Peter van Tour

Peter van Tour (born 1966) is a Dutch musicologist, music historian and music theorist, specializing in Aural Training, Counterpoint and Historical Improvisation. After moving to Sweden in 1990, he co-founded the Gotland School of Music Composition together with Prof. Sven-David Sandström and Ramon Anthin. At this institution, Peter taught counterpoint, aural skills, music analysis, and history of composition. He is best known as an expert in the field of Partimento and is the author of "Counterpoint and Partimento: Methods of Teaching Composition in Late Eighteenth-Century Naples", his doctoral dissertation. Van Tour is an associate professor of Music Theory and Musical Analysis at Örebro University in Sweden.

Education
Van Tour has Masters Degrees in Music Pedagogy (Brabant Conservatory, 1988), Musicology (Utrecht University, 1990) and Music Theory (Royal College of Music, Stockholm, 2008). In 2015, van Tour received his PhD in Musicology and Music Theory from Uppsala University, with his dissertation "Counterpoint and Partimento: Methods of Teaching Composition in Late Eighteenth-Century Naples" winning the Hilding Rosenberg Award for Musicology. In 2021 he was awarded the annual research grant of Stiftelsen Thuréus Forskarhem och Naturminne.

Research on Counterpoint and Partimento
Van Tour's research has helped identify two different schools of counterpoint instruction among the music conservatories of Naples in the 18th century. These are the school of Leonardo Leo, which emphasized adding counterpoint above or below a cantus firmus and the school of Francesco Durante, which emphasized writing counterpoint above a bass line.

Awards

 * Hilding Rosenberg Award of Musicology (2016) - Counterpoint and Partimento: Methods of Teaching Composition in Late Eighteenth-Century Naples