(It.; Ger. Partie, Parthie, Partia, Parthia; Lat. pars).
A term used at different times for a variation, a piece, a set of Variations and a Suite or other multi-movement genres. Perhaps the earliest use of the term was in Vincenzo Galilei’s manuscript Libro d’intavolatura di liuto, nel quale si contengono i passamezzi, le romanesche, i saltarelli, et le gagliarde, written in 1584 and probably composed over the preceding 20 years (Torrefranca), containing a Romanesca undecima con cento parti, a Passemezzo sesto con [5] parti, and Aria del Gazzella con XII parti. Shortly afterwards Prospero Luzi published a dance manual entitled Opera bellissima nella quale si contengono molte partite et passaggi di gagliarda (1589); to what extent ‘partite’ was consciously derived from ‘parti’ is unknown, but both seem to be equivalent in meaning to mutanze or modi, i.e. variations or elaborations on the bass of a traditional tune. ‘Partite’ or ‘partite diversi’ continued to be used by the Italians in this sense, though less and less frequently, throughout the 17th century; examples of pieces called ‘partite sopra’, Ruggiero, zefiro, fidele, monica, folia, then ciaccona and passacagli and finally miscellaneous tunes, exist by Mayone, Trabaci, Frescobaldi, Michelangelo Rossi, Gregorio Strozzi and Alessandro Scarlatti.
It may have been Frescobaldi’s pupil Froberger who first used ‘partite’ in the sense of ‘pieces’ in his Libro secondo di toccate … gigue et altre partite (autograph, 1649, A-Wn). The older Italian meaning survived, with acknowledgment by Spiridion, in an appendix called ‘Adjunctum Frescobaldicum’ to the fourth part of his Nova instructio (1675), containing Partite sopra passacagli, by J.A. Reincken (Partite diverse sopra … ‘La Meyerin’) and by Bach (partite diverse on various chorales), while the newer one reappeared with the first publications of Froberger’s works in 1693.
In 1680 Biber divided the pieces of his Mensa sonora into six suites which he labelled Pars I, Pars II etc. He may have thought of ‘pars’ as a term for a group of pieces or simply as a division of a collection, but it was the former meaning that was taken up by Kuhnau as a designation for a suite in his Neuer Clavier-Übung … bestehend in sieben Partien (1689). Johann Krieger followed in 1697 with a collection of suites whose title was given in German and Italian: Sechs musicalische Partien, Sei partite musicali, thus establishing a new meaning for ‘partita’ by a process of folk etymology. Krieger was echoed by J.A. Schmierer the next year: Zodiaci musici in XII partitas balleticas … Das ist, Dess in zwölff balletischen Parthyen … Himmel-Creyses (1698). Both ‘partita’ in its new meaning of suite and ‘partie’ and its variants thus appear to be the arbitrary constructions of late 17th-century German composers. Both terms were used in their various meanings by Bach.
‘Partita’ as a term for variation died out in the early 18th century, but it retained its meaning of suite, though often restricted in its number of movements. The orchestral partita in particular was popular in western Austria (a large collection survives at Stift Lambach) and in Salzburg, where partitas were widely composed between about 1720 and 1750. Thereafter the genre apparently gave way to the symphony (the last known example of a Salzburg orchestral partita, by Michael Haydn, dates from 1770; its three movements are now better known as parts of the symphony Perger 12). Ferdinand Seidl’s sole extant Parthia (A-LA, 239), possibly composed in the 1740s, is typical: each of its four movements (Intrada, Menuet, Intermezzo, Finale) is moderate or fast in tempo and largely based on dances; like most partitas of the time it is scored for two violins, two trumpets, timpani and basso (lacking violas, which are also missing from Eberlin’s lost partita in G major and Leopold Mozart’s only extant work of the type; see Eisen, 1994). Some partitas, however, including a considerable number of works from the Viennese orbit, were conceived one-to-a-part; by and large these represent a subset of the divertimento, which at the time was a catch-all term for soloistic ensemble music (Webster, 1974). The term largely disappeared well before the end of the century, except in the case of outdoor wind music, where Feldpartita or Feldpartye continued to be used. Schilling’s Encyclopädie (1840) says that Parthie, Parthia and Partita all have the same meaning, that of the successor to the suite, in which prestos, allegros and the like are interpolated among the dances.
ApelG
MGG2 (T. Schipperges)
F. Torrefranca: ‘Origine e significato di repicco, partita, ricercare, sprezzatura’, IMSCR V: Utrecht 1952, 404–14
F. Torrefranca: ‘Documenti definitivi sulla partita’, GfMKB: Bamberg 1953, 143–8
J. Webster: ‘Towards a History of Viennese Chamber Music in the Early Classical Period’, JAMS, xxvii (1974), 212–47
Gesellschaftsgebundene instrumentale Unterhaltungsmusik des 18. Jahrhunderts: Eichstätt 1988
T. Schipperges: ‘Partita’ (1993), HMT
C. Eisen: Introduction to Orchestral Music in Salzburg: 1750–1780, RRMCE, xl (1994)
DAVID FULLER/CLIFF EISEN