tied or prolonged note that another note in a different voice would
force into dissonance and a resolution a step lower. The old terminology was colorful and
described a “bound” note that would “suffer” the imposed dissonance and be forced to
submit by descending a step to reestablish consonance. In Example 11.6, we see a Leo
intavolatura that, following the solo opening, has a bound dissonance in every measure.
The bound tones are shown in red, and the tone in another voice that forces the disso-
nance is shown in blue. As the coloration makes evident, the red-and-blue pairings are

e x . 1 1.6  L
 eo, an intavolatura in G major (Naples, ca. 1730s)

pervasive to a fault, but the pedagogical purpose of the intavolatura may have been to help
the student understand how such a pattern can appear in so many different guises. All
three voices take turns performing the bound dissonance. Sometimes the forcing or “free”
voice is above and sometimes it is below. And in measure 9 we see that one can make a
continuous sequence of these dissonances. Moreover, the sequence of forcing tones (m. 9,
in blue) sounds the Prinner melody and continues down the hexachord of A major to
where, in the twelfth measure (not shown), one would expect to end on the keynote “A.”
Leo writes only three voices and only three different note values (whole, half, quarter), but
he manages to craft a very sophisticated lesson in sacred-style counterpoint.
Intavolature may provide good models for the kinds of realizations of partimenti that
the boys were able to manage in Naples. Young boys were not keyboard virtuosos, and
there were limitations on what was practicable on the kinds of instruments that they had
to play (probably small harpsichords or clavichords). So a modern keyboard player con-
templating how to realize a partimento by Leo might do well to first play his intavolature
and listen to how Leo treated various schemas, movimenti, and cadences.
An old manuscript of a Leo partimento in the Santini collection provides a useful
clarification of how to realize a long passage of eighth-notes where each new four-note
group is a third lower than the previous one (Ex. 11.7). A performer could emphasize each
 Chapter 11  intavol atur e  153

four-note group, or try to articulate each pair of such groups, or possibly make a unit of
four such groups as suggested by notated changes in register. How would one decide?

e x . 1 1.7  Leo, the opening measures of a C-major partimento (Naples, ca. 1730s)

While arguments could be advanced in favor of any of these choices, the Santini
manuscript provides an unexpected and strong clue. At the end of this partimento, the
long sequence of eighth-notes returns in the soprano range, and the manuscript provides
a bass. As shown below in Example 11.8, the highest notes in the bass (in blue) and the first
notes of the corresponding four-note groups (in red) match the core tones of the Prinner
schema. Given Leo’s tendency to use this schema seemingly whenever possible, the given
bass not only clarifies the sequence but also provides yet another illustration of the simple
but elegant keyboard style preferred for both his partimenti and his intavolature.

e x . 1 1. 8   L
 eo, the closing measures of a C-major partimento (Naples, ca. 1730s)

COTUMACCI — Carlo Cotumacci (1709–1785) entered the Poveri as a boy and

later became first master at the Onofrio, where he remained until his death. A student of
Alessandro Scarlatti and later of Durante, he wrote all sorts of lessons for generations of
boys. His training first by a seventeenth-century master and then by an eighteenth-century
one can be reflected in his lessons, which inventively incorporate some very old patterns
into the new design of sonata movements. As shown in Example 11.9, an intavolatura4 in
Cotumacci’s mannerist style has many points in common with works by his more famous
German contemporary C. P. E. Bach. Take for example Cotumacci’s opening gambit
 154 child composers in the old conservatories

Vi deo 1 1. 4 (mm. 1–3; the entire movement can be heard in Video 11.4). It does not fit neatly into any
single schema, and by cadencing twice in three measures he emphasizes small gestures at
the expense of a more intelligible outline. For a listener it is difficult to predict what comes
next. The melodic motif of four sixteenth-notes followed by two eighth-notes, first heard
in measure 3, develops into a sequence at the end of measure 5. At each stage of the
sequence he gives us an inverted Comma, where mi–fa in the melody (blue tones) sounds
against fa–mi in the bass, all in the context of a bass that descends chromatically (notes in

e x . 1 1.9   C
 otumacci, a G-minor intavolatura (Naples, ca. 1750s)
 Chapter 11  intavol atur e  155

purple). In the course of that sequence Cotumacci modulates from G minor to D major
(then minor) to C major (then minor) to Bb major. Bb is the relative major key of the open-
ing G minor, and in this new key we get a small Half Cadence, then a large cadence that
ends deceptively (G in the bass takes the place of Bb on the downbeat of m. 11), and then
the same large cadence that now ends completely.
If this were a small mid-century sonata, there would be a double bar here (m. 14) with
repeat signs. Both are lacking, but the Fonte that follows shows that Cotumacci was follow-
ing the general outline of a sonata. A Fonte following a double bar was a forerunner of
“development sections,” where there is a large digression leading to an eventual return to
the opening theme and key. Cotumacci’s Fonte begins in C minor and then returns to Bb
major. A Prinner leads the key back down to G minor and the return of the opening gam-
bit. The Prinner appears again, as does the opening gambit, and this time they lead to the
same twofold large cadence (deceptive . . . complete), now in G minor. Many of the
essential elements of sonata form are present in this intavolatura, though they are devel-
oped along different lines from those adopted in Vienna by Haydn and Mozart.

FENAROLI — Compared with Cotumacci’s intavolature, which have an artful side

to them, the keyboard lessons of Fenaroli5 seem primarily designed to impart the generic
contents of basic schemas. Fenaroli’s intavolature are obviously didactic and written for
beginners. It is easy to imagine Fenaroli giving a ten-year-old at the Loreto the intavolatura
of Example 11.10 (the intavolature in this section can be heard in Video 11.5). The four- Vi deo 1 1.5
note groups of eighth-notes begin with a guide to fingering, and a boy only has to worry
about one hand at a time to play the first system. His task is made even easier by the call-
and-response design. Whatever he plays in his right hand is then imitated by his left hand.
Both hands play together on the second system, but until measure 10 the left hand need
only manage one note per measure. Those notes (in blue) form the bass of the Prinner
schema, whose core melodic tones are shown in red. So even in such a simple lesson
Fenaroli manages to teach one of the most frequent and useful schemas. Notice that this
small exercise presents its few patterns and then finishes with a cadential trill on k. There
are no artful digressions or repetitions—just the bare contents of the lesson.

e x . 1 1.1 0  Fenaroli, a C-major intavolatura (Naples, ca. 1780s)

 156 child composers in the old conservatories

Fenaroli was able to incorporate subtle aspects of counterpoint and movimenti in

keyboard textures of great simplicity and clarity. In Example 11.11, for instance, he presents
the student with a version of the 5–6–5–6 diatonic Monte, one of the many ways to treat
an ascending scale in the bass. For each four eighth-notes in the bass, the first two take an
implied 5/3 chord (C–E–G over a C bass) and the second two take a 6/3 chord (C–E–A
over a C bass). But Fenaroli goes beyond simple chording. As the notes tinted blue are
meant to illustrate, his melody alternates “3” and “6” intervals above the bass. Those notes
are emphasized by repetitions that initiate each group of sixteenth-notes.

e x . 1 1.1 1   F
 enaroli, a C-major intavolatura with a rising 5–6–5–6 schema (Naples, ca. 1780s)

Fenaroli is teaching a boy the correlation between strong beats and “3s” and “6s” in
two-voice counterpoint because later the boy will find out that this correlation is one of the
secrets of invertible or “double” counterpoint, a core concept in writing fugues. The same
lesson gains reinforcement in Example 11.12. There a descending scale in the bass, a type
of stepwise Romanesca, also alternates 5/3 and 6/3 chords (two chords per measure) and
Fenaroli similarly places alternating “3s” and “6s” on strong beats.

e x . 1 1.1 2   Fenaroli, a G-major intavolatura with a stepwise Romanesca (Naples, ca. 1780s)

Those correlations are intentional choices by Fenaroli. The same descending scale
can be set without them, as he did in Example 11.13. The blue-tinted notes show that here
Fenaroli placed parallel 3rds on strong beats. What is being conveyed in this lesson is the
5/3 versus 6/3 shape of the right-hand figuration and the measure-by-measure descent by
3rds of the highest notes.

e x . 1 1.13   Fenaroli, a C-major intavolatura with a stepwise Romanesca (Naples, ca. 1780s)
 Chapter 11  intavol atur e  157

All of these features are elements of what one might term a “schema family,” meaning
a class of closely related patterns. Examples 11.12 and 11.13, for instance, shared a descend-
ing scale and alternating 5/3 and 6/3 chords. In Example 11.12, we can name the first six
chords G major, D major, E minor, B minor, C major, G major. Example 11.14 has that
exact sequence of chords and a descending scale starting on G in the alto voice. Does
Example 11.14 present the same schema as Example 11.12? The conception held by a boy
at one of the conservatories probably depended much on his master, and the masters
grouped patterns in slightly different ways. There were advantages in not having overarch-
ing principles that forced every musical passage into a predetermined grid of meaning.

e x . 1 1.1 4   F
 enaroli, a G-major intavolatura with a rising-5ths Romanesca (Naples, ca. 1780s)

Masters and apprentices could think of Examples 11.12–14 as distinct types or as closely
related family members (which is what people do with real family members, who each
have unique names but all fill stock roles—mother, father, . . .). The only thing necessary
was to learn each one well enough so that it was securely stored in memory. Recognizing
interesting similarities was useful and probably desirable, but not actually necessary to
function as a professional musician.

INTAVOLATURE AS TRANSLATIONS — “Keyboard” was one of several musical

media, as was “choral” or “orchestral.” Each had many subtypes. “Choral” could mean
singing chant in unison, or it could mean an eight-part composition for two four-part
choirs. Similarly “keyboard” could mean “cembalo” (CHEM-bah-low; a harpsichord) or
“organ.” And each subtype had particular textures and characters. Organs, for instance,
excelled at long tones, whereas tones on a harpsichord died away quickly. Professional
musicians were expected to be able to translate works from one medium to another. To be
done well these translations or “arrangements” needed to respect how different media
conveyed the same musical content in different ways. In an orchestra, for example, agita-
tion or great energy could be conveyed by the strings playing tremolo. In that medium
“tremolo” means the very rapid iteration of a tone. Translating that effect directly to the
keyboard was almost impossible because the mechanisms of eighteenth-century keyboards
could not reset themselves fast enough to rapidly repeat the same note. So for a keyboard
performer, “tremolo” came to mean the rapid alternation of two tones from the same
chord. The translation retained the content, but accomplished it in a way amenable to a
keyboard’s limitations.
 158 child composers in the old conservatories

Keyboard translations from orchestral and operatic media became so important that
they formed their own genre, “keyboard transcriptions.” Students learned many tricks of
the trade for how to get ten small fingers to perform a transcription of what had taken as
many as a hundred musicians in the original. Intavolature, by teaching students how to
perform various schemas at the keyboard, helped to form a foundation for the art of key-
board transcription. Example 11.15 contains an image from the overture of a comic opera
by Cimarosa (Naples, 1794). As you may observe, reading such a score is challenging.
Clefs and key signatures are only provided at the beginning of a movement, and different
instruments use different clefs and/or have their parts transposed to different keys. Red
brackets enclose the first violins (in the treble clef), blue brackets the basses (in the bass
clef), and the 5/3 or 6/3 figures have been added on a blank staff. For the student who had
studied stepwise Romanescas in Fenaroli’s intavolature this passage (in A major) would
Vi deo 1 1.6 suddenly leap into focus. (A recording of the overture can be heard in Video 11.6.)

[ ]

5 6 5 6 5 6
3 3 3 3 3 3

[ ]
e x . 1 1.15   Cimarosa, Le astuzie femminili, Overture, mm. 39–42 (Naples, 1794)
 12

DISPOSI T IONS

A ND T HE M A ST ERY

OF COMPLE X I T Y

Th e Es t ua ry of Hu m bol d t Bay lies on the coast of northern California. Seen

from above it exhibits a complex pattern of blue rivulets separating islands of green vegeta-
tion. Like many forms of complexity in the natural world, the pattern of Humboldt Bay
results from the actions of a few laws of physics applied repeatedly to the original state of
the landscape. Gravity, erosion, tides, and silting do all the work and no landscape archi-
tect needs to intervene. Is the complexity of music like that? Are there laws of physics and
the brain that “do all the work”? Is a composer just a receptive conduit through which the
interactions of eternal laws apply themselves repeatedly to a primordial state of sound?

Aerial view of Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge, Northern California

159
 160 child composers in the old conservatories

The complexity of a large orchestral work, say Rimsky-Korsakov’s orchestral suite

Scheherazade (1888), bears little resemblance to that of a natural landscape. The score’s
eighteen separate staves guide perhaps a hundred performers, but natural laws and forces
do not act on each performer as they might on each grain of sand in an estuary. Instead the
performers act together in a coordinated fashion to carry out the conscious design and
dramatic strategies of the composer.
It was mentioned in Chapter 10 (“Counterpoint”) that the word “disposition” (dis-
pozitione) was used in Naples to describe a written-out realization of a partimento or other
bass in three or four separate voices or parts. The same concept was retained in France at
the Paris Conservatory, though the term used was réalisation. Two-voice counterpoint was,
as mentioned, perhaps the core subject in the curriculum. Solfeggi were two-voice coun-
terpoints of melody and bass. The first stages of counterpoint training were all about the
two-voice counterpoint of a reference voice and a counterpointing voice. And the two
hands that played partimenti performed a counterpoint of melody and bass. The skills
learned in those subjects did not, however, transfer to three or four voices automatically. A
three-voice composition with bass, alto, and soprano parts will have three separate two-
voice counterpoints: bass + alto, bass + soprano, and alto + soprano. A four-voice compo-
sition with bass, tenor, alto, and soprano will have six two-voice counterpoints: bass +
tenor, bass + alto, bass + soprano, tenor + alto, tenor + soprano, and alto + soprano. That
is more complexity than most musicians can control or even contemplate. How was it
then that graduates of the advanced classes at the conservatories had little difficulty in
composing three- or four-voice music almost as rapidly as they could write it down?
A repertory of dispositions for study could be a great help in trying to understand
multivoice counterpoint. In studying them one could begin to identify and learn the col-
locations that matched particular bass patterns—the movimenti. This approach was
favored by the Durantisti (followers of Durante). Master Cotumacci, introduced in the
previous chapter, was a Durantista, and his student Giovanni Furno (1748–1837) wrote
three-voice dispositions1 for most of the movimenti. Because they are in only three voices
and notated quite simply, they may make a good introduction to the world of dispositions.

FURNO — Five of Furno’s three-voice dispositions of the “up a 2nd, down a 3rd”
Vi deo 1 2 .1 movimento are shown opposite and can be heard in Video 12.1. In no. 1 (top of Ex. 12.1),
four measures set the movimento and then four measures set up a Double Cadence. The
reference voice of four descending whole-notes is in the alto voice, with the outer voices
alternating “5s” and “6s” against it as they move in parallel 10ths. This is a very old tech-
nique from the 1500s, where long tones become the “6” of a 6/3 chord and then the “5” of
a 5/3 chord. In no. 2 the same general plan is followed but the soprano makes 7–6 suspen-
sions with the reference voice (the alto) and the ensuing close is a Compound Cadence.
In nos. 3–5 (Ex. 12.2) Furno shifts the movimento so that the “up a 2nd” tone (C, in
blue) now falls on a downbeat to set up the Prinner schema (melody in red, bass in blue).
No. 3 retains the 7–6 suspensions (a “bound” soprano against the alto reference) of no. 2.
 Chapter 12  dispositions  161

e x . 1 2 .1   Furno, disposizioni a 3, nos. 1–2 of the “up a 2nd, down a 3rd” movimento (Naples, ca. 1800)

No. 4 moves the Prinner melody to the soprano and gives a circle-of-fifths melody to the
alto. The Prinner melodic tones are preceded by pairs of quarter-notes that mark a descend-
ing “6–5” over the rising bass. This is the Comma articulation used frequently in Fontes

e x . 1 2 . 2  Furno, disposizioni a 3, nos. 3–5 of the “up a 2nd, down a 3rd” movimento (Naples, ca. 1800)
 162 child composers in the old conservatories

and Montes. And no. 5 retains the general plan of no. 4 but adds 2–3 suspensions (a
“bound” alto below a forcing soprano).
As Furno progresses through these dispositions, there are increasing levels of tech-
nique and a style that becomes increasingly contemporary. No. 6, for instance (Ex.12.3), is
characteristic of Furno’s own era. Descending triads in the alto lead to notes of the Prinner
schema (melody in red, bass in blue) while ascending triads in the soprano sound the
notes of the 5/3 chords.

e x . 1 2 .3   Furno, disposizioni a 3, no. 6 of the “up a 2nd, down a 3rd” movimento (Naples, ca. 1800)

If we were to halve Furno’s note values and remove his soprano while transferring its
figuration to the bass, we would come very close to the Prinner riposte in the second
theme of Mozart’s Sonata in C Major (“For Beginners”). Mozart works the same movi-
mento and, just like the boys in Naples, alternates 6/3 and 5/3 chords so that the “6/3s”
correlate with the “lower” tones of the movimento (bass tones B, A, G, F#). Mozart did visit
Naples and the conservatories when he was fourteen, but he was already proficient in how
to use all of the movimenti in multivoice counterpoint.

e x . 1 2 . 4  Mozart, Keyboard Sonata in C Major, 1st movement, mm. 19–22 (Vienna, 1788)

ASIOLI — Furno’s dispositions are notated without any thoroughbass figures or other
commentary. The patterns—two dozen pages of them—are what they are. Well-meaning
attempts to annotate dispositions ran the risk of burying the patterns under a blizzard of
information. A case in point would be a lovely three-part disposition by Bonifazio Asioli
(1769–1832), the first third of which is shown in Example 12.5. It was published after his
death and perhaps heavily edited by former students.2 Above the bass staff are abbrevia-
tions for the “1st” and “2nd” strong beats per measure (primo, secondo). Just below the alto
staff (the middle staff) are the interval numbers between alto and bass, and below the
soprano staff are the interval numbers between soprano and bass. There are even special
 Chapter 12  dispositions  163

e x . 1 2 .5   Asioli, no. 33 from The Master of Composition (Milan, 1836)

marks (soprano, middle of m. 2; alto, downbeat of m. 3) that

refer to footnote “(a)” about the succession of two 5ths.
Asioli was a musician of considerable stature. The great
Joseph Haydn wrote to him in 1805, recommending that he
might accept Mozart’s son Karl as a student—high praise indeed
for Asioli. But the welter of numbers in Example 12.5 is little
more than a pretense at analysis that almost completely conceals
Asioli’s deeper musical understanding. Take for example the
first three measures. As highlighted by the added names for
schemas, he begins with the Leapfrog Schema that ascends the
C-major hexachord (C, D, E, F, G, A). After the alto states its
“C” in measure 1 (the first note circled in red), the soprano drops
in a step above, forcing the alto a step lower. But the alto then
leaps over the soprano to sound an “E” (the third circled note),
Bonifazio Asioli
which forces the soprano down, and so forth for three measures.
A listener’s ear will follow the rising scale, not the alto-versus-bass intervals “8 6 11 3 3 5 3 5
5.” Asioli is demonstrating how a salient line, even if performed alternately by two voices,
can give coherence to complex counterpoint (hear Asioli’s work in Video 12.2). Vi deo 1 2 . 2
Two cadences (mm. 4–5) then lead to the key of G major and a new salient line now
in the bass, an ascending hexachord (G, A, B, C, D, E) supporting a different version of a
soprano/alto leapfrog (discussed in Chapter 14). The closure of a Double Cadence is
 164 child composers in the old conservatories

evaded as the key quickly melts into Eb major, which is a setup for an Augmented 6th
variety of tenor cadence that resolves on a G chord as the dominant of the home key of C
major. That prepares the entry of a third salient line, a rising chromatic scale in the bass
(six notes, of which only the first three are shown) supporting the Monte schema with the
two upper voices in imitation, the alto following the soprano at a two quarter-note lag. An
organizing plan emerges. Asioli has written a didactic work to illustrate a series of contra-
puntal schemes separated by one or more cadences. In this case the schemes are Leapfrog
(C major)—Cadences—Scala (G major)—Cadences—Monte (C major). . . . As the
strings of numbers and the footnotes attest, there is great complexity here. But the com-
plexity is managed within the perceptually simplifying structures of known schemas and
cadences.

LAVIGNA — We are fortunate that many lessons have survived from the studies of
Vincenzo Lavigna (1776–1836) in Naples. Lavigna, mentioned in Chapter 10 for his coun-
terpoint lessons, arrived at the Loreto in 1790 and remained there until 1799, having com-
pleted the course for a maestro di capella and served as a “little master” (maestrino) to the
younger boys. From that biographical outline we can infer that Lavigna was a bright and
careful student, and that his lessons probably represent a conservatory boy at his best. His
later career supports that supposition because he became a harpsichordist at La Scala in
Milan, composed operas there, directed some of the first La Scala performances of
Mozart’s great operas, gained a post as professor of solfeggio at
the Milan Conservatory (where Asioli taught), and lastly but
most importantly for Italian music history, gave three years of
private lessons in counterpoint and composition to Giuseppe
Verdi. He was a living link between his teacher Fenaroli, a stu-
dent of Durante (born 1684), and Verdi, who died in 1901.
Absolute beginners in counterpoint think from note to note
and interval to interval. After gaining some facility and experi-
ence, students begin to think schematically in terms of charac-
teristic note patterns and their preferred collocations. When
those matters became second nature, students could enter the
upper levels of counterpoint and write fugues and dispositions
that might approach real music in complexity. At that higher
level, but not all the way to mastery, stood Lavigna in 1794. A
Vincenzo Lavigna manuscript dated by him two months before his eighteenth
birthday is titled Fuge per Cembalo del Signore Don Fedele
Fenaroli, Ad uso di me, Vincenzo Lavigna, 29 Nov., 1794 (“Harpsichord Fugues by Master
Fedele Fenaroli, for my own use, Vincenzo Lavigna”).3 One would expect harpsichord
music to be on two staves, treble and bass. But this manuscript has three staves, two treble
and one bass. On closer examination one can deduce that the lower two staves contain
Lavigna’s (or someone else’s) realizations of Fenaroli’s fugal partimenti, their preludes,
 Chapter 12  dispositions  165

and some pieces of unknown origin. The top staff is what we might call a descant, mean-
ing an optional treble voice. We can be confident that it was indeed optional because the
core tones of all the schemas used by Fenaroli are played in the lower two staves. The top
staff fills in missing tones of the harmony and creates a richer texture, but does not alter
the essentials conveyed by the harpsichord. In that sense Lavigna’s dispositions are like
Mozart’s earliest violin sonatas, where the violin part was an optional addition. The likely
genesis of Lavigna’s manuscript was first a realization of a single-staff partimento, which
resulted in two staves, to which was added a third—an unusual but pedagogically useful
type of three-voice disposition.
Whether in the fugues of Bach or Fenaroli, the passages that separate statements of a
fugue’s subject or answer feature sequences called “episodes.” Episodes often correspond
to movimenti taught at the Loreto, so by looking at Lavigna’s episodes we can be fairly
certain how he understood them and what strategies he used for incorporating the added
voice. The three-voice dispositions of Furno discussed above were all based on the “up a
2nd, down a 3rd” movimento, with the higher notes of the bass pattern taking 5/3 chords
and the lower notes 6/3 chords. Fenaroli used that movimento for one of his episodes in a
Bb partimento fugue from his Book 5. As shown in Example 12.6, the bass begins with the
“down a 3rd” (Bb to G; in
blue) followed by the “up
a 2nd” (G to A; in blue).
The right hand of the
harpsichord (middle staff)
has its high notes move
contrary to the bass in
alternating 3rds and 6ths e x . 1 2 .6   Lavigna, 3-voice disposition of a Fenaroli partimento, mm.
(in red). Notice that the 64–68; the “up a 2nd, down a 3rd” movimento (Naples, 1794)
partimento bass begins
with an interesting first measure that leads to a static second measure (the dotted half-note
G). Lavigna responds appropriately by transferring the interesting motif of the partimen-
to’s first measure to the second measure of the realization.
With the basic counterpoint of this movimento already provided by the harpsichord,
and the harpsichord also taking the call-and-response alternation of the attention-grabbing
motif of eighth-notes, Lavigna sets his violin (the top staff) to shadow the partimento bass
in parallel 3rds (or 10ths to be precise). The choice shows good judgment. Beginners in
counterpoint often think that multiple voices need to be doing multiple things. But listen-
ers can find it difficult to pay attention to more than two independent parts. Lavigna man-
ages to enrich the sonority of the disposition without detracting from the core features of Vi deo 1 2 .3
this movimento. (Listen to this and Lavigna’s other dispositions in Video 12.3.)
The “up a 2nd, down a 3rd” movimento creates a descending sequence. For ascend-
ing sequences, one of the top choices was “up a 4th, down a 3rd.” Like so many movi-
menti, this ascending sequence will sound vaguely familiar. Some people may have
 166 child composers in the old conservatories

encountered it in its innumerable appearances in classical music, or perhaps in the tradi-

tional English carol “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” As seen in Example 12.7, Furno’s
disposition of this movimento, there can be a call and response between the bass and
melody. As shown by the editorial slurs connecting the upward leaps of a 4th, the melody
(in red) can mimic the leaps in the bass (in blue), alternating intervals of 3rds and octaves.
The red and blue
notes in Furno’s disposi-
tion find their same places
in Lavigna’s, as shown in
Example 12.8 below. Again
we see a call-and-response
pattern as the right and left
hands of the realization
e x . 1 2 .7   Furno, disposizioni a 3, no. 2 of “up a 4th, down a 3rd”
alternate active eighth-
(Naples, ca. 1800)
notes and static dotted half-
notes. The realization itself uses two voices in its right-hand part, so there are no tones
missing from the simple chords and thus nothing novel for Lavigna to add for his top
voice. So instead he doubles the “response” part of the realization’s right hand, only an
octave lower. Again this creates a richer sonority without muddying the contrapuntal
waters. Lavigna’s choice creates a terminological problem for some people. They might
say, “This is not counterpoint, and it creates a stream of forbidden parallel octaves.” In
Lavigna’s defense someone might justly reply, “It is a disposition, which includes the
techniques of what later became orchestration.” For instance, in composing a movement
for a mass, Lavigna could double his vocal parts with string parts. That would change the
sound but not the counterpoint. In many respects “disposition” took the place of “orches-
tration” in the old conservatories. “Orchestration,” as a separate subject, was foreign to the
conservatories in Naples and only arrived at the Paris Conservatory in the 1870s.

e x . 1 2 . 8  Lavigna, 3-voice disposition of a Fenaroli partimento, mm. 84–92; the “up a 2nd, down a 3rd”
movimento (Naples, 1794)

MATTEI — Stanislao Mattei (Mah-TAY; 1750–1845) was born in Bologna, son of a

smithy. Bologna was where Padre Martini (1706–1784; upper portrait opposite) was a lead-
ing teacher and an active correspondent with many of the era’s best musicians. Martini
 Chapter 12  dispositions  167

was a Franciscan monk, and the local church of his

order had a daily mass and vespers with impressive musi-
cal performances. The boy Mattei came all the time to
listen. Martini noticed his love of music and took him
on as a student. Mattei himself became a Franciscan as
the portrait below suggests, and, after Martini passed
away, preserved his mentor’s scores, writings, and meth-
ods of teaching. Young musicians as important as Rossini
and Donizetti came to study with Mattei. He also taught
the Dresden organist Christian Weinlig, the future
teacher of harmony and counterpoint to Clara
Schumann and Richard Wagner.
Although the number of students taught by Martini
and Mattei was tiny compared to the hundreds of boys
taught in Naples, Martini’s connections with musicians Padre Martini
all over Europe and his considerable historical knowl-
edge helped to make the “school” of Bologna influen-
tial. For example, Giuseppi Sarti (1729–1802) studied
with Martini and later taught Luigi Cherubini, future
director of the Paris Conservatory. Sarti’s particular way
of structuring a fugue became Cherubini’s model and
thus the model for decades of fugue contests at the Paris
Conservatory.
You may remember from the chapter on counter-
point (Chap. 10) how the linguist Sinclair favored the
“idiom principle” to describe how normal people speak
or write their native language. Other scholars working
in the same field prefer to think of idioms more broadly,
calling them “pre-fabs” or prefabricated utterances. If
we think of two acquaintances greeting each other, the
one saying “How are you?” and the other responding
Stanislao Mattei
“So far, so good,” we are hearing pre-fabs. The first
speaker did not say “How” and then, using the “open-
choice principle,” try to think of a word that was both grammatical and useful in a greet-
ing. That is not how this type of conversation works. Both speakers used pre-fabs that they
had heard others use in the same situation. Guided by the situation, pre-fabs from long-
term memory fall into place almost automatically.
Like the movimenti taught in Naples, the multivoice dispositions of Mattei served as
pre-fabs for composition in three or more parts. And they were likely important influences
on the polyphonic pre-fabs known as marches harmoniques (“harmonic progressions or
models”) at the Paris Conservatory. As in Naples, the starting point was a repertory of small
 168 child composers in the old conservatories

partimenti, or as they were called in Bologna, bassi. The three scales shown below in
Example 12.9 (from an 1824 publication4) show three thoroughbass models for a multi-
voice disposition of an ascending major scale. The top staff represents the Rule of the
Octave. The middle staff represents
6
4
6
5
n6 6
5
alternating 5/3 and 6/3 chords, and the
3
bottom staff represents a series of 7–6
suspensions.
5
Students in Bologna did not just
3 6 5 6 5 6 5 6 5 6 5 6 5 6
count out the intervals to see what might
sound good in upper voices (an “open-
choice principle” at work). They were
7 6 7 6 7 6 7 6 7 6 7 6 5
expected to absorb a large repertory of
pre-fabs ranging from two to eight total
voices. Let us examine just a small sam-
e x . 1 2 .9   Mattei, three thoroughbass models for an ascending ple of the dozens of pre-fab dispositions
scale (Bologna, 1824) that Mattei wrote for the 5–6 and 7–6
versions (the lower two staves of Ex.
12.9).
In Example 12.10, the upper pair of staves sets the sequence of alternating “5s” and
“6s” in a soprano voice (with soprano clef, the first note is G above middle C). The lower
pair sets the series of “7s” and “6s” in the soprano voice and follows every “6” with a “5,”
leading rapidly down to an unmarked “3” before leaping up a sixth to set up the next “7.”
This is a more dramatic model that takes a full measure to complete. The 5–6 model, by
contrast, plays out twice per measure and contains no leaps at all. The 7–6 model repre-
sents something close to the surface of a real composition; the 5–6 model is more like
Vi deo 1 2 . 4 something in the background. (All these dispositions can be heard in Video 12.4.)

5 6 5 6 5 6 5 6 5 6 5 6 4 3 8

7 6 5 3 7 6 5 3 7 6 5 3

e x . 1 2 .1 0  Mattei, two two-voice dispositions of the 5–6 and 7–6 models (Bologna, 1824)
 Chapter 12  dispositions  169

The two three-voice dispositions shown in Example 12.11 could be described as simple
and complex versions (upper and lower groups of staves respectively) of the 7–6 model,
although it is the complex disposition that becomes more widely used. In the simple ver-
sion, each voice has a distinct role. The bass presents the C-major scale, the soprano (top
staff) starts a scale on G at a one-measure delay (underlined in red), and the alto voice
(middle staff) presents all the 7–6 suspensions. In a quirk of the old Italian style of solfeg-
gio, the C-major scale in the bass and the delayed G-major scale in the soprano could
begin with the same syllables—do–re–mi–fa–sol. In both versions, after the bass reaches
the upper C and completes the scale, Mattei concludes with the same Double Cadence.
The two-voice disposition of the 7–6 sequence shown at the bottom of Example 12.10
could perform the suspension just once per bar. In Example 12.11, lower staves, Mattei is
able to perform a 7–6 suspension twice per bar by having the alto voice imitate the soprano

7 6 7 6 5 7 6 5 4 3 9 8 5 6 5
3 4 4 3

7 6 5 7 6 5 7 6 5 7 6 5 7 6 5 7 6 5 9 8 5 6 5
3 4 4 3

e x . 1 2 .1 1  Mattei, two three-voice dispositions of the 7–6 model (Bologna, 1824)

voice at the lower seventh (the initial C in the soprano is imitated a seventh lower on D in
the alto). The result, indicated by the notes circled in green, is a type of Leapfrog that cre-
ates a syncopated and deconstructed shadow of the same scale played by the bass. This is
not a case of “parallel octaves.” Martini and Mattei were paragons of contrapuntal correct-
ness. Any errors found the original edition of 1824 (and there are dozens of them) were
printing errors. The close connection of the two dispositions in Example 12.11 is further
revealed by comparing the notes underlined in red. The soprano line of the upper staves
becomes distributed between the soprano and alto voices in the lower staves.
Mattei’s type of 5–6 model has three essential voices. There is (1) the bass playing the
ascending scale, (2) an upper voice alternating “5s” and “6s,” and (3) an upper voice per-
 170 child composers in the old conservatories

forming parallel 3rds or 10ths above the bass. In a four-voice disposition, what is the fourth
voice to do? As one can see in Example 12.12, Mattei gives role no. 1 to the bass, no. 3 to
the soprano, and splits role no. 2 between the tenor and alto.

5 6 5 6 5 6 5 6 5 6 5 6 5 6 9 8 5 6 5
7 3 4 4 3

e x . 1 2 .1 2   Mattei, a four-voice disposition of the 5–6 model (Bologna, 1824)

In the glorious five-voice disposition of the 7–6 model shown in Example 12.13, Mattei
demonstrates his mastery. The Double Cadences (mm. 3–4, evaded; mm. 6–8, complete)
both follow double suspensions over F (m) in the bass. That is, 9–8 suspensions (in blue)
add to the 7–6 suspensions (in green) to create the type of intensified suspension that
became a hallmark of nineteenth-century Romantic practice. Mattei goes on to demon-
strate six-, seven-, and eight-voice dispositions, but little is gained by adding additional

6 6 5
5

7 6 5 7 6 5 9 8 5 7 6 5 6 5 9 8 7 5 5
7 6 4 3 5 4 3 7 6 5 4 3
m m

e x . 1 2 .13   Mattei, a five-voice disposition of the 7–6 model (Bologna, 1824)

 Chapter 12  dispositions  171

parts. The texture reaches a point of saturation where a listener

could not tell a six-voice version from an eight-voice one.
At the Paris Conservatory, four-voice dispositions derived
from given basses or melodies (basses données and chants don-
nés) became the focus of classes in harmony. Assignments
involved creating these réalisations, and long hours spent
studying the way each movimento (marche harmonique) was
handled by various masters would pay off when the annual
contest in harmony arrived. Let us imagine, for instance, that
a teenage boy or girl at the conservatory had been studying a
collection of Mattei’s four-voice dispositions published posthu-
mously in 1850 (and contributing to the terminological morass
by calling them intavolature). The very first of these treats a
rising scale in the bass (see Chap. 14 for the opening measures) Augustin Savard, ca. 1861
in the manner seen here in Examples 12.11 and 12.13. If the boy
or girl were in a harmony class led by Augustin Savard (1814–1881; portrait above) and he
gave them a bass featuring slowly rising scales, they would know exactly what do to.
Savard’s own réalisation of a scalar bass5 (Ex. 12.14) is amazingly similar to Mattei’s
dispositions seen earlier. The basse donnée, which begins with an ascending Ab-major
scale, elicits all the standard responses. There is the alto voice singing parallel 3rds (in
whole-notes) and the soprano singing the 7–6 suspensions in a near copy of Example 12.11
(top system, alto). Only the chromatic soprano in measures 6–7 might distinguish Savard’s
version from Mattei’s. (You can hear Savard’s realization in Video 12.5.) Vi deo 1 2 .5
Savard began by featuring 7–6 suspensions without the following “5s,” like the Mattei
three-voice disposition shown in the top system of Example 12.11. But Savard also knew the
“7–6–5” version shown in the lower system of that same Mattei example. Later in Savard’s
realization he wrote a close copy of Mattei’s “7–6–5” disposition (see Ex. 12.15), but over a
Bb-minor scale. All the features are here, suggesting either that Savard copied Mattei or

e x . 1 2 .1 4  Savard, réalisation of an ascending Ab-major scale (Paris, 1885)

 172 child composers in the old conservatories

that this type of realization was a pre-fab, something that any of the masters in this tradition
knew and taught. Both possibilities are probable and not mutually exclusive.Traditions are
maintained by copying, imitating, and sharing. Just recently it was learned that Savard’s
teacher, François Bazin, copied by hand an entire volume of Mattei’s bassi, so it would not
be surprising if Bazin’s students knew Mattei’s lessons quite well.

e x . 1 2 .15   Savard, réalisation of an ascending Bb-minor scale, mm. 25–33 of Ex. 12.14 (Paris, 1885)

We can catch a glimpse of how the masters employed a type of modular construction
of partimenti and basses données from two different basses composed by Mattei. The upper
staff of Example 12.16 contains a C-major bass that Mattei wrote for a collection of bassi
published in 1824.6 Measures 4 and 5 of this staff are blank and have no duration to allow
for alignment with the relevant sections of the lower staff. The lower staff contains the bass
used for one of Mattei’s 125 four-voice dispositions published posthumously in 1850. Both
basses begin with the same variant of the Scala schema (“7–6–5”), leading to a tenor
cadence. The cadence is to G in the upper staff, to C in the lower staff. The lower staff
then inserts a “5–6” variant of a scalar disposition. At this point the lower staff is two mea-
sures longer than the upper staff. When the lower staff reaches G (m. 6) both basses per-
form a Double Cadence (simple chordal roots in the lower staff, an elaborate pattern of
eighth-notes in the upper). What follows (mm. 7–10) is a kind of episode featuring suspen-
sions and Half Cadences. The two basses here are almost identical. (The two versions of
Vi deo 1 2 .6 Mattei’s bass, with typical realizations, can be heard in Video 12.6.)
In measure 11 the opening schemas return but in the key of G major, and in measure
21 the same patterns return in A minor. Beyond what is shown in the example, Mattei
writes the same series of patterns again in C major, then F major, and lastly C major. The
lower-staff version keeps getting longer than the upper-staff version because of insertions
of the “5–6” disposition of part of a scale. I say “version” because to my mind these are two
performances of the same partimento content. The upper version is more condensed, the
lower version more prolix. When realized in four voices, the two versions can appear
frightfully complex. But the complexity, even if beautifully executed, belies the underly-
 Chapter 12  dispositions  173

ing simplicity of a string of schemas. These are pre-fabs illustrating the utility of Sinclair’s
idiom principle applied to music, and, like the Homeric epithets and conventional “runs”
of storytelling studied by Albert Lord, they help explain how such complexity could be
improvised or rapidly written down by musicians trained in these artisanal traditions. The
particular names of the schemas are not important, although the ones shown below were
sometimes used in eighteenth-century Italy. The names are just verbal cues to distinct
packets of musical knowledge, each one built up from hundreds of similar yet unique
experiences of playing, singing, writing, and listening. Intimate knowledge of each pattern
family made writing dispositions and realizations possible. For the best students, it made it
easy.

e x . 1 2 .1 6   Mattei, two distinct basses that share very similar contents (Bologna, 1824; Milan, 1850)

Mattei and Savard taught students who became famous in the nineteenth century,
and Padre Martini really comes into his own in only the second half of the eighteenth
century. But the 7–6–5 version of the Scala schema was at least a generation or two older
than that. Nicola Fago (1677–1745), teacher of Leonardo Leo, Francesco Feo, Niccolò
Jommelli, Nicola Sala, and many other fine students at the Pietà in the first half of the
eighteenth century, was eight years older than Bach and Handel. A careful reader, having
now seen and heard so many examples of this 7–6–5 schema, might recognize, in the dark
image at the top of Example 12.17 (p. 174), telltale signs of it. The image shows the opening
 174 child composers in the old conservatories

phrases of an old partimento by Fago, no. 29 from a manu-

script7 still preserved in the Naples Conservatory Library. Early
partimenti are admittedly not easy to read. This one begins in
the tenor clef, then changes to the bass clef, all in Bb major but
notated with only one flat. I have provided a modern transcrip-
tion below the image, revealing two parallel phrases, the first
in Bb major, the second in F major. On the opposite page you
will see my realization of a three-voice disposition employing
the version of this schema that features imitation between the
upper voices. So even in the older, “Baroque” generation of
Fago and his contemporaries, the same schema was known by
masters and taught to students. Between the birth of Fago and
the death of Savard there is ample evidence of a two-century
period when musicians continuously learned, shared, and
passed on this non-verbal knowledge. It was, as it is sometimes
Nicola Fago
called, a period with a “common practice,” one based not only
on a repertory of carefully learned schemas, but also on the
craft of disposition—how one transformed a partimento sketch into a fully functioning
Vi deo 1 2 .7 multivoice composition. (A realization of Example 12.18 can be heard in Video 12.7.)

7 6 5 7 6 5 4 6 7 6 6 §6
3 2

7 §6 5 7 6 5 6 7 §6
3

e x . 1 2 .17   above: An excerpt from the original manuscript of a Fago partimento in Bb major (Naples,
before 1740). below: A modern transcription of Fago’s partimento excerpt, showing two parallel phrases
in Bb and F major.
 Chapter 12  dispositions  175

e x . 1 2 .18   A disposition of Fago’s partimento excerpt in 3 voices using imitation in the upper parts
176 child composers in the old conservatories

@
 PA RT III

T R I A L BY CON T EST
a nd
t he confer r a l of stat us

Ch a p t er s 13 t h rough 17 address how conservatories evaluated their students.

Instead of assigning numerical or alphabetical grades, schools subjected their young
apprentices to annual or semiannual contests. These became the primary means of dif-
ferentiating the best students from their more ordinary classmates. In Naples there were
occasional contests to select upperclassmen for positions as paid teaching assistants. But it
was at the Paris Conservatory that a culture of contests became entrenched. Every year in
every class a contest was held to see who would rate a first prize, a second prize, or a level
of honorable mention. In many cases some level of prize was necessary either to stay in a
class or to advance to a higher class. Looking back today at the winning entries in the
contests for harmony and counterpoint, one sees an extraordinary level of technique, far
beyond what music students typically achieve in North America today. Understanding
how the conservatory students were trained gives us some insight into how they were able
not only to survive these grueling tests but also to fashion quite beautiful compositions in
the process.

177
@
 13

LI T T LE M A ST ER S,

R E A L M A ST ER S,

A ND M A ST ER PIECES

L a P i e tà , c a rv ed by M ich el a ngel o, has been acknowledged a masterpiece

since it was first shown to the public around the year 1500. It has been praised for the
technical feat of making hard stone look like flesh and soft cloth, for the drama of its pyra-
midal composition, and for the emotional impact of Mary’s restrained pity (pietà) for her
crucified son. Today the statue is housed in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, a symbol of
what faith and great artistry can accomplish. The actual image below was taken of a plaster
copy of La Pietà exhibited during 2010 in the Cathedral of St. Paul, Minnesota. Given the
low status of plaster as a cheap material sold in home-improvement stores, one might
argue that the copy, rather than being a masterpiece, is just a work of craftsmanship.

La Pietà by Michelangelo, ca. 1500, but in a modern reproduction

179
180 child composers in the old conservatories

Mass-produced copies of great artworks have been a sore point for art critics since the
means to make them first appeared. The greatest artists are often described as having cre-
ated new ideas, new ways of seeing or hearing. Yet if the effect on the viewer or listener is
the core measure of value, then copies of masterworks should be valued as highly as the
originals. A plaster cast of La Pietà in St. Paul should be experienced the same as the
marble original in the Vatican. But of course that is not the case. We value authenticity,
and something about a copy seems phony. We value an artist having surmounted a strug-
gle, and the machines that make copies do not struggle in any human sense. We also value
the physicality of art, the quality of its material substance. This is true even for incorporeal
musical sounds. An orchestra of kazoos could perform Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony flaw-
lessly and yet still fail to create the excitement and awe that his listeners have come to
treasure.
Prior to the twentieth century, music performance was not subject to forgery or
mechanical reproduction (scores were a different matter altogether). Yet with the intro-
duction of recording technology, those same issues begin to crop up. Conservatory chil-
dren were trained to reproduce hundreds of patterns used by other composers, and that
kind of reproduction was expected and encouraged. By contrast a modern musician who
samples other recordings to enhance the feel of a new track risks a lawsuit from the owners
of those samples. Attaching ownership and the laws of property to musical utterances has
injected litigation into already confused notions about the nature of musical creativity,
and forced idealized Romantic concepts of originality onto the art-production realities of
both earlier and later eras.
Originality, viewed from the vantage points of craftwork and apprenticeship, involved
the novel arrangement of items that were a common heritage (i.e., not the property of an
individual), and the notion of a masterpiece had a very different meaning in the world of
tradesmen’s guilds. Becoming a master was less about reaching some ill-defined level of
greatness and acclaim, and more about achieving an established level of skill and meeting
specific requirements. Take for example the regulating statutes (1759) of the guild of wool
merchants in Rome, which spell out in detail the procedure for admitting a new master.

Anyone who wants to become a master merchant of our art, provided that he will be
twenty years old, must be subjected to an examination to demonstrate that he has suffi-
cient capacity to practice well that art, which he intends to undertake, and to that end he
will have to make his intentions known to one of the councilors pro tempore, who would
then meet with the other counselors, auditors, and the treasurer of the guild to deter-
mine with them the precise day, hour, and also the shop of one of the councilors in which
the examination will be held. With that set, and having made known to the applicant the
place, day, and exact time of the examination, the counselors, auditors, and treasurer pro
tempore, in company with the guild’s recording secretary, acknowledging that, if the per-
son to be examined is at least twenty years old, each should pose one or more questions to
the one being examined, or alternatively, according to the judgment of the examiners,
make him give a demonstration regarding our profession and art. The said secretary
 Chapter 13  little masters  181

should provide a written record of the questions, answers, and treat the demonstration
of the art. The same secretary should put in writing the opinion that each of the examin-
ers should give in secret concerning his verdict on the test, if one was given, according to
the standards of the art. Subsequently they have to place before the eyes of the president
not only the questions and answers, but also any tests made, and the opinions taken by the
examiners.1

A test or demonstration (It.: prova) for an aspiring wool merchant would be different
from one for a smithy or a clockmaker. In those trades one made things. The skill of the
maker was evaluated through an examination of the thing made. A piece of craftsmanship
evaluated as part of an application to be a master was thus a “master piece.” In her pio-
neering study of apprenticeship and child labor (1912), Jocelyn Dunlop describes how a
masterpiece developed into a special hurdle placed before the applicant.2

One of the most interesting customs connected with apprenticeship is that of Testwork,
better known, perhaps, as Masterpiece, because of the use of that term in connection with
apprentices in Germany, where the practice of exacting a masterpiece from the aspirant to
the freedom of a guild was one of the distinctive features of the apprenticeship system. In
England the custom is found under the name of testwork, masterpiece, artpiece, or proof-
piece, but it seems never to have been very generally adopted, nor to have been so fully
developed as in Germany. There the young man was required to make a definite piece of
work from start to finish, and so present it in its completed form for the inspection of his
judges. Testwork appears sometimes in the same form in England, but more often it was a
less formal inspection of a man’s work.

It will be remembered that at the close of the thirteenth century apprenticeship was only
one of the methods of entering a guild, and, judging by the small number of crafts which
made rules for apprentices, it was not the most important method. New members were
recruited from sons who had worked with their fathers, by patrimony, namely, and from
those workmen who came into the town with a good reputation for craftsmanship, or who
proved their skill in some way. Rules were often made by the guilds forbidding the admit-
tance of men who had not been “abled” and proved sufficient workmen. Thus, at
Northampton, no tailor was allowed to set up shop until he had been approved by the
master of the craft aforesaid learned and skilful in it, and by his character fit for the utility
of the said town. . . . But in some guilds, although the word “testwork” is not used, it is
apparent that a definite masterpiece had to be performed. This was certainly so at Bristol
among the Merchant Tailors, whose rule in 1401 was that no one was to be made free of
the craft until he was tried by four lawful workmen, appointed by the Master, to see if he
was skilful, and also if he were of good conversation and living. . . . [A] man who wished
to be admitted had both to be apprenticed and tried by four workmen to see if he was able.

Mention may be made here of the examinations of barbersurgeons, apothecaries, and

musicians, though they are slightly different in character from testwork. The Master and
Wardens of the Musicians’ Company were empowered to summon periodically all their
members, and even masters might be tested, to see if they were competent musicians.
182 child composers in the old conservatories

Dunlop was referring to the statutes of the Worshipful Company of Musicians (1606)
in London. Those statutes do not, unfortunately, describe the standards for judging musi-
cal competence. But it is clear that some musicians guilds did take competence seriously.
Wagner’s opera Die Meistersinger, for example, was based on a guild in sixteenth-century
Germany, the guild of “master singers.” The opera’s plot depends crucially on guild exam-
inations and the marking of errors. Craft guilds were thus not casual clubs. Their mem-
bers’ livelihoods depended on everyone respecting the guild’s rules and procedures. The
rules could even have legal force, and guilds in Italy often had their rules published with
an endorsement by the Pope, as in the above-cited rules of the wool merchants in Rome.
As the conservatories in Naples developed after hiring professional musicians as mas-
ters in the early 1600s, they adopted many of the procedures already prevalent in the world
of guilds. Established masters examined those who wished to become new masters, special
pieces were composed as “masterpieces,” and special committees were delegated to select
new masters as teachers.

REAL MASTERS — Explaining what makes one musician a real master and another
just adequate is no easier today than in earlier centuries. In the quote copied below from
the governors’ minutes of the Loreto, we read that Gallo and Sacchini were chosen
because they were prior students, they had “ability and honesty,” and they had a lineage
from other real masters.

[15 May 1761] One of the present maestri di cappella of the same [Conservatory] being
Don Pietro Antonio Gallo, who has studiously and diligently served it since 1742, we have
decided to elect, and so appoint, him to be first maestro. . . . We have at the same time
elected Don Antonio Sacchini as second maestro. . . . Our decision has been influenced
both by the needs of the Conservatory and by the fact that the said maestri di cappella have
been students of the same and have given us proof of their ability and honesty, the first
having been a student of the celebrated, late maestro di cappella Don Francesco Mancini
and the second pupil of the famous maestro di cappella Don Francesco Durante, whose
names must always be esteemed and remembered throughout our conservatory. These
facts have led us to conclude that such an election should be a vigorous incentive to the
boys to work the harder, [now] that they see endeavor so richly rewarded, and [an incen-
tive] to the maestri to pass on the knowledge with keenness and love in the place that has
nurtured and trained them so well.3

One might accept that the governors’ selection was based mostly on Gallo and
Sacchini being solid “company” men, had not Sacchini (1730–1786) been a composer of
the highest stature. He was a star who would become the preferred composer of the queen
of France, Marie Antoinette. She had been alerted to his talents by her brother, Emperor
Joseph II of Austria. Queen and emperor would not have championed a composer who
had only “ability and honesty.” The choice of Sacchini by the governors and by the royals
 Chapter 13  little masters  183

was more likely made on the basis of Sacchini’s abili-

ties being extraordinary. And of course he had to be a
good teacher. That was one of the main “needs of the
conservatory.” Conservatories past and present all
desire to hire a great musician who is simultaneously a
great teacher. The problem of course is that many
times the institution must settle for someone who is
not equally great in everything. And a musician with
an international reputation as performing artist or
composer may not wish to remain tied to a rigid sched-
ule of lessons, daily in the case of Sacchini’s Loreto. In
truth Sacchini taught for only a few years before head-
ing north in the pursuit of further fame.
All these issues made hiring and retaining conser-
vatory masters in Naples difficult. The star musicians
Antonio Sacchini
wanted few restrictions on their time, the students
wanted regular lessons, the rectors wanted reliable
employees, and the public wanted composers who would entertain them with masses and
operas. Adding to this complexity was the royal court resident in Naples. The court held
open competitions for its senior musicians, and masters at the conservatories sometimes
held positions at both places.

LITTLE MASTERS — During the eighteenth century, as the conservatories grew

their enrollments, they did not engage more masters. Even with two masters each giving
two-hour lessons six days a week there were simply too many students. While the classes
for senior students aspiring to be chapel masters required teachers of distinction, the
classes in basic solfeggio probably did not. The solution was to employ teaching assistants,
known as “little masters” (mastricelli, maestrini, sottomaestri). The Italian Emanuele
Imbimbo (1765–1839), writing in Paris in 1821, claimed this form of “mutual instruction”
(enseignement mutuel) was an invention of the Naples conservatories. It is unquestionable
that the conservatories made ample use of little masters. Here is his description.

Among the stronger students there are a certain number who are designated by the name
of Mastricelli, and who instruct the weaker students of their respective classes. In general
the strongest students fulfill the functions of masters vis-à-vis the weakest, and by this
means the lessons are transmitted student to student.4

There seems also to have been a higher level of little master who would function
more like an adjunct real master and perhaps lead the instruction for a course in funda-
mentals. This is suggested by special examinations in advanced subjects held to qualify a
 184 child composers in the old conservatories

small group of senior students. In August of 1795 the future opera composer Gaspare
Spontini (1774–1851) was one of the students so examined by three masters.
Spontini was born in Maiolati, a small town in the hills of central Italy. The town’s
modern name—Maiolati Spontini—gives a measure of his eventual fame. In 1793 he left
Maiolati and journeyed to Naples where, at the relatively late age of nineteen, he enrolled
in the Pietà. There he studied with Sala and Giacomo Tritto, perhaps having additional
lessons from Cimarosa and later Piccinni (both famous opera composers). Preserved in
Naples is the exposition of a fugue that Spontini, along with three classmates, had to write
for this examination.5 His effort, reduced to two staves, is shown in Example 13.1, where I
Vi deo 13.1 have marked his Subject in red, his Countersubject in blue, and his Answer in green.
(Video 13.1 plays this fugue.)
In this type of examination the maestros provide the Subject,
the candidate (Spontini) is shut in a room for hours, and then the
candidate turns in a clean copy of his best effort. After their evalu-
ation the maestros marked and numbered three errors on
Spontini’s score and provided footnotes explaining each error.
Referring to the first error, they wrote “The alto should not
remain holding the third [above the bass] while the soprano
sounds the fourth.” Concerning the second error, they cautioned
that “The D in the bass should take the third [in the alto] and not
the fourth.” And for the third error (which matches the same
point in the subject marked by the first error), the maestros may
have betrayed some cumulative displeasure by declaring, “The
parts are not well positioned, and it is not good to hold the F in
the alto above the G in the bass.”
Gaspare Spontini
To anyone unfamiliar with the traditional study of fugue,
these demerits might seem trivial and pedantic. The typical mod-
ern listener will not perceive any of the errors as sounding bad or even slightly amiss. The
examining maestros, however, were pointing out musical behaviors that fell below the
refined standards of a royal court or cathedral. The masters were also acting as gatekeepers
for the informal guild of trained composers and music directors. Spontini had only served
a short apprenticeship in the conservatory. Most students came at a much earlier age and
stayed for much longer. Those boys would have had ample time to learn the subtle musi-
cal behaviors that Spontini violated. One might say that, unlike those who had grown up
in the conservatory as fluent contrapuntisti, Spontini “spoke” counterpoint with a slight
accent. Three faults within an exposition were too many for the examiners, and Spontini
failed to advance as a mastricello. Yet his failure may have been a blessing in disguise, for
he quickly shifted his focus to comic opera, and his success in that arena led to his later
success in Paris. His lack of a long, carefully supervised apprenticeship had robbed him of
that perfection of technique so prized in the eighteenth century, but his natural talent for
musical drama, aided in part by the experienced counsel of Cimarosa and Piccinni, flow-
ered in the more dynamic, less punctilious world of early Romantic opera.
 Chapter 13  little masters  185

e x . 13.1   S
 pontini, fugue exposition for an examination (Naples, the Pietà, Aug. 5, 1795)

MASTERPIECES — For the few students who would qualify to study as future cha-
pel masters, their final year included writing a mass and possibly a small scene or inter-
mezzo in the genre of comic opera. These would be performed outside the conservatory
and so needed to blend in with the musical styles favored by city audiences. For that reason
it can be difficult or impossible to say that, for instance, one undated mass is a student
work while another undated mass is the work of a recent graduate. Nonetheless it is highly
likely that some of the earliest professional-level works by Naples-trained composers were
in fact “masterpieces” in the old sense of the word. They were test pieces produced for the
purpose of examination by conservatory masters and the public at large. If such a piece
was judged satisfactory, its composer could begin to think of himself as a newly minted
master.
A recent book by Frederick Aquilina6 treats in detail the life and works of Benigno
Zerafa (1726–1804), a student at the Poveri who became chapel master at St. Paul’s
Cathedral in Malta. In 1969 a dusty cupboard was opened in the sacristy of that cathedral
to reveal almost the complete works of Zerafa. This huge corpus of music—hundreds of
movements for all types of choral ensembles and soloists with orchestra—had been pre-
served intact for almost two centuries. Moreover most of the works were dated, providing
scholars with an exceptional opportunity to study Zerafa’s development from his conserva-
tory period all the way to his maturity.
 186 child composers in the old conservatories

Born the fifth of a Maltese surgeon’s eight children, Zerafa knew as a boy that the
family business would pass to one of his older brothers. For a younger son, a life in the
Church was an attractive option. Indeed, payroll records from the Cathedral of Malta
show him already receiving a small salary as a choirboy in 1735, when just eight years old.
He showed such musical promise that three years later, in the summer of his eleventh
year, the Church sponsored sending him to the Poveri. This future priest was to be trained
as the eventual replacement of a recently deceased chapel master who years earlier had
also attended the Poveri.
Zerafa was a student at the Poveri for more than five years, until the school was shut-
tered in November 1743. His return to Malta was delayed by a year, during which time he
may have transferred to another conservatory or studied privately with a local maestro.
Because Zerafa dated his works, the “Z” numbers assigned by his biographer Aquilina are
reliably indicative of the order of a work in Zerafa’s output. A work like Z2, his Mass in D
Major in ten movements, completed in 1743 during his last year at the Poveri, is a good
candidate for a “masterpiece.” Not only is its grandiose scoring for two choirs and orchestra
indicative of a conservatory project (Who else would ask an unknown seventeen-year-old
to compose something so big?), but the score was selected as one of the works forwarded
to Malta to document his qualifications for the job of chapel master at the cathedral.
In this ambitious work the young Zerafa occasionally allows the formulae of his train-
ing to float very near to the musical surface. Example 13.2 shows Zerafa using the “down a
4th, up a 2nd” formula of the Romanesca. The upper score of the example leaves out the
soprano of the first choir, who sings long notes of each chord in no special pattern. But
otherwise the example shows the complete passage. An indication of the schematic nature
of the passage can be gleaned by comparing it to a model harmonic progression (marche
harmonique) given by François Bazin in his textbook (1857) for the Paris Conservatory

{
Vi deo 13. 2 more than a century later. (Compare the sounds in Video 13.2.)
A Bass that Goes “Down a 4th, Up a 2nd”
ZERAFA (1743)
S.
˙™
& C ˙™ œœ ẇ ˙
ẇ ˙ ẇ ˙ w w
ẇ ˙ ẇ ˙ w
˙™
w
? C ˙™
A.
œœ w w w ˙ w
T. w w w w
w ẇ ˙
B. ẇ w
4 3 9 8 4 3 9 8 4 3 4 3

{
2nd 2nd
4th 4th 4th
BAZIN (1857)
S.
&C w
w ẇ ˙ ẇ ˙ ẇ ˙
A. ẇ ˙ ẇ ˙ ˙˙ ˙˙ w
w
w
w w w
w w w
T.
?C w w w w
w
w w
w
B. w
4 3 9 8 4 3 9 8 4 3 4 7
2nd 2nd 3
4th 4th 4th

e x . 13. 2   Zerafa, passage from Mass Z2 (Naples, 1743); Bazin, marche harmonique (Paris, 1857)
 Chapter 13  little masters  187

An earlier student at the Poveri was the more famous Giovanni Battista Pergolesi. His
poor health and bad leg have been described in Chapter 4, but his appearance in this
chapter is due to his also having written a Mass in D Major the year that he left the con-
servatory. He would have been twenty-one in the summer that he graduated (1731), and
scholars presume that the mass dates from about that time. Because he died a scant five
years later one ought to call all his works “early Pergolesi,” but perhaps the Mass in D
Major qualifies as “really early.” As with Zerafa’s mass, schematic elements are barely
concealed, although Pergolesi’s ability to imbue a score with amazing vitality shines
through on every page.
Opening Gambit Prinner Prinner

  x
A manuscript of this mass preserved in zDresden reveals a large work for five-voice
     w
pairs of oboes  afull complement y x z y
   and   whatever
  continuo  

choir, horns, of strings, and
instruments were on hand (organ or harpsichord, cellos, basses, theorbo, bassoon). Since
   had studied   Greco  andthen with
Pergolesi   composition  first with Gaetano  Francesco
 
Durante,
j we should expect to find evidencem of hislteachers’kschemas
j in Pergolesi’s
m l final k
efforts as a student.

 
7 cadence MONTE
Example 13.3 shows an excerpt fromv Greco’su intavolatura titled “Courante after La
w
      5/3 
Baudolino” (possibly a song of thatera?).   notes
 Long  in the bass support alternating
  to a series
“5 6”), and leaps upwardfrom ahalf-note

 6/3 chords (marked
and

 on the salient
 and 6ths
6 of quarter-

notesalternate  3rds beats. This is a common 5–6–5–6 species of the
l m j l
Montej schema. (Examples 13.3 throughn13.6 can be heard in Video 13.3.) Vi deo 13.3

              
11
      
 
5  
  
5 6 5 6

5 6 6

m n o p j

e x . 13.3  Greco, 5–6 Monte from the Courante after La Baudolino (Naples, 1690s?)

In Example 13.4, from the final movement of the mass, Pergolesi sets the same Monte
schema in much the same way. There are many more parts, to be sure, but the bass has
the same long tones, the upper voice of the middle staff (in red notes) sings the bare “5s”

e x . 13. 4  Pergolesi, 5–6 Monte from the Mass in D Major (Naples, 1731)
 188 child composers in the old conservatories

and “6s” of the schema, and in each measure one of the five voices leaps up from a half-
note to begin a descending series of quarter-notes.
The Courante by Greco was likely intended as a teaching piece for keyboard, given
that it requires only one note at a time per hand. Durante, a keyboard virtuoso, favored
more complex textures and a piling up of patterns. Those features find expression in his
regole and partimenti. Below is his Rule No. 31 (also shown earlier as Ex. 7.7), which is
ostensibly about “the preparation of the 9th, which stems from the 3rd.” That rule could
have been demonstrated by just two notes in a bass. Any of the pairs of bass notes indicated
by brackets in Example 13.5 illustrates the rule. But Durante nests four of those patterns

e x . 13.5   Durante, 9–8 supensions with the “9” prepared by a “3” (Naples, ca. 1740s)

within the larger pattern of a Prinner schema (core melodic tones in red, bass tones in
blue), and the Prinner schema is incorporated into the still larger pattern of a descent
through the A-minor scale z–y–x–w–v–u. The descending scale knits the Prinner
schema and a cadence together into a satisfying whole.
It should be noted that Durante only wrote the bass and “9–8” figures for the above
rule. Its upper staff is my own conjecture, one that matches the bouncy, slightly disjointed
style of the bass. Pergolesi used Durante’s structure several times in his Mass but changed
its character in keeping with the sacred style (see Ex. 13.6). That excerpt, from near the
end of the mass, has replaced Durante’s brief rests and short-long rhythms with long, tied
tones and uniform runs of eighth-notes. Measures 1 and 2 of the example present Durante’s
exact setup of a 9th (the high B in m. 2) by a 3rd (the bass of m. 1), but then subsequent
measures prepare the 9ths by 5ths, which is not the innovation of a creative student but
rather the exact procedure called for in Durante’s next rule, No. 32: “On the preparation
of the 9th, which stems from the 5th.”
As with Durante’s model in Example 13.5, Pergolesi extends the slow descent of the
Prinner schema down the E-minor scale to incorporate a large type of cadence (beginning
in m. 8). The bass of that cadence begins its own descent in measure 8. Bass and soprano
will eventually both reach “E,” though that goal is deferred for several more measures (not
shown).
 Chapter 13  little masters  189

e x . 13.6  Pergolesi, 9–8 supensions with the “9” prepared by a “3” or “5” (Naples, 1731)

Five years later, when Pergolesi wrote his Stabat Mater (1736), he used Durante’s
structure again, in nearly the same place toward the end of the final movement (which
may have nearly coincided with the final act of Pergolesi’s brief life). But this time, as can
be heard in Video 13.4. he placed a pedal-point n under the whole structure, adding to Vi deo 13. 4
the considerable tension that builds up to a final resolution. This was a technique used by
other great masters, Leo for example in his flute concerto, but Pergolesi had reached their
level so quickly and so convincingly. For a hundred and fifty years after his passing, his
Stabat Mater would triumph as one of the most famous and most performed works of
sacred music. It was a masterpiece in the modern sense.
190 child composers in the old conservatories

@
 14

T HE CON T EST PIECE

A S A PROBE OF

MEMORY

m agici a ns per for m t r ick s bu t t h ei r au di ences see m agic. The magi-

cian does not experience the thrills of surprise and wonder as rabbits or bouquets emerge
from his top hat. He may experience satisfaction in tricks well executed or from causing
gasps and shouts in his audiences, but he is never surprised by the intended show. A magi-
cian memorizes every moment and gesture in his act and only a change in the audience
might lead to a slight deviation from the way it is usually performed. One might justly
claim that the act resides in his memory. Its performance on stage is an exercise in mem-
ory retrieval.

Poster, ca. 1899: the magician Zan Zig

191
 192 child composers in the old conservatories

When students at the old conservatories faced one of the contests in harmony, coun-
terpoint, or composition, their task was much like that of a magician. They needed to
reach into their memories, pull out musical bouquets or rabbits as needed, and put the
whole act together in a way that impressed the intended audience, which in most cases
consisted of judges selected from the ranks of conservatory professors.
All of these contests put great demands on a student’s memory. For a harmony contest
at the Paris Conservatory, a student would be locked in a room for six hours. In the room
there was a table, a chair, music paper with blank staves, ink, and little else. Missing was
a keyboard instrument where the student might try out musical ideas or play back sketches
to hear how they sounded. Instead the student needed to imagine, correct, and evaluate a
composition entirely in his or her own mind. The contest in counterpoint focused on writ-
ing a four-voice fugue based on a melodic subject composed by the conservatory director.
For that difficult test the student was shut up in the same kind of room at six in the morn-
ing and let out at midnight (I am uncertain how the conservatory handled calls of nature).
And for the greatest contest of all, the Rome Prize (Prix de Rome), contestants were sent
off to a French chateau for two weeks of isolation.
The harmony test was really two tests. A student was presented with a bass, aptly
named a “given bass” (basse donnée, “bawss duh-NAY”), to which three higher voices
needed to be added: a tenor, an alto, and a soprano. And the student was given a melody
(a chant donné, “shawn duh-NAY”) for which an alto, a tenor, and a bass had to be sup-
plied. In each challenge the preferred result was a composition in vocal style singable by
a four-part choir. The given bass and the given melody were generally about 20 to 40
measures in length, which meant a contestant was responsible for finishing from 120 to
240 measures of well-crafted music (2 tests times 20–40 measures times 3 new voices). In
a six-hour test there were only 360 minutes, and a clean copy in ink was required for sub-
mission. So in imagining the student’s predicament it becomes clear that there was no
time to wait for inspiration. One could begin by analyzing the bass or melody, hopefully
recognizing learned patterns, and becoming familiar with characteristic motives and fig-
ures. There might be time enough to sketch some ideas. But then one had to get right to
work, turning out measure after measure of finely wrought parts.
In Example 14.1 we see a bass given as a practice test in 1898 by Charles Lenepveu,1
professor at the Paris Conservatory and onetime private student of Savard (see Chap. 12).
Originally in Ab major, the bass is presented here in G major for ease of comparison with
subsequent examples. The rising G-major scale is an easily recognizable pattern, unlike
many others that might
require training and prac-
tice to notice. If we imag-
ine ourselves as a contes-
tant alone in a bare room,
we first need to decide
E x . 1 4 .1  T
 he opening of a given bass by Lenepveu (Paris, 1898) what to do with a major
 Chapter 14  the contest piece  193

scale that ascends in equal time-units. Were we to adopt the open-choice principle, where
for each new tone in the bass we try to deduce what the grammar rules of harmony might
allow, we would run out of time before we had advanced very far. The forty or more mea-
sures of a contest bass contain too many notes and too many possibilities. Instead we need
the idiom principle. We need to recognize whole patterns—like “rising scale” (Scala)—
and then probe our memories for ready-made completions. The problem for us is that as
products of a modern music education, we may have no such memories. Let us then
review what was taught to conservatory students in hopes of understanding what might
have been in their memories.
The default harmonization of a rising scale was the Rule of the Octave (see Chap. 3).
That would be too basic and not contrapuntal enough to give us any chance of winning a
prize at the Paris Conservatory. So we need to examine what the Italians called movimenti
or moti del basso (bass motions) and what the French called marches harmoniques (har-
monic progressions). As the following examples will show, neither term quite does justice
to what were in essence polyphonic schemas whose individual parts had defined roles,
each of which needed to be memorized. Let us begin in 1775 at the Loreto in Naples with
the regole (“rules”) of Fedele Fenaroli. Fenaroli had just published a little handbook of
rules,2 the first ever from one of the conservatory masters. Each rule made reference to a
separate manuscript for music examples. Here is Fenaroli’s example “T” (Ex. 14.2), for set-
ting a rising scale, taken from a manuscript now held in Milan. (You can hear this and the
next two musical examples on Video 14.1.) Vi deo 1 4 .1
Fenaroli did not use
colored noteheads. Here
they are added to better
distinguish the voice that
parallels the bass in 10ths
or “3s” (blue notes) from
the voice that sounds
alternating 5ths and 6ths
(red notes). The manu-
script gives the exemplar
twice, once with the 5s–6s
(red) in the soprano part,
and once in the alto part
E x . 1 4 . 2  Fenaroli, example “T” (Naples, 1775)
to demonstrate that the
upper parts are invertible.
Viewed as an integrated whole, this is a schema with three vocal roles. The bass is the
foundation, the 10ths (blue) play a supporting role, and the 5s–6s (red) are the active voice
that draws our attention. The manuscript further emphasizes the independence of the
upper parts by giving them two separate lines of numerical figures (above and below each
bass staff), something rarely done (Asioli’s example in Chap. 12 is another instance).
 194 child composers in the old conservatories

His next two examples

(14.3–4) provide the red
voice with suspensions. For
his example “V” there are
7–6 suspensions, and 9–8
suspensions for his exam-
ple “X.” Both examples
show the invertibility of the
upper parts. Examples “T”
(previous page) and “V”
proceed uniformly until
E x . 1 4 .3  Fenaroli, example “V” (Naples, 1775) the last measure, where a
weak Soprano Cadence
(bass F#–G) ends each
exemplar. But example “X”
devotes its last two mea-
sures to a more substantial
Double Cadence, whose
core tones in the upper
voices are shown in green
and orange. The green
notes highlight the twofold
move from leading-tone F#
to the tonic G (the double
cadence), while the orange
E x . 1 4 . 4   Fenaroli, example “X” (Naples, 1775)
notes present two variants of
the part that, with the half-
note A, forces the suspended
G (in green) down to F#. In
the old terminology, the
green voice is “passive” and
“bound” while the orange
voice is “active.”
These three model pat-
terns by Fenaroli all feature
a forward-moving, sequen-
tial bass that leads to a
cadence. As such examples
go, Fenaroli’s are at the sim-
E x . 1 4 .5  M
 attei, top staff: bass in C major 3 (transposed; Bologna, publ. ple end of the spectrum. A
1824); bottom staves: keyboard realization ca. 1840s? more difficult example by
 Chapter 14  the contest piece  195

Stanislao Mattei is given in Example 14.5 (see Chap. 12 for more of his scale realizations).
Its top staff shows what the student would see, which includes a set of complicated figures
indicating single and double suspensions. A good student—and Mattei’s students included
future greats like Rossini and Donizetti—should have been able to peer through the
thicket of figures to recognize the schemas noted in my annotations (“Rising Scale . . .”).
The overall design of Mattei’s bass is similar to Fenaroli’s example “X,” with a stepwise
ascent leading to two cadences. An actual student realization of this bass from the early
nineteenth century (bottom of Ex. 14.5) caught those subtleties. Red notes show the affin-
ities to Fenaroli’s examples “V” and “X,” green and orange notes show a feint toward a
double cadence (m. 3) and then the real thing (m. 4), while the second half of measure 3
gives us a 7–6 suspension and weak “tenor cadence” to the dominant D. The eighth-notes
of measure 4 fulfill the same role as the whole-note D in Fenaroli’s example “X,” which
was to support the upper-voice counterpoint of the Double Cadence. (Hear Mattei’s
examples in Video 14.2.) Vi deo 1 4 . 2
Mattei realized almost a hundred of his partimento basses for string quartet.3 Example
14.6 shows a rising bass with a two-voice canon of suspensions in the upper voices (red
notes). Then part of a Double Cadence (mm. 3–4, alto in green) animates the inner voice
of a Prinner schema (parallel descending 10ths, magenta). The rising stepwise bass returns
(mm. 4–5) with 5–6 moves (red), followed by a Double Cadence (green and orange; an
extended excerpt of this bass appears in Chap. 12, Ex. 12.16).

E x . 1 4 .6  M
 attei, Bassi d’acompagnamenti, C major, arranged for string quartet
(transposed, Bologna, ca. 1820s, publ. 1850)

All of the techniques of Italian instruction were transferred to Paris. Cherubini, an

important composer who was admired by Beethoven and who later became director of the
Paris Conservatory, had also been trained in Bologna by a student of Padre Martini. After
his death, a collection of hundreds of his marches harmoniques was published (1851).4
 196 child composers in the old conservatories

There are over ninety four-voice examples of ways to set just an ascending scale in the bass.
Then dozens more for how to set a descending bass, and so on. The exemplar shown in
Ex. 14.7, with its canon of suspensions (in red) between tenor and soprano, and the sup-
porting alto voice in parallel 10ths (blue) should sound quite familiar by now. (Hear the
Vi deo 1 4 .3 music on this page in Video 14.3.)

E x . 1 4 .7   Cherubini, marche harmonique of an ascending stepwise bass (transposed, Paris, 1851)

So to finally answer the question, “What would have been stored in the memory of
bright boys or girls in the 1890s who attempted to realize the bass set for them by Lenepveu?”
(shown earlier as Ex. 14.1), the answer is probably, “All of the preceding examples and
more.” Lenepveu’s own realization of the opening of his basse donnée is given in Example
14.8. Though the bass and realization are chromatic and complex, several of its idioms
should be recognizable and are listed below his bass. He begins with almost a direct quote
of Cherubini’s model (adjusting for the shortened time values in Lenepveu). In measure
4 there is the beginning of a Double Cadence (orange and green) that melts away as the

E x . 1 4 . 8  Lenepveu, basse donnée realized (transposed, Paris, 1898); c.f. Ex. 14.1
 Chapter 14  the contest piece  197

bass descends D–C–Bb through a tenor cadence (i.e., a descending step in the bass) into
the key of Bb major. In measure 5 we restart the ascending-scale bass with upper-voice
suspensions. But the harmony changes in measure 6, and the bass is forced downward in
a way reminiscent of the Prinner pattern in the Mattei quartet (Ex. 14.6, m. 3). The long-
held Bb bass, which arrives as the third of a G-minor chord, transforms into the bass of an
augmented sixth chord (G# in the soprano), a species of tenor cadence where the outer
voices expand to an octave by half steps. That octave on A forms the dominant of D major,
which will be the tonal focus of Lenepveu’s next section (not shown).
Lenepveus’s plan, encoded in his bass, is long in the telling but relatively clear in the
hearing. His students could read his intentions from his bass’s design. What might appear
today as small twists and turns in his bass were, in the context of a harmony contest, inten-
tionally exposed musical affordances (see Chapter 15) that if recognized could guarantee
a student a good mark or even a prize.

BAZIN’S STUDENTS DO HARMONY — François Bazin (bah-ZAN; 1816–1878)

was a central figure in the teaching of harmony at the Paris Conservatory. He had been a
star student, winning first prizes in harmony, fugue, and organ before claiming the Rome
Prize in 1840. His own teachers, Henri-Montan Berton and Fromental Halévy, had had
their ideas of musical syntax formed by Sacchini and Cherubini respectively. So it should
not be surprising to find in Bazin’s harmony textbook (1857)5 the world of Italian parti-
menti and movimenti translated into French basses données and marches harmoniques.
Bazin first defines a “marche d’harmonie” as “the symmetrical replication of a group
of several chords, whether ascending or descending. The group is
called the ‘model,’ and the replications of the model are called a
‘progression.’ ” Such sequences can be modulating (chromatic),
or non-modulating (diatonic). He presents the standard Italian
movimenti that require only 5/3 chords before defining a “parti-
mento,” leaving out any mention of keyboard improvisation and
describing only what the masters in Naples would have called
“dispositions.”6

One terms Partimento a series of various chords that create a sense

of harmony and serve as an exercise in learning to write. In
Partimenti one finds a review and summary of that which will have
been established in the various parts of the Course on Harmony.
These partimenti should be realized in four parts in a vocal style.
When required by the part writing, one can disrupt the symmetry of
a harmonic sequence.

In conservatory style, the fourth [bass] voice of a partimento is called

a Given Bass (basse donnée) because that part is given entirely alone
without the realization of its harmony. There are two kinds of Given
Basses: a note-against-note Given Bass, and a florid Given Bass. A François Bazin
 198 child composers in the old conservatories

note-against-note Given Bass is that in which a quite limited and regular rhythm carries a
new chord on each of its notes. These are the basses on which one has been working. As
for the florid Given Basses, they will be discussed later.

“Later” meant the next 300 pages. The marches harmoniques would be set out with a
note-against-note bass, and the partimenti for review would be florid. Bazin’s students, in
their lessons, would need to be able to find the simplicity of the marches harmoniques in
the complexity of the partimento basses. Memorizing the marches harmoniques was a
crucial step in this process. When secure in memory the patterns became part of percep-
tion, and a good student could recognize the whole (a marche harmonique) from its part
(a passage in a florid partimento). Success at internalizing these four-voice schemas helped
ensure a good chance of success in the annual harmony contest. Success there meant not
only a modest cash prize, but also the right to proceed to the class in counterpoint and
fugue, which in turn led to the class in composition.
Bazin was not alone in his approach. This was the institutionally approved method of
the Paris Conservatory generally. A brief selection of the “down a 4th, up a 2nd” or
“Romanesca” schema as presented as a marche
harmonique by several Parisian masters should
demonstrate how this was a shared heritage.
The first is Bazin’s own, from his harmony trea-
tise (1857; see Ex. 14.9). The bass contains the
movimento, the tenor descends by thirds every
two notes in the bass, the alto descends step-
wise from its high “C” (u), and the soprano
descends stepwise in suspensions from its high
“E” (w). These are three upper-voice colloca-
tions that needed to be memorized along with
the sequential bass. If any of these four melodic
patterns occured in a given bass, the possibility
existed that this was the schema to use.
Beginning this movimento with an ascend-
ing 5th (instead of a descending 4th) was part of
the Parisian partimento dialect. One can trace
it back through most of the treatises published
E x . 1 4 .9  Bazin, marche harmonique (Paris, 1857, 188)
in the first half of the 1800s. Victor Dourlen,
who had taught Bazin, presents in his own trea-
tise (1838)7 the same four voices as did Bazin, though without the suspensions in the
soprano (Ex. 14.10). There were several stock variants of this schema. One could add sus-
pensions to the soprano or to the alto or to both. All four possibilities (and more) can be
found in contemporary treatises, including in the early and influential treatise of Charles
Vi deo 1 4 . 4 Catel (1802).8 Example 14.11 shows his four variants. (Hear these in Video 14.4.)
 Chapter 14  the contest piece  199

Catel was one of the first

harmony professors (1795) at
the Paris Conservatory, and he
was responsible along with
Choron and other early figures
for setting the conservatory on a
course to continue the success-
ful methods of the Naples con-
servatories. France had an aca-
demic history of speculation
about harmony, one given a
boost by the great composer
Rameau (1722). But specula-
tions about harmony were of E x . 1 4 .1 0   Dourlen, marche harmonique (Paris, 1838, 13)
little use when teenagers con-
fronted a basse donnée in a
high-stakes examination. They
needed to know the marches
harmoniques in all their rich-
ness and variety. As Catel’s cap-
tions stated, one needed to know
the marche as (1) “A series of
basic triads,” (2) “Suspensions of
the top part [soprano], making a
series of 6–5s and 5/4–5/3s, (3)
“Suspensions of the second part
[alto] making a series of alter-
nating 4ths and 9ths,” and (4)
“Suspensions of the two [upper]
parts, making a series of alternat-
ing 6/4s and 9/4s.” And there
were still more florid versions to
learn of just this one marche.
It should be emphasized E x . 1 4 .1 1   Catel, marche harmonique (Paris, 1802, 49)
that the class in harmony for
which these treatises were written was not a student’s first experience of harmony at the
Paris Conservatory. Between the basics taught in solfège (the French translation of solfeg-
gio) and the written assignments of the harmony class stood the class known as “harmony
and accompaniment” (harmonie et accompagnement). “Accompagnement” is a French
term for figured bass, so the course covered the same material as an Italian course in par-
timenti. In fact the terms were more or less interchangeable. When referring to Claude
 200 child composers in the old conservatories

Debussy’s only first prize at the conservatory, in the class of harmony and accompaniment,
his fellow student Maurice Emmanuel spoke of Debussy’s study “of partimenti with
Auguste Bazille.”9
Students in this course of “practical harmony” learned the same set of marches har-
moniques that they would encounter later in the course of written harmony. As a boy, the
great piano virtuoso Friedrich Kalkbrenner had studied harmony at the Paris Conservatory
with Catel in the period 1799–1801. When Kalkbrenner later wrote a treatise for pianists on
how to improvise preludes (1848),10 he repeated many of the lessons he had had as a boy.

E x . 1 4 .1 2   Kalkbrenner, piano variants on a marche harmonique (Paris, 1857, 188)

 Chapter 14  the contest piece  201

Example 14.12 shows how Kalkbrenner took a Catel

model—the Romanesca marche harmonique—and com-
posed virtuoso variants of it. Though the four variants
shown become increasingly virtuosic, each of them none-
theless remains faithful to the underlying model at the top
of the example. (Hear Kalkbrenner in Video 14.5.) Vi deo 1 4 .5
Kalkbrenner’s approach to improvisation and schema-
based preluding can still be heard in early works of pianist-
composers of the next generation, for example in the
etudes of Chopin and Liszt. But even as that approach
began fading in the works of leading composers from the
1840s and 1850s, it remained central to the teaching meth-
ods at the Paris Conservatory. Hippolyte Colet (1808–1851)
became a harmony professor at the conservatory in 1840. Friedrich Kalkbrenner
He published a number of treatises, including the 378-
page work titled Partimenti ou traité spécial de
l’accompagnement pratique au piano (1846).11 In this long
treatise Colet shows not only how to realize partimenti in
a simple chordal style, but also how to create more artful
realizations that feature melodic or contrapuntal indepen-
dence. To give his students models of eighteenth-century
textures that were not readily available in Paris, he included
a dozen two-part inventions by J. S. Bach and a similar
number of sonatas by Scarlatti. He also composed an
advanced realization of one of Durante’s partimenti dimi-
nuiti, showing the continuing influence of the Neapolitan
masters on the musical scene in Paris.
Colet considered marches harmoniques central to a
student’s preparation for partimento realization. Each Hippolyte Colet
marche harmonique was introduced as a “new model”
(nouveau modèle) followed by realizations that closely matched Catel’s. His Romanesca is
shown in Example 14.13, and he followed it with the typical variants of suspended soprano,
suspended alto, double suspensions, active bass, contrapuntal interplay, and so forth

E x . 1 4 .13   Colet, introduction of a new marche harmonique (Paris, 1857, 188)

 202 child composers in the old conservatories

Imagine now that we are one of Bazin’s students in the early 1850s. We have done
well in solfège and practical harmony, and have completed the classwork for written har-
mony. We now face the dreaded contest (concours d’harmonie). We arrive at the conserva-
tory, are led to a small room with nothing in it save a desk, a chair, score paper, pen, and
ink, are told we will have six hours to work, and then given a bass (this test also involved
harmonizing a given melody, but that is a topic for the next chapter). Here are the first
sixteen measures of the basse donnée (Ex. 14.14).12

E x . 1 4 .1 4   Contest in harmony, basse donnée, mm. 1–16 (Paris, 1854)

The original basse donnée was not, of course, color coded. Yet to a trained student,
the patterns likely stood out as clearly. The downbeats of the first six measures (in red)
clearly sound out the bass of the Romanesca marche harmonique. Then follows a cadence
(in orange). Counting the downbeat “F” in measure 9, the next five measures go “down a
4th, up a 5th,” another of the standard marches harmoniques. In measure 14 the rapid
descending scale will change harmony every other note (in green), and the last two mea-
sures follow with a strong cadence (in orange). This segment of the basse donnée has
fifty-three notes, but only three marches harmoniques and two cadences. The student who
tries to solve fifty-three harmonic problems with the “open choice principle” will run out
of time, but the student who sees but five problems for the “idiom
principle” has a good chance of finding winning solutions.
Example 14.15 gives the winning solution of Samuel David,
a highly successful student who went on to win the Rome Prize
and become a force in the music of Parisian synagogues. Though
locked alone in a room without any references or notes, his real-
ization of the Romanesca gives each of the upper parts one of the
three approved roles just as if he had been reading the recipe
from a treatise. The soprano voice begins on the tonic and con-
tinues down the scale with suspensions. The alto begins on the
third and places each downbeat (in blue) a step lower as it
descends the scale. For his first cadence he makes sure to place
the {–u move in the soprano (in green). The “down a 4th, up
Samuel David a 5th” schema often features 4–3 suspensions at each stage, and
 Chapter 14  the contest piece  203

E x . 1 4 .15   David, winning realization of Ex. 14.14 (Paris, 1854)

that is exactly what David provides (in purple), alternating between alto and tenor. In
measure 14 he gives each of the green notes a 5/3 chord, as taught for the schema of
descending thirds, and again places the {–u cadential move in the soprano for the final
cadence of this section. It is no wonder that he won a first prize. (Listen to Video 14.6.) Vi deo 1 4 .6

In preparation for the year 1900, the Paris Conservatory had one of its senior clerks,
the bassoonist Constant Pierre, prepare a number of books that brought together docu-
ments from its past and organized information about masters, students, and contests. The
diligent and sober Mr. Pierre, in his younger days a conservatory graduate who made ends
meet by playing at the Folies Bergère, made a heroic and lasting contribution by sorting
out who did what, when, and with whom. The task was made especially difficult because,
 204 child composers in the old conservatories

as a government entity, the conservatory changed every time the government changed. At
various times there were classes in “preparatory harmony,” “harmony and accompani-
ment,” “harmony,” and later “women’s harmony” (harmonie femmes). David won a first
prize in the contest for “harmony and accompaniment,” though the examination was the
same as would later fall under the rubric of “harmony.” I gloss over these and other details
of administrative and curricular organization in the hopes of maintaining an unobstructed
view of what was central and more or less permanent in how the institution developed a
young person’s musical mind and imagination. This chapter began with a bass by Lenepveu
from 1898 and along the way encountered the pianist Kalkbrenner, who had won the har-
mony contest of 1801. That contest, and the institution that sanctioned it, changed less over
the century than one might imagine given the wrenching changes that were occurring in
the world around it. Apparently the powers of musical imagination that the conservatory
instilled in its students could be adapted to suit whatever conditions prevailed in the out-
side world. The same training could be harnessed to create grand operas or soufflés for the
comic stage, long story ballets or brief sentimenal songs, salon pieces for piano or sym-
phonic works for the concert halls of the Belle Époque.

The year after Lenepveu’s bass was published, another professor, Albert Lavignac,
published a combination bass-and-melody test13 of the type Henri Busser encountered
when he took the entrance examination for the harmony class of Théodore Dubois (see
Chap. 2). As shown opposite in Example 14.16, Lavignac’s test begins as
a chant donné in soprano clef, changing to a basse donnée in bass clef
at its midpoint. This was a standard format for entrance examinations
in the later nineteenth century. What sets this test apart, however, is the
riddle-like epigraph provided at the upper right of the score. It says,
“The bass of the Chant donné and the soprano of the Basse donnée
should between themselves form an imitation in contrary motion.” A
moment’s reflection reveals that Lavignac is describing a relationship
between imaginary voices. He is saying that the realized bass of the
notated soprano, if done properly, should equal the realized soprano of
the notated bass, but upside down. How in the world would a nervous
applicant solve this riddle?
Albert Lavignac, 1900 The answer is that his or her memories of schemas would provide
sufficient clues to allow for a solution. Take the section with the basse
donnée. The downbeats of its first six measures (mm. 9–14) match the Romanesca schema.
That schema has as its primary collocate a descending scale beginning here on E. (Listen
Vi deo 1 4 .7 to Video 14.7.) Similarly, the opening section with the chant donné begins with a motive
that is the 7–6–5 collocate of the Scala schema (a rising scale), here beginning on C. So
by listening to the schematic affordances of this test piece, we arrive at an ascending scale
in whole-notes for the bass of its first half and a descending scale in whole-notes for the
 Chapter 14  the contest piece  205

E x . 1 4 .1 6   Lavignac, ex. 152 from his 3-vol. collection of lessons (Paris, 1899)

soprano of its second half. We just solved the riddle: the notated soprano’s bass imitates the
notated bass’s soprano in contrary motion, and vice versa.
For people trained this way, such a test was relatively easy. In passing the test and solv-
ing the riddle they could demonstrate that they deserved admission because they had done
the work and learned the lessons. For people not trained this way, the test could pose a
barrier that no amount of innate skill could conquer. Thousands of realized sopranos
would need to be compared with thousands of realized basses, if the only constraint was a
series of reasonable chord progressions. Henri Busser, in spite of his great talent, fell vic-
tim to such a test, as probably did many otherwise fine musicians. What the test tells us
today is that the repertory of old Italian schemas served as a kind of “secret handshake” for
the members of the Paris Conservatory. If you knew the handshake, you were admitted to
the club.
Students at the Paris Conservatory in the late 1800s, or for that matter students
there today, generally did not (and do not) think of most of the marches harmoniques as
being Italian. Those schemas had been assimilated into French musical culture for so
long that they appeared to everyone who worked with them as properly French teaching
materials. Of course names like Fenaroli or Sala would show up in some collections of
partimenti, or in assignments, and the term partimenti was still used, but national and
institutional pride led most students and masters to downplay the Italian origins. Today,
when as mentioned one can inspect an entire volume of Bazin’s handwritten copies of
Mattei’s partimenti, the long-standing symbiotic relationship of French and Italian music
masters becomes much clearer.
206 child composers in the old conservatories

@
 15

A FFOR DA NCE

A ND T HE MUSICA L

H A BI T US

Hu m a ns l e a r n t o i n t er ac t w i t h t h ei r en v i ron m en t. Some of the envi-

ronment is natural, and we learn that water is wet, stones are hard, and trees can be
climbed. Other parts of the environment were built by people, and we learn that ladders
can also be climbed and that billiard balls are hard like stones. When we see a doorknob,
we know what to do with it even though it has no clear analogue in the natural world. Like
an object in Alice and Wonderland, the doorknob seems to carry a label on which is writ-
ten “Turn Me.” That label, that sense of what an object might want from us or what we
could do with it, is its affordance.

The “affordance” of a doorknob is to turn it

207
 208 child composers in the old conservatories

When we then engage with the

object and carry through with its
affordance we can either be pleased
that things work as expected or frus-
trated that they do not. When we
correctly read affordances we feel a
sense of satisfaction and of being in
harmony with our surroundings.
The man with his hand on the door-
knob is about to turn it. If the door
then opens, everything is fine. But if
the door does not open, we might
Correctly reading an affordance and acting on it imagine him shaking or pushing
the knob, even shouting at it to
force its compliance with his intents and expectations. The perceived perversity of inani-
mate objects can stem from our misreading their affordances.
Long before there appeared a virtual world of computer screens with their virtual
affordances, there was an incorporeal world of music filled with musical objects. In the
same way that a peasant farmer could look at a field of wheat and know if it was ripe for
harvest, a student at one of the old conservatories could see a partimento or basse donnée
and recognize how to respond. In the world of the conservatories, bass lines and counter-
point involved objects just as real and compelling as the physical objects outside the con-
servatory walls. Success in these technical subjects involved being able to recognize the
musical objects embedded within a bass, to understand their affordances, and to respond
appropriately. A partimento “spoke” to the student, who replied with improvised or notated
harmony and counterpoint.
To a child growing up with music lessons in a musical family or conservatory, the
objects of music were objects of the natural world. When I was a student I enjoyed listen-
ing to stories told by the wonderful pianist Leonid Hambro (1920–2006). In 1946 he had
won first prize in the Naumburg Competition, but his storytelling skills had been honed
by years spent as pianist straightman for the pianist comedian Victor Borge. Hambro spoke
of how surprised he was on his first day in grammar school to learn that many humans did
not play the piano. Both his parents played, and everyone who came to their house for
lessons played. If a visitor did not play that day, he had assumed that they could play but
just chose not to. From an early age Hambro developed the ability to read, write, memo-
rize, and improvise music, and he was adept at imitating the style of other composers for
comedic effect. One of his best-loved pastiches, a series of variations on “Happy Birthday”
in the style of Beethoven, is worth finding on the internet.
Children in conservatories were similarly immersed in a world of music and musi-
cians. We have seen how, at the Paris Conservatory, children were taught to memorize
marches harmoniques in all their four-voice complexity so that when confronted by a
 Chapter 15  affordance  209

florid basse donnée they would be able to match a schema to each passage of the bass. The
process could be arduous, but at least it was conceptually straightforward and led to posi-
tive results. The same could not be said for instruction in harmonizing a melody, what the
conservatory called a chant donné (a “given melody”). Four-voice harmonization of a
given melody was the other half of the harmony contest and by many accounts the more
difficult. Much depended on a student’s ability to sense the subtle affordances of each
phrase of the given melody. And because the style of chants donnés was more contempo-
rary, less severe than the style of basses données, the chants donnés were less tractable in
terms of basic principles or premises. The melodies were embroidered with all manner of
decorative elements. It might be difficult to separate the structurally important tones from
the more decorative ones since the distinction depended very much on the harmonization
chosen. In other words, the student often needed to sense a global affordance of musical
organization for each melodic phrase, since an a priori separation of tones into the catego-
ries “structural” and “embellishing” was often not possible.
Generally speaking, the difficulty of harmony contests rose through the nineteenth
century as the possibilities of Romantic harmony expanded. The basse donnée realized so
successfully by Samuel David (1854) in the previous chapter would have been considered
easy by the 1870s and 1880s. David’s contemporary, Émile Durand, who had also studied
with Bazin, won the harmony contest in 1851. He went on to win the Rome Prize (1853),
succeeded Bazin as a professor of harmony (1871), and taught both Gabriel Pierné and
Claude Debussy. Apparently Durand was not a popular teacher, but his students did very
well in the contests.

ÉMILE DURAND — “The Treatise on Harmony [1881] that

Mr. Émile Durand has submitted for the review of the Academy of
Fine Arts is a most remarkable work that bears on every page the
mark of vast experience gained by the author during his career as a
professor. . . . The examples with which Mr. Émile Durand accom-
panies his treatise are written not only with purity, but also with
elegance and even with charm.”1 So said Camille Saint-Saëns, writ-
ing for the Institute of France. Speaking of his own work in the
preface for teachers, Durand mentioned that it could serve either
“the student who needs to deepen his knowledge of this science or
one who merely wants to brush up against it. There is no need to
add that the author has no predilection for this latter type of instruc-
tion. On the contrary, this work addresses itself most particularly to
musicians who wish to be consummate harmonists.”2 Émile Durand, ca. 1870s
Durand’s text was serious business, organized along the same
lines laid out by Fenaroli in the 1770s: first learn diatonic harmony in the major and minor
modes, then learn to add dissonances, and finally treat all manner of chromatic alterations
and embellishments. Each principle was presented as a numbered assertion. At the very
 210 child composers in the old conservatories

beginning we see “§1.—Tonality, basis for our system of contemporary music, rests princi-
pally on the two tone-ladders . . . that one names the diatonic major and minor scales.”
More than 1,100 principles later we read “§1137.—The resolution of suspensions and those
of chromatic alterations can occur simultaneously. §1138.—These resolutions can be suc-
cessive.” In the example provided for §1137 (see Ex.
15.1) the high G is tied across the barline and
resolves to F at the same moment that the passing
C# in the tenor voice arrives at D. In Example 15.2,
the high D resolves before the passing G# arrives at
A. Durand then provides eleven separate exercises
that feature the same suspensions and chromatic
E x . 15 .1 Durand, §1137 (Paris, 1881) alterations in the top, middle, and bass voices.
Example 15.3 below shows the sixth of these exer-
cises, his exercise “F.” Between the staves is a
detailed set of figures showing the intervals above
the bass of each embellishment. Under that bass
staff he notes whether the embellished chord is
major or minor, and above the treble staff he com-
ments on the type of embellishment. From left to
E x . 15 . 2 Durand, §1138 (Paris, 1881) right he notes “Ascending alteration of the 5th,”
“Descending alteration of the 5th,” and “Descending
Vi deo 15 .1 alteration of the 3rd.” (Hear Durand’s examples in Video 15.1.)
After the fully notated exercises Durand provides seven additional exercises written as
short figured basses. If a student had worked through all this material diligently, he
(Durand taught only boys) would turn the page and encounter the chant donné in
Example 15.4 titled “On the Use of Simultaneous Alterations and Suspensions.” Today,
even if one can read the soprano clef, this is a very challenging melody to harmonize. But
Durand’s students had done all the exercises and for them it was much more tractable.
Look back at Example 15.1 above. Its first two tones in the soprano are E and G, with the
G tied across the bar to resolve downward to F. That is exactly how the chant donné

E x . 15 .3   Durand, exercise “F” on combined alterations and suspensions (Paris, 1881)

 Chapter 15  affordance  211

E x . 15 . 4  Durand, lesson no. 362 on combined alterations and suspensions (Paris, 1881)

begins, though in a different meter. For a Durand student, the harmonic affordance of that
opening gesture is to place a C chord below the first measure and an F chord below the
second measure, with the 5th of the F chord rising through C# to D to coincide with the
resolution of the soprano’s tied G to F (the first eighth-note).
Durand’s own realizations for his harmony textbook were published in 1882.3 Below
(Ex. 15.5) we see how he harmonized the first line of this chant donné. As predicted, the F
chord in measure 2 receives the rising chromatic passing tone (C#, tenor voice) that

E x . 15 .5   Durand, realization of lesson no. 362 on combined alterations and suspensions (Paris, 1882)
 212 child composers in the old conservatories

reaches its goal (D) simultaneously with the resolution of the soprano’s suspension (F).
When the melody modulates to A minor (m. 5), the same gesture is repeated in measure
6 (cf. Ex. 15.3).

THE HARMONY CONTEST OF 1877 — In the space of this chapter we cannot

review everything that Durand taught in the 500 dense pages of his treatise. But we can get
an idea of the richness of that instruction from observing how his students reacted to
chants donnés in the harmony contests. If different students responded in the same way, it
suggests they were sensing the same affordances of musical objects learned in Durand’s
class or in other classes at the conservatory. The harmony contest of 1877 provides a good
Vi deo 15 . 2 test case, inasmuch as Durand’s students won a first prize, a second prize, a first honorable
Vi deo 15 .3 mention, and a second honorable mention. That is, we have four realizations to compare,4
Vi deo 15 . 4 all ranked by conservatory judges in order of excellence. (Hear them in Videos 15.2–5.)
Vi deo 15 .5 Because the judges gave their verdicts on the combined basis of realizations of both a
chant donné and a basse donnée, it is possible that a great realization of a melody could
be marked down by a mediocre realization of a bass. But let us assume for the sake of this
small demonstration that the quality was similar in both of a contestant’s realizations.
The melody to be harmonized is given in Example 15.6. Each student, alone in his
cubicle (en loge), saw the same melody. His first response was probably to play it in his
mind or to sing it softly. Then he would look for cadences and parallel passages that might
indicate sequences and marches harmoniques. Colored notes in the example indicate
some of the things he might notice. The first two measures confirm the key of A major,
with a weak {–u melodic cadence (in red) ending measure 2. The blue note beginning
measure 3 marks the possible location of the situation discussed above in Example 15.1,
and the half-notes in measure 4 likely indicate a half cadence, still in A major. The blue

E x . 15 .6   The chant donné of the harmony contest, 1877 (Paris, 1877)

 Chapter 15  affordance  213

notes in measures 6 and 7 may indicate a parallelism of F# minor and E major, with the
red notes in measure 8 indicating a cadence in E major. The green note in measure 9
begins two bars of A major that parallel two bars of D major beginning in measure 11. A
possible rising sequence begins in measure 13, and a descending parallelism begins in
measure 17. With the melody’s general organization sketched out, each student would set
to work identifying marches harmoniqes, cadences, and tonal strategies that could fit with
the melodic details. That refined sketch could then be used to create the four-voice coun-
terpoint that would count as his final realization.
Example 15.7 presents measures 1–5 of the four realizations by Durand’s students. Red
circles indicate chromatic passing tones. As predicted for measure 3, three out of four
students set A–A#–B in the tenor voice, just like Durand’s precept §1137 (Ex. 15.1) and his
exercise “F” (Ex. 15.3). Realization “C” places the A#–B in the bass. Realization “B” man-
ages to use this motif threee times, and realization “D” uses it twice, suggesting that it was
a preferred behavior. The blue rounded rectangles point out that given a clear half
cadence, one indicating a 6/4–to–5/3 progression in long tones, three out of four students
employed the exact same combination of a chromatic neighbor note (alto, E–D#–E) and
a descending chromatic passing tone (tenor, C#–C§–B) in the inner voices. Given all the
many things one might do in this situation, the fact that the majority opted for a descend-
ing chromatic passing tone
and accompanying neighbor
note is evidence of a strongly
conditioned response, one A
indicative of lessons learned
and operationalized. Clearly
Durand’s students put what
they learned into practice, at
least for the contest. B
In 1877 “harmony” often
meant modulations that
called attention to themselves
through remote or unex-
pected twists of chordal color. C
Most contest basses and melo-
dies featured such modula-
tions. Measure 5 of the chant
donné gives hints of that kind
of move by tying over the
D
leading tone ({) of the previ-
ous bar and then introducing
the exotic tone of FX (F dou-
E x . 15 .7  Four realizations, mm. 1–5 (Paris, 1877)
 214 child composers in the old conservatories

ble sharp) in a melodic turn that subsequently leaps up to C#. Three students responded
with a C#-major chord to begin measure 5 (see the E#s highlighted in orange hexagons), a
move that suggests a modulation to the relative minor key of F#. Student “B” chose C#
minor and foreshadowed the chromatic turn in the melody by placing it in his bass.
Looking back over these measures we see that the bass of student “D” has the simplest
design, with its direct scalar ascent from A up to D and E. The bass of student “C” is simi-
lar, if slightly more complex. Students “A” and “B” both chose a deceptive cadence (F# at
the end of m. 2) before also moving toward the half cadence with the E bass of measure 4.
The next five measures are shown in Example 15.8. Everyone treated measures 6 and
7 as being in F# minor and E major, respectively, an echo of the eighteenth-century Fonte
schema. The F#-minor passage (m. 6) is handled simply, with everyone reaching an F#
bass on the third beat. The melody of the E-major passage (m. 7) descends more slowly,
going down a 3rd (B–A–G#), up a 2nd (G#–A), down a 3rd (A–G#–F#) in a way that mimics
a “down a 3rd, up a 2nd” movimento and its related marches harmoniques. Perhaps
because that movimento is a species of the “circle-of-fifths” progression, and occurs here
as the melody descends from n to j, three of the four students placed a circle-of-fifths
bass under it (the brown rectan-
gles). Moreover, the same three
gave the passage a Fonte-like har-
A monization, where { to u in F#
minor (alto, E#–F#; see the green
lozenge) precedes { to u in E
major (alto, D#–E). It seems
remarkable that just a few
melodic twists of an E-major
B scale (m. 7) could elicit such a
consistent and complex response.
The next two measures
return to the opening key of A
major. Measure 9 melodically
C outlines the dominant chord (E
major) and measure 10 does the
same for the tonic chord (A
major). The long melodic “D” in
measure 9 allowed for two stan-
dard harmonizations. One could
D treat the whole measure as a 6/5/3
chord (G# bass) or as a 7 chord (E
bass), as did students “A” and “B.”
Or, as did students “C” and “D,”
E x . 15 . 8   Four realizations, mm. 6–10 (Paris, 1877)
 Chapter 15  affordance  215

one could preface G# and E with F#s (the red ellipses). Either choice is correct, though
the latter is more dynamic under the static “D” in the melody.
Measures 11 and 12 (Ex. 15.10) repeat the previous two measures, but now in D
major. All four students agree and place long “Ds” in the bass (m. 12, the orange rectan-
gles). That pattern seems to have triggered memories of a marche harmonique with its
roots in the 1600s, when it was called La Folia. Exercises “A,” “B,” and “C” from lesson no.
283 in Durand’s text (Ex. 15.9) show how his students were to handle this “up a 4th, down
a 2nd” type of bass. (Hear Durand’s models in Video 15.6.)

Vi deo 15 .6

E x . 15 .9   Durand, exercises for lesson no. 283 (Paris, 1881)

Three out of four students

read these affordances and
responded with the Folia bass,
two of them using an imitation A
of the melody to fill in the
ascending 4ths (the green loz-
enges).
Usage-based or construc-
tion grammars in language B
emphasize how much what we
say and understand depends on
context. The D-major chord
and “D” bass in measure 12
conclude a phrase, and two stu-
C
dents embellished it with the
descending chromatic tone Bb.
The D-major chord and “D”
bass in measure 16 is part of a
move toward an A-major
cadence. In that context three D
out of four students added the
ascending chromatic passing
tone A#.
E x . 15 .1 0   Four realizations, mm. 11–16 (Paris, 1877)
216 child composers in the old conservatories

The four students were, of course, real people who went on to have successful careers
in music. Student “A” was Florintin Piffaretti, age nineteen, whom the judges awarded a
second honorable mention. He won a second prize the following year, and a first prize the
year after that. Piffaretti would eventually become a professor of solfège at the conservatory.
Student “B” was Léon Lemoine, age twenty-two, whom the judges awarded a second
prize. Lemoine succeeded his father as an important editor and publisher of music.
Student “C” was Lucien Hillemacher, age seventeen, whom the judges awarded a
first honorable mention. He won a first prize the following year and the Rome Prize in
1880. With his older brother Paul, a Rome Prize winner in 1876, he composed a number
of comic operas, a pantomime for London, and dozens of songs.
Student “D” was Georges Falkenberg, age twenty-three, whom the judges awarded a
first prize. He had been awarded a second honorable mention in 1875 and a second prize
in 1876. He eventually became well-known as a professor of piano at the conservatory, his
most famous student being Olivier Messiaen.
Do the judges’ rankings of the realizations in the order D, B, C, A—Falkenberg,
Lemoine, Hillemacher, and Piffaretti—seem reasonable today? That can be a difficult
question to answer because all four were very good (and hence received prizes). From the
above biographical sketches we might take note that the teenagers received honorable
mentions while the young adults won the first and second prizes. With the exception of
Lemoine, who was called into the family business, the other students all worked their way
up the ladder of awards, starting with honorable mentions and eventually realizing a first
(more than one award of a given level could be bestowed each year). If we liken this con-
test to an Olympic event like figure skating, we might think of the judges awarding points
not only for “technical merit” but also for “artistic impression.” Technically, all four were
very good; there are no “wrong notes.” So a decision comes down to artistic merit. If we
were to accept Saint-Saëns’s aesthetic standard that these miniatures be “written not only
with purity, but also with elegance and even with charm,” then in my opinion Falkenberg
was properly the winner. His basses are simple and direct, he read all the affordances cor-
rectly, and he made it sound easy.

THE TRANSFER OF KNOWLEDGE — A phrase like “students in the class of

Durand at the Paris Conservatory” should not be equated with something like “the ninth-
grade class of Mr. Stephens at Brookside High School.” The modern classroom model of
teaching, with its lectures, note taking, textbooks, workbooks, and students sitting atten-
tively (or not) in serried rows of desks bears little resemblance to the world of the old
conservatories. The conservatories developed from a model of apprenticeship, and appren-
ticeship was not about sitting passively while an adult droned on about some abstract
principle.
At the annual meeting of the Society of American Archaeology in 2005, a symposium
was held on the topic of “ancient apprenticeship.” The program noted that “learning a
 Chapter 15  affordance  217

craft, a physical learning process, is based on observation, imitation, and most importantly,
repetition. This symposium concentrates on the types of knowledge and the methods of
knowledge transfer by craftsmen in the social context of learning.” The
speakers all touched on different aspects of apprenticeship in the distant
past. Prof. Welleke Wendrich, an Egyptologist at UCLA, spoke of ideas
that would find fuller expression in her book Archaeology and
Apprenticeship: Body Knowledge, Identity, and Communities of Practice
(2013).5

Ancient technology was passed on through generations. The transfer of

knowledge from master to apprentice was done partly by demonstrating, but
mostly by having the apprentice train the same movements over and over
again, building up a physically engrained knowledge of movements. . . . The
modern researcher will find that the most suitable method of acquiring Welleke Wendrich
knowledge is to take on the role of apprentice.

Similarly, Lisa B. Jørgenson, a specialist in ancient textiles, pointed

out the difference between academic knowledge and knowledge of a craft.

Craftsmanship is transmitted by familiarity, obtained by daily, close contact

with a master craftsman, as so-called tacit knowledge. Craftsmanship has a
language of its own, consisting of movements and experience. Traditionally,
this is perceived as utterly non-academic.6

Training in music as a craft and training in music as a university sub-

ject were, as mentioned previously, largely incompatible. The two began Lisa B. Jørgenson
to diverge decisively in the 1840s, and the tone of that schism can be
detected in a footnote found in the harmony treatise (1840) of the Berlin professor Siegfried
Dehn.

In some of Italy’s famous music conservatories the theory of harmony, which

precedes the teaching of counterpoint, operated in a purely practical way
without a preceding systematic construction of all the chords. The student
has to learn some rules about the progression of the various intervals [in the
bass] and the so-called Regola d’ottava [Rule of the Octave] (instruction in
the harmonic accompaniment of stepwise bass progressions from the tonic up
to the octave in a given key) and then how to treat figured basses both on
paper and on an instrument. The student finds the necessary lessons and
related assignments in older and newer books that appeared under titles like
L’armonico pratico al cembalo — Pratica d’accompagnamento sopra bassi
numerati — Partimenti, etc. Regarding actual theories of harmony that con-
tain a particular theory of chords, there are likely only a very few or no longer
any, except for the Scuola della Musica of Carlo Gervasoni (a work lacking
inner substance).7 Siegfried Dehn
218 child composers in the old conservatories

An irony that would certainly have been lost on Professor Dehn is that his own theory
of chords was, at best, folk wisdom dressed up in the garb of academia. The son of a pros-
perous banker, Dehn had a classical education but merely dabbled in music. Only when
his father went bankrupt did music emerge as a possible profession. Dehn was spared his
likely failure on that path by his appointment to the royal library in Berlin, where his eru-
dition and enterprise helped create one of the world’s finest music collections.
Dehn had a sufficiently superficial knowledge of traditional training in Italian conser-
vatories to judge it “utterly non-academic,” to quote Jørgenson. The charmingly absurd
supposition underlying Dehn’s remarks seems to be that the great Franco-Italian musi-
cians who dominated musical life in Europe would have been much better musicians if
only they had a theory of chords! Could Dehn have been resentful of the highly paid
chapel master of the Prussian court and conductor of the court opera house, Naples-
trained Gaspare Spontini?
While nineteenth-century academic attempts to describe music as a kind of physical
system akin to gravity or magnetism failed utterly (which is not to say that they had no
influence or were not widely adopted), other sciences of the mind were developing rapidly
and advancing empirical methods for exploring how people learn. In 2015 the American
Psychological Association (APA) produced a lengthy report titled “Top 20 Principles from
Psychology for PreK–12 Teaching and Learning.” Most relevant to evaluating the transfer
of knowledge in the old conservatories are the APA’s principles 4–6:

Principle 4 — Learning is based on context. Generalizing learning to new con-

texts is not spontaneous; it needs to be facilitated. Student transfer or generaliza-
tion of their knowledge and skills is not spontaneous or automatic; it becomes progres-
sively more difficult the more dissimilar the new context is from the original learning
context. Moreover, students’ ability to transfer learning is an important indicator of the
quality of their learning—its depth, adaptability, and flexibility.

Principle 5 — Acquiring long-term knowledge and skill is largely dependent on

practice. The transfer of information from short-term to long-term memory is an effortful
process, accomplished through different strategies. Practice is key to this transfer
process. Effective practice involves attention, rehearsal, and meaningful repetition. As a
result, this knowledge can reach automaticity, allowing for focus on more complex knowl-
edge or skills over time.

Principle 6 — Clear, explanatory, and timely feedback to students is important

for learning. Occasional and inattentive feedback does not help students feel motivated
to understand the curricular materials better. Instead, student learning improves with
regular, specific, explanatory, and timely feedback.8
 Chapter 15  affordance  219

In reading the APA’s principles, one can see why the apprenticeship model of learn-
ing has been attracting renewed interest. Principle 4, for instance, emphasizes context. In
the conservatories context was continually manipulated by the master to give the appren-
tices opportunities for transferring old knowledge to new circumstances. Think of a boy
realizing a partimento. When he encounters a particular movimento in the bass, he has to
take into account the local key, the meter, the style, and possible melodic motifs. There
were sound psychological reasons why masters would give apprentices stacks of solfeggi
and partimenti. A single solfeggio might cover most of the common melodic intervals and
rhythms, but only by exploring those elements in dozens of different contexts would a
student’s knowledge become enriched. Principle 5, about practice, is obvious for appren-
tice musicians. And Principle 6, about feedback, goes without saying when a student was
daily corrected by one or two masters.
What psychologists, in their zeal to coin nouns, term “automaticity” is close to what
sociologists have termed the “habitus.” Popularized by the French sociologist Pierre
Bourdieu, “habitus” is explained by the American scholar David L. Schwartz (2002).

Bourdieu’s concept of habitus builds on the idea that actors [meaning individuals in the
world] act strategically and practically rather than as conformists to external sets of formal
rules. Actors are not usually simple conformists to cultural norms or external constraints,
such as income. Rather, they are strategic improvisers who respond in terms of deeply
ingrained past experiences to the opportunities and the constraints offered by present situ-
ations. . . . Children brought up in a family of athletes, for example, are far more likely to
develop their own sports abilities and acquire the dispositions and the know-how to appre-
ciate good athletic performances, than if they were raised in a family of professional musi-
cians. . . . Habitus generates perceptions, expectations, and practices that correspond to
the structuring properties of earlier socialization. An individual’s habitus is an active resi-
due of his or her past that functions within the present to shape his or her perceptions,
thought, and bodily comportment.9

The conservatories developed the apprenticeship model as the best way to transfer
nonverbal musical knowledge from masters to young students. To aid this process the
masters created a suite of mutually reinforcing types of lessons—solfeggi, partimenti,
intavolature, dispositions, and lessons in counterpoint and fugue. Growing up in this
milieu of lessons, concerts, masters, little masters, and fellow students, conservatory stu-
dents developed as “strategic improvisors” within a musical habitus. Their automatic
responses to musical affordances allowed them to perform brilliantly in the contests. At an
early stage a student might look at a bass that went “up a 4th, down a 2nd” and think, “Oh
yes, I should use 5/3 chords and 9–8 suspensions,” but at a later stage the student would
likely just write or play a correct marche harmonique, explaining, if prodded, that any-
thing else “wouldn’t sound right.”
220 child composers in the old conservatories

@
 16

PR EDICT ING CR E AT I V I T Y

W I T HIN

A T R A DI T ION

Wh ich you ng m usici a ns w i l l bec om e gr e at ? If the music masters at the old

conservatories could have answered that question with confidence, they could have put
more energy into cultivating the talents of the future greats and saved themselves wasted
effort in trying to help those who could not or would not be helped. But music teachers
then and now have no crystal balls. Musical styles, modes of performance, audiences, and
societies as a whole are in continual flux, so even a crystal ball that could foretell who
would be great the next year might fail to predict who would be great several decades later.

Actress Myrna Loy with soothsayer; publicity still

221
 222 child composers in the old conservatories

Every student is different, with different strengths and weaknesses. Some who play beauti-
fully when alone or with close friends might completely fail as public artists who need to
communicate fearlessly with audiences of strangers. A composer who excels at crafting
elegant musical miniatures might find herself in a time and culture where bombastic
orchestral works were the public’s only fancy. A young prodigy might burn brightly for a
few years and then seem to lose his way. Another student might be adequate but not excep-
tional when young, yet she might continue studying, growing, and maturing to become
truly great much later in adulthood.
Institutionally, the masters in the conservatories had to judge every student every year.
In Naples, the Church did not want to waste its limited resources on bad students. In
extreme cases the governors of a conservatory would vote to
expel a boy for bad behavior, lack of talent, or both. Expulsion
could mean, in the best case, switching to employment as a
music copyist (most music in those days was hand copied). In
the worst case a boy would end up begging in the streets. In a
real sense, as the seventeenth-century painting suggests, an
angel and a devil daily tugged at each boy, with the institution
and benevolent masters hoping to nudge the struggle in favor
of the angel.
In Paris, the conservatory was a government institution
with many of the students supported by state bursaries. As de
facto child employees of the French state, these students
needed to do their jobs. For them, the contests were like
annual performance reviews in a modern corporation. The
corporation’s business was the manufacturing of future profes-
sional musicians. Failure to receive high enough marks in a
contest could be taken as a failure in the manufacturing pro-
“An Angel and Devil Fighting for the Soul
cess. As a result a student could be dropped from a perfor-
of a Child,” by Giacinto Gimignani, ca. 1630
mance studio or be prevented from advancing to a higher class
in counterpoint or composition. The contests were thus high-
stakes tests that could have an outsized effect on a child’s future. Even professors were at
risk if their students habitually failed to perform well in the contests.
With most of the history of the conservatories taking place before the age of recording,
we are prevented from understanding the fine points of how performance was judged on
instruments and in singing. At the extremes there were world-class talents whose abilities
were clear to anyone, and at the other end of the spectrum there were students who had
bad intonation or who developed physical impairments. But we would learn more about
the musical ideals of those times if we could hear the performances of students in the
middle of the pack. Those students who were not singled out as stars at the dawn of record-
ing technology have left no audible trace of their abilities.
 Chapter 16  creativity  223

With the contests in harmony and counterpoint we do have extensive records of the
results from the 1850s onward. One is able to examine the tests given to the students, their
completed efforts, and the ratings given to those efforts by the professors who sat as judges.
The conservatory, however, appears not to have retained copies of the efforts that went
unrewarded. When prizes were given, names and fair copies were entered in the ledgers
and funds dispersed to the winners. The losers took their scores and went home.
Of special interest is a 260-page manuscript that at some time in the late twentieth
century found its way from Paris to the library of Northwestern University near Chicago.1
The manuscript shows not only contest results but also regular lessons from students in the
harmony class of Émile Durand during the decade 1872–1882. Because his students
included future greats like Gabriel Pierné and Claude Debussy, and because each lesson
or contest submission is written in the students’ own hands, this manuscript is of some
historical significance. The chants donnés compared in the previous chapter were taken
from this source.

DEBUSSY DOES HARMONY — “Where is the creativity?” is a question that peo-

ple have asked in connection with the regularizing and disciplined curriculum of the old
conservatories. If all students learned solfeggi, partimenti, harmony, and counterpoint in
the same way and were held to rigid standards in evaluations, how could a truly creative
individual survive and prosper?
Claude Debussy was one of the most creative musicians of his or any era. But he was
also a product of the Paris Conservatory, enrolling at age ten. Much is often made of his
nonconformist nature, but here is the impressive list of his contest results: Solfège, third
medal (1874), second medal (1875), first medal (1876); Piano, second honorable mention
(1874), first honorable mention (1875), second prize (1877); Accompaniment, first prize
(1880); Counterpoint and Fugue,
second honorable mention (1882);
Rome Prize, second grand prize
(1883), first grand prize (1884). To
the right, in the white jacket and
dark hat, sits Debussy at the Villa
Medici in Rome, where he and
the other Rome Prize winners—
painters, sculptors, architects,
musicians—spent their fellowship
years, all paid for by the Academy
of Fine Arts, meaning the French
government. He may have chafed
at institutional restraints, but he
was clearly an elite student who
benefited from state support. Debussy (top, in white jacket) at the Villa Medici, 1885
 224 child composers in the old conservatories

Two (or possibly three) of his lessons, signed and dated, are preserved in the Durand
manuscript. The first is his realization of a chant donné completed on April 4, 1879, when
he was sixteen. Because his classmate Gabriel Pierné, age fifteen, completed the same
assignment, we have the opportunity to examine their realizations together. Example 16.1,
which extends for two pages, presents the realization by Debussy on the upper two staves
and that by Pierné on the lower two. In terms of a psychology experiment, we might think
of the chant donné (the notes on the treble staff with note stems ascending) as the stimulus
and each realization as a response. Were we to attempt a global description of the differ-
ences in the students’ responses, we would likely fall into general platitudes: “Debussy
liked chromatic lower neighbor tones.” By examining the two realizations passage by pas-
sage, schema by schema, however, we can detect a number of telling differences.
Vi deo 1 6 .1 At the opening measures (heard in Videos 16.1–2) Debussy shows his superior knowl-
Vi deo 1 6 . 2 edge of chant donné realizations, which often begin with a tonic pedal point (the tied Gs,
in orange). And the “boring, interesting” character of the melody’s first two measures leads
him to place moving quarter-notes under the “boring” soprano D of measure 1. Pierné’s
choices are correct but less successful in exploiting the melody’s affordances. Both com-
posers recognize the sequential nature of the melody’s measures 5–6, and how they fit into
a slow G-major cadence. Pierné takes the bass figure (notes in purple) from measures 5–6,
which he shared with Debussy, and anticipates it in measure 4.
Measures 9–12 present the Prinner schema twice, with a modulation that matches
the Fonte schema. In the Prinner, scale degrees z–y–x–w in the melody (the red notes)
are collocated with m–l–k–j in the bass (the blue notes). For the Fonte schema, the
Prinner appears first in the key of A minor and then, “one step lower,” in G major.
Debussy’s treatment of this quintessentially Mozartean combination is properly classical,
set as a delicate trio (one voice rests) where the close in each key (m. 10, m. 12) sets the
two lower voices in a tenor cadence as their intervals expand from perfect 5th to major 6th
to perfect 8va. Pierné matches Debussy’s recognition of the Prinner/Fonte combination,
but sets it in a more pedestrian style that misses making the end of the tied melodic D
(downbeats of m. 10) a dissonance, an affordance that Debussy recognized.
Some of the differences are due to choices about the roles of inner voices (alto, tenor).
In measure 20, for instance, Debussy chose to give his alto voice (in orange) the melodic
motive of measure 2. Other differences depend on recognizing different schemas. Debussy
and Pierné diverge substantially in their realizations of measures 15–16. Pierné heard the
melody’s ascent (m. 15) from G to A to Bb as the ascent z–{–u in the key of Bb major,
and thus as a small cadence. Debussy, by contrast, thought of the pattern starting at the
end of measure 14 with the F# in the melody. He heard the melodic rise as {–u–v–w in
G minor (notes in green). A century earlier, when Mozart assigned his bright pupil Barbara
Ployer a melody in half-notes with the pattern {–u–x–w (a variant of {–u–v–w), she
responded with a bass in quarter-notes that, allowing for transposition to G minor, went
D–C–Bb–G–F#–D–G–Bb and then repeated. All those notes appear in Debussy’s accom-
 Chapter 16  creativity  225

 ealizations by Debussy, above, and Pierné, below, of the same chant donné assigned in
e x . 1 6 .1  R
the class of Émile Durand [continues on the next page] (Paris, April 4, 1879)

paniment (in red), most prominently in the bass. Across that century of masters and
apprentices the same stimulus elicited a very similar response. Debussy’s lessons in parti-
mento playing under the master Bazille (whose own conservatory training was in the
1840s) seem to have made him more sensitive than was Pierné to many of the old patterns
from the Naples conservatories, in this case a schema I have dubbed the Fenaroli, given
how frequently that master and his pupils like Cimarosa used it.
 226 child composers in the old conservatories

e x . 1 6 .1   [continued from the previous page]

Not all the similarities and differences in these realizations have obvious explana-
tions. In measures 18–21 (previous page), for example, the melody replays its opening
theme, but in the key of Bb major. One might expect both apprentices to repeat their open-
ing harmonizations, but instead they both inflect the harmony toward C minor, and in
very similar ways (compare their basses). Intensifying and darkening a previously stated
theme was a Romantic trait and appears even in the late works of Mozart. But in cases like
this it suggests an unrecorded, verbal instruction that was given by the master during les-
 Chapter 16  creativity  227

sons. Otherwise it would be difficult to explain such similarities in the realizations, since
the path taken was not motivated by any apparent cue in the chant donné.
Gabriel Pierné was extremely talented. He would win the Prix de Rome and later
conduct the premiere of Stravinsky’s Firefird (Paris, 1910). Even if in most passages we
might give Debussy a slight edge over Pierné, the differences are slight. In measures 29–32,
however, we can say with confidence that Debussy completely bested Pierné. The melodic
affordance of measure 31 says “the Indugio schema.” “Indugio” in Italian means a linger-
ing or tarrying, and in eighteenth-century music it meant lingering over m in the bass with
melodic scale degrees v, x, and z, each ornamented by half steps from below. A typical
example from the 1700s is shown in Example 16.2 (which can be heard in Video 16.3). The Vi deo 1 6 .3
larger context is G major, the C in the bass is m, the ornamental tones G#, B, and D# slide
into the core tones from below, and the whole thing delays an arrival, by way of C# in the
bass, of a converging cadence on the dominant, D.

indugio
 
# 2 X X. # X X .

  X.

  X.

£
X X X. # X X X . # X X . X # X . # X X . X X.( n) X X.
19 
X. X.

& 4 # X XXX X
#2 ¥ ¥ X
? 4 X X #X X
X X
  # 
converging  

ex. 16.2 Pierre Gaviniés, Opus 3, no. 5, mvt. 1, Allegro, m. 19 (Paris, 1764)

Measure 31 of the chant donné gives the clearest clues to an Indugio, but Debussy
recognized that measure 30 could also be incorporated into the same schema. He adopts
the Indugio bass note-for-note and thereby gives aural clarity to this most active part of the
chant donné. Pierné’s realization, by contrast, sounds confused. He harmonizes each
quarter-note but to no obvious goal or purpose.
Both apprentices conclude their realizations with the typical double presentation of
the Quiescenza schema (kwee-ah-SHEN-zah; from the Italian for a quiet, settling-down
passage). The pedal point D for two measures on the dominant (32–33) sets up the final
cadence, and both realizations give the concluding five measures a tonic pedal on G.
Besides a tonic pedal, the Quiescenza schema features a lowered { going to z (F§–E;
fa–mi), followed by the raised { going to u (F#–G; mi–fa; see the notes in red). A
Romantic alternative to the F#–G conclusion is Eb–D, which both Debussy and Pierné
employ for the repeat of the Quiescenza (mm. 36–38).
The preceding realization by Debussy was written in April 1879. In June of the same
year he may have realized a combination basse donnée and chant donné, labeling it an
“Examen.” Entrance examinations in harmony often used a single test that began as a
 228 child composers in the old conservatories

basse donnée and at about the halfway mark switched to become a chant donné. A single
staff was presented to the examinee, with a bass clef at the beginning and a change of clef
to treble or soprano near the midpoint. Evidence is mixed for Debussy’s authorship (see
Vi deo 1 6 . 4 the discussion of the manuscript in Video 16.4). In any case, as shown in Example 16.3, the
basse donnée begins with an interesting, active first measure and a boring, static second

e x . 1 6 .3 Debussy [?], “Examen,” a combination basse donnée & chant donné (Paris, June, 1879)
 Chapter 16  creativity  229

measure. This was an obvious cue to have another voice do the reverse, and for that role
the student chose the soprano. The red notes show the call-and-response between bass and
soprano, a unit that modulates up one step every two measures. Measure 6 goes “down a
3rd, up a step” in the bass, and the student responded appropriately. Then in measure 7 an
extended Eb in the bass begins a protracted modulation to Db major and the beginning
(m. 15) of the chant donné. This section has a different character and construction.
Measures 15–16 have a rising fourth in the bass (Db–Gb; the blue notes). The standard col-
locations are for the melody to move in contrary motion, either Db–Bb or F–Bb. The stu-
dent chose the latter. That unit is then transposed up a step to form measures 17–18. The
Fenaroli schema comes next, played twice. The notes in red show a canon between
soprano and bass. The soprano begins u–v–w–{ ({ appears in the tenor) as the bass
plays l–p–j–k: the same sequences of scale degrees but out of phase with each other.
A Fenaroli schema with a canon between two voices was an alternate form of the schema,
Debussy having used the version with a more active countermelody in the realization he
did in April. That a sixteen-year-old in the late 1870s would have such a rich knowledge of
these old patterns is quite impressive (assuming his actual authorship, as mentioned
above).
Lastly, we can examine a “Lesson composed by A. de Bussy” (Achille was his first
name) dated April 8, 1880 (Ex. 16.4, Video 16.5). It has many of the hallmarks of a chant Vi deo 1 6 .5

e x . 1 6 . 4   “Leçon composé par A. de Bussy” [continues on the next page] (Paris, April 8, 1880)
 230 child composers in the old conservatories

e x . 1 6 . 4   [continued from the previous page]

donné, though it is possible it was all composed by Debussy. The more challenging key (B
major), the extreme modulations, and the many decorative melodic touches all suggest
the general type of exercise seen in the later chapters of Durante’s harmony textbook.
Were this an original piece, it would not fall too far from Debussy’s decorative early piano
works, for example his two arabesques. The only other exercise labeled “Lesson” in this
260-page manuscript is from 1880 by Leon Honoré, and that work too is unusual in not
specifying a given melody or bass.
 Chapter 16  creativity  231

Obvious marches harmoniques are mostly absent from Debussy’s lesson. The excep-
tion is the rising sequence of measures 30–36. The bass, in red notes, first rises stepwise
j–k, harmonized as in the Rule of the Octave with a 7–6 suspension in the first half of
measure 31. The second half of measure 31 reinterprets the A in the bass to change k into
p, the leading tone of Bb major. The process is then repeated so that Bb to C in the bass
begins as j–k (mm. 32–33), but the second half of measure 33 reinterprets the C in the
bass to change k into p, the leading tone of Db. The process repeats but the goal is
stretched so that we end, in measure 36, on Gb, not Fb. This type of successive reinterpre-
tation of bass notes to effect sequential changes in the tonal context was described by
Fenaroli as early as 1775 in his Regole. But Fenaroli never envisioned such remote modu-
lations. It may be worth pointing out that this marche from G major to Gb would already
be noteworthy if it had not taken place in a short movement that begins and ends in B
major. Distances between keys are sometimes measured by the difference in their key
signatures, taking sharps as pluses and flats as minuses. The distance from C major to G
minor is thus −2, the distance from C major to D major is +2, and the distance in Debussy’s
lesson from B major to Gb major is a huge −11.
Would a professor at the conservatory have played through Debussy’s harmony lesson
and said, “This young man is a genius who will tower over us all very soon”? That seems
unlikely, especially given how these exercises were highly constrained by conservatory
traditions. But presumably the professor would notice the abundant craft and the small
flashes of brilliance that suggested a robust musical imagination. It would be unrealistic to
imagine that any institution could reliably produce epochal artists year in, year out. But
what the great conservatories could do was to give their students the ability to think in
music, to imagine musical alternatives in their minds, and to work alongside masters who
were, in many cases, among the greatest musicians alive. In the harmony and counter-
point classes the students would be given tasks that would
defeat all but a few students today. But with their long and
intensive training, the best conservatory students could press
on, surmounting challenge after challenge until they reached
the goal of mastery. And their practice in solving difficult artis-
tic problems within a revered tradition would enable a select
few to become composers of real significance, even if they later
went on to reform or upend the very tradition in which they
were trained.

PALADILHE DOES A SCALETTA — Émile Paladilhe

was a star student at the Conservatory. He won the Prix de
Rome when just sixteen (1860), younger than anyone before
him, and he went on to pen a dozen operas. Though he out-
lived Debussy, his tastes were far more conservative and his Émile Paladilhe as a child prodigy
 232 child composers in the old conservatories

creativity was channeled into familiar styles and genres. That said, he could do work of
great finesse, work that on occasion approached a kind of musical perfection.
A scaletta was a “little scale,” meaning a portion of the complete eight-note scale. In
a manuscript from eighteenth-century Venice2—one likely connected with the conserva-
tories for girls known as the ospedale (“hostels”) because it was catalogued with the word
“Esposti” (the exposed or abandoned ones)—a scaletta climbs the scale from C to G. It is
harmonized according to the Rule of the Octave (see Chap. 7, p. 88) and falls back to C
by virtue of a compound cadence on G. It is followed by a small set of variations on the
Vi deo 1 6 .6 same scaletta. (You can hear the scaletta and its variations in Video 16.6.)
Today the best known of Paladilhe’s songs is “Psyche” (“Psyché,” 1887). For a song to
remain in the art-song repertory for more than a century is quite a feat, given the tens of
thousands of other fine songs written by so many of the best composers. More remarkable,
perhaps, is that the musical theme of “Psyche” depends on the same type of scaletta taught
to orphan girls in Venice. The bass rises through scale degrees j–k–l–m–n with
nearly the same harmonization, there are two counts on n for the same compound
cadence, and then we fall back to j. So where is the creativity? To say that Paladilhe adds
some appoggiaturas would hardly do justice to his art. Better just to listen to Video 16.6
and the further artistry of Renée Fleming, who graciously permitted the use of her record-
ing.
 17

A SICK LY YOUNG WOM A N

SPE A KS ELEGA N T H A R MON Y

TO ONE OF T HE IMMORTA LS

Jac qu es de L a P r esl e taught harmony at the Paris Conservatory from 1937 to 1958.
In this postwar photo of his harmony class, the students include both young men and
women. That was not the case when La Presle first began to teach. Before the war, classes
for the teenagers in solfège and harmony were segregated by gender, with each sex having
its own professors. The annual contests in harmony were segregated, as were the prizes.
The two young ladies in the photo, had they earned a first or second prize in the 1930s,
would have found their awards listed under “harmonie (femmes).” Only young adult stu-
dents in the advanced classes for fugue and composition took classes that were coeduca-

Jacques de La Presle (left) and his coeducational class on harmony, Paris, 1950
© Musica et Memoria/Marie-France Chatelais (www.musimem.com)

233
 234 child composers in the old conservatories

tional. It remains an open question to what extent, if at all, the men’s and women’s classes
in harmony differed. The results of the contests suggest that the women’s classes were
every bit as demanding as the men’s. La Presle had been a teacher of the women.
In 1938 a first prize in women’s harmony was awarded to Colette Boyer. I had been
reading through a collection of realizations edited by La Presle in 1945,1 and when I got to
one by Colette Boyer I was struck by its beauty. It was, moreover,
a realization of a basse donnée by Henri Busser (see Chap. 2). I
had never heard of Colette Boyer so my curiosity was piqued.
Who was she? How had she gotten so good at harmony? What
happened to her?
I learned she was born in 1914, the first year of World War I (in
1915 her future professor La Presle would enlist in France’s 118th
infantry regiment). In some respects Colette became an indirect
casualty of the war when, in 1919, she contracted the Spanish Flu,
remaining sickly and prone to illness for the rest of her life. The
war devastated Europe. I grew up in a Norwegian-American vil-
lage of three hundred in northern Minnesota. In that war the vil-
lage lost one man, the Medal of Honor winner Nels Wold. If one
visits a comparable rural village in France or Germany, their roll
of honor will list more names lost in the war than their current
adult male population. And the losses did not stop with the armi-
stice. André Caplet, a gifted orchestrator who had bested Maurice
Ravel in the 1901 Rome Prize competition, was gassed in the
trenches and never fully recovered before finally succumbing in
1926. As the war dragged on, the mix of prizewinners at the conser-
vatory had become more and more female as the males reached
the age of enlistment and left for the front, many never to return.
In the postwar period many young women had to give up on
the idea of marriage and family because the ranks of possible hus-
bands had been so cruelly depleted. The Lord Peter Wimsey
detective stories of Dorothy L. Sayers are set in this period, and
Colette Boyer, age 14
Wimsey was able to staff an undercover detective agency entirely
© Éditions Du Rocher 1998
with such women. Of course Wimsey and his detectives were
from the upper echelons of society. Boyer’s father was a tailor, she
would need a trade, and her musical talent at the piano led to her admission to the Paris
Conservatory in 1924, age ten. To the left is a photograph of her at age fourteen, when she
would have likely completed the course in solfège and the class in preparatory piano.
Chronic illness in the form of tuberculosis required that she withdraw from time to time,
taking a total of three years out of her eventual fourteen years on the conservatory rolls.
The top photograph on the following page shows Boyer in her very early twenties
holding the family cat on the balcony of her parents’ modest apartment in Paris. As a local,
 Chapter 17  a sickly young woman  235

she lived at home during her years of study. The photograph below captures Boyer as a
courier in the French Resistance during World War II. What?
We will return to Boyer’s musical accomplishments shortly, but permit me first to
sketch the remarkable larger arc of her life. On November 11, 1939, with the Germans
threatening to invade France, Boyer on foot collided
with a bicycle ridden by a Jewish law student named
André Chouraqui. He was a highly literate member of
a soon to become extinct class of Frenchman—Jews
born and raised in North Africa to administer the
French colonies. Boyer and Chouraqui fell in love. In
solidarity she converted to Judaism and followed him
into the Resistance in central France, where the guer-
rilla fighters were called the Maquis. Although con-
fined to a sanatorium because of her health for part of
the war, when able she served as a courier for the
Maquis. That is likely the role she was playing in the
photograph below, taken at a train station.
Any telling of the lives of the French during the
war cannot convey the multiple ambiguities and con-
flicts of the occupation. Friends were killed, opportun-
ists prospered. Right or wrong seemed up for negotia-
tion. By the end of the war Boyer seems to have been Colette Boyer with cat, at her parents
shattered. There was a marriage to Chouraqui, a baby
girl who died after only a few months, and then divorce
and conversion back to Catholicism. André went on to
become a judge in North Africa and then an impor-
tant figure in Israel. She entered the order of the Little
Sisters of Jesus in 1949. The sisters lived among the
poor and outcast, working menial jobs alongside them.
In 1981 she died in Chouraqui’s arms near the shrine at
Lourdes, France’s greatest site of pilgrimage. He had
been called to her bedside as she began to fail. The
book Ton Étoile et ta Croix (“Your Star and Your
Cross,” 1998) by Chouraqui contains letters from their
youthful correspondence.2
Chouraqui was not a musician or even musically
trained, so his observations on Boyer’s talent were gen-
eral and more biographical than technical. He noted
that she played piano very well, which would be a
gross understatement for a successful piano major at
Colette Boyer with the Resistance
the conservatory. He also noted her love of Ravel’s
 236 child composers in the old conservatories

piano works. His observation about her powers of concentration, however, do suggest in
part why she was able to excel in performance and in the harmony contests:

Colette had, to an unusual degree, a power of contemplation that revealed itself especially
when she played the piano. . . . It was like she was suspended over an abyss, on a summit
where, stripped of words, images, ideas, she became pure receptivity.3

When a student sat in a closed room for the harmony contest, “pure receptivity” was
just what was needed. The given bass or melody was only one part of the four parts
required, but the student had to sense its affordances, sense the way in which it could
reveal the full context of what its author had intended.
In 1938 the Académie Française elected Henri Busser as a member. Perhaps in honor
of that high distinction Busser, now an “immortal,” was asked to contribute a basse donnée
for the women’s harmony contest that same year. Below you see what the contestants saw.
Busser’s bass begins in Db major by sounding the notes of a Db-major triad on the salient
Vi deo 17.1 beats (i.e., downbeats and the dotted half-notes) (Ex. 17.1 and Video 17.1). Determining the
key of each passage was one of the first tasks in analyzing a contest bass. The G§ at the end
of measure 3 is the first tone outside of Db and makes the key uncertain. Only in measure
5 does a new key fully consolidate when the opening theme returns securely in F minor.
The D§ in measure 7 moves the key toward Eb major, a move confirmed by its dominant
pedal point in measures 9–11. Something must be added in measure 11 to undermine the

e x . 17.1   A basse donnée by Henri Busser for the women’s harmony contest (Paris, 1938)
 Chapter 17  a sickly young woman  237

pedal point and push the harmony toward a Gb. The double bar and change of signature
transform the Gb into F#, an enharmonic change of the type often set as a trap for weaker
students. Measures 13–14, in F# minor, behave like a variation on the opening theme
before the key shifts, in measure 15, to A major. The leading tone of that key, G# (m. 16),
undergoes another enharmonic change to emerge on the other side of the double bar and
new signature as a dominant pedal point back in the home key of Db major. From that
point on, all is diatonic and headed downward toward the long tonic pedal at the end. One
might wonder why Busser did not insert a key signature of three sharps for measures 13–16,
since that would be a better fit for his F# minor/A major content (would it have been too
obvious?).
Boyer’s realization, below and continuing on the next page, is magnificent. It is as if
she heard the bass of the great Busser, understood all that he had intended, and then went
further to craft an artistic statement of outstanding grace and subtlety, in spite of the exam-
ination’s ticking clock (listen to Video 17.2). Some small parts of her technique can be Vi deo 17. 2
readily explained. Measure 1 of Busser’s bass, for example, has an interesting first half and
a boring second half. Boyer set the melodic motif of the interesting half (four quarter-
notes) in her soprano to sound against the bass’s boring half. And when Busser lets his bass
begin to flow downward in quarter-notes (second half of m. 3), she echoes that motion in
her soprano (m. 4) to lead gracefully toward a cadence in F minor (m. 5). In measure 21,

e x . 17. 2   Busser’s basse donnée realized by Colette Boyer [continues on the next page] (Paris, 1938)
 238 child composers in the old conservatories

e x . 17. 2   [continued from the previous page]

at the beginning of the long tonic pedal point, she places a Cb in the alto voice, the low-
ered-p cue to the Quiescenza schema used for settling down and concluding. But Boyer
keeps the schema well in the background as her voices gently waft downward. Only at the
very end does her soprano make the definitive p–j move (C–Db) to finish this schema
and her whole realization.
Much of her magic, however, is not easily explained. The chord grammar taught in
modern colleges and universities would only make her enchanting harmonic twists and
turns seem ungrammatical, when in truth they are deftly authentic usages. Her route, for
instance, through Busser’s enharmonic labyrinth (mm. 12–17), where she fearlessly writes
Bbb and Ebb (m. 12), is laid out so securely that we hardly notice the extreme shifts of key.
To better explain her art we are left with her training in marches harmoniques, her mem-
ories of other compositions, and, above all, her command of counterpoint. Harmonic
craftswomen like Boyer were not ignorant of how certain harmonies could lend focus and
shape to a given key, but that was trivial. Only through advanced counterpoint could an
artistic vision be actualized in an ensemble of sounding voices. The conservatory judges
recognized the excellence of her effort by awarding her a first prize.
Fortunately for those interested in the fine points of Boyer’s art, we have the realiza-
Vi deo 17.3 tion of Busser for comparison. As shown in Example 17.3 (listen to Video 17.3), Busser’s
realization of his own basse donnée also exhibits a very high level of craftsmanship. He
 Chapter 17  a sickly young woman  239

was, however, forty-two years older than Boyer and had a personal style less influenced by
Fauré, Ravel, and others of the younger generation. Take for instance measures 14–18,
both versions of which can be seen on these facing pages. Busser begins firmly on an
F#-minor chord, sets a cadence in A major (mm. 14–15), and performs fauxbourdon (m. 15)
in the three upper voices (he sang fauxbourdon as a child, see Chap. 2). The bass of mea-
sure 16 cues a cadence, exactly as specified in the regole of Pasquini (Chap. 3). Busser
chose the conventional compound cadence, with its 6/4 to 5/3 intervals. By contrast, Boyer
takes the quarter-note bass motif of measure 15 and weaves it into the fabric of these mea-
sures, first in the soprano (m. 14), then alto and bass (m. 15). Appoggiaturas from below
(e.g., downbeats of mm. 14 and 15) are pervasive and keep Boyer’s harmonies open and
evolving as the music moves forward. For measures 17–18 Busser uses a chromatic marche
harmonique (down a 4th, up a 3rd) where Boyer uses a rising and largely diatonic sequence

e x . 17.3   Busser, an excerpt of his realization of his own basse donnée (Paris, 1938)
 240 child composers in the old conservatories

that pushes on toward the pedal point, the Quiescenza, and the final close. Both realiza-
tions show flashes of real brilliance, but perhaps Boyer’s realization is the more subtle. She
did, after all, win a first prize in harmony, something Busser failed to do.

MUSIC THEORY? — We have no writings at all from Colette Boyer concerning the
technical features of her art. For that information we must turn to one of her senior class-
mates, Paule Maurice (1910–1967). As a student, Maurice was a star who later became a
professor and a successful composer. She had won a first in harmony (1933), a second in
fugue, and in 1939 a first in composition, her teacher being none other than Henri Busser.
In 1950 she co-wrote a supplement4 to the harmony treatise of Henri Reber (1861) with her
husband Pierre Lantier, a winner of the Rome Prize. As shown below, the first subtitle of
her book promises “to facilitate the assimilation of modern composition: Debussy, Ravel,
Stravinsky, etc.” The second subtitle, referring to Reber and the new supplement, confi-
dently asserts,“The combination of these two works (sold separately) constitutes a com-
plete treatise on classical and modern harmony.”
There has been a tradition
in academic circles, abetted by
the generation of composers
who embraced the avant-garde,
so-called twelve-tone composi-
tions of the 1950s and 1960s (e.g.,
Pierre Boulez), that Stravinsky
was a modernist with few if any
connections to the European
tradition of his teachers, most
importantly to Rimsky-Korsakov.
In that school of thought it was
assumed that understanding
Stravinsky’s music required a dif-
ferent set of assumptions from
The title page of the original Maurice/Lantier supplement (Paris, 1950)
one might use for the music of,
say, Gounod or Tchaikovsky. So
it was with considerable interest that I opened the Maurice/Lantier supplement, curious
to see how “Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky” could be “assimilated” into the classical tradition.
Amazingly, there is hardly anything in the supplement (with the exception of a few
modal and exotic scales) that was not already implicit in the basic conservatory approach
to counterpoint and composition. Perhaps because the artisanal, “hands-on” approach of
the Paris Conservatory was so flexible and free of rigid theories about “proper harmonic
progressions,” much of the “new music” could still be understood in terms of what had
been taught in a nearly unbroken tradition extending back to the founding of the Naples
 Chapter 17  a sickly young woman  241

conservatories. To ground these assertions in musical reality, let us turn to the rules for
writing chorales given near the end of the Maurice/Lantier supplement.5

Chorale writing, in the strict style, is subject to the following rules:

Only 5/3 and 6/3 chords can be used unconditionally, as well as suspensions, embellish-
ments, and passing tones. The chords 7, 6/5, and 4/2 cannot be used except on condition
either that the dissonance [the 7th from the root] be prepared by a note of at least equal
value, or that the dissonance appears in the form of a passing tone or embellishment.

The second inversions of triads or seventh chords are forbidden.

It is recommended that the three parts accompanying the chorale melody be realized, to
the extent possible, in conjunct motion.

The combinations resulting from the coincidence of nonharmonic tones may produce
transient aggregations that are equivalent to all classes of chords, including those in sec-
ond inversion. These last, however, really find their place only on weak beats or weak parts
of beats; if not, they no longer belong to the style of this musical genre. The use of chro-
maticism is not allowed.

In the above rules, Maurice and Lantier spelled out what we might call the conserva-
tory regole for strict styles. Those styles included what was expected in the harmony and
fugue contests. Just as painters at the École des Beaux-Arts looked to the masters of Greek
and Roman antiquity to set the rules for their art, so the musicians of the conservatory
looked back to the masters of the Italian Renaissance to set the rules for musical art. Of
those early masters Palestrina was the most admired, performed, and studied. As unlikely
as it might seem, the rules given above for writing conservatory chorales in the early 1950s
apply equally well to the sacred works of Palestrina. On the following page is a reproduc-
tion of the opening passage from Palestrina’s Stabat mater (Ex. 17.4; listen to Video 17.4). Vi deo 17. 4
To emphasize the continuity of Palestrina’s practice with the practice of strict writing in
Parisian conservatories, the edition chosen is by Alexandre Choron (1820),6 who published
it as one of his many initiatives to maintain French links to a sacred musical past. As men-
tioned in Chapter 3, Choron founded a school that eventually became the École
Niedermeyer, the alma mater of young Henri Busser (see Chap. 2).
The striking harmonies at the beginning of Palestrina’s Stabat mater will perplex the-
ories of chords that calculate root movements. That is because the passage is not based on
root movements, even though every chord is in root position. What motivates the succes-
sion of sonorities are the motions by half and whole step in contrary motion from an
imperfect interval to a perfect one. The word “perfect,” from the Latin perfectus, means
“complete.” Imperfect intervals like 3rds and 6ths were incomplete and found completion
only by moving to perfect intervals (unisons, 5ths, 8vas). When Palestrina moves from an
 242 child composers in the old conservatories

A-major chord to a
G-major chord (m. 1), his
bass and tenor voices
move in contrary motion
(away from each other in
this case) from an imper-
fect major 3rd to a perfect
5th. That same intervallic
progression occurs in the
bass and soprano voices
when the G-major chord
subsequently moves to an
F-major chord (m. 2). At
the end of the passage
e x . 17. 4   P
 alestrina, Stabat mater (edition by Choron, Paris, 1820) shown, the bass and
soprano voices move in
contrary motion (toward each other) from a minor 3rd to a perfect octave (m. 4). Students
at the Paris Conservatory may not have fully understood the intervallic syntax of Palestrina,
but they were not blinded to the perfection of his style by simplistic theories of harmony.
As a practical illustration of the rules for the strict chorale style, Maurice and Lantier
presented two model chorales, the first of which was annotated by numbers on the score
(see Ex. 17.5 for an excerpt). Notes marked “1” are passing tones, with the assumption that
they fall on the weak half of the beat; notes marked “2” are seventh chords with prepared
7ths (if the chord is in root position); notes marked “3” are accented passing tones, falling
on the beat; notes marked “4” are broderies, here meaning neighbor tones, ascending or
descending; and notes marked “5” are suspensions (that are not part of a 7th chord). The
practice of annotating a study score with numbers above staves is quite old and is charac-
teristic of the circle of Franciscans around Padre Martini in Bologna in the mid-eighteenth
century.
Vi deo 17.5 The chorale melody on the top staff of Example 17.5 (heard in Video 17.5) has the
modal quality of many of the Lutheran chorales known to J. S. Bach, although its origin is
not stated. The fermatas (UI) mark the first two cadences. The first of them is a Phrygian
cadence, where Eb in the bass descends a half step to D, and C in the soprano ascends a
whole step to D, the age-old move from imperfection to perfection. The second cadence
has the sound of Gabriel Fauré. The half-note D in the bass, had it been part of a Phrygian
cadence, would join with the rising alto line (alto, A–B§) to expand to an octave C#p[]\. The
same D in the bass could have joined with the tenor F in contracting by half and whole
step to E. That D in the bass, however, leaps down to A, so that neither C# nor E becomes
the root of the chord of resolution. It might be surprising to have a choir go directly from
singing the A-major triad under the second fermata to singing the opening passage of
Palestrina’s Stabat mater, yet the musical effect would not be jarring. Both the Maurice/
 Chapter 17  a sickly young woman  243

e x . 17.5   Maurice/Lantier, sample chorale with annotations (Paris, 1950)

Lantier chorale and Palestrina’s masterwork create a world of sound through the move-
ment of intervals between voices. In both works, dissonance is carefully controlled and
exploited, and the high correlations of particular dissonances with strong or weak beats
help to animate and regulate the perceived flow of the music.
André Gedalge was a professor of fugue at the conservatory and served as an impor-
tant teacher for Maurice Ravel and other giants of the early twentieth century. Gedalge
was a master of counterpoint, and his treatise on fugue (1904) is practically the final word
on the subject as it applied to the Paris Conservatory. In the preface to that book he gives
his thoughts on harmony.7

Because the study of harmony has been advanced to possibly an excessive degree, one
tends to forget that in fugue, as in the counterpoint of which fugue is the highest applica-
tion, the succession of harmonies is the result and not the determinate cause of the melodic
progression of the parts. It is impossible, then, to teach fugue according to the rules of
harmony. In fugue one cannot, for example, disregard the second inversions of the major
or minor seventh chords just because they are second inversions, but we must consider the
point of view of counterpoint and say, “One must not employ simultaneously the fourth (a
dissonance) and the third which is its resolution.” Therefore, in fugue, chords do not exist
in the sense in which the word is usually used in harmony texts, but are aggregations of
tones that create harmony and result from the melodic progression of the parts.

Students must thoroughly understand that a fugue is constructed horizontally, so to speak;

the melodic independence of the voices is limited only by the necessity of producing, at
least on the first beat of the measure, a natural concord [5/3 or 6/3]. Consequently, simul-
taneous passing tones are employed frequently, and harmonic analysis, as one would apply
it to a series of concords, has no real justification.

One of the clearest sets of instructions for how to approach a harmony test was written
in 1848 by Hippolyte Colet in his book on partimenti.8 He had been Anton Reicha’s assis-
tant at the conservatory (as such he taught harmony to César Franck) and was then pro-
moted to professor. For his students sitting the harmony exam he compiled a list of twenty-
244 child composers in the old conservatories

five points to bear in mind. As you will see, there is hardly any mention of “harmony” in
the sense used in college classrooms. Small single-staff musical examples originally illus-
trated some of his points, but they add little to these rules and have been omitted here.
References to a Panharmonie are to his treatise on harmony, which his students would
have purchased.

1. Write in four parts for Soprano, Alto, Tenor, and Bass, using their four clefs.

2. Use the old thoroughbass figures as they are given on pages 10, 15, 16, 17, and 18 of this
book [i.e., Colet’s book on partimenti].

3. Employ all the means set out in the first three books of the Panharmonie, excepting the
following cases:

4. All parallel fifths and parallel octaves are prohibited; a first exception is made for hidden
fifths and octaves, taking care to place it in an inner voice. Do not sound a unison except
on a weak beat when the chord is already heard.

5. Do not double or omit the third.

6. Distribute the notes of chords among the four vocal parts in the most suitable manner (see
p. 26 of the Panharmonie).

7. Do not cross the upper parts among themselves except when a crossing is necessary in
order to make a canonic imitation. Never cross the bass voice.

8. All intervals named “augmented” or “diminished,” and all those larger than a perfect fifth,
with the exception of the octave, are strictly prohibited; they can only be used correctly in
marches d’harmonie or in an imitation.

9. The errors of parallel fifths, parallel octaves, and prohibited melodic intervals cannot be
made right by one or two intermediate notes if they are of short duration.

10. Parallel fifths and parallel octaves delayed by suspensions are prohibited.

11. One must avoid all false relations (see Panharmonie, p. 29).

12. One should connect all common tones by a tie.

13. At the moment when the chord changes, the leading tone must ascend one degree, or at
least remain in place.

14. The first and third inversions of chords are widely used; the second inversion [6/4, 6/4/3] is
only used in cadential formulas; in all other cases one should avoid it sounding on a strong
beat in the measure; it must always be prepared and resolved, except in a final cadence,
when it is made with the tonic chord.
 Chapter 17  a sickly young woman  245

15. One rarely uses evaded or interrupted cadences, because in the strict style one most often
gives chords their natural resolutions. All other cadences are used frequently. When the
dominant note in the bass is preceded by the fourth with a 6/5/3 chord, the double
cadence and the compound cadence with 5/4 is preferable to a compound cadence with
6/4.

16. One uses the dominant seventh frequently, with or without its root. In this style it is better
to prepare the dissonance, especially when it is in the bass.

17. Ninth chords are not used except without their root; again, one should but rarely use the
leading-tone seventh chord.

18. Secondary seventh chords are only used in marches harmoniques; the second and third
classes of sevenths, however, are used in cadential formulas.

19. One generally avoids altered chords; one does, however, see them in certain cadences
[e.g., augmented sixth chords].

20. One often breaks the chords, but note the rule for the strict style given on page 117 of the
Panharmonie.

21. Make frequent use of marches harmoniques.

22. Avoid forced modulations and all false relations involving the octave. You should never
double a note that changes chromatically.

23. Among nonharmonic tones one should only use passing tones, ornaments, suspensions,
and pedalpoints, never appoggiaturas and rising suspensions.

24. Mistakes that one makes with nonharmonic tones are counted as if they were made with
chord tones.

25. Suspensions should always resolve downwards.

In a different publication (Conseils, 1847) Colet summed up his view of harmony.9

Chords are formed by various intervals sounded at the same time.

Melody is formed by various intervals always heard in isolation, that is, one after the
other.
To compose harmony or melody, one must have a thorough knowledge of the theory
of intervals, their regular sequence, and their effect.
Therefore all harmony is the study of intervals.
 246 child composers in the old conservatories

CHANT DONNÉ — The harmony contest of 1938 posed two tasks for the contes-
tants: realize both a basse donnée and a chant donné. The basse donnée, seen earlier in
Example 17.1, was composed by Henri Busser. The chant donné, shown below, was com-
posed by Robert Dussaut, a recent winner of the Rome Prize and a new professor at the
conservatory. Dussaut’s melody was not only highly chromatic but also quite confusing in
the way it modulated to remote keys. Weaker students probably felt faint when they first
sang it to themselves. A note attached to the melody read “in instrumental style,” meaning
that newly composed parts could be active and widely leaping. On the next page you can
see piano reductions of matching excerpts from the opening of Boyer’s realization and the
realization by Dussaut himself (Exx. 17.7–8). Both realizations set the same melody.

e x . 17.6   A chante donné by Robert Dussaut for the women’s harmony contest (Paris, 1938)

Dussaut, in his realization, lays out for us what he felt was harmonically implicit in his
complicated melody. Boyer, pressed for time and unable to test things out at a keyboard,
nonetheless showed that she was Dussaut’s equal. He had, for instance, the better solution
for the transition from measure 4 to 5 (Ex. 17.8), where he supports the alternation of the
melodic Db and Eb with a rising chromatic line in the bass. She, on the other hand, man-
ages to avoid the strong dissonances that begin his measure 7 (Ex. 17.7: soprano and tenor,
Eb/D§, C§/C#). All the way through she crafts harmonies at his level, and maybe a touch
Vi deo 17.6 beyond (both versions can be heard on Video 17.6.).
When carefully compared, these two realizations constitute a veritable masterclass in
chromatic harmony. Each measure illustrates how these two young adults crafted elegant
solutions to the problems of Dussaut’s melody. Take, for instance, measure 1. Both har-
monists agree on a downbeat j in the bass leading to a downbeat l in the bass of mea-
sure 2: two versions of the tonic chord of Eb major. He places a m and dominant harmony
 Chapter 17  a sickly young woman  247

e x . 17.7   Boyer, realization of the opening passage of Dussaut’s chant donné (Paris, 1938)

e x . 17. 8   Dussaut, realization of the opening passage of his own chant donné (Paris, 1938)

(an underlying Bb chord) in between so that his bass can descend to the l and return to
tonic harmony. She adopts the same general strategy, but ascends to the l by way of a
piquant chromatic double appoggiatura (E§ / C#) that slides into the passing k and dom-
inant harmony from below, all in moving up toward the goal of l. (Hear Video 17.7.) Vi deo 17.7
As a final example of Boyer’s skill under pressure, let us explore what she was able to
do with the final cadence, again in comparison with Dussaut. As shown in parallel excerpts
on the following page (Exx. 17.9, 17.10), Dussaut concludes his realization with a simple
V7–I cadence (Ex. 17.10, mm. 30–31, bass Bb–Eb), initiated with the same scale steps l,
m, n (m. 30: G, Ab, Bb) recommended by Pasquini two centuries earlier (see Chap. 3).
Dussaut’s added appoggiaturas and passing tones do provide some pastel coloring (as they
did in the second half of his m. 1; see Ex. 17.8), but the overall approach remains charm-
ingly conventional. Boyer’s final cadence (Ex. 17.9), by contrast, adopts the more evasive
style of Gabriel Fauré. At the last second before her final chord, the major sixth of Cb–Ab
(Ex. 17.9, bass and soprano) expands to octave Bbs, but the bass sounds an Eb. This is the
 248 child composers in the old conservatories

e x . 17.9   Boyer, realization of the closing passage of Dussaut’s chant donné (Paris, 1938)

e x . 17.1 0   Dussaut, realization of the closing passage of his own chant donné (Paris, 1938)

same type of cadence used in the chorale example of the Maurice/Lantier supplement (cf.
Ex. 17.5, m. 4). Boyer not only avoids the more clichéd ending of Dussaut, but also sets up
her elegant close with a combination of appoggiaturas and passing tones that form the
“aggregation,” in the word of Maurice/Lantier and Gedalge, of an unexpectedly beautiful
Db dominant ninth chord (Db–Cb–Eb–(F)–Ab) at the beginning of the penultimate mea-
sure. Preceding that exquisite moment she gave the judges something further to marvel at
when she wove the beginning of Dussaut’s melody, now in G major, into the alto voice
beginning in measure 26. No wonder she received a first prize!
Whether it was “pure receptivity” or the result of concentrated training, Colette Boyer
had developed a resplendent tonal imagination. At twenty-four she had advanced enough
to vie with masters like Busser and Dussaut—but the war intervened. In choosing the path
that she took after the war she found refuge and fulfillment, but we lost her exceptional
musical voice.
 PA RT I V

T R A NSFOR MING COMMONPL ACES

in to
wor k s of a rt

Ch a p t er s 18 t h rough 2 2 describe how one goes about transforming conventional

cultural materials into fine art. Artist and musician apprentices were trained to reproduce
known schemas and then to elaborate them through more advanced techniques. As these
artists reached the master level they were able to infuse their paintings or musical compo-
sitions with narrative and emotional power. This traditional approach to artistic produc-
tion was questioned in the early twentieth century, and even in a postmodern era many
people are suspicious of art that is not radically original. Whatever one’s personal views
about art in the present, the training of artists and composers in past centuries was expressly
geared toward the mastery of conventional materials. Even giants of modernism like
Picasso and Stravinsky had thorough training in the traditional techniques of the old art
schools and conservatories.

249
@
 18

T HE OVA L A ND CROSS

IN T ER NA LI ZED CONST RUCT IONS

IN T HE V ISUA L DOM A IN

Er ns t G om br ich wa s a s uc ces sf u l you ng s chol a r i n aus t r i a before the

Nazis banned his first book, forcing him to flee to Britain in 1939. Suddenly of necessity
an English author, he turned to writing about art and artists in the European tradition. His
book Art and Illusion (1960)1 brought to a wide audience the fruits of his many years of
research into the training of visual artists. Gombrich explained how artists learned by first
absorbing visual formulas. He singled out one in particular: “The most widespread and
familiar of all the diagrammatic formulas taught in the Western tradition—the divided
oval or egg shape that does duty for the head.”2 He quotes an eighteenth-century source:
“The portrait painters of the present day generally describe [sketch] an oval upon their
panel before the person to be painted sits to be drawn, make a cross in the oval, which they
divide into the length of four noses and the breadth of five eyes; and they paint the face
according to these divisions to which it must be accommodated, let the proportions them-
selves be ever so much at variance.”3 Any beginner can draw an oval with a cross in it, but

The Oval and Cross Schema in three orientations

251
 252 child composers in the old conservatories

to imagine and render it in any orientation

in three dimensions takes a great deal of
practice.
For centuries “How To” books for bud-
ding artists showed first how to place the
oval and cross in a particular orientation,
and then how to add the details for various
facial features. The sketches to the left4 are
exactly of that type. Each pair of faces pres-
ents a formula (left) and its refinement
(right), or as Gombrich would describe it,
“schema and correction.” Of the eight
Four pairs of schema and refinement, Venice, 1608
heads in this illustration, notice the two at
the lower left, where a woman casts her eyes
downward to the right (her left). It might take an apprentice only weeks to progress from
the schema to that first stage of refinement. But even to approach the level of the portrait
below (sold in 2018 for $337,500) would require a decade or more of concentrated study.
And only upon reaching the level of a mas-
ter could an artist realistically hope to
imbue a painting with emotional depth.
Prior to the advent of photography, por-
trait painters were highly valued for their
ability to memorialize a wealthy or power-
ful person. Once the individual died, the
portrait became both memento and talis-
man to be hung in a great family’s gallery.
Families wanted their kin to appear in por-
traiture better than they may have appeared
in real life. There was no desire for the scars
of war or smallpox to detract from how a
person might wish to be remembered.
Good portrait artists could also depict sub-
jects as being slimmer or more refined than
they may actually have been. For all these
needs, a method of drawing based on visual
schemas was both practical and helpful in
producing results that would be praised by a
patron. Moreover, a great deal of psycho-
logical research has shown that people gen-
erally find a face formed from the average
“Portrait de jeune fille,” Bouguereau, 1898 of many faces more attractive than any one
 Chapter 18  the oval and cross  253

of the single faces. The result may seem counterintuitive, but it is a byproduct of our
brain’s strong proclivity to deduce common threads from diverse experiences. We judge
the “normal” face from averaging all the faces we encounter, and if we then see a face that
comes close to the norm we are somehow pleased. By working from preferred schemas, an
apprentice artist not only learned the style of the day but was guaranteed results that would
seem right to the patron. (Video 18.1 explores the paradox of beauty as an average.) Vi deo 18 .1
Johann Daniel Preissler (1666–1737) came from a family of German draftsmen. He
apprenticed at the age of ten within his own family and then with a master painter. His
journeyman years were spent in Italy. In his fifties, now as a master draftsman, he began
publishing pattern
books5 to introduce
amateurs to the art
of drawing. They
are full of schemas
of every type. For an
ear, one learns first
how to draw an oval,
then how to draft
the curves of the
Stages in drawing a human ear, Preissler, ca. 1720s
ear, and then how
to add shading and detail. We will see a similar three- or four-step process carried out over
and over again on different body parts, human figures, or scenes.
After learning how to draw the ears, eyes, noses, and mouths, Preissler showed how to
combine the parts into a head. The first step was to draw the oval and cross, with a second
horizontal line at the bottom of the nose. The two horizontal lines extended to an oval for
an ear. The second step was to add in the outlines of the subsidiary schemas (eyes, ears),
and the third step
was to supply
details, shading,
and texture to
create the illu-
sion of a human
head. This is the
stage at which a
master would
give the face a
recognizeable
expression, gen-
der, age, and so From schema to sketch to refinement, Preissler, ca. 1720s
forth.
 254 child composers in the old conservatories

To draw a complete human figure Preissler rec-

ommended first placing the oval-and-cross schema
atop a stick figure. Each major bone of the limbs is
schematized by a straight line, and the joints are
reduced to tiny circles. The spine is drawn as a curved
line of dashes. A stick figure has the advantages of
being quick to sketch and relatively easy to alter or
erase. Errors at this schematic stage would carry
through to the finished drawing, so it was important to
get this right before going the the next stage.
That next stage was to imagine the skeletal
schema covered in flesh. In the middle engraving (left
center) one can just make out dotted lines that reveal
Oval and Cross on a stick figure, Preissler, ca. 1720s
the stick figure still present under the man’s skin. That
stick figure helped to regulate the drawing of the three-
dimensional torso and limbs, keeping them all in pro-
portion to the whole figure. There were, of course, a
number of rules of thumb used by professionals to
gauge the length of fingers, the thickness of toes, and a
hundred other details. Such details were very impor-
tant because people are inordinately sensitive to any
kind of deformity or abnormality.
The third stage, as with the ear or head, was to add
the finishing details, shadows, and other illusionistic
treatments to approach verisimilitude, the sense that
one is looking at an image of something real. For a
Fleshing out the stick figure, Preissler, ca. 1720s professional draftsman, engraver, or painter, this was
the stage that took the most time and care. The tech-
niques that were required depended greatly on the
medium chosen. To suggest shadows, for example, an
engraver might need to employ a number of metal
stamps or cutters to create a pattern of fine lines,
whereas a painter could just apply a wash of a dark pig-
ment.
Not all figures were nude, of course. The image at
the top right provides fine dashed lines to show that
the outline of a female figure is taken into account
when clothing is drawn. Just as a stick figure skeleton
underlay a figure with flesh, so its flesh underlay its
clothing. Drawing clothing was itself a multistage
Approaching verisimilitude, Preissler, ca. 1720s undertaking. The image to the right shows clothes in
 Chapter 18  the oval and cross  255

outline form, with only the edges of folds

indicated. The middle figure below has
the folds highlighted by a number of
techniques special to engraving. The
darkness of the background, for instance,
is determined by how close the fine par-
allel lines come to each other. Closer
equals darker. Were this instead an oil
painting, creating the background would
be an issue of the hue and saturation of
colors.
One of Gombrich’s more interesting Adding clothing to a nude figure, Preissler, ca. 1720s
claims about the visual schemas used by
artists in earlier times is that the schemas
became so ingrained in the artists’ minds
that they affected how the artists saw the
world. The hypothesis is not easily veri-
fied because we cannot test the minds of
artists long dead. But the idea may be a
useful corrective to the notion that these
schemas were merely neutral tools.
Many of the old masters of painting
became quite famous during their life-
times. Their sketches and casual draw-
ings, probably intended to be discarded, Adding shade and texture, Preissler, ca. 1720s
might instead be preserved by admiring
patrons and friends. Paolo Veronese,
among the most famous Venetian mas-
ters, painted a large scene entitled “The
Conversion of Mary Magdalene,” a
detail of which is shown to the right.
Mary Magdalene, at the bottom right,
looks up at Jesus, and the woman to the
far left looks down toward Mary
Magdalene. Indeed, almost every head
in this painting is in a different orienta-
tion. Several of his sketches have been
preserved, and from them we can see
that he began laying out a complex
painting by sketching oval-and-cross
schemas in the planned orientations. “The Conversion of Mary Magdalene,” Veronese, ca. 1548
 256 child composers in the old conservatories

The sketch to the left, preserved at the Morgan Library in

New York City, was intended as a study for his work “The
Finding of Moses” (c. 1580). The head highlighted by a circle
of red dots (added by your author) is little more than an oval
and cross with a second horizontal line à la Preissler. But it
fixes the sharp angle of the serving woman’s face as she looks
down and across to what would, in the finished painting, be
the baby Moses discoved floating in the bulrushes near an
Egyptian palace.
The middle image to the left shows Veronese’s sketches
for the people in another busy scene, this time of “The
Wedding Feast at Cana.” In the upper right, highlighted again
by a circle of red dots, we see a face sketched with just an oval
Sketch, Veronese, ca. 1580 and cross, nothing more. To its left, also highlighted, is
another sketch with a bit more detail added. The areas of the
eyes are darkened and a few lines from a central point atop
the head probably indicate how a woman’s hair would flow in
the finished work. Many of these same sketched figures recur
in other paintings, ones different from the one being sketched.
For example, in “Bacchus, Vertumnus, and Saturn,” a fresco
in the Villa Barbaro near Venice, Veronese paints an aerial
female musician (lower left) whose face could easily have
been derived from any of the previously discussed sketches.
Since Veronese was sketching and painting biblical scenes of
which he had no direct experience, the images came from his
mind and memory. He did sometimes paint living figures into
historical scenes—he and other famous painters are depicted
Sketch, Veronese, ca. 1562
as musicians in “The Wedding Feast at Cana”—but even
those images likely first emerged in schematic forms, one of
which was the oval and cross.
A learned pattern like the oval and cross could be used
quite differently by a rank beginner and a master artist. Both
might begin a portrait or group scene with the same schema,
but even at such a preliminary stage one can see differences
due to decades of practice. On the facing page, for example,
we see instances where the great Rembrandt sketched the
oval and cross. The upper sketch shows a dejected figure
standing at Golgotha before the Cross. The head and face are
handled with little more than the oval and cross, but some-
how emotion is conveyed. And in the sketch below it (the
Detail of fresco, Veronese, ca. 1560 middle image) Rembrandt reduces the human figure to prac-
 Chapter 18  the oval and cross  257

tically the minimum number of required penstrokes without

sacrificing a sense of character and perhaps whimsy. This
sketch floats ghostlike over a fine ink drawing of a man kneel-
ing (ca. 1633), which itself was a sketch for an etching titled
“The Ship of Fortune.”
By contrast, the oval and cross could, in the hands of an
amateur, be little more than a ritualized crutch for drawing the
human face. The Van de Passe family of Dutch engravers
served all manner of clients, including amateurs wishing to
learn to draw. One of the Van de Passe publications was a draw-
ing manual for amateurs,6 and the oval-and-cross schema made
an appearance on its first plate (see below). Inside the laurel Sketch, Rembrandt, from Gombrich
wreath (presumably for graduates of that course in drawing),
one sees a trained hand finishing the oval-and-cross schema.
Above the hand a Latin motto proclaims, “Nothing but the use
of charcoal,” likely meaning that one could do wonders with
only a pencil. Below the hand is a Latin exhortation to keep
applying oneself, “Never a day without [drawing] a line.”
For young adult amateur painters, however eager they
might be to learn, an oval-and-cross schema would never fully
compensate for their lack of technique and experience. Any
human head they might draw would still probably look awk-
ward. For fully apprenticed journeyman artists, the same
schema could be bypassed on paper because it had become
fully integrated into a whole repertory of advanced techniques
and broad experiences of art. So schemas were not determina- Sketch, Rembrandt, ca. 1633
tive of outcomes; great artists did great things with them, ama-
teurs did not. But the schemas did constrain
outcomes, helping amateurs to stay close to
cultural norms and helping professionals to
work quickly, almost automatically, as their
real attention was focused on characterization
and the integration of human forms into a
larger scene.

Crispin Van de Passe, Plate 1, 1643

258 child composers in the old conservatories

@
 19

A FR A MEWOR K FOR EL A BOR AT ION

T HE MOT I DEL BA SSO

IN NA PLES

A n av er sion t o or n a m en t a n d dec or at ion is a hallmark of modernism in the

arts. In architecture, for example, the clean, unadorned lines of buildings by Frank Lloyd
Wright or Mies van der Rohe have come to dominate both domestic and commercial
buildings. The structural elements of a modern office tower—all those steel beams—now
often serve as prominent features of its exterior surface. Viewed from the perspective of all
human history, this shunning of ornament is the exception. The sample of eighteenth-
century embroidery shown here is but one of countless examples of how the men and
women of the past loved decoration, ornamentation, elaboration, and embellishment.

Silk satin with silk and metallic-thread embroidery, French or Italian, ca. 1730–1740

259
 260 child composers in the old conservatories

Traditionally, learning an
art and learning decoration
were nearly the same
endeavor. To the left, we see
children in Algiers, North
Africa, in the School of
Arabian Embroidery set up
in the late 1800s by a
Madame Luce. To learn
this art the children proba-
bly lived in her house, spent
thousands of hours copying
intricate decorative pat-
terns, and experienced the
ways of different kinds of
School of Arabian Embroidery, Algiers, ca. 1900 cloth, threads, needles, and
frameworks. The children
pictured here would, probably by the 1920s, take their places as masters of the art of
embroidery in the North African style.
A conservatory in Naples or Paris taught musical decoration in much the same way,
even using, in the case of the Paris Conservatory, the category broderies (“embroidery”) to
describe the musical embel-
lishments and ornaments
taught to each student. The
heading shown to the left is
taken from a book on har-
mony by Émile Durand,1 the
harmony teacher of Claude Debussy. It refers to various forms of musical decoration
applied to two categories of chords, the chords serving as frameworks.
In Naples, the tradition of Durante preserved by Fenaroli and other masters at the
Loreto taught students to use sequential bass patterns as frameworks for embellishment
and variation. Those bass motions or movements were, as stated earlier, known in Italian
as moti del basso or movimenti and sets of them figure prominently in manuscripts devoted
to partimento rules and written counterpoint. The listing shown opposite is found in a
manuscript2 from 1819 that preserves the counterpoint teachings of Fenaroli, who had died
the year before (omitted are movimenti that differ only in mode, i.e., C min./C maj.).
Each of the movimenti came with its own verbal description, translated into English
in Ex. 19.1. Notice how that listing is partly systematic, beginning with small intervals (e.g.,
no. 1) and progressing to larger ones (no. 8), and partly idiosyncratic. There is, for instance,
no mention of the pattern “rises by 4th and falls by a step,” even though that pattern was
taught as part of the old aria “La Folia” and would reemerge in French compendia of
 Chapter 19  a framework for elaboration  261

marches harmoniques. This

listing also omits the basic
ascending or descending
scale, which can be found at
the beginning of other lists.
Note also the great specific-
ity of key. When Fenaroli
thought of rising and falling
semitones, he associated
them with the key of G
minor (nos. 9, 10). And for
some reason he associated
the “rises by a 4th and falls
by a 5th” movimento with G
major (no. 5), but the very
similar “falls by a 5th and
rises by a 4th” with C minor
(no. 6). That specificity, of
course, is characteristic of
the old conservatories.
There were no grand theo-
ries of harmony, no neat
principles that supposedly
explained all the choices
musicians made. Instead
one learned each framework
as something unique unto
itself. Each one needed to
be realized and embellished
in its own special way. As the
perfunctory small cadences
attached to these movimenti
suggest, each bass motion
was something to be per- e x . 19 .1  School of Fenaroli, movimenti (Naples, 1819)
formed.
One of Fenaroli’s most successful students was Niccolò Zingarelli, who arrived at the
Loreto when he was just seven years old (1759). He would rise to considerable fame as a
composer of operas, and he held important posts for sacred music at the Milan Cathedral
and later the Sistine Chapel in Rome. In 1813 he become director of a unified Naples
Conservatory, a combination of the institutions still surviving after the Napoleonic Wars
(see his portrait on p. 263). In his counterpoint manuscripts one finds copious examples of
 262 child composers in the old conservatories

how to elaborate all of the

bass patterns. Bass motion
no. 2 in the list of movimenti
gets ten separate treatments
in one of his manuscripts.3
Example 19.2 shows the
underlying two-voice
schema, with the bass voice
in black notes and the upper
voice in red. Above the basic
schema are five of
Zingarelli’s ten elaborations
of the upper voice, with the
core tones of the schema
shown highlighted in red.
Each of his embroider-
ies on the stock upper voice
presents a special character
e x . 19 . 2  Zingarelli, variations on a movimento (Naples, ca. 1810s) and technique. No. 1 brings
out a canon between the
upper voice and bass. No. 2
delays the stock upper voice
by a quarter-note, creating
syncopations. No. 3 uses
passing tones (in black) to fill
in the descending 3rds, and a
chromatic Eb for a hint at the
key of Bb major. No. 4 adds
passing eighth-notes and a
later Eb that creates a
“Neapolitan 6th chord” (the
6th is from the bass G to the
soprano Eb, which makes for
a piquant darkening prior to
e x . 19 .3  Zingarelli, variations on a movimento (Naples, ca. 1810s) the C# in the next measure).
Finally, no. 5 uses a series of
7–6 suspensions, the resolu-
tion of each of which falls on a core tone (in red), but now an octave lower. (You can lis-
Vi deo 19 .1 ten to all of Zingarelli’s embroideries in Video 19.1.)
In Example 19.3 we see Zingarelli continuing the process of decoration by adding a
third voice. The movimento in the bass remains the same—down a 3rd, up a 2nd—but the
 Chapter 19  a framework for elaboration  263

variations shown above it introduce different contra-

puntal relationships between two upper voices. In the
top staff we see 7–6 suspensions involving an imag-
ined soprano and alto, with the core upper tones of
the two-voice schema (in red) alternating between
them. The middle staff shows a less contrapuntal
arrangement where the soprano and alto voices move
in parallel sixths, with the soprano carrying the core
tones. Finally, in the lower staff, the alto takes the
core tones as Zingarelli introduces faster note values
and a mix of parallel and contrary motions.
After showing six exemplars in three voices (three
of which appear in Ex. 19.3), Zingarelli’s manuscript
goes on to present several examples in four voices: a
movimento in the bass with three upper parts added.
The first exemplars use all whole-notes, and as the
exemplars progress the note values decrease in the
added voices. These diminutions, as the insertions of
Niccolò Zingarelli by C. Angelini, ca. 1800
smaller, decorative note values were called, can lead
to the formation of recognizable melodic motifs.
Because such motifs could be memorable, they could serve as the themes or opening mot-
tos of compositions. The Italians called such motifs “subjects” (soggetti, sow-JET-tee).
Decoration with soggetti was considered an advanced practice and was sometimes reserved
for the study of fugue. Zingarelli’s ultimate exemplar of this movimento in four voices
introduces the soggetti seen below in Example 19.4. Note how as each voice enters to state
the subject, the core tones of the schema’s upper voice (in red) fall in most cases exactly
where they would have been had all the melodic embroidery been stripped away. In other
words, the embroidery has been added in such a way as not to compromise the intelligibil-
ity of the underlying schema. It is embroidery on a known framework.

e x . 19 . 4   Zingarelli, variations on a movimento (Naples, ca. 1810s)

 264 child composers in the old conservatories

EMBELLISHED BASSES — While embellishing a melody over the framework of a

bass motion was an obvious exercise to give to young apprentices, in truth every aspect of
partimenti, solfeggi, intavolature, and counterpoint involved some aspect of embellish-
ment. The bass motions themselves were subject to diminution. Example 19.5 shows a set
of basses from a manuscript4 by Padre Martini in Bologna. The top staff presents an
unadorned movimento known in Naples as “up a 4th, down a 3rd.” Each staff introduces
a diminution or a variation on a diminution. The notes in red show that diminutions of the
bass, just like diminutions of a melody, often kept the core tones of the model (in red) in
Vi deo 19 . 2 their original locations in terms of the meter. (Video 19.2 plays Exx. 19.5 and 19.6.)

e x . 19 .5   M
 artini, a set of diminutions on the “up a 4th, down a 3rd” movimento (Bologna, 1770s?)

Masters trained in Bologna had a large influence on what was taught at the Paris
Conservatory in its first decades. Padre Martini had been the linchpin of a social network
of professional musicians, so his general influence was widespread. But larger factors were
 Chapter 19  a framework for elaboration  265

likely the fact that Naples was in revolt against its French occupiers in the earliest years of
the conservatory and the fact that Cherubini, director from 1822 to his death in 1842, had
been trained in Bologna and Milan by Martini’s student Giuseppe Sarti.
One can see a very similar set of bass diminutions in the partimento textbook of
Hippolyte Colet.5 In Example 19.6, the “up a 4th, down a 3rd” movimento is presented at
the top and labeled the “Basic Model” (modèle simple). Below it, all but the last example
present “variations” on the model. Colet uses many of the diminution techniques of
Martini, although Colet’s bass avoids sixteenth-notes and is generally less active than
Martini’s. For the student, studying these sets of diminutions could aid their work in both

e x . 19 .6   C
 olet, a set of diminutions on a marche harmonique (Paris, 1846)

partimenti and counterpoint. In partimenti they would be better able to recognize the
underlying movimento when confronted with a florid bass. Recognizing the movimento
allowed one to know which right-hand collocation to recall from memory. In counter-
point, knowledge of a set of variations on a bass pattern helped both to recognize the
underlying pattern in a florid part and to know which other patterns were often matched
with it.
The last two instances shown on the bottom staff of Example 19.6 have nearly the
same first two measures. The point Colet is making is that the “up a 4th” unit that is sub-
sequently raised one step in the “up a 4th, down a 3rd” movimento (i.e., mm. 1–2 of the
basic model are raised one step for mm. 3–4) is at the same time the first unit of an “up a
4th, down a 5th” unit—the circle of fifths. He is pointing out to the student that different
movimenti can share the same intervallic module, but they differ in how the module is
subsequently transposed and sequenced, ascending or descending.
 266 child composers in the old conservatories

EMBELLISHING COUNTERPOINT — Joseph Riepel, an eighteenth-century

German chapel master in Regensburg, emphasized that music was an ars combinatoria—
an “art of combinations.” Basses combined with melodies, fugue subjects combined with
countersubjects, right-hand parts combined with left-hand parts, solfeggio melodies com-
bined with basses, and so forth. Much of the instruction in the old conservatories could be
summarized as learning “what goes with what.”
Auguste Panseron was a professor of solfège at the conservatory. He had entered the
conservatory at age ten (1805) and won the Prix de Rome when he was eighteen. During
his fellowship years he became for a period one of Salieri’s last students in Vienna. Melody
was his specialty, but he also published a Treatise on Practical Harmony and Modulations
for Pianists, in Three Parts: 1. Practical Harmony, 2. The Art of Modulation, 3. Partimenti.6
In the section on partimenti he gave examples of how a beginner could make a serviceable
realization with simple block chords as suggested by the figures. But he also demonstrated
how an advanced student or young master could fashion the more artful, more contrapun-
tal type of realization practiced by the old Italian masters. Speaking of Fenaroli, he said,
“I cannot emphasize enough to my students to study his Partimenti, so celebrated in Italy
and all of Europe.” Panseron gave that recommendation as a preface to his realization of
Vi deo 19 .3 a partimento from Fenaroli’s Book 6 (seen in Ex. 19.7 below and heard in Video 19.3). The
original partimento, on a single staff, began in the soprano clef with what Panseron set as
the right-hand part of measures 1–4. An “Aha!” moment comes when a student realizes
that the active sixteenth-notes of measures 1 and 3 can fit contrapuntally with the more
boring quarter-notes of measures 2 and 4. That is the ars combinatoria of this partimento.
By playing a realization like the one notated by Panseron, a student would demonstrate an
understanding of “what goes with what.”
Panseron gave a more virtuoso demonstration of the ars combinatoria in providing
eighteen basses to support a simple descending melody in half-notes (see Ex. 19.8). Each
bass is a movimento or an embellishment of one, or a combination of different bass motions
Vi deo 19 . 4 and schemes of modulation. (Panseron’s embellishments can be heard in Video 19.4.)

e x . 19 .7   P
 anseron, Traité de l’harmonie, realization of Fenaroli (Paris, 1855)
 Chapter 19  a framework for elaboration  267

e x . 19 . 8   P
 anseron, Traité de
l’harmonie, marche
vocale (Paris, 1855)

1. Descending scale, 7–6 susp.

2. Up a 4th, down a 5th

3. Up a step, down a 3rd

4. Down a 4th, up a step

5. Scala

6. Modulation down a 3rd

7. Rising chromatic scale

8. No. 3, diminished

9. No. 3, rhythmic variation

10. Down a 3rd, up a 4th

11. Modulation to minor

12. Descending chrom. scale

13. Down a 3rd, up a step

14. No. 3, diminished

15. Various techniques

16. Mod. to minor, dim.

17. No. 1, diminished

18. Pedal point

 268 child composers in the old conservatories

Sustained efforts in combinations and embellishments took place in counterpoint

lessons. Students were led, step by step, from the simplest combinations to extended can-
ons and fugues. Supporting these efforts were advanced partimenti, the most difficult of
which were also fugues. Vincenzo Lavigna, introduced in Chapters 10 and 12 as a student
of Fenaroli and the teacher of Verdi, preserved his counterpoint lessons. There are over 150
pages of them in seven manuscripts7 dated from September 1791 to June 1795. Lavigna
began them when he was fifteen and completed them at nineteen. All are kept in the
library of the Conservatory of Milan, now named for his student Verdi.
Lavigna began his counterpoint studies under a teaching assistant of Fenaroli and
then studied directly with the master when he reached the advanced level. The first exer-
cises involved writing dozens of counterpoints in the treble to simple cadences and scales
in the bass. This mirrors the beginning stages of partimento lessons, where one learned the
Vi deo 19 .5 basic cadences and the Rule of the Octave. (Hear Lavigna’s studies in Video 19.5.)
At the next level Lavigna had to write multiple counterpoints to twelve stock basses
that Fenaroli gave to all his students (bassi; see Ex. 19.9). The example below presents the
bass just once and places all four counterpoints above it (only the first eight measures are
shown). Lavigna wrote out the bass separately for each of the five counterpoints, so the
manuscript contains five two-voice completions. Lavigna gave a short description of each
counterpoint as “plain,” “with dissonances,” or “in imitation” (in Italian, of course).
Although each of his counterpoints is different, the notes in red have been marked to show
how the descending scale of the counterpoint at the top of the example recurs in all the
other counterpoints—each counterpoint is a variation or embellishment of the basic ver-
sion.
After completing multiple counterpoints to all twelve of Fenaroli’s basses, Lavigna
went on to a set of six Fenaroli melodies. For each, Lavigna had to compose a different
bass, each one forming correct two-voice counterpoint with the melody. This was in 1792,
three years before the founding of the Paris Conservatory. Lavigna’s studies on given basses
and melodies foreshadow the lessons in Paris on basses données and chants donnés.

e x . 19 .9   L
 avigna, four counterpoints to Fenaroli’s bass no. 1 (Naples, 1791)
 Chapter 19  a framework for elaboration  269

e x . 19 .1 0  Lavigna, five counterpoints to Fenaroli’s melody no. 1 (Naples, 1792)

As with the given basses, Lavigna wrote out the melody separately for each new coun-
terpoint in the bass. In Example 19.10 these basses are all aligned together so that one can
see how the notes marked in blue in the simple version of the bass (the top staff in the bass
clef) recur in all the variations. A bright student like Lavigna was learning a great deal
from this type of exercise. At the note-to-note level of structure, he had to avoid bad
melodic intervals in his bass, to ensure that consonances fell on strong beats, and to place
dissonances (e.g., passing tones) on weaker beats or parts of beats. At the measure-to-
measure level he had to create intelligible connections. Note how the blue notes on
downbeats have stepwise connections to the next downbeat. The exception is between
measures 3 and 4, which is a boundary between two different schemas. The opening
schema, in G major, has a do–re–mi or u–v–w melody (G–A–B) and a j–p–j bass
(G–F#–G). The riposte to the opening schema is a Prinner, with a z–y–x–w melody
(E–D–C–B) and a m–l–k–j bass (C–B–A–G).
In December of 1792 Lavigna began two-voice counterpoints involving imitation.
Exercises were done twice, the first time with a long subject, the second time with the
subject abbreviated. As you can see in Example 19.11, the subject is of the do–re–mi type
(notes in red), which is combined with a j–p–j bass (notes in blue).

e x . 19 .1 1   Lavigna, two counterpoints on similar subjects of different lengths (Naples, 1792)

 270 child composers in the old conservatories

From February to July 1793, Lavigna worked on three-voice counterpoint. A two-voice

counterpoint has only one combination of voices, but a three-voice counterpoint has
three. Lavigna wrote dozens of exercises over ascending and descending scales in the bass.
Then he began to work his way through all the movimenti. When he got to “down a 4th,
up a step”—the old Romanesca sequence—he wrote a dozen different combinations
involving all kinds of variation and embellishment. He wrote each combination on three
separate staves. For purposes of comparison, all twelve are condensed below in Example
19.12. Most follow the pattern of no. 1, where a pair of tones a 3rd apart (E–C) slowly
descends one step per measure. In no. 2, for instance, the same pairing appears, but the
alto voice is delayed half a measure in order to form a dissonant suspension in the even-

e x . 19 .1 2   Lavigna, twelve three-voice counterpoints to Fenaroli’s bass (Naples, 1793)

 Chapter 19  a framework for elaboration  271

numbered measures. No. 5 uses the same general pattern of no. 2 but animates the soprano
voice with dotted rhythms and the alto voice with an ornamental resolution of the suspen-
sion involving eighth-notes. No. 3 is the outlier, presenting an archaic realization favored
by Fenaroli’s teacher Durante.
From the summer into the fall of 1793, Lavigna worked on imitative three-voice
counterpoints. The exercises were similar to those in two-voice imitative counterpoint (see
Ex. 19.11). As before, pairs of exercises used the same subject. Example 19.13 shows a pair
in G major with a do–re–mi subject (notes in red) and a j–p–j countersubject (notes
in blue). If the third voice was delayed, it entered in the key of the dominant, here D
major. If the third voice entered earlier, it entered in the key of G major.

e x . 19 .13   L
 avigna, two related three-voice counterpoints (Naples, 1793)

This work was clearly preparatory to fugue. The constant collocation of melody and
countermelody (the red and blue notes) taught the student about what would become
subject and countersubject in a fugue. The handling of entries in the tonic and dominant
keys was very much like what would become the entries of subject and answer in fugue.
From January 12, 1794, until June 2 of the same year Lavigna pressed on to four-voice
counterpoint. A four-voice counterpoint contains six separate two-voice combinations, so
learning stock settings for all the cadences, scales, and movimenti would bring some clar-
ity to an otherwise daunting tangle of voices. Each voice needed to work with all the other
voices, not just with the bass.
As with three-voice exercises, Lavigna first worked through dozens of exercises over
ascending and descending scales before beginning to set all the movimenti. He made
eighteen separate versions of the “down a 4th, up a step” pattern. He had made a dozen
versions of three-voice counterpoint over this movimento (see Ex. 19.12), and you may
 272 child composers in the old conservatories

remember that the two upper voices had standard roles to play. The same was true in his
four-voice settings.
Below left, in Example 19.14, is one of Lavigna’s simpler settings. The bass presents
the movimento; the soprano presents a descending scale starting on E. The alto presents
another descending scale, starting on C and held back a half-note’s duration to create
suspensions. Finally the tenor descends by thirds each measure. We might call this the
“official” version, since it recurs with different masters, even in different conservatories.
On the right side of Example 19.14 is a marche harmonique written by François Bazin
for his harmony treatise of 1857 intended for the Paris Conservatory. Allowing for the inter-
change of the upper voices (shown by red arrows), his model is almost identical with what

e x . 19 .1 4   Lavigna’s 4-voice Romanesca (Naples, 1794) compared with Bazin’s (Paris, 1857)

Lavigna did under the tutelage of Fenaroli. The marches harmoniques taught at the Paris
Conservatory were the direct descendants of the four-voice dispositions of movimenti
taught in Naples.
Beginning in June of 1794 and continuing into January of the next year, Lavigna
began the preparatory work for writing four-voice fugues. He titled his notebook “Studio
di contrappunto disposte a quattro per imitazione” (The Study of Four-Voice Counterpoint
with Imitation). This meant long four-voice exercises (60 or 70 measures) with pervasive
imitation of an opening subject and perhaps a countersubject. In his first effort, shown in
Example 19.15, a D-minor movement begins on the note A in the alto voice and then
ascends a half step to a whole-note Bb. The countersubject in the soprano begins on D and
then descends a half step to a whole-note C#. Beginning in the second measure the bass
and tenor voices repeat the same two-voice combination introduced by the alto and
soprano. Just as in a more formal fugue, there are episodes based on motives from the
subject and countersubject, new entries of the subject in different keys, pedal points, and
stretti (voices entering with less of a time delay than previously).
Fugue was next, of course, and Lavigna spent the months of April, May, and June
1795 mastering the subject. Part of the exposition of his sixth effort at a fugue is shown in
Example 19.16. This fugue, in F major, is given a rigorously traditional opening with the
 Chapter 19  a framework for elaboration  273

e x . 19 .15 Lavigna’s D-minor study in 4-voice imitation (Naples, 1795)

subject and answer alternating between F major and C major as they rise methodically
from bass to tenor to alto to soprano.
It took Lavigna five years of study to reach the level of precision and fluency exhibited
in his F-major fugue. At age nineteen he was not yet the equal of the great masters, and
perhaps never would be. But he was now a qualified journeyman who, if the need arose,
could write an amen fugue that would pass muster with other professionals. Like the chil-
dren in Madame Luce’s School for Arabian Embroidery, Lavigna had learned embroi-
dery, though of a melodic and contrapuntal kind. He could fashion textures of sound

e x . 19 .1 6   Lavigna’s sixth fugue, in F major (Naples, 1795)

274 child composers in the old conservatories

embellished with the favorite designs of his time and place. Melodies, basses, and their
contrapuntal combinations were all subject to inventive variations that explored and
exploited the possibilities of an ars combinatoria of familiar elements.
 20

T HE BE AU X- A RTS FR A MEWOR K

FROM SCHEM A TO MISE EN T R A I T E

TO V ER ISIMILI T UDE

Th e Fr ench n at ion h a s a lway s ta k en c u lt u r e ser iously. Below we see

the palatial home of the Institute of France, a centuries-old governmental organization
with departments (known as “academies”) responsible for the fine arts, science, the French
language, and sundry other areas. Under its Academy of Fine Arts (Académie des beaux-
arts) are three more specialized academies for (1) painting and sculpture, (2) architecture,
and (3) music. Prominent people in the arts are appointed members of the Academy, and
they help to judge and award various prizes. If this sounds vaguely familiar it may be
because the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science in Hollywood adopted the
French scheme. In Hollywood, members of the Academy award the Oscars.

The Institute of France (ca. 1838), housed in a building begun in 1662

275
 276 child composers in the old conservatories

In Paris, the branch of the Academy devoted to the visual arts established a school, the
École des Beaux-Arts (“School of Fine Arts”; eh-COAL deh boze-ARH). Founded in 1648,
the École became quite famous, and
in 1830 work began on a grand Palace
of Studies, the courtyard of which is
shown to the left. It was stuffed with
Greek and Roman statuary intended
to serve as models for art students.
The entire building, designed by
one of the school’s own graduates,
thus served to reinforce the curricu-
lum, which was based on the emula-
tion of classical models. In this sense
the school continued one of the main
projects of the Renaissance. It pro-
moted the “rebirth” of artisans com-
petent in the artistic forms of antiq-
uity.
Admission to the École was diffi-
cult, even for the talented. Most of
France’s elite painters, sculptors, and
architects were its graduates, so any-
one aspiring to fame in the visual arts
Courtyard of the Palace of Studies, ca. 1890 wanted to enroll. In addition, win-
ning the Rome Prize in art was nearly
impossible for someone not admitted, and claiming that prize would almost guarantee a
steady stream of lucrative commissions from the members of high society. Just as many of
the music treatises written by professors at the conservatory were intended to be marketed
to those seeking admission or those studying in the provinces, so established artists in Paris
produced instructional materials that could prepare a young candidate for the entrance
examinations or be used in provincial schools. Two of the most important of these artist-
educators were Bernard Julien (1802–1871) and Charles Bargue (ca. 1826–1883).
Julien was a gifted engraver in a period when engravings were first enabling the mass
production of images in newspapers and novels. The public wanted to see pictures of the
famous and infamous, so the skill needed to produce realistic portraits in a short span of
time was highly prized. In America, for example, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper in
New York City employed a small army to produce every week an average of sixteen pages
of engraved illustrations using advanced woodblock techniques. In France, Julien’s
engraved portraits were widely reproduced. The portrait shown opposite is of Chopin’s
mistress George Sand, who was both an important author in her own right and an early
feminist. Julien produced both the portrait shown and a close copy where Sand is depicted
 Chapter 20  the beaux-arts framework  277

in male dress. Julien was also a successful painter

whose works in the 1840s would often feature in the
important exhibitions of the Paris Salon. Whether out
of an altruistic desire to help aspiring young artists or
from the more mercenary plan of cashing in on his
own reputation, Julien prepared lithographs for self-
study1 in a curriculum somewhat like that of the École
des Beaux-Arts. I say somewhat because at the École
students worked from the direct experience of classi-
cal sculpture, including some priceless originals of
Greek and Roman antiquity. The daylight streaming
in from the glass above the courtyard put the classical
sculptures in ever-changing patterns of light and
shade. For someone studying at home, this experience George Sand by Bernard Julien
could only be imagined. Lithographs, however, could
capture a moment in time when light
hit white marble from one angle. As
with the Preissler instructional
engravings seen in Chapter 18, Julien
provided models for all the parts of
the head, the head itself, torsos, com-
plete figures, and group scenes.
To the right we see the second
and third stages of rendering a classi-
cal eye from a side vantage. In the
lower part of the image Julien shows a
sketch of each eye. Each sketch is
more detailed than a simple oval, but Two eyes in sketch and refinement by Bernard Julien
less worked out than the image
above it. The upper images show
great skill in shading, which was one
of the crucial skills for an engraver or
draftsman working in a black-and-
white medium.
The two eyes at the bottom of
this page are a copy of the Julien
lithograph done with great preci-
sion. The signature in its lower-right
corner reads “Pablo Ruiz Picasso,”
who was eleven or twelve years old at A copy of the Julien lithograph by Pablo Picasso
278 child composers in the old conservatories

the time (1892–1893). He worked through many of these studies at the provincial art school
in A Coruña, Spain.

“The Chess Game” by Charles Bargue, 1883

The hyperrealistic painting above, titled “The Chess Game,” is the work of Charles
Bargue. No one ever questioned Bargue’s ability, and perhaps that is why his Cours de des-
sin (A Course in Drawing, 1866–1871),2 crafted in collaboration with his teacher Jean-
Léon Gérôme, was a huge success. It was published by the art firm of Goupil & Cie.,
where a young Vincent Van Gogh worked for seven years (1869–76). When Van Gogh
turned decisively toward painting around 1880, he copied out the entire set of Bargue’s 197
lithographs, and copied a great number of them again a decade later. Picasso also made
copies of the Bargue plates, so one can say with some confidence that these giants of mod-
ern art gained their prodigious technique through emulating the masterworks of classical
antiquity using the methods of the École des Beaux-Arts. These master artists went on to
reject the Beaux-Arts style, but they benefited from its disciplined working methods and its
structured way of seeing the world. Van Gogh, writing to his brother in 1881, said, “Careful
study and the constant and repeated copying of Bargue’s exercises have given me an
insight into figure drawing. I have learned to measure and to see and to look for the broad
outlines, so that, thank God, what seemed utterly impossible to me before is gradually
becoming possible now. I no longer stand as helpless before nature as I used to do.’’
The Bargue course had three large sections. First, one studied drawing based on plas-
ter casts (bosses) of classical sculpture. Second, one copied drawings of the masters. And
third, one prepared to draw from nature. We will focus on Bargue’s first part. Like an old
manuscript of partimenti or solfeggi, the course had no text or commentary. It was assumed
that a local master could advise the student when necessary. Today we are indebted to the
distinguished art historian Gerald M. Ackerman, who in collaboration with Graydon
 Chapter 20  the beaux-arts framework  279

Parrish brought out a new edition (2003) of the Cours de dessin supplied with an English
commentary derived from personal contact with modern masters who were helping to
revive the art of representational figure drawing.
In the Bargue course, drawing parts of the head
or body always involved two or three stages. When
there were three stages, as with the foot shown here,
the first stage presented a bare schema, usually a
simple angular shape; the second stage was called
the mise en trait (setting the outline or contour); and
the third stage involved modeling and finishing the
image to a professional standard of verisimilitude.
When there were only two stages, as with the ears
below, the first stage combined the schema and mise
en trait into one preparatory design that was more
angular and less detailed than the last stage. Of
course if apprentice artists had been working in this
way for a number of years, they might not physically
go through these separate stages, having learned the
schemas and contours by heart.

A STUDENT’S LIFE — In 1889 the artist Three stages of drawing a foot, Bargue, ca. 1866
Alexis Lamaistre published L’école des beaux-arts:
dessinée et racontée par un élève (The School of Fine
Arts Depicted and Described by a Student).3 It offers
a frank account of what it was like to enroll, study,
compete, and survive at what was the world’s most
famous art school.
Lamaistre conveys both the facts of the institu-
tion and the feelings of those who worked there.
Officially, the school was free. But there were costs to
be borne. “The School provides the premises, the
heating, and the models; but the supplies—easels,
stools, black soap for washing the brushes—remain
the responsibility of the pupils, as well as the launder-
ing of the hand towels.”4 For some, these costs were
trivial, but for others they only added to their poverty.
“The vocation, which pushes five or six hundred
young people every year to sign themselves onto the
rolls of the school, attracts all classes of society; the
sons of fine families meet at the door with the sons of
Two stages of drawing ears, Bargue, ca. 1866
workmen or peasants; but these latter dominate, and
280 child composers in the old conservatories

most of these aspiring artists have no

personal resources. Some receive a
small pension allocated by the munic-
ipal council of their district, which
barely allows them to live.”5
Lamaistre’s drawings illustrate his
book and provide a wry take on life in
that august institution. An aspiring
student might imagine his entry into
an elite studio at the École as a
moment of triumph, but the look of
the new student in the drawing to the
left shows how terrifying and humili-
ating it usually was. The “new one”
knew nothing, the old hands knew
everything, and all sorts of slights and
hazing would befall him. Note that
the only women at the École were
support staff or models. Talented
female artists could study at private
studios in Paris, as did some of the
enrolled students at the École. Only
“Arrival of the New One”
in 1897 were woman admitted as reg-
ular students.
As mentioned, proper enrollment meant successfully leaping over a number of com-
petitive hurdles. Lamaistre noted that those hoping to enroll in painting first had to make
it through the “preliminaries and eliminations.” “For anatomical drawing there was a two-
hour examination completed while isolated in a cubicle [en loge]. For the test in perspec-
tive, one was locked in a cubicle for four hours. The general examination in history could
be taken orally or written out, at the choice of the candidate.” Survivors of those tests
became eligible for the next battery. “In a first session there was a figure to be drawn from
nature; in a second session a figure from antiquity, both to be done in twelve hours; a frag-
ment of classical scupture to be modeled in antique style, to be completed in nine hours;
and a basic study of an architectural subject to be completed in a cubicle in six hours.”
Once past all those hurdles, the candidate became a fully enrolled student. “The title
of student gives him the right to take courses and take part in the competitions.” The main
part of his time, however, would involve working in a studio under the direction of a mas-
ter. That master could be inside or outside of the École. If outside, fees would need to be
negotiated and paid. “If he wants to be part of one of the studios at the École, where admis-
sion depends solely on the studio professor, then he must proceed as follows: he chooses
the professor who suits him best and then presents himself to him. If he has no letter of
recommendation he must introduce himself, or more to the point introduce his work, and
 Chapter 20  the beaux-arts framework  281

he will be warmly received. The master’s

door, so hard to force open for many peo-
ple, even those in high places, is always
open for a young unknown who has no
title other than that of aspiring student.”6
In the entrance hall of the École,
shown at the right, one saw an impressive
collection of ancient sculpture. Once part
of Roman Gaul, France had its own
ancient history, with remnants of Roman
theaters and garrisons. But the treasures of
antiquity that graced the École and the
Louvre museum were of more recent
acquisition. Some had been purchased by
Louis XIV and his descendants. Others
had been looted by Napoleon and his
armies as they invaded Spain, Germany,
Russia, Austria, Italy, even Egypt. The city
of Rome had been heavily plundered, so
when a top student won the Rome Prize,
entitling him to spend up to four years of
free study at the Villa Medici in Rome, he
would have already seen in Paris many of “The Vestibule of Antiquity”
the treasures of ancient art that, a century
earlier, would have been housed in Roman palaces or at the Vatican.
For students at the École in the 1800s, it was as if the Middle Ages had never hap-
pened. Students were surrounded by classical models of Greek and Roman art, and much
of a student’s time was spent learning how to recreate those designs in various media.
“Design” is an important word, because centuries of weathering had removed almost any
trace of color from ancient sculptures (they were originally brightly painted). The pattern
books showing schemas, contour outlines, and shadings were all in black and white.
Important examinations were in black and white. What counterpoint was to the conserva-
tory, drawing in black and white was to the École. At the conservatory, classes in orchestra-
tion (the instrumental coloring of countrapuntal designs) were only added in the 1870s. At
the École, studios devoted to painting (the coloring of black and white designs) appeared
only in the 1860s. At the time of Lamaistre’s experiences there were three such studios, one
headed by the same Jean-Léon Gérôme who had taught Charles Bargue of the Bargue-
Gérôme A Course in Drawing mentioned earlier.
According to Lamaistre, the head of a studio was its “absolute master.” The salary,
2,400 francs, was exactly the same as for a full professor at the conservatory. Students
called the head of their studio “the boss” (patron), while instructors of classes in anatomy
282 child composers in the old conservatories

(see the image opposite), history, or per-

spective were just called “professor.”7
Wednesdays and Saturdays the boss
came to correct students’ work (see the
image to the left).
“During the Saturday session, stu-
dents sketched on a subject given by the
boss. At the École, a sketch is specifically
referred to as a study in composition. For
a drawn figure one calls the sketch a
‘setup’ (mise en place), and for a painted
figure a ‘rough draft’ (ébauche). Those
who have made a good figure during the
week take advantage of the last hour to
complete it, with a view towards the end-
of-the-year exhibition. Those who are
less satisfied paint over it with white
lead, thus preparing their canvas for
another study. Sometimes one paints
eight or ten figures on the same canvas.
One is not rich at the École, you have to
make economies and decline the luxury
of collecting your own works. Some stu-
“Correction by the Professor” dents spend the entire year with just a
half dozen canvases.”
“Aside from the work done in the studio, where one focuses exclusively on one’s
metier, a student is obliged either to pass the examinations or to receive the medals
required for certains contests, to follow the courses that take place one or two times a
week, where he completes his artistic education. We will see how carefully this education
is regulated [reglée].”8

For painters and sculptors, the following classes were in order:

Drawing and sculpture classes at the evening school.

Daily from 4:00 to 6:00.
Anatomy.
Monday and Friday at 1:00.
Perspective.
Saturday at 3:00.
History and archeology.
Wednesday at 1:00.
 Chapter 20  the beaux-arts framework  283

Aesthetics and history of art.

Wednesday at 2:30.
Stone and marble sculpture.
Daily from 1:00 to 3:30.

Student architects would join the

painters and sculptors for courses in
design, modeling, elementary archi-
tecture, and decorative composition,
which met every day in the afternoon
“Most of these courses offered the
same point of view. Many took place in
the same classrooms on different
days.”9

Assuming that students were good

enough to be admitted to the École,
and then to a studio, and then to do
well enough in various courses, public
validation of their success would still
require winning a prize in one of the
annual high-stakes contests. For the
general public, the top contest was
always the Rome Prize (Prix de Rome),
administered not by the École but by “The Anatomy Class”

the Academy of Fine Arts, the supervis-

ing institution. Other prizes could bring professional esteem, but only the Rome Prize,
somewhat like the Nobel Prize today in science, could give one a measure of lasting fame.
The Rome Prize contest was really two contests, the first being an elimination round
devoted to sketching on a historical, mythological, or biblical subject. You may remember
Lamaistre saying, “During the Saturday session [in the studio], students sketched on a
subject given by the boss.” So sketching on a given subject for student painters was much
like realizing a given bass or melody for music students. It was the same kind of task that
they had worked on in countless lessons. The only difference was that the stakes were very
much higher.
The image on the following page by Lamaistre illustrates his statement that “on the
day of the sketching contest, beginning at 8:00 am, about one hundred students assemble
in front of the door. . . . The students then climb the stairs running. Allowed in five at a
time they go to the office of Mr. Allard, supervisor of the painters, to write down their
names and that of their professor, after which a custodian leads them to their respective
cubicles [illustrated on p. 285], which were about sixty open boxes on a long corridor,
284 child composers in the old conservatories

striped every six feet with the shadow of a

partition. The scene very much resembles
two rows of horse stalls at the circus. Above
all, it resembles the rows of cells in the gal-
leries of the Mazas prison. And in fact,
those who come to sequester themselves
will remain there as prisoners until four
o’clock in the afternoon. Once you have
crossed the threshold, no one can leave
before noon, and those who leave thereaf-
ter are no longer entitled to return. The
furniture of a cubicle is very simple: a
stool, a board that serves as a table, and an
easel.”10
Example 19.1, shown opposite, is from
an autograph manuscript by Luigi
Cherubini. Cherubini became director of
the Paris Conservatory in 1822. Each year
he would compose a given bass, a given
melody, and a fugue subject for the con-
tests in harmony and fugue. The subject or
topic of the bass shown is a descending
stepwise octave in Eb major, with 7–6 sus-
“The Call to the Cubicles” pensions in each measure. A translation of
Cherubini’s title reads “A Bass to Be
Completed in Four Parts by the Contestants in Cubicles.” Because the conservatory and
the École were both under the administration of the Academy of Fine Arts, the two schools
were organized along very similar lines. They each had studios, courses, and contests, with
the contests involving students sequestered in rows of cubicles.
As the participants in the sketch contest filed in and took their places, there was ner-
vous joking and various kinds of antics. Most of the students at the École, just like their
counterparts at the conservatory, had probably been the very best at their metier in their
hometown or city, at least for their age. Now at the top school in the capital city, it seemed
everyone was at their level, and in a few cases they would meet fellow students with abili-
ties that were simply extraordinary. So there was justifiable nervousness and even dread
when competing against young people who might one day emerge as the greatest artists of
their generation. Everyone fell silent when the inspector arrived to announce the pro-
gram. By “program” was meant a paragraph read out loud by the inspector. It would
describe a scene, which in the contest described by Lamaistre was “The Death of
Timophanes.” Here is the program quoted in Lamaistre, which is a passage from Plutarch:
 Chapter 20  the beaux-arts framework  285

e x . 19 .1   C
 herubini, instructions for the harmony contest (Paris, 1827)

Timophanes, after putting to death without a trial great numbers of the leading citizens,
declared himself tyrant. At this, Timoleon was greatly distressed, and considering his
brother’s baseness to be his own misfortune, he attempted to reason with him and exhort
him to renounce that unfortunate and mad ambition of his and seek to make some amends
for his transgressions against his fellow citizens. But when his brother rejected his appeals
with scorn, he took his kinsman Aeschylus, . . . and his friend the seer, . . . and after wait-
ing a few days went up again to his brother; and the three, surrounding him, besought him
even now to listen to reason and change his mind. But Timophanes first mocked them,
and then lost his temper and was violent, whereupon Timoleon withdrew a little space
from him and stood weeping with muffled head, while the other two, drawing their swords,
speedily despatched him.11

“In Cubicles for the Sketch Contest”

 286 child composers in the old conservatories

A winning sketch and completed oil painting on a given subject

The images above show a sketch and its completion as a large oil painting, both done
by the student Dagnon-Bouveret, who came in second in the contest of 1876. The pro-
gram for the above scene was “Priam Pleading for the Body of His Son Hector from
Achilles.” Twelve hours were alloted for sketching. Twenty sketches would be chosen to
select the finalists, who would then have more than two months to complete an oil paint-
ing. This brief description oversimplifies the several stages of the Rome Prize competion,
but it covers the essentials.
Young composers who competed in the Rome Prize competition in music went
through similar stages of examination. In place of the sketch contest was a contest in coun-
terpoint, often a fugue on a given subject. We might describe this as the black-and-white
design competition. Winners selected from this preliminary contest advanced to the final
stage, which was a competition to write a cantata on a given program and text. Just as the
painters would finish their submission as a large full-color oil painting, composers would
prepare a “full-color” orchestral score supporting a choir and vocal soloists who sang the
Vi deo 2 0 .1 given text. (For the contest in architecture, see Video 20.1.)
Why these sorts of contests? Musical styles changed over the decades but the con-
tests did not, or only a little. So there were often rumblings about whether they were rel-
evant. Gabriel Fauré, when he became director of the conservatory (1905), questioned
whether cantatas, a genre from the 1600s, still mattered. But the cantatas continued, per-
haps because, as with the given programs in the École, the idea of testing a student’s abil-
ity to transform an emotionally charged human situation into a compelling image or musi-
cal composition was fundamentally sound. For composers it replicated what it was like to
 Chapter 20  the beaux-arts framework  287

receive a commission from the Church for a celebratory Mass, from an impresario for a
new opera, from Sergei Diaghilev for a new ballet, or from a motion-picture producer for
a new film score. The preliminary stages of the competition ensured that any eventual
winner would have solid technique. And the final stages, with the production of an impres-
sive artwork displayed or performed for the public, worked toward cultural productions
that could move ordinary people.
Below is an actual “Death of Timophanes” completed in 1874 by Léon Comerre,
possibly for the Rome Prize competition. It would be the next year, 1875, that Comerre
won the competition. One can read the program quoted by Lamaistre, note its details, and
then find each of them given visual expression in Comerre’s painting. From the intensity,
narrative force, and violent subject matter of this talented artist’s canvas, one would never
guess that he went on to become best known for charming portraits of pretty girls in genre
scenes. Whatever his eventual choice of subjects, the École had prepared him for success.

“The Death of Timophanes” by Léon Comerre, 1874

288 child composers in the old conservatories

@
 21

A BE AU X-A RTS FR A MEWOR K

FOR MUSIC

FROM SK ETCH TO DR A F T

TO R E A LI Z AT ION

I n t h e v is ua l a rt s w e h av e seen how a n a rt is t might begin by sketching

the schematic shape of something before embarking on the more laborious processes of
refinement and elaboration. That order of work was enshrined in the Beaux-Arts method
of instruction. And given its influence on art manuals for amateurs, even the recreational
painter below probably began her rendering of the bouquet of orange flowers by first
sketching their shapes in schematic form. If she wished to portray the texture and color of
the flowers, she could add in those features later.

“At the Easel” by James N. Lee, before 1911

289
290 child composers in the old conservatories

Suppose now that she was a musician trained at the Paris Conservatory. She would
learn much the same approach to creating music. In many respects the curriculum there
served both to instill the Beaux-Arts ideals of how art should be made and to provide stu-
dents with the skills to carry a composition through to completion. Let us review the rules
of the conservatory exactly as they would have been in force
when Debussy was taking written harmony from Émile
Durand and “practical” harmony (partimenti) from Auguste
Bazille. Bazille (1828–1891; shown to the left) had won firsts in
the big contests (harmony, fugue, organ) and a second in the
Rome Prize while still in his teens. He had great skill in organ
improvisation, was in charge of singers at the Opéra-Comique,
and transcribed numerous operas into piano-vocal editions.
For whatever reason Debussy thrived under Bazille and won
his only first in that class.
In Naples each conservatory was subject to its board of
governors, who in turn reported to patrons, the church hier-
archy, and the crown. The Paris Conservatory was part of a
similar hierarchy, where its director reported to the Academy
of Fine Arts (Beaux-Arts), which in turn reported to the
Institute of France, which in turn reported to the state. The
August Bazille conservatory spelled out its regulations in sixty-nine carefully
worded articles,1 many with subsections and codicils,
arranged in nine numbered sections followed by six named subjects. A child like the ten-
year-old Debussy would first enroll in solfège and spend several years learning the basics:

Section I. — Solfège
Art. 1. Singers and instrumentalists have distinct and separate classes in solfège.
Art. 2. There are four classes of solfège for singers:
Two for the boys.
Two for the girls.
These classes, obligatory for students enrolled in the singing classes, are reserved for
them exclusively.
There are eight classes of solfège for the instrumentalists:
Three for the boys.
Five for the girls.
Art. 3. The director can assign supplementary classes in solfège, if found necessary, to the
solfège coaches (répétiteurs).

At sixteen Debussy enrolled in written harmony. At seventeen he enrolled in practical

harmony after qualifying for the contest in written harmony the previous summer.

Section II. — Harmony, Organ, Composition

Art. 4. There are six classes of written harmony:
 Chapter 21  beaux-arts music  291

Four for men.

Two for women.
Art. 5. There is a class of accompaniment at the piano.
This instruction involves realizing figured basses, chant donné, score reading, and
transposition at sight.
One cannot enroll in this class of accompaniment until one has been admitted to a contest
in written harmony.
Art. 6. There is a class in organ and improvisation.
Art. 7. There are three classes in composition.
This class includes counterpoint and fugue, composition, and orchestration.

Section III (articles 8–10) concerns classes in singing and opera. Section IV describes
classes in piano and harp, where Debussy enrolled early in the preparatory sections and
then got as far as a second prize when he was fifteen. Interestingly there were more classes
for the women than for the men.

Section IV. — Piano and Harp

Art. 11. There are five classes in piano:
Two for men.
Three for women.
Art. 12. There are five preparatory classes in piano:
Two for men.
Three for women.
Students older than fifteen cannot be admitted to these classes.
Art. 13. There are two classes in keyboard skills:
One class for men.
One class for women.
These classes are intended exclusively for singers.
Art. 14. There is one class for harp.

Sections V–VIII (articles 15–22) list the courses in strings, winds, ensembles, and
dramatic declamation. As a piano student Debussy would have been required to partici-
pate in the chamber music class. Section IX details the fairly recent introduction of a
course in music history, which would have introduced Debussy to sarabandes, pavanes,
and the conjectured sounds of early music.

Section IX. — A History Course

Art. 23. There is a course in music history.
This course meets once a week.
It is required for students in the composition and harmony classes.
Art. 24. There is a course in dramatic literature.
The course meets once a week.
It is required for students in the classes of dramatic declamation and lyric declamation.
292 child composers in the old conservatories

Following section IX the regulations begin to specify the rights and obligations of
professors and students, and their roles in the contests.

The Professors
Art. 25. Professors of composition enjoy an equal and fixed annual salary of 3,000 francs.
The [other] full and adjunct professors are divided, according to their respective categories,
into four classes, which have fixed salaries as follows:

Full Professors
1st class - - - - - - - - - - 2,400 francs (approx. $40,000 current U.S. dollars)
2nd class - - - - - - - - - - 2,100
3rd class - - - - - - - - - - 1,800
4th class - - - - - - - - - - 1,500

Adjunct Professors
1st class - - - - - - - - - - 1,200
2nd class - - - - - - - - - - 1,000
3rd class - - - - - - - - - - - 800
4th class - - - - - - - - - - - 600

Art. 26. Every professor, full or adjunct, takes rank in the fourth class upon entering service.
Art. 27. Full or adjunct professors are engaged to give three lessons a week, two hours each.
That said, professors of composition only give two lessons per week.
Any professor who, without an express legal obligation or without authorization by the
director, should fail to give three lessons in the same month shall be deprived of his
salary for the duration of that month.
Art. 28. The retirement of professors is announced by the Minister.
Art. 29. The members of the teaching corps can be terminated by the Minister for habitual
carelessness or for any other grave offense, with the concurrence of the director.

The Accompanists
Art. 30. Accompanists for the classes in lyric declamation enjoy an annual salary of between
600 and 1,200 francs.

Classes and Their Running

Art. 31. The school year begins the first Monday in October and finishes immediately after the
public contests.
Art. 32. All classes are given within the conservatory building.
Art. 33. The mothers of female students are allowed in to assist with lessons.
Art. 34. The director determines the days and hours of class for each professor.

On Students, Their Admission, Their Rights, and Their Duties

Art. 35. Only via the route of examination can one be admitted to the conservatory.
Art. 36. The examinations and the admissions contests take place on the 15th of October and
the 15th of November.
Art. 37. Candidates should register with the conservatory secretariat and present a copy of
their birth certificate and certificate of vaccination.
 Chapter 21  beaux-arts music  293

Art. 38. The director of the conservatory can summon a candidate from the provinces.
Every candidate called to Paris to present himself for the admissions contests receives a
voucher to defray the costs of travel and lodging in the city.
An equivalent travel voucher for a return trip is accorded to those not admitted.
Art. 39. Candidates younger than nine years old or older than twenty-two cannot be admitted.
Outside of this range, admission can only happen in cases where the candidate is judged
very advanced and able to complete his studies in two years or where the candidate is
gifted with exceptional talent.
Art. 40. At first students are only provisionally admitted. Their full admission is certified only
after the semester examination that follows the semester of their admission.
Art. 41. The director assigns to various classes the students admitted by the juries.
He can reassign a student from one class to another if he judges the change helpful to his
progress.
Art. 42. The director can admit, with a juried contest, candidates to classes in solfège,
keyboard studies, harmony, and composition.
After each semester’s examination, he places into the classes of opera and comic opera
the students of singing whose studies have been judged very advanced so that they can
take the classes in lyric declamation.
Art. 43. The director can admit auditors to any of the classes, auditors chosen from among the
candidates who exhibited the most aptitude.
Auditors are only admitted for the whole school year.
Art. 44. No one may be admitted to the solfège class beyond the age of thirteen.
This rule can be disregarded only in cases where students are following a class in singing
or an instrument.
Art. 45. No student may at the same time take part in classes of solfège and harmony, nor in
classes of harmony and composition.
Art. 46. Every student who misses class two times during a month, without a legitimate
excuse, will be stricken from the rolls.
Art. 47. On pain of expulsion, no student may contract an engagement with any theater,
play a role, or sing or play a piece on stage or in a public concert without the express
permission of the director.
Art. 48. By the simple fact of their admission to the conservatory, all students in the classes of
singing or declamation contract the obligation not to become engaged at any theater
before their studies are judged complete and finished.
Art. 49. Foreign candidates can be admitted with the special authorization of the Minister.
They enjoy the same rights and are subject to the same obligations as French students.
They cannot, however, be allowed to compete for prizes before their second year of
study at the conservatory.
Art. 50. The Minister shall be informed by quarterly reports of the entry and exit of students.

On Fellowships for Students of Singing and Dramatic Declamation

Art. 51. Twelve fellowships of 1,200 to 1,800 francs each are awarded, via contest, to students of
both sexes who take the classes in singing and are specially destined for the lyric theater.
In cases where the fellowships are not all awarded, the available sum may be distributed
during the year in encouragement [of deserving students].
Art. 52. Ten fellowships of 600 francs each are awarded, via contest, to students of both sexes
who take the classes in dramatic declamation.
294 child composers in the old conservatories

Art. 53. The fellowships are granted by the Minister, following the advice of the examination
committees and on the recommendation of the director of the conservatory and the
approval of the director general of fine arts.
Professors as members of examination committees cannot participate in voting when
their students are candidates for a fellowship.
Art. 54. The fellowships can always be revoked, in whole or in part, whether by the director of
the conservatory regarding disciplinary matters or by the committee, following a [poor]
examination.

On Semester Examinations
Art. 55. For each semester examination, the committee announces the retention or dismissal
of students.
In addition, for the examination in June, the committee determines the students who will
be called to take part in the contests and those whose studies should be considered at an
end.
Art. 56. The contests in fugue and harmony are held [with students isolated] in cubicles (en
loge).
Students in composition compete at the Institute of France for the Rome Prizes.
Art. 57. Students of the same sex and the same specialty, however many the number of classes
or of contestants, compete together. Students of both sexes only reunite for the contests in
lyric declamation or dramatic declamation; but there are separate prizes for the male and
female students.
Art. 58. Students in the preparatory classes in piano and violin are not allowed to compete in
the contests after age eighteen.
Art. 59. Not allowed to compete in the contests are students who have studied less than six
months or those who, having debuted on the stage, are nevertheless kept in class to
complete their studies.
Art. 60. Every student who, after three years of study, has not been allowed to compete in the
contests is scratched from the rolls.
Similarly ceasing to remain part of the conservatory are those students who have
competed three times without a prize or honorable mention and those who, having
received a nomination, competed two times without success.
Art. 61. Every year the subjects of the contests are determined by the examination committees,
at the suggestion of the director.
Art. 62. The contests are held in July.
Art. 63. The awards are divided into:

First Prize
Second Prize
First Honorable Mention
Second Honorable Mention

The solfège class and the preparatory classes in piano and violin award first, second, and
third medals.
Art. 64. For the contest juries it is necessary to have at least seven members present so that
their deliberations are valid.
 Chapter 21  beaux-arts music  295

Art. 65. Members of the jury should recuse themselves in contests where there are students to
whom they have given lessons during the year.
Any prize or honorable mention given in violation of this stricture is null and void.
Art. 66. The jury deliberates in camera. It first decides whether to award a first prize.
In the affirmative case, the jury takes a secret ballot and the first prize is awarded based
on a majority of the ballots.
The same procedure is followed for the second prize and honorable mentions.
Art. 67. The prizes are awarded immediately after the contests.
Each winner receives a diploma.
The silver medals are handed to the first and second prize winners.
Art. 68. A student who wins a first prize can remain in his class one more year.
Art. 69. Every year there are public events.
Four of these events are dedicated to dramatic declamation.
Students selected by the director to take part in a public event cannot fail to participate
on pain of expulsion.

Many of the regulations are nearly identical to those of modern conservatories the
world over, showing the enormous influence of the Paris Conservatory as a model for
other institutions. Compared to U.S. universities, professors were poorly paid and students
had more time with them (six hours a week for a normal class). Both students and profes-
sors were subject to an unflinching realism regarding poor performance. Students who did
not excel were shown the door (“stricken from the rolls,” “studies should be considered at
an end,” “ceasing to remain part of the conservatory,” “on pain of expulsion”). That some-
one of the caliber of Debussy should be dropped from the piano class after failing to win
a first shows how seriously the rules were observed. The modern university, by contrast,
views students as consumers who purchase classes. Loath to lose a customer, these institu-
tions endeavor to graduate everyone who manages to pay tuition.
The fellowships offered to opera singers show not only how highly such performers
were valued but also how the other students had to find work or borrow from their families
to support themselves in Paris. Tuition was free, but living expenses were not fully covered
by grants. The conservatory, unlike the École Niedermeyer, was not a boarding school, so
students lived in cheap apartments or at home if they were native Parisians.
All the details of curriculum and school rules still do not explain how a student went
about learning to compose the elaborate lessons in written harmony, fugue, and composi-
tion. The foundations of a solid musical education would have been laid in the first years,
mostly in the classes of solfège. The harmony textbooks published by professors at the
conservatory do have some introductory chapters, but they are followed by lessons that
today’s students would likely find insurmountably difficult. From hints in those textbooks
and other surviving documents one can begin to piece together something of the working
methods of students in these advanced courses. Not surprisingly, the outline of those
methods strongly resembles the “schema—mise en trait—verisimilitude” process at the
École des Beaux-Arts.
 296 child composers in the old conservatories

I have chosen four sources to help outline the creative process taught at the conserva-
tory: Bazin’s suggestions for harmonizing a chant donné, Deldevez’s multilevel analysis of
a Fenaroli partimento, Gedalge’s three-stage model for writing a fugue, and the analysis of
a complex passage from Ravel’s Noble and Sentimental Walzes.

BAZIN’S APPROACH — François Bazin, introduced in Chapter 14, was an impor-

tant teacher of harmony at the conservatory from the 1840s to 1871, when he was suc-
ceeded by his pupil Émile Durand. Bazin continued the traditions of Naples, with many
of his lessons still titled partimenti (as mentioned, he copied by hand an entire book of
Mattei’s partimenti). The focus on basses tended to leave the harmonization of melodies
less well defined. Bazin put off the subject until the very last chapter of his long treatise.
Given the huge variety of possible melodies a student might encounter, Bazin laid out for
the student a general approach.2

To find the bass and harmony of florid chants donnés, here is the way one should proceed:
it is necessary to first determine the principal key of the chant donné and those keys to
which it may modulate; then, with the tonality established, one should accompany the
chant donné solely with chords made on the 1st, 4th, 5th, and 6th degrees of the major and
minor modes and with the cadential formulas discussed earlier. Once this harmony,
which is called the “preparatory harmony,” is established, seek out the “definitive har-
mony” through the use of chord inversions, if necessary, and through the various cadences
and other artifices of harmony.

The preparatory harmony should only be considered as a means to arrive at the definitive
harmony; this harmony often produces defective bass motions that are impermissible.
Sometimes, on the contrary, no changes need be made to the preparatory harmony. In
that case it becomes the definitive harmony. When one has spent some time practicing
the means indicated above, one no longer need use them; right away one can place the
definitive harmony below the florid chant donné.

Below (Ex. 21.1) is Bazin’s original table of the chords for a preparatory harmony in C
major. There is a tonic chord on “C”; 5/3, 6/3, and 6/5/3 chords on “F”; a dominant or
dominant seventh chord on “G”; and a triad on “A.” Then follows a Compound Cadence

e x . 2 1.1   Chords and cadences for a preparatory harmony in C major (Paris, 1857)
 Chapter 21  beaux-arts music  297

and a Simple Cadence, in Italian terms, or what Bazin titles a “formula of a complete
cadence.”
The student would work out the same table for every key encountered in the chant
donné. Bazin illustrated his approach with a sample melody and various stages in the
refinement of its bass and harmony. The first eight measures of his sample melody are
given below in Example 21.2. (Hear all of Bazin’s examples in Video 21.1.) Vi deo 2 1.1
Bazin then shows the preparatory harmonization (Ex. 21.3). For his C major, he uses
only C-major and G-major chords. For G major, he inserts the Compound Cadence. His
definitive harmonization is little changed, with a “B” in the bass of measure 4 replacing
C major: G major:
Andantino

e x . 2 1. 2   Measures 1–8 of Bazin’s sample chant donné in C major (Paris, 1857)

C major: G major:

5 5 5 5 5 5 6 7 5
4 #3

Formula of a complete
cadence.

e x . 2 1.3   Bazin’s preparatory harmonization for the melody of Ex. 21.2 (Paris, 1857)

C major: G major:

5 5 5 6 5 5 6 7 5
4 #3

Formula of a complete
cadence.

e x . 2 1. 4   Bazin’s definitive harmonization for the melody of Ex. 21.2 (Paris, 1857)

the “G” (Ex. 21.4). This change makes better counterpoint and schematically responds to
the subtle do–re–mi in the melody (mm. 3–5).
If Bazin’s table of chords, the finding of keys, and the preparatory harmonization are
all part of a schema-based sketch, then the definitive harmonization is like a draft or mise
en trait—something halfway to verisimilitude. For Bazin, that last step was the preparation
of a four-voice realization. In his own words:
 298 child composers in the old conservatories

The realization of florid chants donnés in four vocal parts is a difficult task that requires
great care. It differs from the realizations employed previously in that each part should
move with a certain caution and fit well with the sentiment of the chant donné. In sum it
is a vocal quartet whose good effect one finds in the homogeneity of all the parts.3

e x . 2 1.5   Bazin’s four-voice realization of Ex. 21.2 (Paris, 1857)

Bazin’s sample realization (Ex. 21.5) is cautious to a fault. Most prize-winning realiza-
tions employed more colorful chords and more active secondary voices, though many did
begin with a long-held or repeated tonic note in the bass, as does Bazin’s model.

DELDEVEZ’S “ANALYTIC STUDY” — Édouard (or Edmé) Deldevez (1817–1897)

entered the conservatory at age eight, won a first prize in violin at age sixteen, and imme-
diately began playing in the orchestra of the Paris Opera. At twenty-one he was awarded a
first in fugue and a second in the Rome Prize. Years later, at forty-four, he was appointed
an examiner of strings at the conservatory. At forty-six he became
principal conductor of the Paris Opera and two years later the
first ever professor of conducting at the conservatory (1875).
This is all to say that Deldevez was a consummate insider at the
conservatory and an important figure in Parisian musical life.
Deldevez published a number of works on musical topics,
including an edition of all six books of Fenaroli’s partimenti (ca.
1872).4 In his preface, Deldevez notes the continuing impor-
tance of Fenaroli: “This work, adopted by the conservatories of
Naples and Paris, has trained ‘a multitude of excellent pupils.’ As
Choron says, this is the best way to learn accompaniment.”
Deldevez’s quoting from Choron’s words in the early years of the
century assumed that he and Choron were speaking of the same
work. But the largely improvisatory tradition referenced by
Choron had slowly transformed into something more strictly
Édouard Deldevez defined and notated.
 Chapter 21  beaux-arts music  299

To the right is the bold nineteenth-century typography of

the title page. The larger type gives the names of author and
editor, the smaller type offers “A Complete Course in Harmony
and Advanced Composition.” It is unlikely that Fenaroli him-
self would have made the same claim, given that “advanced
composition” in Naples was predominantly the domain of
counterpoint.
A second display page followed. The word “partimenti” is
given the boldest presentation but it is followed by “or figured
bass,” suggesting an equivalence foreign to the eighteenth-cen-
tury tradition. Nevertheless an explanatory subtitle in the style
of copperplate engraving declares the work “Conforming to the
School of the Naples Conservatories.” It is possible that an
eager publisher wished to claim more from this edition than
Deldevez would have thought seemly. But Deldevez’s boyhood
experience with a reformer of music notation and internal evi-
dence in the edition suggests that Deldevez himself envisioned
a new approach to Fenaroli.
The example below (Ex. 21.6) shows Deldevez’s presenta-
tion of a small partimento from Fenaroli’s Book 3 intended to
provide practice in 4–3 suspensions prepared by 5ths. In more
traditional editions one sees only the bass with a few figures, the
presumption being that the student would practice the lesson
in all three right-hand positions (the first and highest note being
either the root, third, or fifth of the chord). Deldevez instead
completely notates all three positions in block chords, a style
that seems to have been common for students in the courses of
“practical harmony” or “harmony and accompaniment” at the
conservatory. (Hear Deldevez’s examples in Video 21.2.)

e x . 2 1.6   D
 eldevez-Fenaroli, Book 3, 4–3 suspensions (Paris, ca. 1872) Vi deo 2 1. 2
300 child composers in the old conservatories

Even the partimenti of Fenaroli’s Book 4, all originally unfigured, are given complete
figures by Deldevez. These figures can provide specialists a way to compare what we might
call a Parisian dialect of Fenaroli with older Italian models. But perhaps the more interest-
ing feature of this edition is Deldevez’s elaborate justification for the figures that he chose.
His multipage “Analytical Study” of the first partimento from Fenaroli’s Book 4 (only
the first page of which is shown in Ex. 21.7) demonstrates how to go stage by stage to build
up a defensible realization. Like Bazin’s plan for harmonizing a melody, Deldevez’s plan
for harmonizing a bass begins with broad outlines and moves toward finishing details. At
the top of his diagram we see brackets marking keys. Under the first bracket is “A Four-
Measure Phrase in G Major . . . A Complete Cadence . . . A [Modulating] Passage.” The
second bracket is marked as a “Phrase in D Major,” and so forth. Fenaroli’s partimento
itself is labeled a “basse donnée.”
Two sets of three and four staves stand below the partimento as two types of “Simplified
Bass.” The first involves only consonances (“Plain Harmony”), the second involves conso-
nances and dissonances (“Composite Harmony”). In Paris and Naples, all the notes of the
dominant seventh chord (V7) counted as consonances, so the dissonances referred to in
the second type of simplified bass were the result of suspensions. The brackets for keys, the
named phrase-types, and the simplified harmony could be thought of as forming a type of
harmonic sketch.
The mise en trait that creates the outline of the finished realization comes next. The
ninth staff from the top is labeled “Realization of Various Suspensions,” which fills in what
was implicit in the figured basses above it. The next lower staff shows the “Molding of the
Design,” which incorporates the harmonic sketch and the suspensions—minus the pass-
ing tones of the partimento. The staff marked “Resolution of the Expressed Suspensions”
eliminates suspensions whose notes of resolution in an implied upper voice would already
be taken by the bass itself. Incorporating the sketches and the refinements of the mise en
trait leads one to the bottom staff, the “Definitive Figuring” of the realization.
Deldevez’s use of the term “design” (dessin) emphasizes the linear focus of Beaux-Arts
training. Counterpoint was “design,” and the more painterly art of orchestration was only
introduced as a class at the conservatory about the same time that Deldevez was hired as
the first professor of orchestral conducting. Similarly, at the École des Beaux-Arts, designs
in black and white were the focus of the curriculum. The first stages of its contests, for
example, involved sketching in black and white. Only later in the century did painting
itself become a subject with its own professors and courses.
That said, Deldevez’s realization of Fenaroli’s partimento, shown at the top of page
302 (Example 21.8), is significantly less linear than the types of realizations seen in the
eighteenth century or by Fenaroli’s students in the early nineteenth. Even though older
professors like Colet and Panseron had included examples of contrapuntal, linearly
designed realizations in their treatises, by Deldevez’s time the typical Paris Conservatory
student realization of a partimento bass may have been characterized by block chords and
simple resolutions of suspensions.
 Chapter 21  beaux-arts music  301

e x . 2 1.7  Deldevez, stages in deducing a proper realization of Fenaoli’s partimento, Bk. 4, no. 1

If one inspects the “Definitive Figuring” seen above on the bottom staff of Deldevez’s
analysis, the horizontal lines extending from the figures “5” and “8” in measure 1 indicate
that the same chord continues for the duration of the line. That could be taken literally as
an instruction to play a half-note chord, and that is what Deldevez does in his realization
 302 child composers in the old conservatories

e x . 2 1. 8   D
 eldevez, realization of Fenaroli’s partimento, Bk. 4, no. 1 (Paris, ca. 1870)

E 5 5 5 5
G  5B 5 5 5 B5 5 5 5 5B 5 5 5 B 5 5 5 55 5 55 5 55 55 5 55 5 45 5E54 5 5 5 5B E5 B5 5 5 5 E5B 5 5 5 55 55 5
5 5 5
5 5 5
5
 E 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 55 5 5
5 5 5
B 5 B 5 5 5 5 5 5E 5 5

5 : 5!5 5 5 5realization
 Fenaroli’s
5B 5 5 5 B5 5 5E5 55E55 55 55 55 5 5
7
eEx . 2 1.9  Guarnaccia, 5:5 5 5of ! partimento, Bk. 4, no. 1 (Naples? !B ca.
5
G 55 5 55E55 51820? B 5Ein
5 5published 5 Rome,5 E1855) 4 4 5 5 B5 5 5 5 55 55 5
5 5E 55 5
5 5 5 5 strikes 5 5E 5 5 5 5 5 5 E5 5 5 5 5
E 5 21.8). Indeed,
(Ex. 5 5 5 5Deldevez 5 5E5a5chord E5 5 5 5
5 5 time 5 4 555
5 in his 5 5 5
realization every 5the figures change
in the “Definitive Figuring.” Somewhat like a Bach chorale, chords change on the beat or
every other beat. By contrast Example 21.9 shows the same passage from Fenaroli’s parti-

5!55 55 E5 5 4 4 5 5 B5 5 5 5 55 55 5 5 55 5 5 5 : 5 !5 5 55 55 5 55 E5
E!5 realized
13
mento B who was likely in a direct line
by an Italian 5 to Fenaroli himself. Emmanuele
GGuarnaccia 5 5 55 55 55 55
55
published a complete set of realizations for 5 5 5 5Books5 4–6
Fenaroli’s 5 in 1855.
5 BI
5 5 5 5were
suspect that these realizations
E 5 5 5555 555 5 5
written earlier by one of Fenaroli’s students or by the
4
master himself5because they are of very high quality B
5 5 5choices that Ethe
B B
5 and always5 make
master had advocated in his regole. As you can verify, the Guarnaccia realization is much
18 more fluid than that of Deldevez. The continuous eighth-note motion of the first two
E B5 5 5 consonances
of Fenaroli’s bass is echoedE5in parallel 5 5upper
5 5 5 E5Bin the 5 5 5voices.
5 5 5 E55 55
5B 5 5 5 55 55 55 55 5B 5E5 5 E5 E55 5
Gmeasures 5 5B E5 5 55 5 55 5
Guarnaccia recognizes the Prinner schema in the second half of measure 2, and makes
5 5 5 than 5 5 5 5In 5doing
5 5 so, 5 555555
the
E EBmodulation
B to D majorB two beats earlier 5 5did
5 5Deldevez. 5 Guarnaccia 5
5 5
completed a modulating Prinner (bass and alto) and a Double Cadence (bass and
soprano). What was a living tradition of expression and improvisation in Fenaroli’s era was
becoming, in the later nineteenth century, a subject in textbooks taught by those not
always completely fluent in the original language.

GEDALGE ON FUGUE — André Gedalge was a great craftsman and inspiring

teacher. His family printed and sold books, and until his late twenties Gedalge worked in
the family business. He had musical talent and had studied privately with Ernest Guiraud,
so at age twenty-eight he enrolled in the conservatory, did very well, and eventually became
professor of counterpoint. His list of students includes many of the most important musi-
cians of the early twentieth century: Maurice Ravel, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud,
Nadia Boulanger, Georges Enescu, and Florent Schmitt.
 Chapter 21  beaux-arts music  303

In 1904 Gedalge published his Treatise on Fugue.6 It had

been planned as the first of three volumes, all on counterpoint.
The later volumes never appeared, perhaps because the first
volume was already considered extremely advanced and diffi-
cult. In a preface to the English translation, Darius Milhaud
noted how important its study could be, “If you are technically
strong enough to study and assimilate the Treatise on Fugue.”
Similarly, the translator of the 1906 German edition men-
tioned that “The Paris Conservatory . . . seeks . . . to polish
technical skill to the highest degree.” In effect, Milhaud and
the German translator were warning the uninitiated that with-
out a background in partimenti, marches harmoniques, and
counterpoint equal to what was offered at the conservatory, the
André Gedalge
treatise of Gedalge might be unintelligible.
Gedalge endeared himself to students by laying out very clearly how they could work
toward a solution of contrapuntal and compositional problems. He recommended that
they go through a three-stage process: a melodic-harmonic sketch, a working draft, and a
final realization. For the first episode of a fugue in C# minor by the student Ferdinand Van
Doren (ca. 1893), Gedalge shows this process step by step. (Listen to Video 21.3.) Vi deo 2 1.3

e x . 2 1.1 0   Gedalge, elements of the first episode, fugue sketch (Paris, 1901)

He begins by selecting the episode’s “elements,”

which are melodic gestures derived from the fugue’s # # #
subject, countersubject, coda, and free material (see Ex. B #

21.10). He labels the elements “A,” “B,” and “C.”

Example 21.11 shows part of a melodic-harmonic ? # #
sketch. Melodically, element “A” (soprano clef, first
note is E) is positioned so that its first four tones are
z–y–x–w in G# minor (a Prinner melody). e x . 2 1.1 1   Gedalge, two-voice sketch
Contrapuntally, “A” combines with a variant of “C,” the (Paris, 1901)
 304 child composers in the old conservatories

“down a 3rd, up a step” movimento or basse harmonique. Harmonically, the fragment

modulates from G# minor toward B major.
A conservatory student needed no more information to advance to the next stage. For
us today, however, it may be worth reviewing the affor-
dances of a “down a 3rd, up a step” bass. In terms of fig-
ured bass, the lower note of each descending 3rd takes a
6/3 or 6/5/3 chord. The upper note of each ascending step
takes a 5/3 chord. This rule can be seen in Durante’s
e x . 2 1.1 2 a   Durante, rule 34 regola (Ex. 21.12a), where each lower tone of the descend-
ing 3rd is marked with 6/5 (meaning 6/5/3). Similarly, in
a contest basse donnée written
by Cherubini (Ex. 21.12b),
those lower tones are marked
with “6” or “6/5” while the
e x . 2 1.1 2 b   Cherubini, basse donnée for the contest of 1827 upper tones of the ascending
steps are marked with “5” or
single accidentals (meaning
5/3). For someone who knew this as a habit from childhood, Gedalge’s two-voice sketch
defined a full four-voice harmonization and a likely chain of 2–3 suspensions as the “6”
and “5” of the “6/5” chords clash on every strong beat (see also Ex. 21.13).
At the middle stage of Gedalge’s process (Ex. 21.13) we can observe how elements “A,”
“B,” and “C” all come together under the organizing schema of the “down a 3rd, up a
step” movimento. Element “A” (beginning on E, soprano
clef) slowly descends the G# hexachord; element “B” (begin-
# ning on C#, tenor clef) descends a 10th below “A,” but is
# #
B #
delayed or prolonged to sound a “2” with “A” on every strong
beat; and element “C” (beginning on C#) is adapted so that
all the strong quarter-notes conform to the “down a 3rd, up a
step” movimento. For example, if we were to mark the inter-
vals over the strong quarter-notes in the first full measure, FX
2 - 3 2 - 3

B #
would receive “6/5” (C# alto, D# soprano), G# would receive
“5/3” (B alto, D# soprano), and so on. If one sets this marche
? harmonique correctly, then the harmony takes care of itself.
The first full measure is in G# minor and then B major
6 - 5 6 - 5
5 - 3 5 - 3 begins to take over, facilitating the change of mood that is
one of the functions of this first episode.
e x . 2 1.13   Gedalge, working draft
The whole scheme of Gedalge’s process is on display
opposite (Ex. 21.14). The top two staves lay out the “Melodic
and Harmonic Scheme of the Episode.” Notice that the half-notes of the basses harmo-
niques do not appear in the final realization. They represent core bass tones of the govern-
ing schema, which lies behind the actual bass.
 Chapter 21  beaux-arts music  305

e x . 2 1.1 4  Gedalge, sketch, working draft, and realization (Paris, 1901)

The middle four staves show the “Working Draft,” which specifies how the three ele-
ments “A,” “B,” and “C” can be distributed (It.: disposizione) among the fugue’s four
voices. On first presentation they are arranged, from bottom to top, “C–B–A,” but on sec-
ond presentation “B–C–A.” The final stage, the “Realization,” involves the polishing and
finishing stage of work. “Filler” parts (e.g., the tenor, m. 20) and connecting lines need to
be composed for the imagined voices. One needed to check the range of each voice, the
compliance with special rules (e.g., a voice needed to have a rest before entering with the
subject), and the desired rhythmic profile (here, the almost continuous motion of quarter-
notes).
 306 child composers in the old conservatories

LENORMAND ON RAVEL — In 1912 the French composer René Lenormand (age

sixty-six) published a Study on Modern Harmony.7 In the chapter on appoggiaturas (notes
that “lean” into other adjacent notes), Lenormand details how Ravel built up a particu-
larly advanced section of his Noble and Sentimental Waltzes using appoggiaturas that fail
to resolve to their goal tones. As shown below, the passage would be sure to confound
anyone trying to find simple three- or four-note chords. (Listen to Video 21.4.)

Vi deo 2 1. 4

e x . 2 1.15  Ravel, Noble and Sentimental Waltzes, beginning of the B section of

no. VII (Paris, 1911)
 Chapter 21  beaux-arts music  307

e x . 2 1.1 6   An analytical reduction of Ex. 21.15

Example 21.16 presents an analytical reduction of Example 21.15, with the commen-
tary given in the English translation. The various bass tones C and F in the waltz excerpt
are depicted in the reduction as a double pedal point. The eighth-notes that fly around in
the waltz appear in the reduction as a two-voice counterpoint of an imaginary soprano and
alto. The measures of the reduction match the first four complete measures of Example
21.15, the actual waltz. The tones shown parenthetically on the reduction represent the
goal tones of the appoggiaturas, which are not sounded in the waltz.
If the analytical reduction above corresponds to a mise en trait in terms of the École
des Beaux-Arts, or to a working draft in terms of Gedalge, then what was the schema
behind it? Lenormand provides it (Ex. 21.17). The upper tones F and D are chord tones,
and the gap between them is traversed by an E that functions as a passing tone.

e x . 2 1.17  A further analytic reduction of Ex. 21.15

 308 child composers in the old conservatories

Further reduction is possible, at least in theory. The bass staff contains an F-major
triad while the treble staff contains an F and a D. Together these elements form a 6/5/3
chord on F, as shown in Example 21.18. In the syntax of the old conservatories, as repre-
sented by the Rule of the Octave, this would be a chord on the fourth scale degree of an
ascending bass.

e x . 2 1.18  The ultimate reduction of Ex. 21.14

One might justly question how old Lenormand could know all of this about Ravel’s
work. The answer is, “He didn’t.” Scholars who study Ravel have found the manuscript8
where, in Ravel’s own hand, the above analyses were written, along with the accompany-
ing text. In other words, it appears that Lenormand, a composer from an earlier era, made
the wise decision to consult younger composers about their new techniques. The compos-
ers responded, and Lenormand collected and edited the responses into his book on “mod-
ern harmony.” The analysis of the waltz excerpt is by Ravel himself. It is fully conformant
with how his counterpoint teacher, Gedalge, taught students to lay out a sketch followed
by a working draft followed by a complete realization. What Lenormand did not publish
was Ravel’s additional observation that his 6/5/3 chord (Ex. 21.18) was used by Beethoven
at the beginning of his Piano Sonata No. 18 in Eb Major, Op. 31 (Ex. 21.19), where it is
indeed built on the fourth degree of the scale (bass Ab in the context of Eb major).

e x . 2 1.19  Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 18, Op. 31, No. 3 (Vienna, 1801–02)

Beethoven lingers on the Ab bass for three measures before raising it to A§ and then to
Bb, where he completed a cadence in Eb major (at the a tempo). The Italian verb “to lin-
ger” (indugiare) gives its name to the Indugio schema, a common classical-era strategy for
building expectation or behaving playfully before an important cadence (see also p. 227,
Chap. 16).
 Chapter 21  beaux-arts music  309

It seems remarkable that Ravel, while hard at work on his ballet masterpiece Daphnis
et Chloé, would be thinking about classical antecedents for a passage in his waltzes. But
the whole episode of the analysis for Lenormand and the remark about Beethoven high-
light Ravel’s deep ties to the classical tradition. One of Ravel’s French biographers, Marcel
Marnat, selected quotes from Ravel’s friend and pupil Alexis Roland-Manuel, and they
speak to Ravel’s place in an unbroken tradition extending back to the earliest days of the
Naples conservatories (Édition Fayard, 1986):

He was quick to justify his greatest audacities and to reintegrate them into the classical frame-
work, showing me again that I had mistaken the means for the ends; that beautiful harmo-
nies do not exist by themselves, but that their charm results from a chord put in the right
place, a modulation that comes both to surprise the ear and fulfill its expectations. . . . It goes
without saying that there is no aggregation of tones in my dear Valses nobles et sentimentales
that would not be justified according to [the old harmony treatise] of Reber and Dubois. . . .
It is an exacting submission to the rules of the game. (152)

The photograph below shows a twenty-year-old Ravel (left) in a class picture of the
piano studio in 1895. The professor, Charles de Bériot, is at the piano, and the little boy in
short pants at the right is about the age at which Ravel entered the Paris Conservatory. The
tradition and its “rules of the game” were both learned and lived.

The piano studio of Charles de Bériot, 1895, in front of the Paris Conservatory
 310 child composers in the old conservatories

FROM SKETCH TO DRAFT TO REALIZATION — Passages from some well-

known compositions have such strong affinities to schemas taught in conservatories that
one can easily imagine a path leading from an underlying schema to a working draft to a
final and polished realization. Take for instance the two schemas shown below as “A” and
“B” in Example 21.20. Schema “A” is like a Prinner in how its voices move, but its tonal
Vi deo 2 1.5 orientation from an F#-minor tonic leading to a C#-major dominant chord places the pat-
tern more in the seventeenth than the eighteenth century. It is characteristic of some of
the old Spanish basses from that era. Schema “B” has the same tonal plan, but presents it
in the form of an eighteenth-century “down a 3rd, up a step” movimento. Draft “C” repre-
sents a Naples-conservatory style disposition in four voices of schema “B.” The basses on
downbeats receive 5/3 chords while the basses on the offbeats take 6/5/3 chords (the quar-
ter-notes in the soprano are “6” and “5”
above the bass). Draft “D” further modi-
A fies draft “C” by adding dissonances in
the tenor voice (the offbeat half-notes in
Sketch (schema) the tenor are “7s”against the bass) and
by pushing the 6–5 soprano descents
(the eighth-notes) toward the last beat of
B each measure. From this more French
draft it is a short step for master compos-
ers to finalize elegant, captivating real-
izations. Video 21.5 presents these
sketches, drafts, and two realizations,
C one by a famous composition teacher at
the Paris Conservatory and one by his
most talented student.
Draft (mise en trait)

e x . 2 1. 2 0  Related schemas and drafts

 22

LE A R NING OLD MUSIC

IN A NEW AGE OF

DIGI TA L R EPRODUCT ION

T H ER E I T IS—T H E 19 5 9 SEEBU RG MODEL 2 2 2 , with stereophonic

sound and the ability to play any three top-40 hit songs of the day for only twenty-five
cents. In that bland era of President Eisenhower and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan,
a restless teenager with ready money on a summer’s day could simply insert a coin and be
transported to the jazzy supper-club chic of Bobby Darin, the explosive Southern heat of
Elvis Presley, or the choreographed cool of African-American groups like the Flamingos.
Scarcely fifty years earlier no Seeburg of any model existed. To experience music one
needed musicians, or the training to make music on your own. That was the state of music

The Seeburg Model 222 Jukebox

311
 312 child composers in the old conservatories

for all of human history prior to the inventions of Thomas Edison, shown seated below
with his second phonograph (1878). The phonograph could freeze time, allowing sound
to be reproduced, transported, bought, and sold. Edison soon formed the Edison
Phonograph Company (1888) and the industrialization of recorded sound began, though
slowly at first. The equipment was fragile and the reanimated sound stuttering from it was
of poor quality when compared to live music. But gradual improvements in technology
began to tip the balance, and the advantages of hearing a world-famous artist in your own
home whenever you wanted, even in a scratchy recording, began to outweigh the cost and
inconvenience of a trip to a local venue to hear a mediocre talent. By the time of the
Seeburg Model 222, popular music for the masses had become fully commercialized and
commodified. All songs cost about the same, ran the same length, and were fabricated in
the same factories to emerge as mass-produced
consumer goods. Record companies developed
and marketed musical artists much as Procter &
Gamble marketed brands of laundry soap. And the
consumers of choice in both realms were teenagers
and young adults, persons who were developing
brand loyalties that might last a lifetime. This com-
mercial system thrived until the late 1990s.
I had a brief stint in the music industry, bear-
ing the deceptively grand title of vice president for
Music Taxonomy at MoodLogic, Inc. Before that
internet startup disappeared into the corporate
maw of the multinational that owned, among many
properties, Billboard Magazine and the Nielsen
ratings, I was present to witness the wholesale digi-
tal destruction of the recording industry. Inside the
company we predicted (ca. 1999–2000) that every-
one would eventually have access to a “jukebox in
Thomas Edison with phonograph, 1878 the sky” (the Seeburg 222 was colloquially a “juke-
box”). We did not know how exactly such technol-
ogy would function, and could not at that time envision iPhones, Siri, Alexa, or “the
cloud.” Yet when an engineer demonstrated a one-foot-square box that contained bulky
memory-drives with over 10,000 randomly selectable songs, we were sure that the millen-
nium had arrived (which in fact it shortly did). And when a major provider of “metadata”
(song names, song artists, etc.) gave us unfettered access to 3 million promotional song
excerpts (30-second snippets), our experience of the world of popular music began to
transform. If pirate downloading could be controlled, we saw that the industry could rise
again from the ashes.
When music was a purchased physical good, people often hoarded it as a squirrel
might pile up a cache of nuts. Young men would compete to have impressive record col-
 Chapter 22  learning old music  313

lections much as some birds might collect shiny objects in the hopes of attracting a mate.
Yet when one has free (or reasonably priced) access to millions of songs, there is no longer
any social status to be gained by owning a hundred more tracks than your rival. People do
not, for example, download electricity. They could, of course, bring large batteries to work
or school and charge them at those institutions’ expense. But the convenience, reliability,
and generally low cost of electricity at home means that hauling batteries to work seems
pointless. The recording industry was slow to understand how that concept could apply to
music, and only after the trade in CDs was killed off by internet piracy did the industry
eventually and reluctantly acquiesce to making the bulk of their songs available for a rea-
sonable monthly fee, much as a utility sells us power or water. Today the typical teenager
with a smartphone can have a fully functioning jukebox in the sky.
Technology advances and music changes. There is nothing new in that observation.
When keyboard instruments progressed from harpsichords to grand pianos, composers
and performers could express themselves in many new ways. One might imagine that the
way children and teenagers learned music would also be changed by each new advance
in music technology. That seems, however, not to be the case, at least not yet.

MUSIC EDUCATION IN AMERICA —

Archibald T. Davison selected that title for his
book-length essay on the subject (1926).1 A
longtime Harvard faculty member in music,
Davison represented a rare breed of professor
who performed or conducted and also pub-
lished musicological research. Davison was
known on the Harvard campus as the director of
the glee club, which he raised to a standard
unusually high for its time. He was also a scholar
of music, appointed to the very first governing
board of the American Musicological Society
(1934). And rarest of all for an Ivy League aca-
demic, he took a serious interest in music edu-
cation.
Born in 1883, Davison lived through the rise Archibald T. Davison

of recorded music. Boston, his birthplace, and

Harvard, his alma mater (1906), may not have been representative of America as a whole,
but he toured extensively and so was able to see how things were done in less exalted
locales. What he saw concerned him. The full title of his book was Music Education in
America: What Is Wrong with It? What Shall We Do about It? His text began:

Like many other college teachers of music, the author of this book has become increas-
ingly aware of the fact that music education as administered in this country is far from
314 child composers in the old conservatories

accomplishing what we have a right to expect of it. Thousands of persons are engaged in
the profession of music-teaching, immense sums are annually expended for the mainte-
nance of music in schools and colleges, large and powerful organizations of music supervi-
sors meet from time to time to discuss better methods of instruction; and yet the American
“people” grow in musicalness much more slowly than is warranted by the outlay of energy,
time, and money.2

Davison’s notions of “musicalness” and “what we have a right to expect” from music
education probably seemed more self-evident in the 1920s than they do today. When one
looks back at old photographs from that time, the number of group photos stands out,
especially those of large groups. People proudly kept pictures of their entire church con-
gregation, of a whole Boy Scout troup, of all the students in a particular year in high
school, or, during the war years, of a full brigade of soldiers. There was an emphasis on the
social group that is in rather sharp contrast to our contemporary world of aptly named
“selfies.” And unlike today’s “social media,” the social groups of earlier times met in per-
son, held events and festivals, wore badges or other markers of membership, and used live
music to enhance their group experience. Music education in colleges and universities
was seen, in Davison’s era, as promoting social cohesion, civic pride, and good taste. Thus
the phrase “good music” did not just mean excellent music, but classical music of a type
that would elevate one’s sensibilities. There was a presumption that the right music could
contribute to the good morals and character of the citizenry, however quaint or misguided
that may seem today.
Davison had no qualms about labeling the study of music performance “vocational
study.” Like the eighteenth-century author who wrote about Montpellier (see Chap. 6),
Davison did not consider the study of a craft as belonging in academia. One could study
an instrument in college with the goal of becoming a teacher, but only a conservatory
could serve the student aiming for a life as a professional musician. “It would seem wise to
reserve for academic degrees [the subjects of] theory, history, and appreciation, and to
assign to a conservatory all applied study. . . . The question is simply one of safeguarding
the standards of academic degrees and of furthering the interests of music education by
assigning applied music to its rightful sphere—the conservatory.”3 For this important fig-
ure in American collegiate music, the idea of a young person majoring in piano was
absurd. A piano was a tool, and employing that tool meant working with one’s hands, more
the stuff of a tradesman than of a serious student of science or literature.
Davison’s dissertation (1908) had focused on the new music of Debussy, so he had
some sense of the gulf separating musical training at the Paris Conservatory from that
available to the Harvard Glee Club. To maintain a generally positive tone about music
education in America, he arranged for that gulf to be described in a “letter recently
received from a graduate of the Music Department of an American university, now study-
ing music in Paris.” Because the letter provides a useful American perspective on the Paris
Conservatory in the early 1920s, and because its summary of instruction there matches to
 Chapter 22  learning old music  315

a remarkable degree what we have learned about conservatory training in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, its anonymous author is worth quoting at length:4

The normal length of a full course at the Conservatoire or the Schola Cantorum is eight
or ten years. Thus far I have had four years at X University (where only one-fourth of your
time goes to music) and by next June will have had three (academic) years here, the first
of which can scarcely be taken at its face value for I spent half my time and more than half
my energy trying to fit into an alien environment and a quite different point of view. And
if the comparison is to be just, one must also take into account the following facts. A con-
servatoire class in harmony, counterpoint, fugue or composition has three two-hour ses-
sions per week, compared to our three one-hour sessions at home. To be admitted to a
harmony class, you must have finished the text book work and are required to pass an
entrance examination testing your knowledge of it. In America the text book work is done
in class and you complete your course when you have finished your text book. In other
words, here harmony begins at the point where at home it ends. Once admitted to the
class you work at “partimenti,” unfigured basses and melodies (from 20 to 60 or 80 mea-
sures long), usually in instrumental style, which have been culled from Fenarolli and
other seventeenth and eighteenth century Italians and from “continuo” parts in Bach.
Their “realization” demands extensive use of all the devices of imitation and a constant
eye for melodious part writing. In addition, you have systematic work in harmonic analy-
sis.

To put the above description in the context of students’ ages, our author reports that
at around age twenty-two, when he graduated in the United States and began at the
Conservatory, he was at approximately the same stage of technical accomplishment as a
Conservatory student of age thirteen to fifteen. After detailing some of the advanced work
required in counterpoint and harmony, he envisioned a better future back in the United
States.

Some day, I suppose, we shall resort to a similar discipline in America. We shall probably
arrive at it by a different road and the institution which develops and hands it down will
most likely have to take some other form better fitted to the situation in which we find
ourselves. But however that may be, of this I am certain, we shall never make headway as
rapidly as we ought to until we raise our standards of technical training and keep raising
them little by little, until they are the equivalent in thoroughness and severity of those in
force here.5

At this point Davison, like a nervous moderator, pipes up to say, “This must not be
considered an indictment of music-teaching in American colleges, for the writer of the
foregoing letter would be the first to admit that there is frequently as much and as logically
ordered instruction as an academic Music Department can give in the time allowed. That
such instruction is not complete, that it does not suffice for the music student who would
educate himself thoroughly, everyone would agree, for a college should never attempt to
replace a conservatory.”6
 316 child composers in the old conservatories

But of course colleges and universities did replace conservatories in America. More
than 2,000 colleges and universities teach music in America, employing an army of more
than 25,000 instructors. Only a handful of conservatories remain as independent institu-
tions. Sadly, the “American in Paris” who wrote of the need to raise the standards of col-
lege music “little by little” probably lived long enough to see knowledge of the classical
tradition decline decade by decade. Today most students of music in colleges and universi-
ties are no longer even aware of what has been lost and of what they missed.

MUSIC AND ITS LOVERS—That is the title of a book by Vernon Lee, the pen
name of a remarkable Victorian born Violet Paget. From her villa overlooking Florence
she entertained a circle of friends that included luminaries like Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater,
Edith Wharton, Henry James, Mary Cassatt, and John Singer Sargent (who painted her
portrait). Growing up in Italy, she studied Fenaroli’s
partimenti from a master in a direct line of succes-
sion from Fago, Leo, and Sala in Naples. And when
just twenty-four she completed an important study of
eighteenth-century Italian opera (1880).7 In the pref-
ace to its second edition she identified the locus of
musical style in the musical phrase, “implying
thereby that as verbs, nouns, adjectives, and other
parts of speech combine to form the literary phrase,
so intervals, rhythm, and harmonies unite also into
the smallest musical whole which our intelligence
and memory can recognize as a whole.”8
Her reference to “our intelligence and memory”
and her approach to the musical phrase as a holistic
Gestalt were prophetic because she would go on to
Violet Paget, by Sargent, 1881 write one of the early classics in the new field of
music psychology, her Music and Its Lovers: An
Empirical Study of Emotional and Imaginative Responses to Music (1932).9 This project,
long delayed by the First World War and Paget’s active career as a writer of fiction and
criticism, began with an extensive questionnaire sent to about 150 friends and acquain-
tances. She probed their experiences and interactions with music through dozens of quite
specific questions (e.g., “Can you improvise?”), to some of which her respondants wrote
full-page answers. This qualitative study of people’s cognitive engagement with music led
her to distinguish two rather different types of listeners.

The conclusion became obvious that there existed two different modes of responding to
music, each of which was claimed to be the only one by those in whom it was habitual.
One may be called listening to music; the other hearing, with lapses into merely over-
hearing it. Listening implied the most active attention moving along every detail of com-
position and performance, taking in all the relations of sequences and combinations of
 Chapter 22  learning old music  317

sounds as regards pitch, intervals, modulations, rhythms and intensities, holding them in
the memory and coordinating them in a series of complex wholes, similar (this was an
occasional illustration) to that constituted by all the parts, large and small, of a piece of
architecture; and these architecturally coordinated groups of sound-relations, i.e., these
audible shapes made up of intervals, rhythms, harmonies and accents, themselves consti-
tuted the meaning of music to this class of listeners; the meaning in the sense not of a
message different from whatever conveyed it, but in the sense of an interest, an impor-
tance, residing in the music and inseparable from it.10

The active, attentive engagement of Listeners was not the primary experience of
Paget’s Hearers:

Even the least attentive “Hearers” have moments, whose frequency and duration depend
both on general musical habits and on the familiarity with the particular piece or style of
music, of active listening; for they constantly allude to their ability to follow or grasp, as
they express it, the whole or only part of what they happen to hear. But instead of consti-
tuting the bulk of their musical experience (in such a way that any other thought is rec-
ognized as irrelevant) these moments of concentrated and active attention to the musical
shapes are like islands continually washed over by a shallow tide of other thoughts: mem-
ories, associations, suggestions, visual images and emotional states, ebbing and flowing
round the more or less clearly emergent musical perceptions, in such a way that each
participates of the other quality of the other, till they coalesce, forming a homogeneous
and special contemplative condition, into whose blend of musical and non-musical
thoughts there enters nothing which the “Hearer” can recognize as inattention, for
which, on the contrary, the concentrated musical “Listener” recognizes the lapses and
divagations whereof he complains. Moreover, in this kind of hearing the music there
really seem fewer intrusions from everyday life. Musical phrases, non-musical images and
emotions are all welded into the same musical day-dream, and the trains of thought are
necessarily harmonious with the music, for if they were conflicting, the music (which is
heard though not always listened to) would either drive them away or (as in the lapses of
the more musically attentive) cease to play any part. For these intermittently and imper-
fectly perceived sequences and combinations of sound do play a very important part in
these day-dreams. By their constancy, regularity and difference from anything else, they
make and enclose a kind of inner ambience in which these reveries live their segregated
and harmonious life.11

The original responses from the participants in Paget’s survey have been lost (or at
least have not been found). And even if they are recovered some day, those responses
reflect life in a musical world long swept away by war and a century of societal changes.
Nonetheless her research uncovered different modes of listening that do seem to stand
the test of time. To give an example from the first “dot.com boom” of the late 1990s and
early 2000s, there were two quite different strategies chosen to categorize popular songs
by the two most prominent internet startups working in that area. The company that
became Pandora employed what Paget would label as Listeners—music “geeks” who
knew technical musical terminology and could, in Paget’s terms, take in “all the relations
of sequences and combinations of sounds.” Their self-described “music genome project”
 318 child composers in the old conservatories

envisioned each song as a collection of distinct, definable features. By contrast, the com-
pany known as MoodLogic used ordinary music lovers—Paget’s Hearers. They rated songs
by assigning values (1 to 7) on thirty-two dimensions. The dimensions were nontechnical,
fuzzy, and interpreted in the context of a known genre. The demonstration webpage
shown below represents an early iteration of how this might appear to a music lover. One
would select a genre, here “Pop,” and then rate the song being heard (streamed over the
internet) by clicking along each named dimension. I was responsible for devising the
dimensions, including my favorite: “rounded, curvy . . . edgy, spiky.” That may sound
fanciful, but statistically we found that this dimension allowed ordinary music lovers to
distinguish for us Rock ballads and anthems (rounded, curvy) from songs in the genres of
Alternative Rock and Punk (edgy, spiky;
this was, of course, 1999).
Pandora still survives today.
MoodLogic was acquired by a larger cor-
poration whose strategy may have been
to eliminate a promising potential rival.
The MoodLogic approach was more dif-
ficult to perfect and required masses of
data that only today’s Google or Apple
could have aggregated (although
MoodLogic did at one time have 40,000
people rating songs). If perfected, that
approach would have allowed for a kind
of boundary-free travel through musical
Demonstration web page prepared for MoodLogic (ca. 1999)
space, connecting songs by diverse artists
in diverse genres that nevertheless shared similar emotional or socially determined quali-
ties. By 2003, MoodLogic had already been developed enough to offer user-defined
playlists that, for example, could transition gradually from David Bowie toward Etta James
over the course of two hours.
How does this relate to music education? The most successful class that I ever taught
was “The Genres of Popular Music, 1945–2000.” Using MoodLogic-like categories and
pirating the massive servers of Tower Records (bankrupt by 2006), the class actively
explored, categorized, and contemplated the many types of popular music and their inti-
mate connections with race, class, gender, business, and identity. For many white students
it was often the first time they had ever heard Quiet Storm (a 1990s radio format featuring
R&B for African-American adults), and for African American students it was often their
first experience with Old Timey Country (Appalachian, Folk-influenced music for rural
whites). The class was full of Hearers, in Paget’s terms. Instead of forcing them to fail as
Listeners (“In what key does the band play the chorus?”), the class allowed them to flour-
ish as Hearers (“Is Mahalia Jackson’s Gospel more like Al Green’s or Aretha Franklin’s?”).
 Chapter 22  learning old music  319

This was music technology operating on its home field, so to speak, not in the service of
drills or lessons derived from the world as it existed before recorded sound.

LISTENERS AND HEARERS, ARTISANS AND SCHOLARS—Few people went

to college in Davison’s time. College was for the children of wealthier families and it pre-
pared them to enter law, medicine, or the church. Davison’s own father, for example, was
a Harvard-trained physician. So the same old equation of upper class = college or univer-
sity, lower class = trade school or apprenticeship was only slightly modified when Davison
contrasted an “academic Music Department” and a conservatory. Paget, who moved in
much higher social circles than Davison, nevertheless avoided implying class distinctions.
She was a generation older than Davison but her thinking was more modern. Her catego-
ries centered on the nature of a person’s engagement with music. A poor person could be
a casual Hearer, or a rich person an attentive Listener as equally as the reverse. Aptitude
and inclination were the determining factors.
If, as Paget argues, there are different cognitive styles in experiencing music, then
music education cannot be a one-size-fits-all enterprise. For children who are born
Listeners, and who delight in perceiving and playing with “audible shapes,” we need
teachers who themselves have the skills and training to challenge such children and to
help them grow their musical imaginations. When Alma Deutscher’s father first contacted
me, he requested an introduction to a teacher in England who could teach her (age five)
to improvise in the manner of the old Naples conservatories. At the time I did not know of
such a one in the UK and so referred him to talented improvisors at the Schola Cantorum
in Basel, Switzerland. Through technology, Tobias Cramm was able to give lessons to
Alma via Skype video. Skype audio has many limitations, so to facilitate live back-and-
forth improvisation over the internet, their MIDI keyboards were connected through a
separate port. Inspired by their innovations, I found myself giving some introductory les-
sons to students as far away as New Zealand.
Prior to such technologies it was necessary to train teachers with every sort of expertise
that they might one day need. As an extreme but all too common case, future school band
directors are taught how to play and teach every instrument. The result is that a budding
oboe player gets her first instruction from a demonstrably bad oboe player (the band direc-
tor), even though a fabulous oboe player is already on the staff of the state university and,
in internet terms, is only milliseconds away. Musical expertise can be distributed in such
a way that the knowledge of real experts can flow to the people who need it most, allowing
local teachers to concentrate on managing their students’ progress.
There are, of course, wonderful music teachers in the United Kingdom, as there are
in every country. But the great majority focus on preparing children to be fast and accurate
executants and potential winners of contests in performance. Sadly, all but one child will
be a loser in every high-stakes competition. In the digital age, any student pianist can hear
ten fabulous performances on YouTube of any piece in the repertory. The normal student
will almost certainly never reach such a level. Why not couple a child’s growth in instru-
320 child composers in the old conservatories

mental execution with growth in the ability to improvise and compose? The products of
these latter skills will truly be the child’s own creations, things no one else could fashion
in just that way. In an age of digital reproduction, focusing exclusively on a student’s abil-
ity to produce mediocre performances of the standard repertory seems unnecessarily nar-
row. The old conservatories of Naples and Paris knew how to develop a child’s abilities as
engaged Listeners and creators of music. Poor orphan children made music in ways that
were creative, empowering, and enriching. As the young career of Alma Deutscher has
shown, giving children time-tested tools for fostering musical creativity can lead to amaz-
ing results.
At the same time we should not overlook Paget’s Hearers, who constitute the bulk of
the population. This is the group for whom the digital revolution has the most potential.
They often immerse themselves in a steady flow of music, creating what has been called
“the soundtrack of their lives.” It is as if they were the protagonist of a movie, and their
personal playlist is the underscoring. I remember attending a scholarly lecture at which a
distinguished European scientist reported on signal-processing research that would even-
tually lead to the MP3 format for audio files. Those of us in the audience were amazed by
the technical achievement, having no idea yet of the momentous impact that this technol-
ogy would have by enabling music to be streamed and downloaded over the internet.
Though the MP3 technology changed the world of music, it has had very little impact to
date on music education, especially for Hearers.
In some elementary and secondary schools, music education has goals little changed
since the Renaissance. Then, especially in German-speaking lands, the goal was to teach
children to read simple notation so that they could sing at sight hymns in church or at
home. Lutheran chorales served as a form of mass media whose messaging ranged from
pious devotion to militancy (Luther himself penned “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”). But
what does music literacy mean today? Is teaching the ability to read a simple melody in
quarter-notes a worthy goal in an age of Hip-Hop and Electronic Dance Music?
Another influence on music in schools is what we might term the “military-industrial
complex” of bands in support of sports teams. Remember that the Broadway musical The
Music Man (1957) was about a con man selling instruments to an Iowa town. Bands are
expensive, an expense usually borne by parents, and where there are large sums at play,
people have been known to misbehave. The influential American scholar Charles Seeger
(father of the folk singer Pete Seeger) wrote in the 1930s of kickbacks from musical instru-
ment manufacturers to band directors who would steer business in a certain firm’s direc-
tion. Bands may be part of a nostalgic Americana, but they produce music that few people
want to hear as entertainment (I write this reluctantly as a devotee of military band music,
having served as glockenspiel player in the 25th Infantry Division Band). Rather, most
bands exist to provide support to team sports. The power of revenue from collegiate sports
has corrupted entire universities, so it is not surprising that it can warp ideas about what is
in the best interests of student musicians.
 Chapter 22  learning old music  321

Digital technology, now pervasive, can afford teachers the opportunity to help stu-
dents learn about the musical world around them. Instead of artificial lessons designed by
a committee to foster multiculturalism (“Children, let’s sing a song from Burkina Faso”),
why not have children make an audible map of the world of music? Teachers can ask
simple but significant questions: What music do people in India prefer today? What is
traditional music like in southern Africa? These are real questions about the real world of
music that students can answer by searching the internet. Learning to search intelligently
and efficiently for specific kinds of music is a skill that will serve students well their whole
lives. And for lessons focusing on America, even a cursory knowledge of the 400 or so
genres of music popular in North America today will help students to become more aware
of the great diversity of men and women who inhabit this land. Music often serves as a
code for and marker of particular social groups, so children can learn something signifi-
cant about a group if they learn something about its music.
Older students could be asked to hear things inside a recording. They could create,
for instance, a slide show of all the instruments featured in Britten’s Young Person’s Guide
to the Orchestra, or of all the instruments that can be heard on the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper
album. The point is to develop knowledgeable, discerning Hearers through directed hear-
ing. Digital music is all around us, and students should be helped to explore treasures
beyond their current experience. Even without guidance they will still have, in Paget’s
terms, “emotional and imaginative responses to music,” just as even without an English
class they would come to engage with some form of the language. But those emotional
and imaginative responses could be so much richer and deeper with the help of a gifted
teacher leading the way. The further ability to stream movies in class, something nearly
impossible only a decade ago, opens up all sorts of avenues where students could evaluate
the role of music in creating emotional responses in audiences. In the process students
would learn something about their own responses.

COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT—Violet Paget was one of a handful of early schol-

ars who recognized that music takes place in the mind, that music psychology involves the
study of music cognition and musical modes of thinking. The musical mind is not, how-
ever, easy to study. As we listen to music, we draw on our memories of all the music we
have ever enjoyed. We employ general cognitive abilities to recognize musical patterns,
repetitions, and implications of how a piece might continue. We are sensitive to a compo-
sition’s progress through known schemas (“Oh, we’re in the middle of a cadence now”)
and we respond to general cues like music getting louder, slower, more strident, or less
active. All these things happen together and can change in fractions of a second.
The general public in North America first became aware of the cognitive side of
music when an enterprising southern governor, Zell Miller of Georgia, decreed in 1998
that every mother of a newborn child would receive a CD packed with classical music.
The program hoped to ensure that these young Georgians would not miss out on the
“Mozart effect.” The idea of a Mozart effect was partly the result of research that has been
322 child composers in the old conservatories

difficult to replicate, and partly the result of commercial promotion. The promise was that
listening to Mozart would improve a child’s performance on some kinds of standardized
tests. Musicians have always been dubious about the proposition that the reason to study
music is to do well in something else. Music is its own reward, a fact that people experi-
ence more strongly as they age. Yet a second generation of careful research is demonstrat-
ing that training in music does indeed improve a child’s performance in some nonmusic
tasks. Music training does, for example, help children understand spoken language more
clearly. Apparently the need for young musicians to distinguish between different notes
and rhythms helps them to refine their auditory system so that it is better able to detect
small differences in vowels and consonances.
A parent could try to monitor such research, hoping to put their child into the ideal
music program. But research related to music cognition appears almost daily. Somewhat
like research in health and nutrition, where each day someone announces a new dietary
suggestion, even though a balanced diet remains the sensible choice, research in music
cognition is best viewed as scientific confirmation of a “balanced diet” of musical activities
and lessons. Music training involving the whole child, meaning the child’s voice, fingers,
ears, and mind, is the best route to aid the child’s general development. For the orphans
in Naples, the maestros invented a banquet table of lessons and activities that would
immerse the children in a feast of music from dawn to dusk six days a week. Total immer-
sion of that kind will no doubt accelerate progress, but at a potentially high cost in terms
of what children will miss outside of music. So for most children a weekly lesson and a
daily helping of practice are sufficient to build up musical competency, at least in the early
years.

MUSIC EDUCATION IN THE DIGITAL AGE—This chapter has reviewed some

writings by Davison and Paget. Davison, who knew enough of the quality of instruction at
the Paris Conservatory to conclude that collegiate music departments would be incapable
of replicating it, was insistent that the serious study of music performance or composition
required the time and attention of study in a conservatory. And he foresaw that attempting
to do otherwise in an academic setting would ultimately lower standards. He was right and
what he foresaw came to pass. To get students with little or no preparation in music theory
or history to pass academic courses in those subjects, the material has to be watered down
to the point where it ceases to have much relation to the underlying art. Few graduates, for
instance, of two years of harmony courses at a decent college could successfully harmo-
nize a given melody or bass from the nineteenth century, and probably could not harmo-
nize even the Rule of the Octave correctly. I once peeked in on a large class in harmony
at one of North America’s larger university music departments. The teacher was droning
on about some abstract feature of a song by Schubert, and the students, bored to stupefac-
tion, were discreetly using their smartphones to send text messages about anything except
Schubert. These students were both talented and passionate about music, willing to dedi-
 Chapter 22  learning old music  323

cate their baccalaureate education to that art. Yet all were wasting their time. Listening to
someone talk about a craft does not lead to mastery of that craft.
As described in Chapter 15, the Society of American Archaeology convened a sympo-
sium (2005) on the subject of “ancient apprenticeship.” The Egyptologist Welleke
Wendrich stated in the abstract for her presentation, “The transfer of knowledge from
master to apprentice was done partly by demonstrating, but mostly by having the appren-
tice train the same movements over and over again, building up a physically engrained
knowledge of movements.” Similarly, Lisa B. Jørgenson, an expert in ancient textiles,
noted, “Craftsmanship is transmitted by familiarity, obtained by daily, close contact with
a master craftsman, as so-called tacit knowledge. Craftsmanship has a language of its own,
consisting of movements and experience.” Those bored students of Schubert’s harmony
received a lecture when what they needed was a master to guide them in practicing the
“movements” of Schubertian harmony “over and over again.” They would remember that
embodied knowledge for the rest of their lives; the lecture would soon be forgotten.
This was once self-evident in conservatories. Fétis, the conservatory professor men-
tioned in Chapter 9, wrote in 1823 about his handbook of marches harmoniques, cadences,
and partimenti.

In this short exposition I have presented all that a musician must know in order to become
skilful at harmonic realization, but it is a quality that his hands and his head must acquire:
it is the embodied habit [habitude] which makes one rapidly perceive and perform a har-
monization well suited to all the motifs of a bass. This habit is acquired only through hard
work. The best way to reach this goal is to realize many of the basses of good solfeggi, the
partimenti of Durante and Fenaroli, the Psalms of Marcello, the Duos and Trios of Clari
and Stefani, etc.12

Violet Paget reminded us that listeners are not all alike. Some delight in actively
engaging with the music, recognizing particular shapes and consciously attending to each
new turn of phrase. Those people were Paget’s Listeners. Her Hearers, by contrast, let
music flow over themselves in the service of creating moods: “Musical phrases, non-musi-
cal images and emotions are all welded into the same musical day-dream.” For both types
of listeners, digital technology opens up a number of new possibilites. Eager prodigies in
remote locations can connect with masters in urban centers. Lessons can be freely distrib-
uted worldwide. Casual listeners could take courses where they explore the musical digi-
sphere. What passes for music theory in colleges should probably be replaced by academic
courses in music cognition and the sociology of music. The craft component of music
theory should be taught as a craft, not as a pseudo-science with imaginary theories and
axioms. Given the institutional inertia that is pervasive in higher education, it may take
decades for instruction to catch up with the world in which students live. But knowing the
amazing level reached by conservatory students in the past may help us to see what might
 324 child composers in the old conservatories

be possible for young people in the future who want to learn the classical tradition the
classical way.

To demonstrate the breathtaking rate at which a talented, highly motivated child can
progress when the best of the old conservatory traditions are brought back to life, please
Vi deo 2 2 .1 view Video 22.1 in two parts, A and B. You will see brief vignettes of Alma Deutcher as
she realizes partimenti, improvises at the keyboard, has nonverbal improvised musical
conversations with Tobias Cramm, and participates as soloist in her own compositions.
The lessons studied were challenging, Alma put in many hours of practice, and yet, as the
videos show, successfully completing a hard lesson and interacting with adult musicians
can be tremendous fun. We see and hear a child composer following her own path, but
helped by similar paths laid down by the masters of the old conservatories.
 Appendix A

FOR FURT HER ST UDY

D us t y bo ok s i n a rch i v es can have real value for scholars and for performing musi-
cians, but perhaps not always the same books. Performers want manuscripts of lessons and
compositions that can be brought back to life. Scholars want documents and commentary
to help explain past human behaviors. So in this brief appendix I will organize supplemen-
tal materials by their imagined audiences, favoring items that are freely available on the
internet or commercially available through booksellers.

FOR CHILDREN — With an adult guide, young children might begin with the
handbook on partimenti by Giovanni Furno (1748–1837). His partimenti are very simple,
with each one illustrating a preceding lesson. All the rules (regole) are given clear explana-
tions and illustrations. A modern edition, with the original Italian text and an English
translation in parallel columns, can be found by searching for either

<Monuments of Partimenti> or <Google Sites Partimenti>.

325
326 child composers in the old conservatories

The site Monuments of Partimenti is the most comprehensive, but the Google-Sites
option contains a number of sources in handy PDF format. Work on these sites is ongoing,
but one or the other should generally be available.
A child who can realize the partimenti of Furno can then progress to the partimenti
of Fenaroli. His six books of progressive lessons begin very simply, though with figures
added to the basses. By Book 4 the figures are gone, much as training wheels leave a
bicycle once a child becomes a stable rider. Books 5 and 6 contain lessons of great diffi-
culty, likely too difficult for the young. A modern edition can be found at either website
mentioned above.
A sister website to Monuments of Partimenti is Monuments of Solfeggi, which resides
at the same location. The study of partimenti should be accompanied by a study of solfeggi.
Someone should play the bass while the child sings the melody. As to syllables, two practi-
cal options exist for nonspecialists. The child can sing la–la–la . . . for all the notes, or use
the Paris Conservatory method of singing do for any version of “C” (Cb C§ C#), re for any
version of “D”, and so forth through mi, fa, sol, la, si. The full method used at the Naples
conservatories, where all half-steps are mi–fa and one shifts between hexachords, is com-
plex and awaits further research by Nicholas Baragwanath. The worst method for Italian
solfeggi may be “movable do,” where do equals scale degree 1, re equals scale degree 2, and
so forth. In the Italian tradition, the sense of scale degrees and the choice of syllables for
local patterns of intervals were separate domains. This made sense because the music
modulated from key to key rapidly, and a sense of key could be lost in sequences. “Movable
do” was a nineteenth-century development intended for amateurs who sang music that
was simple, tended to remain in one key (e.g., Protestant hymns), and could be printed in
cipher notation by village presses (“Three Blind Mice” would be M R D . M R D . S FF
M . S FF M.). The full Neapolitan system of solfeggio had some features in common with
movable do, in that it could respond to significant shifts of key, but the focus was on objec-
tive local patterns of intervals, not subjective notions of a tonal center. An eighteenth-
century choirboy could solfège masses by Mozart and Palestrina with the same system,
whereas a child today who had learned movable do would have great difficulty trying to
force each moment of Palestrina’s music into a single major or minor key.
In conjunction with the above skills a young child can begin to learn to improvise
simple exemplars of the schemas shown in Appendix B or in the book Music in the Galant
Style (Oxford, 2007). Young students seem to take great pride in making their own pieces,
and simple schemas give them the requisite building blocks.

FOR YOUNGER TEENS — Having mastered Furno and the first four books of
Fenaroli, a serious young student should progress to the partimenti of Durante and Leo.
They too can be found at Monuments of Partimenti. In Durante’s partimenti, especially
the partimenti diminuiti, a student will find examples of how to elaborate the movimenti.
In Leo’s partimenti, the student will become sensitized to the implied counterpoint of
 Appendix A   for further study  327

upper voices with each other and with the bass. The partimenti of these great masters are
small artworks worthy of some care in their realization.
Hand in hand with partimenti and solfeggi, a precocious teen should undertake les-
sons in counterpoint. The subject of “harmony,” which was the modern university’s answer
to the question of what to teach unprepared students, is best avoided entirely. As the saying
goes in relation to the classical tradition, “Harmony is a fairy tale told about counterpoint.”
There are few modern texts that address counterpoint in a historically authentic way. The
Gradus ad Parnassum of Joseph Fux (Vienna, 1725) had great prestige in its day and was
known by later generations of composers, but it is not representative of what students
learned in the old conservatories, though Fux had a resurgence in the later nineteenth
century. Careful study of the examples in Fenaroli’s Regole (his Book 3) can serve as an
introduction to counterpoint, and the analysis of fugal solfeggi can be similarly informa-
tive. For the contemporary student, the greatest difficulty may lie in finding a qualified
teacher to evaluate completed lessons.

FOR OLDER TEENS AND COLLEGE STUDENTS — If one begins to learn how
to improvise and compose at a later age, one can still compensate for the lack of an early
start by carefully studying the secondary literature. For the tradition of partimenti, the
main text is:

The Art of Partimenti: History, Theory, and Practice, by Giorgio Sanguinetti (Oxford,
2012).

For the schemas of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century music, see:

Music in the Galant Style, by Robert Gjerdingen (Oxford, 2007).

For the link between eighteenth-century partimenti and training in counterpoint and
composition, an important recent volume is:

Counterpoint and Partimento: Methods of Teaching Composition in Late Eighteenth-

Century Naples, by Peter van Tour (Uppsala, 2015).

As mentioned, Nicholas Baragwanath’s book on the old tradition of solfeggi in Naples

is in press and expected early in 2020. And the first new textbook to integrate schemas and
partimenti into a practical college-level text is:

Harmony, Counterpoint, Partimenti: A New Method Inspired by Old Masters, by Job

IJzerman (Oxford, 2018).
328 child composers in the old conservatories

These are all twenty-first-century publications, indicating how recent is the rediscovery by
academicians of the once dominant tradition of educating future professional musicians.
In addition to these contemporary English-language sources, there are a number of
advanced nineteenth-century texts in French from the Paris Conservatory that, even if one
cannot read French, are so thickly illustrated with musical examples that one can get the
gist of the presentation from the music alone. Important sources available online are:

Traité d’accompagnement au piano, by Émile Durand (Paris: Leduc, 1892).

Cours complet d’harmonie, by Augustin Savard (Paris: Girod, 1860).

Cours d’harmonie, by François Bazin (Paris: Escudier, 1857).

87 Leçons d’harmonie, by Theodore Dubois (Paris: Heugel, 1891).

Traité de la fugue, by André Gedalge (Paris, 1901).

Solfèges d’Italie avec la basse chiffrée, ed. by Levesque and Bèche (Paris, 1772).

Solfèges du Conservatoire, ed. by Edouard Batiste (Paris, 1865).

FOR SCHOLARS — For the study of the Naples conservatories in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, the problems for research often involve a dearth of sources.
Little is known about the earliest masters, and few if any documents attest to their motiva-
tions, values, or strategies. That said, the importance of those conservatories was already
widely recognized by the later eighteenth century, and a number of important studies
compiled their history and mythology:

Apoteosi della musica del Regno di Napoli, by Giuseppe Sigismondo (MS, ca. 1820;
mod. ed. in Eng. and It., Rome, 2016).

Observations sur l’enseignement mutuel appliqué à la musique, et sur quelques abus

introduits dans cet art, précédées d’une notice sur les conservatoires de Naples, by
Emmanuel Imbimbo (Paris, 1821).

Lettera biografica intorno alla patria ed alla vita di Gio. Battista Pergolese, celebre
compositore di musica, by the Marquis of Villarosa (Naples, 1831).

Memorie dei compositori di musica del regno di Napoli, by the Marquis of Villarosa
(Naples, 1840).
 Appendix A   for further study  329

Cenno storico sulla scuola musicale de Napoli, by Francesco Florimo (Naples, 1869–
71).

Cenni storici sul Collegio di musica S. Pietro a Majella in Napoli, by Francesco

Florimo (Naples, 1873).

La scuola musicale di Napoli e i suoi conservatorii, by Francesco Florimo (Naples,

1880–1882).

Il Conservatorio di Sant’Onofrio a Capuana e quello di S.M. della Pietà dei Turchini,

by Salvatore di Giacomo (Naples, 1924).

Il Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesù Cristo e quello di Loreto, by Salvatore di Giacomo

(Naples, 1928).

With the Paris Conservatory, the problem may be too many sources. Letters, diaries,
biographies, autobiographies, newspaper reviews, treatises, dictionaries, government doc-
uments, and various public archives have preserved such a mountain of paper that one
scarcely knows where to begin. The Paris Conservatory itself felt the need to do some
stocktaking for the year 1900. It tasked the assistant secretary, Constant Pierre, to compile
a number of resources that are still valuable:

Le Conservatoire national de musique et de déclamation: Documents historiques et

administratifs, ed. Constant Pierre (Paris, 1900).

Basses et chants donnés aux examens et concours des classes d’harmonie et

d’accompagnement [du Conservatoire, 1827–1900], ed. Constant Pierre (Paris,
1900).

Sujets de fugue et thèmes d’improvisation donnés aux concours d’essai pour le Grand
Prix de Rome (1804–1900), ed. Constant Pierre (Paris, 1900).

More recently (2004), Yvette Isselin produced an index for conservatory manuscripts
at the National Archives in Paris that allows one to see all the works preserved for a given
student:
330 child composers in the old conservatories

Manuscrits musicaux du Conservatoire de musique de Paris (1819–1925), by Yvette

Isselin (Paris, 2004).

And Anne Bongrain has recently updated Pierre’s work to bring matters up to 1930:

Le Conservatoire national de musique et de déclamation: Documents historiques et

administratifs (1900–1930), ed. Anne Bongrain (Paris, 2012).

The bicentennial of this institution (1995) prompted the preparation of two collec-
tions of articles that provide a great deal of otherwise hard-to-find information:

Le Conservatoire national de Paris: Regards sur une institution et son histoire, ed.
Emmanuel Hondré (Paris, 1995).

Le Conservatoire de Paris: Des menus-plaisirs à la cité de la musique (1795–1995),

ed. Anne Bongrain, Yves Gérard (Paris, 1996).

Regarding the teaching of harmony and counterpoint at the Paris Conservatory, the
classic text is:

Die französische Kompositionslehre des 19. Jahrhunderts, by Renate Groth

(Wiesbaden: Steiner Verlag, 1983).

Groth provides several helpful charts that show the various “slots” given to professors of
composition, harmony, and counterpoint over the decades. One can see, for example, that
the several harmony texts cited here on page 328 were all connected in some way with the
lineage of François Bazin.

Finally, wonderful research databases have been developed by Peter van Tour:

The Uppsala Partimento Database <www2.musik.uu.se/UUPart>

The Uppsala Solfeggio Database <www2.musik.uu.se/UUSolf>

One can search for the lessons penned by a particular master or contained in a particular
manuscript or library. One can also search for all lessons that begin with a particular series
of notes or that have been classified with a given “Gj” number (a master list of lessons).
 Appendix B

MOV IMEN T I,
SCHEM A S, a nd E X EMPL A R S

Wor k i ng f rom m en ta l model s has been, since ancient times, the custom for
traditional artists. Below, from the Bargue plates discussed in Chapter 20, we see the mise
en trait and finished treatment of a male torso. The mental schemas underlying that par-
ticular mise en trait were methodically taught to students at the École des Beaux-Arts in
Paris, just as movimenti and marches harmoniques were taught to the apprentice musicians
at the old conservatories. Years of exposure to these carefully selected simplifications of
actual artworks or compositions helped students develop the memories and cognitive
structures necessary to master the complexities of adult artistic practice. Previous chapters
have, for the most part, highlighted only a handful of the many models taught in the con-
servatories of Europe. In what follows you will see three related but independent collec-
tions of such models, each stressing a different aspect of the same tradition, though origi-
nating in three different centuries.

331
332 child composers in the old conservatories

MOVIMENTI — As shown previously in Chapter 19, Example B.1 displays the mov-
imenti that Fenaroli often used when teaching counterpoint. The graph shown in Example

e x . B.1   Fenaroli, movimenti used in counterpoint training (Naples, 1790s)

 Appendix B  movimenti, schemas, and exemplars  333

B.2 locates the module of each movimento (e.g., “up a 3rd, down a step”) on a grid where
the horizontal axis represents the size of the first interval (e.g., “up a 3rd”), and the vertical
axis represents the second interval (e.g., “down a step”). The grid measures semitones or
half steps, so the formula “up a 3rd, down a step” includes, for instance, all three positions
in the purple quadrant labeled “1” (for movimento no. 1). That is, 3rds and steps each
come in two sizes, major and minor, with the ligatures illustrating how semitones 3 and 4
are two sizes of “up a 3rd” while −1 and −2 are two sizes of “down a step.”
Notice how sparse the graph looks. A teenager in Naples might spend a year or two
mastering how to set these movimenti in two or three voices, yet the graph makes apparent
how restricted and focused was Fenaroli’s selection. In addition to the numbered movi-
menti, the graph also marks “Sc” for ascending scales (reddish quadrant), and yet the
graph remains sparse. Like chess, the game of eighteenth-century movimenti allowed only
a restricted set of moves, moves a child could learn.

(
6
5 6 6

2
( 43
n
(1
d 2 4 2 2 Sc Sc
I 4 2 1 0 Sc
n
t 0 Ø
e
r
v
a
( -2-1 11 9
11 11
(1
1
1
l
( -3-4
(

3
3

( -5-6
7
5
-7 5
-7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
(
(
(

(
(
(

1 s t I n t e r va l

e x . B. 2   A
 graph of Fenaroli’s movimenti from Ex. B1, limited to intervals of a fifth or
smaller. Intervals are measured in semitones, so an ascending third could be
either +3 or +4 (minor or major). The green and lavender quadrants show
changes of direction ( down, up; up, down). The red and yellow quadrants
show two moves in the same direction, as in a scale.
 334 child composers in the old conservatories

The marches harmoniques of the Paris Conservatory took the movimenti of Naples as
classical models and points of departure. During the course of the nineteenth century,
however, the masters in Paris introduced new, more chromatic marches harmoniques that
began to fill in some of the open spaces in the graph. The story of that expansion would
take us beyond the scope of this short appendix, but perhaps two illustrations from the text
in keyboard harmony by Émile Durand (1882) will be sufficient to illustrate a later stage of
the process.
Vi deo B.1 Example B.3 (heard in Video B.1) shows lessons “J” and “K” (there were a dozen
more), intended to be realized at the keyboard as a student learned the sound and feel of
the many ways in which 4–3 suspensions fit into various marches harmoniques. Lesson “J”
sets a chromatic Romanesca, the very type that Fenaroli used in his teaching (see Chap.
10, p. 135). It is fully realized for two measures, after which only the partimento is given
and the student must continue by analogy and by studying the figures. After a double bar,
the lesson begins again with the realization in a different “position” (with D in the soprano
rather than G).

e x . B.3   Durand, marches harmoniques with 4–3 suspensions (Paris, 1882)

Lesson “J” shows us that Fenaroli’s small set of eleven movimenti were in many
respects idealizations. Fenaroli’s no. 4 (Ex. B.1) only presents descending perfect fourths,
not the diminished fourths (C–G#, F–C#) found in Fenaroli’s other basses or in Durand’s
marche harmonique. So actual eighteenth-century practice could be more chromatic
than what was initially taught to the youngest apprentices. Durand’s lesson “K,” for
instance, reflects a common chromatic practice of both the nineteenth and the later sev-
enteenth centuries. Whereas lesson “J” has a soprano part that descends the C-major
scale, lesson “K” has a soprano that descends the chromatic scale. Each module is identi-
cal (no major/minor variation), with a descending perfect fourth followed by an ascending
minor third (e.g., D–A–C§). Were this type of movimento placed on the grid of Example
B.2, its location at x = −5 and y = 3 would not have been taken by any of the basic Fenaroli
movimenti. It reaches out into new, more colorful space.
 Appendix B  movimenti, schemas, and exemplars  335

SCHEMAS — Movimenti served as cues to the improvisation and composition of

eighteenth-century music. By contrast, the schemas shown in Example B.4 are distilla-
tions of the experience of eighteenth-century musical phrases. If we liken the music of
Bach and Mozart to a kind of language, then these schemas are among the things most
commonly “said.” They were derived from a twenty-year study of thousands of composi-
tions, and confirmed as statistical facts through a sophisticated computer analysis of
Neapolitan solfeggi (work by James Symons for his dissertation at Northwestern University,
2017). One simple exemplar is shown for each schema. For the Romanesca schema,

romanesca Prinner

fonte Do-Re-Mi

Monte meyer

quiescenza ponte

fenaroli sol-fa-mi

indugio

e x . B. 4  Gjerdingen, schemas presented in Music in the Galant Style (Oxford, 2007)

 336 child composers in the old conservatories

Fenaroli’s movimento no. 4 would, when realized, be a perfectly good exemplar, as would
Pachelbel’s Canon or thousands of similar passages. The Romanesca schema itself is a
constellation of memories of related exemplars. The exemplar shown has many of the
schema’s central features, but the difficulty in illustrating graphically the roles played by
small melodic cues, motives, or ornaments means that a single exemplar will tend to over-
simplify the cognitive reality.
The schemas shown represent patterns used for themes, sequences, and passages lead-
ing to or from cadences. Cadences themselves, as utterances that articulate the musical
flow, are complex schemas that developed dozens of subtypes, the whole subject of which
is too technical for the present discussion. Suffice it to say that one can play the schemas
Vi deo B. 2 of Example B.4 one after the other (listen to them in Video B.2), and, allowing for the lack
of cadences or characteristic modulations, the result is, in terms of a language, like a series
of grammatically correct clauses bereft of a coherent discourse. An apprentice who learned
to realize simple movimenti as stylistically proper schemas still had to learn how to enchain
them into a coherent musical discourse. That art is sometimes called musical “form,” but
perhaps the closer analog would be to the arts of verbal narrative and rhetoric.

EXEMPLARS — People can learn music in many different ways, and different teach-
ers have developed different ways of helping their students. In performance training, some
teachers have students spend years on technical exercises, leaving repertory for later.
Others teach repertory from the outset, feeling that technique will develop from a student
surmounting the problems posed by real pieces. The conservatories of Naples taught har-
mony and composition through the realization of partimenti and the solution of contra-
puntal problems. The same general approach was taken in Paris, with a greater role given
to written realizations in four voices.
At the Moscow Conservatory, late in the nineteenth century, Anton Arensky taught
harmony through both partimenti and specific exemplars. In 1897 he published a collec-
tion of a thousand partimenti, including not only basses données and chants donnés but
also twenty-four exemplars in four voices. These exemplars, nos. 844–867 in his collection
(one in each major and minor key; see Ex. B.5), were labeled “Motives for Sequential
Modulation.” Arensky had been a student of Rimsky-Korsakov at the St. Petersburg
Conservatory. Another Rimsky student had said that Rimsky gave his students “Gebrauchs-
Formulas” (formulas of usage), and Arensky’s “Motives” may derive from Rimsky’s peda-
gogy. In any case, the student’s challenge was to play an exemplar as written and then
continue it in a sequence, either ascending or descending. Sequences can have different
intervals of transposition, and can be either diatonic, modulatory, strictly chromatic, or
some combinations of those options. So the exercise is far from simple. One is forced to
study the affordances of each exemplar, especially as they relate to possible continuations
Vi deo B.3 and transpositions. In Video B.3 you can hear my continuations of all twenty-four. I chose
somewhat arbitrarily to make half ascend and half descend, and at various intervals of
transposition. The result is but one solution out of the thousands that are possible. Arensky’s
 Appendix B  movimenti, schemas, and exemplars  337

method has all but vanished today, but the harmonic artistry of his students—Rachmaninoff,
Scriabin, Glière—suggests that his approach may still have real merit.

e x . B.5   Arensky, Motives for Sequential Modulation (Moscow, 1896)

338 child composers in the old conservatories

Arensky’s exemplars are not abstractions. They replicate the style of various real com-
posers. No. 848 reminds me of Schubert, no. 857 of Dvořák, no. 865 of Tchaikovsky. There
is no set of universally correct answers for these associations; the connections one draws
are subjective and depend on one’s experiences. For Arensky’s students, these exemplars
served not only as challenging problems in transposition but also as a kind of musical
chrestomathy. That archaic word refers to the collections of choice passages from litera-
ture that teachers of foreign languages once provided for their students. A well-chosen
phrase, for instance “All’s well that ends well,” can be very effective in a conversation, and
similarly the exemplars of Arenky gave his students “pre-fab” utterances to use in improvi-
sations and compositions.
Employing a range of lessons—from abstract movimenti to more realistic schemas to
actual exemplars—may be a good way not only of demonstrating how these different men-
tal constructs relate to each other, but also of allowing for students’ different styles of learn-
ing. These were the types of lessons given when learning to improvise and compose clas-
sical music really mattered. Today there are still students who are passionate about learning
the old skills. They want to be inside the tradition, not outside looking in. The materials
and methods outlined in this book may aid them in achieving their goals.
 No t es

Chapter 1. Introduction

1. Anonymous, Regole e statuti del conservatorio della Pietà (Naples: MS, Consultazione Napoli
5.5.4.\7., Naples Conservatory Library, 1746).

Chapter 2. Little Boys on Their Own

1. Domenico Cimarosa, Partimenti di Domenico Cimarosa per violino [sic] (Modena: Estense
Library, MS Gamma.L.9.26).
2. “Perfidia” (Rome: MS 283, Biblioteca de Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte, ca. 1740?).
3. Henri Busser, De Pelléas aux Indes galantes—De la flute au tambour (Paris: Fayard, 1955), 13.
4. Vincent Rolland, “Rendre les derniers devoirs en musique: rituels, chants, et pompe musi-
cale des cérémonies funèbres,” 2 vols., Ph.D. diss., L’Université Jean Monnet Saint-Étienne, 2015.
5. Henri Busser, De Pelléas, 24.
6. Henri Busser, De Pelléas, 31.
7. Charles Burney, The Present State of Music in France and Italy (London: 1771), entry for
Wednesday, October 31, 1770.

Chapter 3. Masters Take Up the Challenge

1. The valiant but flawed first attempt at a complete edition of Pasquini’s keyboard works (1960s)
should be avoided. The current edition, Bernardo Pasquini, Opere per tastiera, 8 vols., eds. Cera,
Carideo, Belotti (Rome: Il Levante, 2000– ), is far superior, and includes his rules, partimenti, par-
timenti for two keyboard players, and a variety of fully notated keyboard works.
2. Anonymous, Regole e statuti del conservatorio della Pietà (Naples: MS, Consultazione Napoli
5.5.4.\7., Naples Conservatory Library, 1746).
3. Fedele Fenaroli published his rules in 1775­—Regole musicali per i principianti di cembalo nel
sonar coi numeri e per i principianti di contrappunto (Naples, 1775)—but printed versions of his
manuscript lessons of partimenti, which became codified as his six books of progressively more dif-
ficult partimenti, only began to appear in the early nineteenth century, eventually resulting in doz-
ens of editions and numerous reprints.
4. Michael F. Robinson, “The Governors’ Minutes of the Conservatory S. Maria Di Loreto,
Naples,” R.M.A. Research Chronicle 10 (1972), 1–97.

339
340 notes to pages 49 –85

Chapter 4. Child Labor

1. Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (New York:, Doubleday, 1906), near the end of chapter 6.
2. See, for example, Eighteenth-Century Diaspora of Italian Music and Musicians, ed. Reinhard
Strohm (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001).
3. Daines Barrington, Barrington, Daines, “Account of a very remarkable young Musician,”
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 60 (1770) 54–64.
4. “A Musical Prodigy,” The Musical Courier (New York: Jan. 7, 1882), 2.

Chapter 5. Institutionalized Apprenticeship

1. Reproduced in, among several sources, Stewart Scrimshaw, Bricklaying in Modern Practice
(New York: Macmillan, 1920), 151–152.
2. Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (London: 1850), chap. 11.
3. From the Preface to the sixth edition, Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown’s Schooldays (Boston:
Ticknor and Fields, 1863), 2–3.
4. Michael F. Robinson, “The Governors’ Minutes of the Conservatory S. Maria Di Loreto,
Naples,” R.M.A. Research Chronicle 10 (1972), 1–97.
5. Anonymous, Regole e statuti del conservatorio della Pietà (Naples: MS, Consultazione Napoli
5.5.4.\7., Naples Conservatory Library, 1746).
6. Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation
(Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991), 14.
7. Lave and Wenger, Situated Learning, 53.

Chapter 6. Social Class

1. Archives de la ville de Montpellier: inventaires et documents publiés par les soins de l’admin-
stration municipale (Montpellier: Roumégous and Déhan, 1920), 54.
2. Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History
(New York: Basic Books, 1984), 107–144.
3. Archives de la ville de Montpellier, 54.
4. Archives de la ville de Montpellier, 67–68.

Chapter 7. Schemas, Exemplars, and the Treasure Trove

of Memory

1. Pietro [or Pier] Maria Cecchini, Frutti delle moderne comedie et avisi a chi le recita (Padova,
1628), trans. and excerpted in Actors on Acting, ed. Toby Cole and Helen Chinoy, 2d ed. (New York:
Crown, 1954), 50–52.
2. Niccolò Barbieri, “What Is a Buffoon?” trans. from La supplica (1634), in Actors on Acting,
53.
3. Fedele Fenaroli, Regole musicali per i principianti di cembalo (Naples: 1775), 7.
 notes to pages 86 –131  341

4. Riepel’s main publications from the 1750s onward have been collected in a modern edi-
tion—Joseph Riepel, Anfangsgründe zur musikalischen Setzkunst: Sämtliche Schriften zur
Musiktheorie, ed. Thomas Emmerig, 2 vols. (Vienna: Böhlau, 1996)., chap. 2, p. 46.
5. H. F. M. Langlé, Traité de la basse sous le chant, précédé de toutes les regles de la composition
(Paris: Maderman, 1799), 214ff.
6. Northwestern University, Music Library, MS 205 (dated June 1904).
7. Luigi Cherubini, Marches d’harmonie pratiquées dans la composition produisant les suites
régulières, consonnances, et de dissonnances (Paris, 1851), 1.

Chapter 8. Solfeggi and the Acquisition of Style

1. Emanuele Imbimbo, Observations sur l’enseignement mutuel appliqué à la musique, et sur

quelques abus introduits dans cet art, précédées d’une notice sur les conservatoires de Naples, par
Emmanuel Imbimbo, . . . (Paris: F. Didot, 1821).
2. For the Prinner schema, see Music in the Galant Style (New York: Oxford, 2007) chap. 3.
3. Anonymous [student of Sala?], Recueil de fugues MS 8223 (Paris: Bibliotèque nationale de
France), online at <gallica.bnf.fr>.
4. Antonio Salieri, Solfeggio fugato a 2 voci (Basel: Universitätsbibliothek, Geigy-Hagenbach
collection MS 1645, ca. 1820?).

Chapter 9. Partimenti and the Power of Improvisation

1. Alexandre Choron, with V. Fiocchi, Principes d’accompagnement des écoles d’Italie (Paris,
1804); Alexandre Choron, Principes de composition des écoles d’Italie (Paris, 1808).
2. Gj 244, “Perfidia” (Rome: MS 283, Biblioteca de Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte, ca. 1740?); Gj
230, “Partimenti,” MS.It.125 (Rome: Library of the Abbey of San Nilo in Grottaferrata).
3. The Gallipoli Manuscript (ca. 1750), ed. by Peter Van Tour (Visby: Wessmans Musikförlag,
2017), Monuments of Partimento Realizations‚ vol. 1.
4. François-Joseph Fétis, Méthode élémentaire et abrégée d’harmonie et d’accompagnement
(Paris, 1823).
5. Victor Dourlen, Traité d’harmonie contenant un cours complet tel qu’il est enseigné au
Conservatoire de Paris (Paris, 1834).
6. Maestro Vignali, uncatalogued manuscript of partimenti (Evanston, IL: Northwestern Univ.
Library, source: Bologna?, 1789).

Chapter 10. Counterpoint and Collocation

1. S. A. Leonard, The Doctrine of Correctness in English Usage, 1700–1800 (Madison,

WI: 1929), 13 (Studies in Language and Literature, no. 25).
2. Joseph Priestley, Rudiments of English Grammar; adapted to the use of schools. With observa-
tions on style (London: R. Griffiths, 1761), ix–x.
3. John M. Sinclair, Corpus, Concordance, Collocation (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1991).
342 notes to pages 132–176

4. Albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1960).
5. Francesco Durante, copied by Giovanni Salini, Principi di contropunto della schuola del
Signore Don Francesco Durante (Liège: Conservatoire Royal de Musique, Bibliothèque, source ca.
1760).
6. Vincenzo Lavigna, Studi di contrapunto disposti a due (Milan: Milan Conservatory Library,
Noseda collection, Th.c-117a–g), 117a, fol. 9v.

Chapter 11. Intavolature and the Techniques of

Instruments

1. Gaetano Greco, Partimenti de Greco Gaetano (Naples: Naples Conservatory Library, MS

45.1.65), 158.
2. Greco’s intavolatura is titled “Ballo della torcia,” the name of another repeating bass. A Ballo
della torcia used the Romanesca schema played twice, once ending “open,” then ending “closed.”
The same schema comprises only the second part of “Greensleaves.” Many stock bass patterns of
the seventeenth century shared the same repertory of sequential schemes used in various combina-
tions. The “Folia” scheme (see Chap. 2), for instance, uses the Romanesca schema for part of its
second half.
3. Leonardo Leo, 14 Toccate per cembalo (Naples: Naples Conservatory Library, MS 22.1.26-3),
fol. 1vff.
4. Carlo Cotumacci, Intavolature sciolte (Naples: Naples Conservatory Library, MS 45.1.25),
no. 7.
5. Fedele Fenaroli, Intavolature per il cembalo (Milan: Milan Conservatory Library, Noseda
collection, H 12), fol. 17vff.

Chapter 12. Dispositions and the Mastery of Complexity

1. Giovanni Furno, Movimenti del Partimenti del Maestro Furno (Rome: Santa Cecilia Library,
MS A.Ms.3084).
2. Bonifazio Asioli, Il maestro di composizione, ossia Seguito al Trattato d’armonia (Milan:
1836).
3. Vincenzo Lavigna, Fuge per Cembalo del Signore Don Fedele Fenaroli, Ad uso di me,
Vincenzo Lavigna, 29 Nov., 1794 (Milan: Milan Conservatory Library, Noseda collection, R 40).
4. Stanislao Mattei, Practica d’accompagnamento sopra bassi numerati e contrappunti a piu
voci sulla scala ascendente, e discendente maggiore, e minore con diverse fughe a quattro, e 8
(Bologna: 1824).
5. Augustin Savard, Études d’harmonie partique: partimenti progressifs, basses, et chants donnés
pour leploi des différents accords et des divers artifices harmoniques (Paris: Girod, 1885).
6. Stanislao Mattei, Bassi numerati per accompagnare, ridotti ad intavolatura a 2 violini e viola
(Milan: 1850).
7. Nicola Fago, Partimenti del celebre Maestro Tarantino per uso di me Giuseppe Mirone[?]
(Naples: Naples Conservatory Library, MS 46.1.51), no. 29.
 notes to pages 177–206  343

Chapter 13. Little Masters, Real Masters, and

Masterpieces

1. Anonymous, Statuti del nobil Colleggio dell’arte della lana di Roma (Rome: Fratelli Salvioni,
1759).
2. Jocelyn O. Dunlop, English Apprenticeship and Child Labour (London: T. Fisher Unwin,
1912).
3. Michael F. Robinson, “The Governors’ Minutes of the Conservatory S. Maria Di Loreto,
Naples,” R.M.A. Research Chronicle 10 (1972), 1–97.
4. Emanuele Imbimbo, Observations sur l’enseignement mutuel appliqué à la musique, et sur
quelques abus introduits dans cet art, précédées d’une notice sur les conservatoires de Naples, par
Emmanuel Imbimbo, . . . (Paris: F. Didot, 1821).
5. A photograph of the original can be seen in an unnumbered section of plates included at the
back of Alberto Ghislanzoni’s Gaspare Spontini: Studio storico-critico (Rome: dell’Ateneo, 1951).
6. Frederick Aquilina, Benigno Zerafa (1726–1804) and the Neapolitan Galant Style
(Woodbridge, UK: Boydell & Brewer, 2016).

Chapter 14. The Contest Piece as a Probe of Memory

1. Charles Lenepveu, Cent leçons d’harmonie (Paris: Henry Lemoine, 1898), no. 27.
2. Fedele Fenaroli, Regole musicali per i principianti di cembalo nel sonar coi numeri e per i
principianti di contrappunto (Naples, 1775).
3. Stanislao Mattei, Bassi numerati per accompagnare, ridotti ad intavolatura a 2 violini e viola
(Milan: 1850).
4. Luigi Cherubini, Marches d’harmonie pratiquées dans la composition produisant les suites
régulières, consonnances, et de dissonnances (Paris, 1851).
5. François Bazin, Cour d’harmonie théorique et pratique (Paris: Léon Escudier, 1857).
6. Bazin, Cour d’harmonie, p. 59.
7. Victor Dourlen, Traité d’harmonie: contenant un cours complet tel qu’il est enseigné au
Conservatoire de Paris (Paris: Prilipp, 1838).
8. Charles-Simon Catel, Traité d’harmonie . . . adopté par le Conservatoire pur servir à l’étude
dans cet établissement (Paris: Paris Conservatory, 1802).
9. Maurice Emmanuel, Pelléas et Mélisande de Claude Debussy: étude historique et critique,
analyse musicale (Paris: P. Mellottée, 1926).
10. Friedrich Kalkbrenner, Traité d’harmonie du pianiste, . . . Op. 185 (Paris: 1848).
11. Hippolyte Colet, Partimenti ou traité spécial de l’accompagnement pratique au piano (Paris,
1846).
12. David’s complete winning entry can be found reprinted toward the end of Bazin’s Cour
d’harmonie.
13. Albert Lavignac, Collection complète des leçons d’harmonie, 6 vols. (Paris: Henry Lemoine,
1899), no. 152.
344 notes to pages 207–243

Chapter 15. Affordance and the Musical Habitus

1. Émile Durand, Traité complet d’harmonie théorique et pratique (Paris: Leduc, 1881), following
the two prefaces (pages are unnumbered).
2. Durand, Traité complet, first preface.
3. Émile Durand, Réalisations des leçons du Cours d’harmonie (Paris: Leduc, 1882), no. 362.
4. Émile Durand, Classe d’harmonie de M. Émile Durand: Leçons choisies (Evanston, IL:
Northwestern University, Music Library MSS 661, 1872–1882).
5. Welleke Wendrich, Archaeology and Apprenticeship: Body Knowledge, Identity, and
Communities of Practice (Tucson: University of Arazona Press, 2013).
6. Lise Bender Jørgensen, “Epistemology and Ontology of Craftsmanship,” talk given at the
roundtable luncheon “Ancient Apprenticeship,” 70th Annual Meeting of the Society for American
Archaeology, Salt Lake City, 31 March 2005.
7. Siegfried Wilhelm Dehn, Theoretisch-praktische Harmonielehre mit angefügten
Generalbassbeispielen (Berlin: Wilhelm Thome, 1840), p. 4 fn.
8. American Psychological Association, Coalition for Psychology in Schools and Education,
“Top 20 Principles from Psychology for PreK–12 Teaching and Learning. Retrieved from http://www.
apa.org/ed/schools/cpse/top-twenty-principles.pdf.
9. David L. Schwartz, “The Sociology of Habit: The Perspective of Pierre Bourdieu,” OTJR:
Occupation, Participation, and Health 22 (2002): 61S–69S.

Chapter 16. Predicting Creativity within a Tradition

1. Émile Durand, Classe d’harmonie de M. Émile Durand: Leçons choisies (Evanston, IL:
Northwestern University, Music Library MSS 661, 1872–1882).
2. Anonymous, [no title] MS Esposti B.128 (Venice: Biblioteca del Conservatorio di Musica
Benedetto Marcello), p. 2.

Chapter 17. A Sickly Young Woman Speaks Elegant

Harmony to One of the Immortals

1. Jacques de la Presle, ed., Soixante leçons d’harmonie (Paris: Alphonse Leduc, ca. 1945).
2. André Chouraqui, Ton étoile et ta croix (Paris: Éditions du Rocher, 1998).
3. Chouraqui, Ton étoile et ta croix, p. 17.
4. Paule Maurice and Pierre Lantier, Complément du Traité d’harmonie de, commentaires et
nombreux textes destinés à faciliter l’assimilation à l’écriture moderne: Debussy, Ravel, Strawinsky,
etc. (Paris: Gallet, 1950).
5. Maurice and Lantier, Complément, p. 151f.
6. Alexandre Choron, Collection des pièces de musique religieuse (Paris: 1820).
7. André Gedalge, Traité de la fugue. 1re partie: De la fugue d’école (Paris: Enoch, 1901).
Beginning in perhaps the 1960s, various authors began inserting an accent into Gedalge’s family
name (i.e., Gédalge). I can find no contemporary evidence to support that change, though there
may be other factors of which I am unaware.
 notes to pages 243–278  345

8. Hippolyte Colet, Partimenti ou traité spécial de l’accompagnement pratique au piano (Paris,

1846), p. 342ff.
9. Hippolyte Colet, Conseils à mes élèves ou traité élémentaire d’harmonie servant d’introduction
à la Panharmonie musicale (Paris: Q. Legouix, 1847).

Chapter 18. The Oval and Cross

1. Ernst Gombrich, Art and Illusion (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1960).
2. Gombrich, Art and Illusion, p. 168.
3, Gombrich, Art and Illusion. p. 171.
4. Odoardo Fialetti, Il vero modo et ordine per dissegnar tutte le parti et membra del corpo
humano (Venice, 1608).
5. Johann Daniel Preissler, Die durch Theorie erfundene Practic, oder Gründlich-verfasste
Reguln, derer man sich als einer Anleitung zu berühmter Künstlere Zeichen-Wercken bestens bedienen
kan (Nürnberg, 1722).
6. Crispijn [van] de Passe, La prima-[quinta] parte della luce del dipingere et disegnare, . . .
(Amsterdam: 1643–1644), frontispiece.

Chapter 19. A Framework for Elaboration

1. Émile Durand, Traité complet d’harmonie théorique et pratique (Paris: Leduc, 1881), following
the two prefaces (pages are unnumbered), § 800.
2. Fedele Fenaroli, Studj, o sia Scuola di contrapunto del Signor Don Fedele Fenaroli per uso de
Ferdinando Sebastiani (Naples: Naples Conservatory Library, MS 22.1.23), pp. 4–5.
3. Niccolò Zingarelli, Studio di contrappunto fatto sotto la direzione de Maestro Zingarelli,
(Modena: Estense Library, Mus.F.161).), fols. 8–9.
4. Giovanni Battista (Padre) Martini, Per il basso continuo (Bologna: Civico Museo Bibliografico
Musicale MS H.H.78).
5. Hippolyte Colet, Partimenti ou traité spécial de l’accompagnement pratique au piano (Paris,
1846).
6. Auguste Panseron, Traité de l’harmonie pratique et des modulations, en trois parties, à l’usage
des pianistes (Paris: Brandus, 1855).
7. Vincenzo Lavigna, Studi di contrapunto (Milan: Milan Conservatory Library, Noseda collec-
tion, Th.c-117a–g).

Chapter 20. The Beaux-Arts Framework

1. Bernard-Romain Julien, Cours praeparatoire (Paris: 1864).

2. Charles Bargue and Jean-Léon Gérôme, Cours de dessin (Paris: Goupil, 1866–1871).
3. Alexis Lemaistre, L’École des beaux-arts dessinée et racontée par un élève . . . (Paris: Firmin-
Didot, 1889).
346 notes to pages 279 –324

4. Alexis Lemaistre, L’École, p. 13.

5. Alexis Lemaistre, L’École, p. 28.
6. Alexis Lemaistre, L’École, p. 27.
7. Alexis Lemaistre, L’École, p. 39.
8. Alexis Lemaistre, L’École, p. 117.
9. Alexis Lemaistre, L’École, p. 117–118.
10. Alexis Lemaistre, L’École, p. 195.
11. Alexis Lemaistre, L’École, p. 196.

Chapter 21. A Beaux-Arts Framework for Music

1. Édouard Charton and Paul Laffitte, eds. Dictionnaire des professions ou Guide pour le choix
d’un état (Paris: Hachette, 1880), s.v. “Conservatoire national de musique et de déclamation.”
2. François Bazin, Cour d’harmonie théorique et pratique (Paris: Léon Escudier, 1857), 327.
3. Bazin, Cour d’harmonie, 328.
4. Édouard (or Edmé) Deldevez, Fenaroli, 1732, Cours complet d’harmonie et de haute compo-
sition réalisé par E. M. E. Deldevez (Paris: Richault, 1872).
5. Emmanuele Guarnaccia, Metodo nuovamente riformato de’ partimenti de Maestro Fedele
Fenaroli (Milan: Ricordi, 1855).
6. André Gedalge, Traité de la fugue. 1re partie: De la fugue d’école (Paris: Enoch, 1904).
7. René Lenormand, Étude sur l’harmonie moderne (Paris: Monde musicale, 1912).
8. Arbie Orenstein, Ravel: Man and Musician (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1968).

Chapter 22. Learning Old Music in a New Age of Digital

Reproduction

1. Archibald T. Davison, Music Education in America: What Is Wrong with It? What Shall We
Do about It? (New York: Harper, 1926).
2. Davison, Music Education in America, p. vii.
3. Davison, Music Education in America, pp. 136–139.
4. Davison, Music Education in America, pp. 140–142.
5. Davison, Music Education in America, p. 142.
6. Davison, Music Education in America, p. 142.
7. Vernon Lee, [pseud. of Violet Paget], Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy, 2nd ed.
(London: Fisher Unwin, 1907).
8. Lee, Studies, pp. xxvi–xxvii.
9. Vernon Lee, Music and Its Lovers: An Empirical Study of Emotional and Imaginative
Responses to Music (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1932).
10. Lee, Music and Its Lovers, p. 31.
11. Lee, Music and Its Lovers, p. 32.
12. François-Joseph Fétis, Méthode élémentaire et abrégée d’harmonie et d’accompagnement
(Paris, 1823).
 Index of Na mes

Anderson, Leroy 114 David, Samuel 202–204, 209

Andrews, Julie 99 Davison, Archibald T. 313–15, 319, 322
Aprile, Giuseppe 108–9 [ah-PREE-lay] Debussy, Claude 5, 29, 209, 223–25, 227–29, 231, 240,
Aquilina, Frederick 185–86 260, 290–91, 295, 314
Arensky, Anton 336–38 Dehn, Siegfried 217–18
Arezzo, Guido of 100 [ah-RETZ-owe] Delerue, Georges 32
Asioli, Bonifazio 162–64, 193 [ah-zee-OWE-lee] Deldevez, Édouard 296, 298–302
Azopardi, Francesco 43–44 [ah-dzoh-PAR-dee] Deutscher, Alma 4, 319–20
Bach, Johann S. 5, 7, 13, 22–23, 28, 37, 40, 63, 106–7, Deutscher, Guy 3–4
117, 120, 147, 150, 153, 165, 173, 201, 242, 302, 315, Dickens, Charles 20, 61–62
335 Disney, Walt 83
Baragwanath, Nicholas 103, 109, 326–27 Dol, Joseph 133, 138
Barbieri, Niccolò 85 Dourlen, Victor 123–24, 198–99
Bargue, Charles 276, 278–79, 281, 331 Dubois, Théodore 29, 142, 204, 309, 328 [due-BWAH]
Bazille, Auguste 200, 225, 290 Dunlop, Jocelyn 181–82
Bazin, François 172, 186, 197–98, 209, 272, 296–97, 328, Durand, Émile 209–213, 215–16, 223–25, 260, 290, 296,
330 328, 334
Beethoven, Ludwig van 28, 44, 96, 109, 131, 195, 208, Durante, Francesco 22–23, 33–34, 37–38, 40–41, 43–44,
308–9 88–89, 105, 107, 116–17, 119, 133–34, 138, 148, 153,
Bériot, Charles de 309 160, 164, 182, 187–88, 260, 271, 304, 323, 326
Bongrain, Anne 330 [du-RAHN-tay]
Bouguereau, William-A. 252 Dussaut, Robert 246–48 [dew-SEW]
Boulanger, Nadia 302 Dvořák, Antonin 338
Boulez, Pierre, 240 Edison, Thomas 312
Bourdieu, Pierre 219 Enescu, Georges 302
Boyer, Colette 28, 234–35, 237–40, 246–48 Fago, Nicola 39, 120, 173–75 [FAH-go]
Britten, Benjamin 321 Falkenberg, Georges 216
Burney, Charles 28, 46 Faraday, Michael 78–79
Busser, Henri 19, 24–32, 43, 45, 143, 204–5, 234, 236–40, Fauré, Gabriel 142, 239, 242, 248, 286
246, 248 [Boo-SAIR] Fenaroli, Fedele 33, 40–41, 43–44, 66, 85–86, 88–93,
Cafaro, Pasquale 6, 94 [KAFF-ah-row] 108–9, 115–19, 122, 125, 133–35, 155–58, 164–66,
Catel, Charles 198–201 193–95, 205, 209, 225, 229, 231, 260–61, 266,
Catherine the Great of Russia 20 268–72, 298–200, 302, 316, 323, 326–27, 332–36
Cecchini, Pietro M. 85 [che-KEY-nee] [fen-ah-ROLE-ee]
Charles I of Naples 20 Fétis, François-J. 121, 323 [FAY-tee]
Cherubini, Luigi 96–97, 167, 195–97, 265, 284–85, 304 Fiocchi, Vincenzo 43, 116 [fee-OAK-ee]
[Kay-rou-BEE-nee] Fleming, Renée 232
Chomsky, Noam 136 Florimo, Francesco 329
Choron, Alexandre 42–46, 116, 199, 241–42, 298 Franck, César 29, 56–57, 142–43, 243
[SHORE-own] Furno, Giovanni 87, 89, 160–62, 165–66, 325–26
Christina, Queen 33–34, 36–37, 148 Fux, Joseph 327 [FOOKS]
Cimarosa, Domenico 19–25, 30, 32, 93, 108, 158, 184, Galeotti, Cesarino 55–57 [gah-lay-OH-tee]
225 [chee-mah-ROSE-ah] Gaviniés, Pierre 227
Colet, Hippolyte 201, 243–245, 265, 300 [co-LAY] Gedalge, André 96, 142, 243, 296, 302–5, , 307–8, 328
Comerre, Léon 287 [zheh-DALZH]
Corelli, Arcangelo 34, 44, 148 Gérard, Yves 330
Cotumacci, Carlo 138, 153–55, 160 [co-too-MAHCH-ee] Gérôme, Jean-L. 278, 281
Cramm, Tobias 4, 319, 324 Giacomo, Salvatore di 329
Darnton, Robert 74 Glière, Reinhold 337
D’Aubigny, Julie 78 Gluck, Christoph 140

347
348 child composers in the old conservatories

Gombrich, Ernst 251–52, 255–56 Pergolesi, Giovanni B. 52, 54, 105–6, 108, 187–89
Gounod, Charles 30, 240 [pair-go-LAY-zee]
Greco, Gaetano 148, 187–88 Picasso 249, 277–78
Groth, Renate 330 Piccinni, Niccolò 140, 184 [pee-CHEEN-ee]
Guiraud, Ernest 29, 302 Pierné, Gabriel 223–25, 227
Gustavus Adolphus 33 Pierre, Constant 209, 323
Hambro, Leonid 208 Piffaretti, Florintin 216 [peef-ah-RET-ee]
Handel, Georg 5, 22, 37, 40, 107, 117, 120, 150, 173, Ployer, Barbara 224
Hanks, William F. 70–71 Preissler, Johann D. 253–56, 277
Haydn, Joseph 20, 140, 155, 157, 163 Priestley, Joseph 130
Hillemacher, Lucien 216 Rachmaninoff, Sergei 147, 337
Holmes, Sherlock 91–93 Ravel, Maurice 5, 96, 234–35, 239–40, 243, 296, 302,
Hondré, Emmanuel 330 306–309
Honegger, Arthur 302 Reber, Henri 240, 309
Hughes, Thomas 62 Rembrandt 256–57
IJzerman, Job 327 [EYE-zer-mahn] Riepel, Joseph 93–96, 105, 135, 266 [REEP-ul]
Imbimbo, Emanuele 183, 328 Rimsky-Korsakov, Nicolai 160, 240, 336
Isselin, Yvette 329–30 Robinson, Michael F. 45–46, 64
Jørgenson, Lisa B. 217–18, 323 Roland-Manuel, Alexis 309
Julien, Bernard 277–77 Rollin, Vincent 26
Kalkbrenner, Friedrich 200–201, 204 Sabatini, Nicola 43–45,
Kunc, Aloÿs 25—26, 28 Sacchini, Antonio 182–83, 197 [sah-KEEN-ee]
Lamaistre, Alexis 279–81, 283–84, 287 Saint-Saëns, Camille 56, 209, 216
Langlé, Honoré 94–96 Sala, Nicola 42–42, 120, 119–24, 184, 205, 316
Lantier, Pierre 240–43 Salieri, Antonio 109–11, 266
La Presle, Jacque de 233–34 Salini, Giovanni 132–33, 136–41
Lave, Jean 70–71 Sanguinetti, Giorgio 327
Lavigna, Vincenzo 134–35, 164–66, 268–73 [lah- Sarti, Giuseppi 167, 265
VEEN-ya] Savard, Augustin 171–74, 192, 328
Lavignac, Albert 204–205 Scarlatti, Domenico 22–23, 117, 148, 150, 201
Lee, Vernon [see Paget, Violet] Schmitt, Florent 302
Lefèvre, Gustave 28–29 Schubert, Franz 322–23, 338
Lemoine, Léon 216 Schumann, Clara 78, 167
Lenepveu, Charles 142, 192, 196–97, 204 Schwartz, David L. 213
Lenormand, René 306–309 Scriabin, Alexander 337
Leo, Leonardo 16, 39, 41–45, 103–104, 120, 123, 133, Sigismondo, Giuseppe 328 [sih-gis-MOAN-doh]
148–53, 189, 316, 326 [LAY-oh] Sinclair, John M. 131–32, 167, 173
Leonard, S. A. 130 Sinclair, Upton 50–51
Leopold II of Austria 18 Seeger, Charles 320
Lord, Albert 127 Selman, Richard 60
Marnat, Marcel 309 Spontini, Gaspare 184–85, 218 [spon-TEEN-ee]
Martini, Padre 43–44, 116, 166–67, 169, 173, 195, 242, Stokes, Thomas 60
264–65 Stravinsky, Igor 227, 240, 249
Mattei, Stanislao 166–73, 194–95, 197, 205, 296 Symons, James 335
[mah-TEY] Tchaikovsky, Peter 240, 338
Maurice, Paule 240–43 Van de Passe 257
Michelangelo 179 Van Eyck, Jan 145
Milhaud, Darius 302–303 Van Gogh, Vincent 278
Miller, Zell 321 Van Tour, Peter 123, 327
Mozart, Wolfgang 4, 6–7, 13, 16, 20–21, 28, 39, 54, 56, Venturini, Carlo 137
64, 93, 95, 109, 120, 140, 150, 155, 162–65, 224, Verdi, Giuseppe 136, 164, 268
226, 321–22, 326, 335 Veronese, Paolo 255–56
Pachelbel, Johann 22, 116, 134, 148, 336 Vignali, Gabriele? 125–28 [veen-YAHL-ee]
Paget, Violet 316–17, 319, 321–23 Villarosa, Marquis de 328
Paladilhe, Émile 231–32 Voltaire 78
Palestrina, 241–43, 326 Wagner, Richard 167, 182
Panseron, Auguste 266–67, 300 Wendrich, Welleke 217, 323
Parrish, Graydon 279 Wenger, Étienne 70–71
Parry, Milman 132 Ysaÿe, Eugène 56–57 [ee-SAH-ee]
Pasquini, Bernardo 34–38, 150 [pas-QUEEN-ee] Zerafa, Benigno 185–87 [tzair-AHF-ah]
Perez, Davide 107–108 Zingarelli, Niccolò 261–63 [tzing-gah-RELL-ee]
 Ta ble of Topics by Ch a p t er

Chapter 1. Introduction

Orphans and conservatories in Naples 9

The core curriculum 14

Chapter 2. Little Boys on Their Own

Cimarosa as a boy in Naples 19

Partimenti from his notebook 22
Solving puzzle partimenti 23
Busser at the maîtrise in Toulouse 24
His daily schedule 25
Improvised fauxbourdon 26
Busser in Paris 28
Busser and Jaeger write fugues 30

Chapter 3. Masters Take Up the Challenge

Queen Christina and her court 33

Pasquini’s rules and partimenti 35
Durante’s “diminished” partimenti 37
Leo’s contrapuntal partimenti 39
Fenaroli’s six books 40
Choron and the French revival of the Italian School 42
School administration in Naples 45

Chapter 4. Child Labor

Children working for their family 50

Children working in mines and factories 51
Work in the conservatories 52
Processions and uniforms 53
Prodigies 54

349
350 music in the galant style

Chapter 5. Institutionalized Apprenticeship

Apprenticeship and indenture 59

The Inns of Court 60
David Copperfield and Tom Brown’s Schooldays 61
The Naples conservatories 63
Rules of the Loreto 64
Selecting music masters 66
Daily life at the Pietà 67
Situated learning 70

Chapter 6. Social Class

Class and the “estates” 73

The Academy of Music in Montpellier 75
The orphanage of Montepellier 76
The high status but low class of musicians 77
Universities excluded artisans 78

Chapter 7. Schemas, Exemplars, and the Treasure Trove

of Memory

Pixar explains human memory 83

Cadences 85
Rule of the Octave 88
Suspensions 88
Sequences 90
More complex schemas 90
Was there awareness of schemas? 94
Gedalge says to avoid a hackneyed schema 96
Cherubini’s editor speaks about “ready-made phrases” 97

Chapter 8. Solfeggi and the Acquisition of Style

Syllables as a path to music literacy 99

The Guidonian hand 100
Hexachords 101
Eighteenth-century Italian solfeggio 102
Steps and leaps 103
Duets 105
Advanced solfeggi 108
 Table of Topics by Chapter  351

Chapter 9. Partimenti and the Power of Improvisation

A musical thread leading out of the labyrinth 113

Partimenti as lead sheets 114
Fenaroli’s Book 1, Number 1 115
Fenaroli’s Bk. 1, No. 1 realized by Fiocchi 116
A student realization from the Gallipoli manuscript 117
An authentic realization of a Fago partimento 120
A realization of a Sala partimento by Fétis 121
Partimento fugues 122
A fugal partimento by Sala 123
An annotated partimento 125

Chapter 10. Counterpoint and Collocation

The problem of fitting melodies together 129

Approaches to grammar 130
John Sinclair and Albert Lord 131
Open-choice principle vs. the Idiom principle 132
Counterpoint in two voices 133
Fenaroli’s teaching methods 134
A solfeggio as a counterpoint lesson 136
Salini’s four counterpoints to one partimento 138
Counterpoint in three voices 140
Fugue 141
Joséphine Boulay, blind contrapuntist 142

Chapter 11. Intavolature and the Techniques of

Instruments

Voices and instruments all sounding together 145

Intavolature as teaching pieces 146
Intavolature by Greco 148
Intavolature by Leo 148
Intavolature by Cotumacci 153
Intavolature by Fenaroli 155
Intavolature as transcriptions of ensemble music 157

Chapter 12. Dispositions and the Mastery of Complexity

Dealing with complexity in music 159

Dispositions by Furno 160
352 music in the galant style

Dispositions by Asioli 162

Dispositions by Lavigna 163
Dispositions by Mattei 166
A disposition by Savard 171
Two related basses by Mattei 172
A three-voice disposition of a bass by Fago 173

Chapter 13. Little Masters, Real Masters, and

Masterpieces

Is a copy of a masterwork also great art? 179

Rules of for becoming a member of a guild 180
An old meaning of a masterpiece 181
Choosing masters for the conservatories 182
“Little masters” 183
Spontini’s test in fugue 184
Masterpieces as qualifying compositions 185
Zerafa and Pergolesi demonstrate their skills 186

Chapter 14. The Contest Piece as a Probe of Memory

The magic of memory retrieval 191

Harmony and counterpoint contexts 192
A given bass by Lenepveu 192
Fenaroli’s models for rising bass lines 193
Mattei and rising bass lines 195
Cherubini and rising bass lines 196
Lenepveu realization of his bass 196
Bazin on marches harmoniques 197
Catel, Dourlen, and their marches harmoniques 198
Kalkbrenner on preluding using schemas 200
Colet and his text Partimenti (1846) 201
The harmony contest of 1854 and Samuel David 202
Lavignac and a puzzling chant donné 204

Chapter 15. Affordance and the Musical Habitus

Knowing how to engage with objects in the world 207

Children engaging with a world of music 208
Durand’s treatise on harmony 209
The harmony contest of 1877—four winners 210
The transfer of knowledge in apprenticeships 216
 Table of Topics by Chapter  353

Principles for teaching and learning 218

Bourdieu’s concept of the habitus 219

Chapter 16. Predicting Creativity within a Tradition

Conservatories were constantly judging students 221

Debussy does harmony 223
Debussy and Pierné do the same assignment 224
The Indugio schema 227
An entrance-examination for harmony 228
“Lesson composed by A. de Bussy” 229
Paladilhe does a scaletta 231

Chapter 17. A Sickly Young Woman Speaks Elegant

Harmony to One of the Immortals

Single-sex harmony classes 233

Colette Boyer attends the Paris Conservatory 234
A given bass by Henri Busser 236
Boyer’s realization of Busser’s bass 237
Busser’s realization of Busser’s bass 239
Music theory and Paule Maurice 240
Palestrina and composition with intervals 241
A chorale by Maurice and Lantier 242
Colet’s rules for harmony contests 244
Boyer and Dussaut realize the same melody 246

Chapter 18. The Oval and Cross

Ernst Gombrich and the oval-and-cross schema 251

Preissler and his schemas for drawing 253
Great artists and schematic sketching 255

Chapter 19. A Framework for Elaboration

Training in the embroidery of melodies 260

Fenaroli’s movimenti as frameworks 261
Zingarelli shows how to embellish movimenti 262
Embellished basses 264
Embellishing counterpoint 266
354 music in the galant style

Lavigna’s counterpoint lessons 268

Chapter 20. The Beaux-Arts Framework

The Institute of France and the Academies 275

The École des Beaux-Arts 276
Drawing manuals 277
A Course in Drawing by Bargue and Gérôme 278
Schema – Mise en trait – Verisimiltude 279
A student’s life at the École 279
The contests at the École 283
Cherubini’s instructions for the harmony contest 285
The “Death of Timophanes” 285

Chapter 21. A Beaux-Arts Framework for Music

The Paris Conservatory as an institution 290

The regulations of the Paris Conservatory 290
Bazin’s approach to harmonizing a melody 296
Deldevez’s “analytic study” of Fenaroli 298
Gedalge on fugue 302
Lenormand on Ravel 306
From sketch to draft to realization 310

Chapter 22. Learning Old Music in a New Age of Digital

Reproduction

Technology and the consumption of music 311

A jukebox in the sky 312
Davison’s doubts about music in the academy 313
A letter from an American in Paris 315
Paget’s Music and Its Lovers 316
Listeners, hearers, artisans, and scholars 319
Music and cognitive development 321
Music education in the digital age 322
The musical growth of Alma Deutscher 324

Appendix A. For Further Study

Resources for children 325

 Table of Topics by Chapter  355

Resources for younger teens 326

Resources for older teens and college students 327
Resources for scholars 328

Appendix B. Movimenti, Schemas, and Exemplars

Fenaroli’s movimenti and a graph of intervals 332

Some basic schemas of the eighteenth century 335
Arensky’s motives for sequential modulation 336
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356 music in the galant style