O Partimento como Jogo Musical Pedagógico

Abstract

Over the last few decades there has been a growing movement dedicated to the study, research and practice of composition and improvisation practices in historical styles fostering discussions regarding the performative and pedagogical potential of such practices. Two topics in such movement are deserving of attention: 1) the Schema Theory discussed by Robert Gjerdingen (2007,2020), which analyses 18th and 19th century's musical language using the concept of Schema from cognitive psychology and suggests that fluency in musical creation in such idioms depends on acquiring and mastering their typical schemata; 2) the historical partimento pedagogical approach, that consists in figured basses to which a student must add complementary upper voices following stylistic rules of counterpoint in order to create a composition or improvisation (Sanguinetti, 2012). However, as discussed by Gjerdingen, to properly realize a partimento is not a matter of just following grammatical rules, but of recognizing that a partimento is made of schemata that “ask” for a particular response that is typical of the style so that a partimento is similar to a musical game or puzzle where the student must search her vocabulary for previously learned formulae in order to find good responses to the “problems” suggested by the bass line and perhaps even learning new manners to respond to the same situations. Here, we argue that the relationship between a partimento and a game can go beyond that of mere analogy so that it is possible to think of a partimento as literally being a musical game. This constitutes a perspective that highlights the ludic aspects of such pedagogy and allows us to approach it from the perspective of Play and Games Studies in order to better understand and explore its pedagogical possibilities.