Welcome to Try This!—a space for exploring old ideas that still have something to teach us.

This year, I’m expanding Try This! with monthly articles about partimenti—the fascinating 18th-century teaching tradition that challenges us to rethink music history and reconsider how we teach and learn music today.

Lately, I’ve been reading and thinking about Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) and his early apprenticeship with Nicola Porpora (1686–1768), a renowned teacher from Naples. Porpora had trained at the Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesù Cristo, one of the major Neapolitan conservatories where partimenti formed the core of a very practical, hands-on musical education.

Years later, when Porpora was living in Vienna, he hired a young, struggling freelance musician named Joseph Haydn to serve as his accompanist and valet. Despite the humbling nature of the job, Haydn later credited Porpora with teaching him “the true fundamentals of composition.” High praise from one of classical music’s great architects.

As I was reading about Haydn, I began imagining a conversation with him—about Porpora, about partimenti, and about where music has gone since his time. The letters that follow are fictional, of course, but the questions are real. What can we still learn from this older way of thinking? And how might someone like Haydn respond to the musical world we live in today?

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Dear Joseph Haydn,

From Ian Campbell to Joseph Haydn

Winnipeg, a Thursday evening, after teaching and before dishes

Dear Herr Haydn,

I hope you’ll forgive the liberty—I’m writing to you across more than two centuries. But I’ve been studying a method of teaching that I think you knew well: partimenti. They’re fascinating—bass lines used to teach young musicians harmony, counterpoint, and improvisation, often without explanation. Just the keyboard, your ears, and the shapes under your fingers and in your ears.

You once said you learned the fundamentals of composition from Porpora. I wonder if that was what he gave you—those same kinds of basses, and the expectation that you would make them speak.

Your music has been with me a long time. It’s full of clarity, wit, and purpose. I hear in it a kind of freedom that I suspect came from real discipline—music learned not through rules, but through sound.

I’d be curious to know how Porpora taught you.

With respect and affection,

Ian

From Joseph Haydn to Ian Campbell

Vienna—or wherever the ear still leads

Dear Herr Campbell,

What a pleasure to receive your letter. I am glad to know that partimenti still live on in some form—and that teachers like you are putting them back into students’ hands.

Yes, Porpora gave me basses—sometimes figured, often not—and told me to play. To try, fail, try again. He did not explain much. He showed, and expected me to learn by doing. He was strict, but he taught me to think musically, not theoretically. I believe this was the best thing anyone ever gave me.

Can I ask you a question in return: what has become of music where you are? Do people still gather to play and listen? Do children still sing? Has the keyboard changed? Or is it still the same old box with black and white teeth?

And if I may add—Winnipeg sounds very cold. I hope your stove is well-fed and your fingers are still warm enough to play.

Yours with curiosity,

Joseph Haydn

From Ian Campbell to Joseph Haydn

Winnipeg, late afternoon, the piano slightly out of tune after a long winter

Dear Herr Haydn,

Thank you for your reply—it means a great deal to hear about your time with Porpora. That image of learning by doing, by sound and gesture, has shaped my own teaching. It’s affirming to know it shaped yours too.

To answer your questions: music is still with us, though the way we experience it has changed. We no longer rely on live performance to hear music. People carry recordings in their pockets—entire orchestras, choirs, and concert halls captured in little machines. It’s a miracle, but also a loss: fewer people make music together.

Children still sing in schools, but often in fragments—music education competes with many other demands. The piano is still here, though many students now play electronic keyboards, which can imitate any sound imaginable. And we compose not just with pen and paper, but with computerts and software—entire symphonies can be written and heard without a single live musician.

Yet the ear still matters. A well-shaped phrase still moves people. A cadence still satisfies. And when a group of people comes together to make music in real time, it still feels like something sacred.

Yours,

Ian

From Joseph Haydn to Ian Campbell

Where the air is quiet and no one tunes the violins

Dear Herr Campbell,

How strange and wonderful to think of music carried in pockets! And machines that sing—like mechanical organs, but much smaller, I suppose.

I can’t say I like the thought that fewer people are making music themselves. But perhaps that’s the challenge of abundance: when music is everywhere, we forget what it costs to create it.

I’m glad the piano remains, even if in new forms. I wonder: do your students still learn to listen deeply? Do they hear the shape of a line, the weight of a suspension, the relief of resolution? Or is the music too fast now—too much?

You mentioned software. I can hardly imagine it. But then, I used to compose at the clavier, with a pen and a hundred false starts. If your students still search for a phrase that feels inevitable, then perhaps the spirit of the thing remains.

I’m grateful to know that my music is still played. That it still says something in your time.

Keep going.

Yours,

Joseph Haydn

From Ian Campbell to Joseph Haydn

Winnipeg, the snow melting fast, the piano tuned this morning

Dear Herr Haydn,

Yes, the world is faster now—too fast, sometimes. There’s more music than ever, but not always more listening. That’s part of what I try to teach: how to slow down, how to hear.

When I work with students on partimenti, I ask them not to label, but to respond. What does the bass want? Where does it lead? We try to stay close to the gesture, the shape, the tension and release. Sometimes it’s messy. But when they get it right—when a cadence feels earned, or an inner voice sings—they know it. That’s how I know they’re learning.

So yes—they still search for great melodies, moving harmonies, and elegant counterpoint.

Your letters have clarified something for me: that tradition isn’t just about preservation. It’s about continuity. A way of thinking, passed down through sound, from one musician to the next.

Thank you for reminding me.

With gratitude,

Ian

Conclusion

This correspondence, of course, is imagined. But the questions are real. What does it mean to teach music in a time when sound is everywhere? How do we train judgment, not just knowledge? What can a tradition like partimenti still offer us?

In writing to Haydn, I found myself writing to the lineage I work within—and to the future I hope to help shape. I hope you’ll find something of your own in these letters, and maybe even write a few of your own—across time.