Studies in historical improvisation : from Cantare super librum to Partimenti / edited by Massimiliano Guido.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Guido, Massimiliano, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Improvisation (Music)--History.

Improvisation (Music).

History.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xvi, 219 pages : music ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, 2017.

Summary:

In recent years, scholars and musicians have become increasingly interested in the revival of musical improvisation as it was known in the Renaissance and Baroque periods. This historically informed practice is now supplanting the late Romantic view of improvised music as a rhapsodic endeavour - a musical blossoming out of the capricious genius of the player - that dominated throughout the twentieth century. In the Renaissance and Baroque eras, composing in the mind (alla mente) had an important didactic function. For several categories of musicians, the teaching of counterpoint happened almost entirely through practice on their own instruments. This volume offers the first systematic exploration of the close relationship among improvisation, music theory and practical musicianship from late Renaissance into the Baroque era. It is not a historical survey per se, but rather aims to re-establish the importance of such a combination as a pedagogical tool for a better understanding of the musical idioms of these periods. The authors are concerned with the transferral of historical practices to the modern classroom, discussing new ways of revitalising the study and appreciation of early music. The relevance and utility of such an improvisation-based approach also changes our understanding of the balance between theoretical and practical sources in the primary literature, as well as the concept of music theory itself.

Contents:

The improvisatory moment / Thomas Christensen

Musical invention, rhetorical loci, and the art of memory / Stefano Lorenzetti

Climbing the stairs of the memory palace : gestures at the keyboard for a flexible mind / Massimiliano Guido

Toward a stylistic history of Cantare super librum / Philippe Canguilhem

Contrapunto and fabordón : practices of extempore polyphony in Renaissance Spain / Giuseppe Fiorentino

Discovering the practice of improvised counterpoint / Jean-Yves Haymoz

Composing at the keyboard : Banchieri and Spiridion, two complementary methods / Edoardo Bellotti

Partimento teaching according to Francesco Durante, investigated through the earliest manuscript sources / Peter van Tour

Partimento and incomplete notations in eighteenth-century keyboard music / Giorgio Sanguinetti

Teaching theory through improvisation / Peter Schubert

Learning tonal counterpoint through keyboard improvsation in the twenty-first century / Michael Callahan.

Notes:

"An Ashgate book".

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781472473271

1472473272

OCLC:

949987918

Publisher Number:

99971817232