ROBERT GJERDINGEN APRIL 2008

ROBERT GJERDINGEN 
This seminar took place at Orpheus Institute from Monday April 28 through Wednesday April 30, 2008.

Further to an initiative of the Dutch-Flemish Music Theory Society, the academic year 2007-2008 appointed an internationally recognized Music Theorist in Residence for two terms.

The Amsterdam University and Conservatory, on the one hand, and Orpheus Institute, on the other, who act as partners in this initiative, were pleased to welcome Professor Robert Gjerdingen (Northwestern University, Evanston) in November 2007 and April 2008.
This American music theorist specialises in research centred on the composition process in general, and the training curriculum of composition students in 18th-century Naples in particular. The findings of his research are both groundbreaking and important for theorists and performers who wish to familiarize themselves with this fascinating period.

Between November 28 and 30, 2007, Robert Gjerdingen resided at the Amsterdam Conservatory and University. During his lectures and workshops, he discussed the "partimento" tradition of advanced unfigured basses, once deemed extremely important in the court musician curriculum of Italian conservatories.

During his April session at Orpheus Institute, Robert Gjerdingen presented both general and more specific aspects of his musical schema theory. More specifically, he dealt with the importance of remembering musical phrases and gestures for both composition and improvisation. The concepts of the schema theory was illustrated with examples of 18th-century galant music. His theory helps us to understand how such intricate, elegant and finely crafted music could be written so quickly.

Robert Gjerdingen, who studied with Leonard B. Meyer, Eugene Narmour and Eugene K. Wolf at the University of Pennsylvania (PhD in 1984), has been teaching music theory, cognition and history at Northwestern University since 1994. The author of "Music in the Galant Style" (an essay about the various typical schemes of 18th-century court, chapel and theatre music), "A Classic Turn of Phrase: Music and the Psychology of Convention", he has also translated Carl Dahlhaus´ "Untersuchungen über die Entstehung der harmonischen Tonalität" from German into English.