The gap between theory (education) and performance (practice) often still exists, but has increasingly become the subject of lively discussion in recent decades. How can the various aspects of musicians’ training and their later teaching and professional practice be better aligned? There are many possible paths to take, and obviously there have always been countless examples of good practices, visionary teachers and innovative institutions that perfectly sense this gap and try to close it in their own way. But it cannot be denied that the publication of Robert Gjerdingen's Music in the Galant Style (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007) – and in its slipstream the rediscovery of partimento and related historical pedagogical approaches among a wider audience – has created a strong momentum. Many examples demonstrate how a historically inspired approach can be a relevant way to connect theory and practice today. The glue is often formed by a combination of creativity, improvisation, variation and recomposition. It is precisely at this intersection that the hybrid conference ‘Musicianship in Development’ could be situated. For the organizers, Ewald Demeyere (Koninklijk Conservatorium Antwerpen) and Peter van Tour (Örebro universitet), the main goal was ‘to highlight how eighteenth-century musicians combined performance practice with creative skills such as improvisation, variation and re-composition of older models’ (www.ap-arts.be/en/event/musicianship-development (10 July 2024)). The conference consisted of a mixture of video and live presentations, workshops and lessons, all given by leading experts in the broad field of eighteenth-century practical (performance) skills.

In this report I only discuss the presentations, because the underlying ideas of the contributors can be explained in a structured way. The live lessons were at least as relevant given the intent of the conference, but were still designed as experiences for those present, both voluntary ‘students’ and the audience. Some teachers approached the live lessons as a practical elaboration or demonstration of what was substantively covered in their papers: Claire Roberts (Hochschule der Künste Bern), ‘Making Harmonies Sing: Melodic Improvisation over Bass Patterns’, and Tobias Cramm (independent scholar, Basel), ‘Furno's Breve Metodo (1817): Practical Approaches to a Small Universe of Interweaving Patterns’. Other colleagues focused on a different facet of their pedagogical practice, where connections with their other work were not, of course, completely excluded: Peter van Tour, ‘Using Partimenti as Models for Free Improvisation: A Bolognese Perspective’, and Ewald Demeyere, who focused on Fenaroli's Libro Terzo (‘Playing with Textures’) and Mattei's Versetti. Jeroen Malaise (Koninklijk Conservatorium Antwerpen) gave a workshop on ‘Developing a Personal Improvisational Language at the Keyboard through Historical Sources’, in which he also demonstrated part of his own approach to improvisation, inspired by historical pedagogy.

When teachers wish to work with historical sources in their lessons, (at least) two crucial questions inevitably arise: (1) ‘what learning goals do I have in mind for a specific group of students?’ and (2) ‘which (historical) sources and material will I use in my lessons in order to achieve these goals?’. During the conference it became clear that some colleagues start from specific learning objectives and from there gather their historically inspired material, often drawing from different sources. Other colleagues work exactly the other way around: from a specific source they look at which learning objectives can be determined, which are therefore adapted or in a certain sense ‘limited’ by the choice of the chosen material in question. Still others seem to assume a fluid interaction between the two poles. In what follows I will bundle the presentations according to these fundamental starting-points.

A first example of a more generic approach to historical source material in contemporary teaching practice is Chloé De Domenico's (Sorbonne Université). In ‘Partimento Practice and Galant Schemata as Pedagogical Tools in Harmony Classes (classes d’écriture) in French Conservatories’ she initially sketched the typical curriculum, and especially the courses on writing skills: there is a very strong focus on four-voice harmony (using both given basses and given soprano parts), there is no separate course on counterpoint, the programme lasts for five years and students are expected to write in different historical styles. As an example of the general approach, De Domenico exhaustively demonstrated which steps and thought processes the students should follow for realizing a given melody (chant donné). Although the approach is very clear and gradual, many students face fundamental problems in these lessons. In brief, the problems are: no connection between aural skills and writing, no genuine understanding of the tonal language, no recognition of patterns (such as sequences) nor of musical structures (phrases, cadences) and a lack of creative skills. These observations have led De Domenico to the crucial question that underpinned her presentation: ‘how can partimento (and schemata) practice be applied?’. Taking a more advanced harmony exercise (with given bass, basse donné) as an example, De Domenico showed how a different approach – inspired by some familiar schemata (such as Prinner or Fonte) and easy regole from Furno and Durante – could lead to a completely different level of understanding. This new way of looking at harmony exercises would be helpful for realizing given melodies as well, as De Domenico exemplified with two chants donnés. By recognizing typical voice-leading motions in the upper voice, and relating them to schemata and partimento-based patterns and sequences, students would learn to think in longer (sub)phrases, instead of looking note by note.

Besides the fundamental change in theoretical framework, De Domenico proposed a completely different didactic perspective. Harmony classes should contain musical and practical components: singing, aural training by reproduction, inventing variations, keyboard practice and integration of pieces from instrumental lessons. Specific historical (partimento) sources could be very helpful in that respect, such as Durante's partimenti diminuiti or different disposizioni from maestros like Furno. Because of time limitations, some fundamental questions were left open: about (non-)flexibility in texture or number of voices, or about the stylistic range that could or should be covered. In any case, the integrated approach that De Domenico presented seemed to be a very convincing way to cover the problems that she had initially observed in her classes.

While De Domenico's teaching environment consists of (pre-)professional musicians and performers, the pedagogical challenges for Olga Sánchez-Kisielewska (University of Chicago) seem greater: she teaches music theory and musicianship to non-professional musicians. There is a wide diversity in relative proficiency as performers and familiarity with the repertoire, and no unified basis in music-theoretical training. The only prerequisite is that students know some fundamentals (ability to read music, key signatures and intervals). Instead of building her courses from the viewpoint of ‘know-what’ (which is a general preoccupation in most modern curricula), she has chosen a different angle, based on ‘know-how’: ‘A Historically Inspired Approach to Musicianship Skills for First-Year College Students’. Not only is this paradigm shift fundamental, but Sánchez-Kisielewska's pedagogical choices deviate from more traditional approaches and fit with current trends. These include diversifying the repertoire, decentring harmony as the focus point and reducing the number of technical requirements. Music theory, keyboard skills and aural training are integrated into one single course, with the whole programme being spread over three years.

In every course, Sánchez-Kisielewska focuses on two central topics, which she connects to different sub-components and which almost always lead to a large final creative assignment. For instance, one of the main subjects of Harmony and Voice Leading I is figured bass. Sánchez-Kisielewska discusses different shorthand systems, binary form, baroque dance rhythms and some specific cadential progressions. With the acquired skills and tools, students take part in the ‘sarabande project’ at the end of the course. Through the study of some prototypes and learning from several exemplars, and by adding dance rhythms to easy and typical contrapuntal progressions (‘smooth moves’, as Sánchez-Kisielewska calls them), students evolve step by step towards the final goal: writing their own sarabande. As is the case with subsequent ‘chorale’, ‘minuet’ and ‘free’ projects, stylistic purity is not always neatly reached, and some voice-leading problems seem to be hard to avoid. But these criteria are not the paramount goals. Rather, the aim is to encourage students to apply some of the skills they have learned in their own creative output, accepting stylistic flexibility and personal musical preferences. To refer to Sánchez-Kisielewska's general starting-point: students know ‘how’ to apply what they have learned, maybe better than ‘what’ they are exactly doing. After all, this pedagogical choice connects with the eighteenth-century spirit of teaching, in which practical application surpasses fully conscious theoretical knowledge. There is a reason why many partimento sources contain much more music than text (if any at all).

Similarly to Sánchez-Kisielewska's perspective, Yves Senden (Koninklijk Conservatorium Antwerpen) stresses the eighteenth-century mindset: learning by doing, or even better, learning how to do. In his course on tonal improvisation, Senden starts off by letting students play and analyse specific repertoire, such as one of Bach's pieces for solo violin. Through an inductive approach, regole are derived from knowing and understanding the chosen music. These regole are then translated into concrete guidelines for both improvisation and (style) composition, and apply largely to the horizontal component of the improvisations, allowing students to arrive at a more organized whole. Instead of performing merely a string of notes, students understand much better the logic behind the language, and are aware of how to put the ‘Lego building-blocks’ together. Obviously, for other specific stylistic aspects, Senden implicitly leans on the knowledge that students acquire through their playing and analysis of particular works. A concrete example is the Prelude from Bach's Partita No. 3, bwv1006, which served as the model for students to make their own prelude in the same style. While the original is in 3/4, Senden made the students write theirs in 4/4, in order to avoid too much copy-and-paste. For the Gavotte from the same partita, students were asked to compose a piece based on the same gesture: two times four bars, after which some Fortspinnung should follow, based on the regole they have seen, such as a tonic or dominant Prinner.

One of the strongest aspects of Senden's presentation was the fact that two students were exemplifying the process and playing their own creations. It was obvious that they were proud of what they had achieved, which is probably more important than stylistic purity. Indeed, some of the schemata were quite loosely interpreted and realized, and imitating Bach is for almost every musician a daunting challenge. But when the main attention goes on learning ‘how’ instead of knowing ‘what’, the didactic method that Senden proposed seemed absolutely convincing. The focus on playing, varying, creating, reinterpreting and performing clearly points to an eighteenth-century mentality, and is probably more rewarding for the students – at least at the beginning stage of their professional career – than a more nineteenth-century-inspired theoretical approach would be.

In the presentations discussed so far, the lessons described have consisted of various musical activities. In addition to playing music, (re)composition and writing are also an important part of the output. In the following contributions the emphasis was almost exclusively on the executive aspect. In her video presentation Yi-heng Yang (The Juilliard School) zoomed in on the creative aspect in music education: ‘Pathways to Creativity: Integrating Partimento and Historical Improvisation at a Modern Conservatory’. Yang almost exclusively teaches performance-related subjects: piano, fortepiano, improvisation and historical performance. The way in which she integrates and enhances creativity in these highly practical lessons is clearly indebted to a partimento-based approach. As a first step, her students would learn different sequences, cadences and moti del basso, followed by the realization of relatively easy partimenti by Fenaroli, which serve as a means to explore different types of realization, and at the same time as flexible models for further improvisation. Yang demonstrated how fruitful a historically inspired teaching method can be, especially when the didactic tools are well chosen, with specific learning goals in mind. And these goals by no means interfere with other ambitions and objectives that ‘modern’ players might have in mind. Indeed, the possible cross-fertilization may lead to a higher level of musicality, either implicitly or explicitly.

In his performance and concert practice, Korneel Bernolet (Koninklijk Conservatorium Antwerpen) always looks for the rhetorical possibilities of the music being performed. An aspect that plays a major role for him is ‘The Art of (Not) Repeating’, the title of his presentation. For Bernolet, repetition is a rhetorical device that gives the performer the opportunity to build conscious communication with the audience. The fundamental question is how this repetition can or should be carried out, and to what extent we can still structurally speak of a ‘repetition’. As a historical point of departure, Bernolet chose a passage from C. P. E. Bach's Versuch über die wahre Art das Klavier zu spielen (two parts, Berlin: Christian Friedrich Henning, 1753; Berlin: Georg Ludewig Winter, 1762) in which the composer asserts that playing varied repetitions is a practical skill, and that performers should not write out their ornaments or variations. Bernolet has incorporated this attitude into his pedagogical practice: he teaches his students a self-reflective method, moving from intuition to training based on examples and finally to free, ‘improvisational’, playing. The historical examples that he uses include Bach's own Sonatas with Varied Reprises, the ‘doubles’ in keyboard suites by, for example, d'Anglebert, diminution practice in arias by Lully and Handel, written-out decorations in the English suites of J. S. Bach and variation sets.

Bernolet works through five categories: (1) variation technique as intrinsic to musicality (through the narrative aspect of performance, one can influence the rhetoric); (2) instant embellishments, indicated by signs and symbols in the score; (3) spontaneous melodic embellishments, such as changing the direction of melodies or switching material in repeated harmonic progressions; (4) playing with texture; and (5) structural changes at the grammatical level. To teach this last option, Bernolet integrates historical pedagogical tools into his lessons: the rule of the octave, schemata and partimento. By offering different variants, elaborations and combinations, Bernolet gives his students various options that they can eventually use in a live performance. To illustrate the working method and final sounding results, he showed some examples from his teaching and own performance practice: the Allegro from Mozart's Sonata in G major, k283, the Allegro from Haydn's Sonata in E flat major hXVI:49, the Allegretto assai moderato from Benda's Sonata No. 4 in F major (Sei sonate per il Cembalo solo (1757)), and finally a live performance by Bernolet himself of the Adagio from Haydn's Keyboard Concerto in F major hXVIII:3.

While Yang and Bernolet's pedagogical approach largely starts from the individual student, Nicola Canzano (Michigan State University and The Juilliard School) and Nathan Mondry (The Juilliard School) took us on a stimulating journey that goes one step further. In ‘Historical Improvisation with Two Keyboards: Pedagogy and Performance’ they not only pleased the audience with their musical dialogues, they organized their talk in the same entertaining manner. From the very beginning it was clear that the required level of stylistic improvisation, not to speak of aural skills and technical ability, needed be relatively high, but Canzano and Mondry also explained how students could grow step by step towards joint historical improvisation at two harpsichords. Cadences should be strong and clear, in order to ensure that the other player knows when a phrase is finished and he or she can take over. Cadences are related to phrase structure through the concept of interpunctuation. Canzano and Mondry distinguish between colons (soprano or tenor cadence in the bass) and periods (involving typical cadential bass progressions such as 4̂–5̂–1̂). These relate to one of the first stages in their approach: students should first learn to play short phrases consisting of four or five chords and ending with either a weak(er) or strong(er) cadence. The preferred succession, at least initially, of (sub)phrases would be short–short–long, a phrase-structural idiom that obviously connects to specific types of cadential articulation. Through the focus on such relatively short phrases, students can train their memories: specific chord progressions, formulas, patterns and sequences come back regularly, which is of great support when memorizing melodies that are rooted in them. Splitting up the bass lines found in partimenti is a very valuable activity, helping the students to grasp short phrases ending with a cadence.

Extending these basic phrases to fully fledged (though relatively small) musical forms could happen in several ways: techniques like prolongation or Fortspinnung are ideal tools through which to stretch phrases, but the main structural device is modulation. Canzano and Mondry stick to the most convenient modulations: to the dominant, to the relative key or to the subdominant region. The order in which these modulations appear may be agreed upon in advance, but normally the dominant key comes first. However, the final step before reaching the level of being able to improvise ‘real’ music jointly is to add stylistically appropriate motives, rhythms and melodies. This best happens within a strict framework: ‘less freedom is easier’, as Canzano and Mondry stated. To demonstrate this final phase, they jointly improvised a rondeau: key, musical form, metre and typical rhythms were predetermined, after which a beautiful baroque dance with intense (and sometimes funny) dialogues between the two harpsichord players was performed.

Although we often associate partimento with keyboard practice, or at least with a pedagogical approach in which the keyboard plays a role – see most presentations discussed so far – Peter van Tour (Örebro universitet) explored a different, vocal approach. On the one hand, this is inspired by the linear quality of the different voices: the partimento repertoire is largely based on contrapuntal principles, especially when it comes to the most common patterns, imitative techniques and dissonance treatment. On the other hand, few teachers today have the opportunity to work individually at the keyboard with each student. A vocal method, which could involve an entire class group, is a good compromise between the historical source material, the historical pedagogical context and contemporary circumstances and learning objectives.

To demonstrate his systematic approach, van Tour opened with Pergolesi's Solfeggio No. 16, one of his three-part solfeggi. The construction of the bass line is based on recognizable patterns and models, often two bars long: cadences and movimenti del basso. The elaborate upper voices reveal a very vocal linear style. And it is precisely from these starting-points that van Tour took the audience through a step-by-step construction of a long pedagogical process, beautifully performed live by several students from the Koninklijk Conservatorium Antwerpen. The group was divided into sopranos, altos and basses, the latter almost always singing the given bass line, though sometimes being invited to participate in the contrapuntal fabric in the upper voices. In a first phase, van Tour works around relatively simple lines above a pedal note in the bass, expressed through figures. Sopranos and altos first sing separately, then together, and finally the parts are exchanged. From this basis, van Tour starts to vary: first, rhythm is added (via letter notation: w(hole), h(alf) and q(uarter) notes (semibreve, minim, crotchet)), then the lines are extended and the first dissonances appear. The second step is to practise some standard chords, referred to as vertical sounds above a long bass note. From the third step onwards, van Tour works with reference to original sources (Durante, Palmerini). Dissonances – their preparation and respective resolutions – are treated. Slowly but surely the complexity is increased, with the bass in cadences also being varied and filled in, which again leads to new, interesting options in the upper voices. Palmerini's last examples go somewhat further: they begin with a movimento del basso and end with a cadence. Various suspensions are added in the upper voices, both in minor and major keys. The fourth and fifth stages focus on sequences. Here, too, van Tour returns to historical source material (Palermini, Martini), with dissonant suspensions being a permanent ingredient.

Vocal performance of these relatively complex small partimenti is not for beginners, but is certainly a realistic end goal after a fairly lengthy pedagogical process. As possible next steps, van Tour pointed out the possibilities of combining different parts of lines from the different parts, so that the melodic quality of each voice can be further increased. He also emphasized the possibilities of exchanging voices, including the bass, and of combining playing and singing. In this way, a keyboard instrument is no longer necessary to learn the language and contrapuntal principles of the partimento repertoire, and everyone in a (larger) class group can be actively involved.

As previously indicated, a number of colleagues focused their attention almost exclusively on one specific source. They each have their reasons why starting from a well-defined basis works best for them when teaching. In any case, the resulting learning objectives are inevitably highly dependent on the chosen perspective. This does not necessarily mean, though, that pedagogical opportunities have to be sacrificed. The speakers discussed below provided compelling examples to the contrary.

Nicoleta Paraschivescu (Musik-Akademie Basel) zoomed in on some peculiar partimento manuscripts to demonstrate how ‘musicianship in development’ could be interpreted literally, within a specific historical framework. Her point of departure was Giovanni Paisiello's Regole (1782), in which she had searched for pedagogical elements. To place this source in a broader context, Paraschivescu started off with a manuscript copy of Francesco Durante's Regole per imparar di sonare il Cembalo made by a priest called Don Giustino de’ Santi in 1754. Both the title-page and some added notes clarify that de’ Santi must have made his copy of Durante's Regole for personal use, and for educating members of his family. The pedagogical aim can be seen through several features, such as a specific fingering for the rule of the octave and the figures that sometimes refer to imitation or to particular melodic lines. Noting that Paisiello took lessons with Durante during the last year of the great master's life (1684–1755), Paraschivescu pointed out some interesting pedagogical similarities and differences between the ‘regole’ sections of the two sources. For instance, both Durante and Paisiello put the 5–6 and 7–6 sequences directly after their demonstration of the rule of the octave, a decision that is by no means standard in similar partimento sources.

An interesting difference concerns the written-out realizations of the first basic rules. In the Durante copy, fully written-out examples are provided, which are completely missing in Paisiello's Regole. A nice instance in the Durante is the realization of the 7–6 sequence, where some interesting contrapuntal middle voices are shown. Paraschivescu demonstrated how these could be inverted as well. And precisely her decision to play an alternative version might explain why Paisiello did not include such realizations: in actual lesson situations, several possibilities and options must have been played and demonstrated by the maestro, after which the pupil was supposed to internalize them. Since pupils were practising them over and over again, while exploring many different possibilities, written-out versions would be completely redundant. There could be several reasons why the Durante copy does contain realized examples: either de’ Santi's family members were less gifted compared to the (pre-)professional pupils whom Paisiello was training, or some written-out versions were included to emphasize a specific manner of realization, as with the contrapuntal possibilities of the 7–6 sequence. The pedagogical purpose of the Durante copy is demonstrated by a final, rather dramatic partimento piece that includes almost all regole that have been treated earlier. Since similar regole sections can be found in other copies, such as those now located in Liège (Bibliothèque du Conservatoire Royal de Musique) and Parma (Biblioteca Palatina), the organization of the content and the examples seems to align with the teaching method adopted by Durante himself.

In most partimento sources, the regole section is followed by the partimenti themselves. Paraschivescu explored different influences on Paisiello's partimenti, by studying those found in the Durante copy and a handwritten copy of some of Alessandro Scarlatti's by Carlo Cotumacci, who succeeded Durante as teacher of Paisiello. The regole in the Durante copy are followed by thirteen partimenti diminuiti. Each such partimento is preceded by some ‘modi’, or stylistic suggestions about how to realize a specific bass motion or pattern. The underlying idea is to challenge the pupils constantly to find different possibilities, and to be able to play several versions of the same partimento. The partimenti in Paisiello's collection clearly fit within both Durante's and Scarlatti's pedagogical traditions: they contain concerto-like movements, and the continuous search for different disposizioni is exemplified in a manuscript by Auguste-Louis de Talleyrand (1770–1832), one of the private pupils of Paisiello.

Ewald Demeyere highlighted a very specific aspect of partimento pedagogy: the constant search for alternative realizations as a means of mastering counterpoint down to the smallest detail. With his title (‘Stanislao Mattei's Versetto No. 1: Exploring Its Contrapuntal Possibilities’) Demeyere made it clear that he would demonstrate this approach in practice. His choice of a versetto by Mattei was pedagogically motivated. Mattei was a big name in the eighteenth century; he not only was a student of Padre Martini in Bologna, but later also succeeded him. His magnum opus is undoubtedly the ‘Pratica d'accompagnamento’, but Demeyere consciously chose a different source, ‘Scale, Versetti, Bassi numerati per accompagnare’, because of its inclusion of one hundred versetti. The short lengths of their bass lines are ideal for challenging students to work out different versions, much more so than is the case in highly developed and often very extended ‘real’ partimenti. The design of Mattei's section containing the versetti is very consistent: for each key (all major and minor), he first writes some basic exercises, starting from the rule of the octave. This is followed on each occasion by four versetti, usually based on a moto del basso, combined with one or more cadential patterns.

Demeyere explained how he, like many other partimento pedagogues, opts for a three-part texture when realizing the very first versetto from the collection. This choice is historically informed, because it is based on similar sources and elaborated versions from the time. Using this same versetto, he then showed how playing with and combining various contrapuntal styles and possibilities can lead to almost countless different versions. The contrapuntal options include diminution, imitation, invertible counterpoint, delays, chromaticism and reharmonization. Because Demeyere also linked specific choices that he made to tempo, phrasing and articulation, the performing potential of these little gems was also beautifully highlighted.

There are several reasons why the partimenti of Giovanni Furno (1748–1837) occupy a special place in the repertoire. For one, they are notably short, but they also look relatively simple, partly owing to the simple rhythms employed. Furthermore, any suggestions concerning musical ideas, motives, imitation, texture and so forth seem to be missing. Tobias Cramm lifted the veil for us in his presentation ‘The Weaving of Voices: Working on Partimento Patterns with Beginners’. What did Furno intend with his collection of unfigured basses? And how can we still use elements from his pedagogical approach in our education today?

Cramm advises teachers to focus on an integrated approach from the start, continuously connecting singing, playing, combining, recomposition, expansion, compression and indeed musical imagination. The way in which Cramm worked with Furno's partimenti not only let us see their potential, but may relate to the objectives that Furno himself had in mind. He started with a short passage from Furno's first partimento, a single bar of bass line in 4/4 with an upbeat and an extra added note at the end, all in crotchets, which is then played and/or sung. In the next phase, the student should try to find a suitable upper voice: a line that moves by step as much as possible and that follows some basic rules of voice leading. These can be formulated relatively simply: a note can be sustained, the added voice can move in parallel motion by imperfect consonances, or it can move in contrary motion to the given bass.

Cramm challenges his students to look continually for different possibilities. Singing is often the starting-point, because in this way the inner ear is best addressed. When the different options have been refined, upper voices can be brought together. Here too, keyboard and singing can be combined, or the final three-part result may be reproduced just on the keyboard. Cramm extended this partly intuitive approach through comparison with other opening patterns from Furno's partimenti. He showed how the beginnings of most partimenti follow a clear pattern: a two-bar segment that confirms the key and ends with a cadence. Cramm challenged us to try and find different options above each bass line, while Furno ‘demonstrates’ to us how his bass lines represent different ways of realizing the same syntactical idea. Finally, the speaker discussed some of his own partimenti that have been inspired by the method that Furno implicitly uses. Owing to his very systematic pedagogical approach, starting from a contrapuntal realization that is intuitive, musical and as simple as possible – without invoking various rules a priori – Cramm succeeded wonderfully in promoting Furno's partimenti as ideal teaching material, even for absolute beginners with minimal piano skills.

Claire Roberts has always been fascinated by the musical-stylistic eloquence that performers achieved in the eighteenth century. The ears of the musicians of that time must have been extremely well developed, yet they received no separate or specific training in what we today call ‘aural skills’. This observation has led her to take a radically revised approach to such classes, into which she gave us an insight with her presentation ‘Musical Eloquence through Integrative Approaches of Aural Skills Instruction: Inspiration and Application’. The puzzle Roberts faces looks complex. Countless partimento and solfeggio sources show that musical eloquence includes many different facets: variation, diminution, ornamentation, improvisation and others. But how can we integrate all these aspects, or at least a representative part of them, into aural classes? Roberts has looked for the answer in the repertoire of Niccolò Zingarelli (1752–1837), who taught partimento, solfeggio and counterpoint, activities that transitioned seamlessly into composition. Zingarelli's teaching materials show how he repeats standard patterns (cadences, scales, movimenti) over and over, but always in different musical contexts. Because the students in his lessons continually played, sang, accompanied, decorated and improvised using the same building-blocks, they automatically learned how to express themselves musically, how to find their own eloquent ‘voice’.

Roberts put us in the role of an eighteenth-century music student. She had us sing simple patterns (a scale, or just a hexachord) from Zingarelli's solfeggi collections for alto and soprano while she played the bass at the keyboard. These basses are always embellished through diminution and contain typical contrapuntal techniques and motivic material. The elaborations and options are constantly different, with Zingeralli almost always developing a clear focus for each version, such as root-position chords, suspensions or modulation techniques. That these solfeggi had a pedagogical purpose is clear from the notated solmization. Solmizing hexachords and simple scales is not very complicated, but it is a necessary step that every student must take in the beginning, and which initially involves writing out syllables.

Zingarelli's basic material is relatively simple. But the variety of (possible) elaborations shows how the constant search for new options can lead to a complete understanding of the musical language, to the most complex ‘solutions’. In other words, given the right approach, ‘less is more’ can lead to musical eloquence. Roberts noted that contemporary lessons in music theory often become crash courses: we often want to teach as much as possible in the shortest possible time. Compared to eighteenth-century students, however, there are two important differences: our students are acquainted with an enormous variety of styles and genres, and are therefore not immersed in one overarching musical language, and most students are very attached to their scores. As a result, they have never been able or allowed to take the step towards genuine musical eloquence.

That is precisely why Roberts has taken a different path. Students first sing, write, play and improvise the simplest elaborations, starting with note-against-note counterpoint. The options and possibilities are systematically expanded, with many different musical parameters consciously addressed: harmony, ornamentation, rhythm, dissonance, imitation and dialogue. After a few weeks, the students achieve a certain degree of musical eloquence within the framework provided. Roberts let us enjoy the end result through some recordings from her lessons: students play the rule of the octave, with harmonization, ascending and descending, and sing various improvised lines on top of that, often starting from a clear musical idea or principle. This approach not only gives students a solid theoretical and musical grounding, from a clearly defined starting-point, but also teaches them a methodology that they can later apply themselves in other, sometimes more complex musical situations.

It is not in itself a major challenge to use historical sources or historically inspired pedagogical methods in education. Yes, it is of course fancy – and maybe even just cool – to be ‘historical’. The crux, though, is what impact we aim to make on our students, primarily on their qualities as performers, but also on their implicit or explicit knowledge of the musical language and of different styles. The various contributors to this very versatile conference explored diverse pedagogical and musical possibilities and – above all – demonstrated them through sound. As a result, they not only convinced us that musicianship, in an eighteenth-century spirit, is mainly about the ‘how’ to play, but also showed us ‘how’ to integrate historical material in a relevant manner into our contemporary education.