classical improvisation for students (and their teachers) robert o. music in the galant style. new...
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Classical Improvisation for Students
(and Their Teachers)
John Mortensen, DMA, NCTM
Steinway Artist & Ohio Artist on Tour
Professor of Piano, Cedarville University
Download the notes for this presentation at www.johnmortensen.com
Fugue
What is provided: A subject.
What you have to make up: Exposition, Episodes,
Modulations, Presentations.
Fugue
• The performer needs to create spontaneous invertible counterpoint, episodes, modulations, presentations in various voices, sequences, cadences, etc.
• Level: Highly Advanced.
The Dance Suite
What is provided: A bass line.
What you have to make up: Harmonies and stylistic elements of each dance.
Dance Suite
• The performer uses an established bass line to extrapolate harmonies, and then overlay the characteristic elements of each dance (meter, figurations, polyphonic motions, etc.
• Level: Advanced.
Toccata or Fantasia
What is provided: A key.
What you have to make up: Everything. But it can be very episodic and loose.
Toccata/Fantasia
• The performer must “string together” a series of stylistically appropriate elements, but may pause between each statement. The musical texture need not be seamless. Modulation is possible but not necessary.
• Level: Moderately Advanced.
Variations Chaconne Passacaglia
What is provided: A looping progression.
What you have to make up: Continuous new variations.
Variations/Chaconne/Passacaglia
• The performer must invent variations on an existing progression. Because the meter and harmony and provided, the performer is only responsible for surface elements such as texture, figuration, and ornamentation.
• Level: Moderate
Figuration Prelude
• The performer is responsible to follow a given chord pattern and create consistent elaboration upon it. The performer’s only job is to create figuration.
• Level: Moderately easy.
The Unmeasured
Arpeggio Prelude
What is provided: The notes.
What you have to make up: The pacing and rhetoric.
Unmeasured Arpeggio Prelude
• The performer can play only the written notes, but most imbue them with compelling rhetorical sweep and direction.
• Level: Easy.
Further Resources
Erhardt, Martin. Upon a Ground - Improvisation on Ostinato Basses from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries. Magdeburg: Verlag Franz Biersack, 2013.
Gjerdingen, Robert O. Music in the Galant Style. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Mortensen, John. The Pianist’s Guide to Classical Improvisation. Forthcoming in 2018.
Sanguinetti, Giorgio. The Art of Partimento: History, Theory, and Practice. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
www.johnmortensen.com
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