(It.: ‘division’).
A term used fairly frequently in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to denote exercises in figured-bass playing, not so much as accompaniments to a solo instrument as self-contained pieces. Composers using this term were very often Neapolitan or Milanese, though the significance of this is unknown. The word may or may not refer to the 17th century practice of divisions, i.e. performing variations on a repeating (figured) bass; more likely it reflects the common Italian practice c1700 of writing bass lines for keyboard players to work into fully-fledged pieces. The definition is attested to as early as 1634 by G.F. Cavalliere in Il scolaro principiante di musica (Naples). Examples are common in MSS, e.g. the ‘Arpeggi per cembalo’ exercises in GB-Lbl Add.14244 (?A. Scarlatti), the organ ‘Versetti … per rispondere al coro’ in Lbl Add.31501 (?B. Pasquini), and the complete solo and even duet figured-bass sonatas for harpsichord by Pasquini in Lbl Add.31501. Fugues were often intended by composers as realizations of their carefully planned figured basses (Keller, Handel, Pasquini); other instruments too were expected thus to develop their basses (Carulli's guitar tutors). Typical titles of the books devoted to such harmonic and contrapuntal instruction are F. Fenaroli: Regole musicale per i principianti di cembalo (Naples, 1775) and Partimenti ossia basso (Rome, c1800/R), G. Tritto: Partimenti e regole generali (Milan, 1816), and C. Cotumacci: Regole dell'accompagnamento, e partimenti (MS, Naples, listed by C.F. Becker: Systematisch-chronologische Darstellung der musikalischen Literatur von der frühesten bis auf die neuste Zeit, Leipzig, 1836–9/R). Other composers of partimenti include N. Sala and N. Zingarelli.
A. Choron: Principes de composition des écoles d'Italie (Paris, 1808)
M. Panni: Dechiffrage: Twelve Partimenti for One or More Performers (London and New York, 1981)
R. Cafiero: ‘La didattica del partimento a Napoli fra settecento e ottocento: note sulla fortuna delle “Regole” di Carlo Cotumacci’, Gli affetti convenienti all'idee: studi sulla musica vocale italiana, ed. M. Caraci Vela, R. Cafiero and A. Romagnoli (Naples, 1993), 549–79
PETER WILLIAMS/ROSA CAFIERO