Music in the Galant Style

by Robert Gjerdingen

Music in the Galant Style is an authoritative and readily understandable study of the core compositional style of the eighteenth century. Gjerdingen adopts a unique approach, based on a massive but little-known corpus of pedagogical workbooks used by the most influential teachers of the century, the Italian partimenti. He has brought this vital repository of compositional methods into confrontation with a set of schemata distilled from an enormous body of eighteenth-century music, much of it known only to specialists, formative of the "galant style."

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Theory

514 pages, Hardcover

First published September 5, 2007

Reviews

[Michael Curtis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not only does this book bring us into the world of 18th century, European music, it shakes up some conservative attitudes regarding music theory: "it highlights only what Locatelli has in common with Rimsky-Korsakov." The audience is limited for this book and the author acknowledges this: "readers with a low tolerance for this sort of technical minutia might now wish to skip ahead." But, if you really want to get into the head of a maestro from the 18th century, this book is the ticket.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finally finished this 500 page book with dense material after reading it on and off since March. It’s fascinating in 2 ways:

First, it obliterates the whole Baroque-Classical distinction that we normally place at 1750. The book demonstrates with numerous examples that Mozart in the 1770s was composing with the same philosophy and templates (or schema) as Corelli in the first decade of the 1700s, or how there really isn’t that much difference between Handel and Haydn after all at least in their overall approach.

In fact, like so many other things in Europe, it was the French Revolution of 1789 that upended the old models that was truly felt by 1800, and its why you can really start with Beethoven in his 30s as the beginning of the Romantic Era.

Second, this is a thorough compositional textbook for how to compose in this style. At times overwhelming, but truly fascinating!

One thing I didn’t do that would have improved the experience. Read Appendix A in advance. Then, either bookmark or print that section for frequently reference.

[Alwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Righto. Off to find a continuo instrument and learn partimenti.

[Patrick Braga · Rating 5 out of 5]

Impressive work piecing together the schematic foundations of Western art music.