FUNDAMENTO

For more general resources on partimento, see here.

1. Concept Overview

2. Premises (Pedagogical Axioms)

Sound before symbol is wrong if sound lacks generative structure.
Children are not music boxes; they are speakers of a musical language.
- Treating students as music boxes results in them wanting to not be tools. A good instinct! We should encourage them to play. Telling them exactly how to move the Barbie or the toy truck is not going to make them want to mess around.
- Give the child enough tools that they are able to hit the piano and make something happen.
- Rhythmic improvisation is also a kind of improvisation. “Clapping” on the piano is essential.
The mind is primary, the instrument secondary.
- The method should be agnostic enough to the instrument that it could be used on any keyboard instrument, or even adapted to the violin.
Harmony is geometry in time; chords are spatial events, not vertical stacks.
Improvisation is not the endgame but the ground game.
Adult and child co-learners produce higher motivation and retention.
Written music is the final record of thought, not the source of thought.
- We need to keep the priorities straight. It is more important for students to know how to respond than it is for students to know how to repeat. And after responding, students eventually are prompted simply by their imagination.

3. Core Method

Start with single bass notes and figures, not full notation.
Use figured bass as proto-grammar: 5, 6, 64, 7, 43, 42, etc.
Progressive lengthening of bass lines: start with 2-note cadences, expand stepwise.
Fragments as atoms: cadence, ascent, descent, prolongation, tonicization.
Repertoire as intavolatura: written pieces are stylizations of familiar improvised gestures.
Every session ends with a "miniature": 4–8 measures improvised or written from a given bass.

4. Cognitive Development and Structure

Modular memory: Repetition of fragments builds improvisatory reflexes.
Geometric voice-leading: Encourage spatial intuition.
E.g., “F with a 43 above becomes V⁴³; lower the bottom note = French 6”
Encourage mental transposition: Move fragments to all keys early.
Avoid hand position fixation: Pitch and function are primary, not finger comfort.
Noodling allowed, but anchored in function: Limit the notes, not the expression.

5. Instruments and Accessibility

No piano required: Tablet, toy keyboard, MuseScore, solfege, voice.
The body is the first instrument: Sing bass lines, clap rhythms, solfege figures.
- A musicianship text from the very start. Complete musicianship.
  - Make it clear to the teacher that the singing and other stuff is bonus. If students do not want to do it, they do not have to.
Instruments follow desire: If the method works, the child will beg for more gear.
Mental keyboarding > digital fingering: The student should “see” chords before they “feel” them.

6. Comparison to Other Methods

Not Suzuki: no rote memorization of complex pieces.
Not Faber: no C-position pedagogical prison.
Not Kodály: functional harmony over modal folk tunes.
Closer to Bach’s notebook + Neapolitan conservatory method filtered through Montessori.
Use this method to supplement other methods, moving alongside them while also being standalone enough that it can be used in itself.
- Take into account the existing market. Act as a node within a network, a creature in an ecosystem.

7. Theological-Linguistic Justification

Music, like language, is teleological.
- There is a purpose that flows outward from the music. It is about speaking. We need to build enough that the students could make their own grammar.
- There is a direct relationship between the ideas presented and the students’ own play. Each vertical slice is also a paint palette.
- Instead of forcing students to paint by numbers, get them to learn matching paints and experiment on their own.
  - Is painting by numbers true artistic pedagogy?
Children should create as image-bearers, not merely interpret.
- Play something happy, play something sad. Hard to do this when there is only one melody line that they were forced to learn by rote! But it becomes readily possible when they develop a musical grammar.
The Logos is not passive: it “was with God and was God.”
Sound structured by reason becomes participation in creation.
Chord to chord is as phrase to phrase. Realizing a bass is like preaching from a lectionary text—bounded freedom, not blank canvas.
- The difficulty is also all integrated, where when students improvise on the partimento and figured bass lines, they can make it harder or easier based on their own taste.

8. Practical Implementation

A possible example for adult students with some exposure to theory:
- Week 1: Two-note cadences (e.g. G–C with 5–1 or 6–5 figures).
- Week 2: Three-note patterns (e.g. I–IV–V or V–I–vi)
- Week 3–5: Inversions, 7ths, modulations
- Every 5th week: Intavolatura piece from repertoire

For children, the material should be much more basic.
Teachers play too. If they don’t, the method is dead.
Enough instruction is provided for a teacher to lead a child in developing fluency, even if they themselves cannot improvise.
- The teacher or supervisor is expected to help the student by improvising, building up from giving prompts to actually coming up with short pieces.
- This can be a parent and child pedagogy system!
  - I can encourage esp. mothers who know how to play the piano to learn some partimento exercises so that they can prompt their children.

9. Long-term Goal