In this live-stream we will talk with Prof. Robert Gjerdingen about the training of the child-composers in the Old conservatories.

In seventeenth-century Italy, an astonishing number of abandoned and orphaned children overwhelmed the cities. Out of the piety of private citizens and the apathy of local governments, the system of the conservatory was created to house, nurture, and train these roaming children to become hatters, shoemakers, tailors, goldsmiths, cabinet makers, and musicians - a range of practical trades that might sustain them and enable them to contribute to society.

Conservatori were founded across Italy, from Venice and Florence to Parma and Naples, many specializing in a particular trade. Four music conservatori in Naples gained particular renown for their exceptional training of musicians, both performers and composers, all boys.

Robert Gjerdingen discovered evidence of schemas and common partimenti which were part of the training of these boys in the archives of conservatories across Italy and the rest of Europe. Compellingly narrated and richly illustrated, Child Composers in the Old Conservatory follows the story of these boys as they undergo rigorous training with the conservatory's maestri and eventually become maestri themselves, then moves forward in time to see the influence of partimenti in the training of such composers as Claude Debussy and Colette Boyer. Advocating for the revival of partimenti in modern music education, the book explores the tremendous potential of this tradition to enable natural musical fluency for students of all ages learning the craft today.

Robert O. Gjerdingen is a scholar of music theory and music perception and is an emeritus professor at Northwestern University. His most influential work focuses on the application of ideas from cognitive science, especially theories about schemas, as an analytical tool in an attempted "archaeology" of style and composition methods in Galant European music of the eighteenth century. Gjerdingen received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984 after studying with Leonard B. Meyer and Eugene Narmour. His 2007 book Music in the Galant Style, an authoritative study on Galant schemata, received the Wallace Berry Award from the Society for Music Theory in 2009 and has become influential in the field of music theory.