"The Italian Fugue: Investigated through Young Apprentices in Eighteenth-century Naples and Bologna."

While eighteenth-century stylistic development has been commonly described through stylistic changes in the latest fashions of opera and drama, emerging composers were often trained through rather old-fashioned skills, such as the writing numerous fugues. This project addresses questions regarding the general importance of fugal instruction for eighteenth-century musicians and composers and the influences these skills had on the stylistic development of late eighteenth-century music in a more general sense.

It has been well known that Italian masters in Naples and Bologna taught counterpoint through the use of models, or exemplars (‘Esemplare’). Still, many of the preserved counterpoint notebooks by students in the important centers in Naples and Bologna do not show any noticeable references to such exemplars. This study explains this discrepancy by thoroughly investigating the counterpoint notebooks of these students, especially of the students those who were taught by Giovanni Battista Martini (1706–1784) in Bologna, and by Nicola Sala (1713–1801) in Naples.

This investigation of the fugal instruction in the two most important musical centers in Italy, Naples and Bologna, provides important and new information about how thoroughbass exercises were used differently in Naples and in Bologna. In addition to this, this study gives new insight into the central importance of the Italian fugue for the late eighteenth-century style in Italy and beyond.

Keywords: Eighteenth-century music, Bologna, Naples, conservatories, compositional theory, counterpoint, fugue, canon, composition, improvisation, partimento, solfeggio, basso seguente, choral fugue, Giovanni Battista Martini, Nicola Sala.