Channels, Spring 2017

27 Channels • 2017 • Volume 1 • Number 2 Page EXAMPLE 2 Règle de l’octave according to François Campion (Thomas Christensen, “The Règle de l’Octave in Thorough-Bass Theory and Practice,” Acta musicologica 64, fasc. 2 (July–December 1992), 91, http://www.jstor.org/stable/932911. ) Despite the benefits of this system of partimento pedagogy, it had a few shortcomings, such as the extended amount of time and effort required to learn composition through this method. Michele Ruta who wrote about Italian partimento tradition in the late nineteenth, wondered why the great Italian teachers, who thoroughly understood theory, declined to teach theory explicitly to their students. Instead, the teachers relied on partimento, which was governed by “rules not connected by any logical thread” and took “the tireless work of many years to master.” 20 He suggests that the masters may not have deemed their students capable of understanding the theory of harmony “through a more rational method” or that they could not articulate a consistent theory “owing to insufficient literary studies.” 21 Finally, and tellingly, Ruta “[suspects] too that those masters of harmony would attribute such an importance to the figured bass, without explaining those principles, in order to be, for as long as possible, the only oracles able to interpret those enigmatic figures.” 22 Though the reason is not entirely certain, it could be that Neapolitan teachers, perhaps out of adherence to tradition or love for a “secret knowledge”, intentionally withheld from their students certain concepts of theory found in the figured bass. It also seems that if Neapolitan teachers did not themselves have any deficiency in theoretical understanding, they did seem to have very dim views of their students’ capabilities of theoretical understanding. For example, Fenaroli recommended that instructors teach and demonstrate voice-leading principles or else “a long and boring discussion would result, that would be inevitably too confusing for the beginners’ mind.” 23 Proficiency with partimento seemed to be viewed as a somewhat esoteric treasure handed down through generations and only attainable after years of grueling study in the conservatories, culminating in private lessons with one of the elite Neapolitan masters, possessors of this great partimento tradition. 20. Michele Ruta, Storia Critica , 135-40, quoted in Sanguinetti, The Art of Partimento , 97. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. Fenaroli, Regole (1775), 10-11, quoted in Sanguinetti, The Art of Partimento , 116.