Turning Fenaroli Partimenti Into Corelli Style Counterpoint

Añadido: 2026-05-12

[00:00:01]This is the second parliament of a section in Fenaruli's Parliament that Robert Geringan's edition refers to as the fourth book. I reckon that this is one of the more popular pieces of the collection due to its relatively simple construction that's primarily based on the chromatic lameto schema that became an absolute standard topic of Parimento teaching and appears three times in the course of the piece. For an intermediate parliament student, this is definitely a most valuable exercise because the upper voice structure and the implied figures have to be deduced solely from the baseline itself. And thus this parliament requires already a lot of circumstantial knowledge and the ability to connect those dots. And I guess most teachers would be happy if the student would show up to lesson with a realization similar to the following snippet.

[00:01:06]>> [music] >> I think everybody who is into party mentor is constantly asking themselves what's the ideal realization? What was the meestto's actual intent? What kind of texture was he on about? And I guess these questions automatically imply that an authentic realization is always about creating a keyboard piece. Actually, I was never really convinced by that concept at all, simply due to the undeniable fact that a good deal of the baselines you find in those collections don't really resemble the textures you can find in actual keyboard repertoire, but look a lot like what you can find in Baroque instrumental music, especially the trio sonata. So maybe those pieces have as well been used as exercises in written composition. So let me give you an impression of how an alternative approach towards an idiomatic realization may look like. Just recently I was browsing through Corell's trios searching for suitable pieces for students to emulate and suddenly stumbled upon this little movement and I directly had an idea. Let's just listen in for a bit.

[00:02:14]>> [music] [music] [music] >> You're probably already smelling where this is going to go. When I laid my eyes on the score, the baseline just looked too familiar. The beginning is identical to the feneroli I just showed you. But actually, that lameto is not so important to me. It's just as well about these constant repetitions. I guess I would never have come to the idea to simply mirror these repetitions in the upper voices in any realization attempt.

[00:03:02]It just seems a little too primitive.

[00:03:04]But if you look closely, it's actually not primitive at all because behind the chords, there is something going on that produces this particular.

[00:03:14]>> Let's listen again. And let's especially focus on this.

[00:03:22][music] [music] >> [music] [music] >> If you're now asking yourself, what the heck is a leaprog, man? Well, I guess you definitely noticed the >> generally the term leaprogging encompasses a number of [music] specific voice crossing operations that regularly take place in Baroque instrumental or vocal music. [music] To be more precise, this phenomenon usually happens between the two upper [music] voices in a trio setting in which the lower of those two leaps above a sustained note and thus produces [music] the dissonance of a second. In other words, a two three suspension. And back to the corelli, within each of these boxes, he suggests a cadence. However, these cadences are manipulated in a way that allows us to describe them as evaded. In every case, the local leading [music] note resists its expected resolution to the tonic.

[00:04:51]Instead, it [music] leaps away, surpassing the other violin, and three times in a row produces the sharp sound of a minor second, which leads to this rather exotic 65 [music] chords and a ninth on the third cadence.

[00:05:07]So you can see a texture that on the foreground level appears like a homophonic cordal setting is actually structured through particular contrauntal procedures creating sonorities that you surely wouldn't come up with by coming from a purely cordal conception.

[00:05:24]Just in case you're not fully grasping what's going on here, that's no problem at all cuz I published a post on my Patreon page that among other materials contains a definition paper of the leapfrog phenomenon summarizing all situations that I found in original Baroque repertoire. And now I guess it's time to productively apply this kind of analytical knowledge onto my finoli realization and turn this parimento into an actual piece that emulates Corelli's texture and concept. And for that purpose I add figures and where it's possible I add suspensions because as you may have noticed Corelli's music is saturated with dissonances. To be able to maintain an ongoing eighth note pulse that was present in the Corelli original, I simply take Finaroli's quarter notes and divide them into pairs of eighth notes. Thanks. I know this is incredibly smart. Little disclaimer for the upcoming rendition. I guess you got to imagine the sound of a jam band like this one. Let's call the piece grav.

[00:06:31][music] [music] [music] Heat. Heat.

[00:06:51][music] [music] [music] [music] >> [music] [music] [music] >> Hey.

[00:07:49][music] >> [music] [music] >> Heat. Heat.

[00:08:07][music] >> [music] [music] >> Let's quickly check out another phenaroli. Actually, right before the parimeament we've been just rambling on is one in G major. And I have seen several teachers and as well learners aiming at something like the following realization.

[00:08:59]And this is [music] most likely what my very first Basokontino teacher would have suggested because he was drawing exercises and homework assignments from a very popular German figured basis manual by Vulf. You can see I'm still having my copy. And inside of this damn book, there is a particular exercise that generalizes the very concept I just applied to the Fenaroli and that apparently a lot of other people are aware of. So for this kind of a very common broke walking bass, he proposes a texture in which one voice is always resting whilst the other one accompanies the baseline and parallel motion. To be honest, when I look at this now, I'm not really convinced anymore if this even works as elegant accompaniment, let alone as standalone keyboard piece. Or have you seen a texture like this in an actual keyboard composition? I'm rather convinced that this [music] kind of baseline most likely refers to a texture model like this one. A corellian slow movement with huge portions designed as [music] walking bass by underring below a highly dissonant upper voice setting that's packed with suspensions and of course regular leap frogging. So I reckon if this baseline isn't [music] an exercise in continual playing, it most certainly serves well as backbone [music] for a compositional exercise that's very likely aiming at a trio sonata style slow movement. I'm going to share my arrangement now with a disclaimer that it's going to be a note performer audio. I could as well have played it on the piano though. But actually, I think although the sound quality sucks, it still comes closer to the product I was aiming at and conveys the idea of a string sound still better than a piano performance. So, please don't shout at me in the comments.

[00:10:44]Instead, let's just embrace the note performer.

[00:10:53]>> [music] >> Heat. Heat.

[00:11:06][music] [music] [music] [music] >> [music] [music] >> Hallelujah. [music] [music] [music] >> [music] [music] [music] >> Heat. Heat.

[00:12:23][music] [music] >> [music] [music] >> Heat. Heat.

[00:12:50][music] >> [music] [music] [music] >> Please don't have a go at me because of this audio. At the moment, I don't have the resources to do an actual ensemble recording, but honestly, I think this kind of note performer audio fulfills its purpose by providing at least a very raw picture of what the actual outcome would sound like. And with this out of the way, I want to say thank you for watching up to this point of the video.

[00:13:53]And if you're a Patreon, many thanks for your generous That's why I love [music] Nestle.