The Contest Piece as a Probe of Memory

At the end of the school year at the Paris Conservatory each class or studio held a contest. How a student did in the contests could determine whether or not he or she could continue in that class, advance to a higher class, or be dismissed. In the harmony contests, students would be unlikely to win any sort of prize if they could not reproduce the contrapuntal schemas suggested by patterns in the given basses or melodies. That is, a student was provided with just one of the four parts (soprano, alto, tenor, bass) and required to complete the rest of the parts. The test typically lasted six hours, with the student shut in a room without any keyboard instrument. By being sensitive to the cues in the given voice, students could retrieve from their memories the other voices of the appropriate marches harmoniques. These were descendants of the movimenti (bass motions) taught in the Naples conservatories.