Continuo [basso continuo]

(It.).

Continuo playing in varying ensembles was an art practised by players of chordal instruments throughout Europe for roughly two centuries after about 1600. The instruments used included keyboard (organ, harpsichord), plucked string (chitarrone/theorbo, lute, guitar, harp) and bowed string (lirone, bass viol, violoncello). The continuo was fundamental to music in the 17th and 18th centuries to such an extent that its characteristic manner of notation, the Figured bass (It. basso numerato; Fr. basse chiffrée; Ger. bezifferter Bass), also became the basis for teaching composition and analysis and has remained in use for theoretical purposes throughout the 19th and 20th centuries (see also Generalbass and Thoroughbass).

1. Definition.

2. Origins.

3. Development.

4. Instruments.

5. Playing techniques.

PETER WILLIAMS, DAVID LEDBETTER

Continuo

1. Definition.

A basso continuo (through bass or thoroughbass; Fr. basse continue; Ger. Generalbass) is an instrumental bass line which runs throughout a piece, over which the player improvises (‘realizes’) a chordal accompaniment. The bass may be figured, with accidentals and numerals (‘figures’) placed over or under it to indicate the harmonies required. Continuo realization is essentially an improvised art, and much remains undocumented and ambiguous; most figured-bass methods were published to teach the elements of harmony rather than the art of accompaniment. Performance issues include not only where and when the various instruments played, but also the manner of realization: types of arpeggiation and imitation; the placing of cadences; the doubling of the upper part(s); the addition of dissonances; and the ornamentation or simplification of the written bass. The practice of continuo playing was originally closely associated with the growth of recitative (and hence opera and oratorio) and with certain kinds of solo music both vocal (monodies) and instrumental (early violin sonatas, etc.). No player may treat a continuo bass line as an opportunity for unbounded extemporization. The fact that the part is not fully written out, as an obbligato part would be, indicates its secondary nature: the function of the continuo is to accompany. While following this general principle, styles of accompaniment differed widely at different times and places. (See also Improvisation, §II.)

‘Basso continuo’ was one of several terms used by Italian composers from about 1600 onwards, either as a label or as a reference term for the organ part of an ensemble work. That it became the term most used may be due to the fact that it was coined by one of the first major exponents of the practice, Lodovico Viadana, whose Cento concerti ecclesiastici … con il basso continuo (Venice, 1602) became widely known: Viadana was later credited with the ‘invention’ of continuo (or figured bass) playing. ‘Continuo’ (‘continuous’) itself may in turn reflect its character in Viadana's Concerti – not an organ bass part culled from the vocal bass (as were others of the period) but an independent part running through the whole composition, without the rests characteristic of a vocal line.

Continuo

2. Origins.

The origins and early history of the basso continuo may conveniently be divided into two separate though related categories, depending on whether the music performed with this technique was sacred or secular. As the organ part in concerted church music, the basso continuo took the form of an ‘abbreviated full score’: the organist played the lowest-sounding note at any given point, together with its harmony. This practice began long before the earliest figured basses appeared in print in 1600. The first unfigured bass parts for the organ to be printed were apparently those in Placido Falconio's Introitus et Alleluia per omnes festivitates (Venice, 1575), but there are others in manuscript that may be older. Manuscript sources of the late 16th century often provided some kind of organ part and whether this was a bass (Croce, Motetti, 1594), a partial score (Victoria, Missae, 1600: three- or four-part chords), a full score (Valente, Versi, 1580) or a complete intavolatura with divisions was not necessarily significant; nor in most cases, one imagines, did the composer supply it. Unfigured basses seem to have been used most often in polychoral music, presumably because of the inconvenience of accompanying works in a large number of parts from score, but also because such large-scale, vertically conceived works tend to be contrapuntally and harmonically more straightforward. The bass line might be extracted from several vocal basses, as it is in Striggio's 40-part motet Ecce beatum lucem (surviving parts 1587, first performance probably Florence 1561), and include whatever vocal or instrumental part happened to be lowest (see Basso seguente). Some secular part-music was likewise provided with an accompaniment for harpsichord, lute, etc., playing exactly what the voices sang, perhaps with an added part to fill out the texture and harmony (Felice Anerio, Canzonette, 1586). Very likely the popularity of organ basses about 1600 was due to publishers rather than composers. As such it may reflect practical needs: to help organists in smaller churches to hold their choirs to pitch; to replace instruments originally specified by the composer for performance in his own cathedral, court chapel, etc; occasionally, perhaps, to replace the choir completely; or (perhaps most significant) to replace one or more singers in an ensemble. It could well be that Viadana (1602) intended the organist to add imitative parts to his vocal Concerti in the way that other voices in a choral work would have done (ex.1).

Imitative ‘points’ were recommended by many theorists, and Praetorius, who was acquainted with the work of all the important early Italian writers, quoted a preface by B. Strozzi in which figured basses were praised since they actually enabled organists to ‘perform Palestrina's motets … in such a way that it seemed to listeners as if the pieces were written in full tablature’. Palestrina himself evidently authorized an organ bass for his six-part motet Dum complerentur in 1585, and by at least 1600 in Madrid and 1608 in Venice, works of Victoria and Palestrina were being published with organ basses, for example Palestrina's Motettorum quinque vocibus … addita parte infima pro pulsatoris organi comoditate. Viadana justified his bass part on the grounds that it was less troublesome to write out than a full intavolatura; Agazzari (and hence Praetorius) added two further reasons: that it suited the new recitative style (or possibly its notation) and that organists would be spared large collections of transcriptions. Whether composers desired performers to play background chords or worked-out contrapuntal lines of a quasi-vocal nature, they employed various means of showing the harmonies (Banchieri, 1609/R). Some composers printed a single bass line, some a double (one for each choir – Croce, Motetti, 1594 [partitura]). Often they added a few sharps and flats above the bass (Banchieri, Concerti ecclesiastici, 1595); less often, but increasingly from about 1610, they inserted figures as well. Some composers gave organists not only their bass line but also one voice above (soprano, Banchieri, 1595); and most included bar-lines (spartite) in their parts, a help to the ensemble (as Banchieri noted in his Cartella musicale, 3/1614). Although the volumes of music written at the turn of the century were in a less contrapuntally organized style than that of Palestrina, it is clear that, for sacred music, continuo playing has roots not only in the organ basses of the late 16th century but in the more general practice of organ accompaniment in elaborate polyphonic music, particularly in Italy north of Rome. Moreover, even when the continuo as a publisher's or composer's notational device was well established, theorists often advised organists to write out their own worked-out parts (Viadana, 1602) even for relatively simple hymns (Kittel's edition of Schütz's Gesänge, 1657).

Between 1600 and 1640 many Italian and German composers prefaced their works with hints on how to play the figured, semi-figured or unfigured basses they provided, the Germans being largely influenced by the Frankfurt editions of Viadana's Concerti (1609–13). The most pretentious German musicians, or at any rate the most pretentious court chapels, were the most Italianate. Composers in England, France (sacred and secular monodies only from about 1640), Spain, Austria and elsewhere also imitated the Italians. Not all German musicians adopted the technique enthusiastically. As late as 1648 Schütz evidently gave a continuo part for his Geistliche Chormusik only at the request of its publisher; and Praetorius, despite his copious references to theorists and his own wide experience, did little more for continuo playing than disseminate existing information on Italian practices.

Though earlier continuo parts were neither published nor described in print at the time, the practice of playing continuo may well be older for secular music than for sacred – particularly in the performance of Italian secular song. Castiglione wrote in 1528 that he liked best ‘singing to a lute and reciting’ (per recitare); Antonfrancesco Doni's Dialogo of 1544 refers to poems recited to music played by lira or viuola. In neither case is it clear to what the authors, who were amateur musicians, referred, although there was certainly no question of a figured or unfigured bass part. But both writers were associated with Florence where secular entertainments (on such occasions as weddings) brought together rich vocal and instrumental forces, organized around groups of keyboard or plucked instruments. Even at the end of the 15th century it seems that the instruments were organized in what would later be called continuo groups on one hand and obbligato groups on the other. One Medici wedding (1565) had a tableau for Amor and Psyche in which the music ‘was played by a consort of four harpsichords of large compass, two lutes, two violins, two trombones, two tenor recorders, one transverse flute and a cornetto muto’. Choosing colours from such potential was one of the composer's duties, as is clear from Monteverdi's letters, in which he wrote of using a chitarrone and harp for pastoral figures (1615) and the unsuitability of citterns, harps and harpsichords for sea-music (1616), etc. From at least 1597, the published accompaniments to such works as Peri's operas, Caccini's songs and Cavalieri's sacred dramas were simply bass lines, but figured more systematically than those for contemporary sacred music. As such they allowed one or more instruments to play the chords according to their individual technique and, no doubt, according to the rubato of the singer. A written-out accompaniment would therefore not have been traditional for groupings of instruments long known in secular entertainments, nor suitable for the several instruments reading the part (lira doppia, harpsichord and chitarrone in Cavalieri's Rappresentatione, 1600), and was too rigid in metre or rhythm for performance with a solo singer. The expressiveness of the vocal line was, after all, foremost in operatic monody and recitative.

Exactly how continuo players realized their basses in such secular music is not known. Extant written-out accompaniments are simple, leaving the voice free in its bravura passages (ex.2). But theorists such as Agazzari (1607), who divided instruments of accompaniment into chordal ones (‘instruments of foundation’) and ornamenting ones (‘instruments of ornamentation’: see §4 below), suggested many kinds of decoration for the ‘ornamental’ continuo instruments, and contemporary sources of English consort music, written out in full for all instruments, may suggest some of the ‘mille belles variétés et une vitesse de main incroyable’ heard from Italian lute players by André Maugars. By definition Hume's lyra viol parts (ex.3) are not basso continuo parts, but nor were many contributions made by continuo instruments in early opera. Hume wrote out the parts, but good players could have improvised them. According to Agazzari, lute, theorbo and harp players seem to have suited their style to circumstances. If they were accompanying only a few voices they provided simpler supporting chords than if they were in a larger ensemble, improvising above an organ or harpsichord. In slow-moving music the ‘ornamental’ instruments, and even those playing the basic harmonies, could be more adventurous. Schütz suggested that the organist or string player should add passage-work when the singer holds or repeats a note (Historia der Auferstehung, 1623), and Agazzari (Del sonare sopra ’l basso, 1607, 2/1608) distinguished between those playing with ‘invention and variety, now with gentle strokes and repercussions, now with generous passage-work’ and those with ‘facility of hand but little learning’ who play endless and unmusical runs. Exactly how he conceived the one as different from the other can now only be conjectured.

Continuo

3. Development.

In some counterpoint treatises from the 16th century intervals were designated with numbers; it was thus only a short step to use these numbers to indicate chords above a bass. Most of the signs or figures that appear above early basses are sharps or flats; digits were added sparingly, mostly 6s and 4s to clarify particularly ambiguous passages. Both Cavalieri and Monteverdi (Orfeo, published in 1609) were careful to specify such progressions as 3–4–4–3, though their scores are mostly without figures. But it is doubtful if any basses of the whole figured bass era were figured completely from the theoretical point of view, save in a few treatises. In 17th-century Italy few composers figured them even adequately, and there are many ambiguities, especially in music by major figures like Monteverdi. The examples of continuo songs arranged for voices and strings by the composers themselves, for instance Cavalli or Purcell, reveal how distant in some cases their intentions were from what they implied by their figuring. But on the whole players could assume that in most music, particularly sacred music within a narrow harmonic spectrum by Carissimi, Schütz, Charpentier and their lesser contemporaries, certain bass notes would imply certain harmonic progressions: for example, C rising to D would require a 6-3 chord. Many theory books until well into the 18th century deal mainly with the standard situations which players learnt as formulae (see Regola dell'ottava). Thus both the sacred and the secular compositions of good composers offer the player of today two distinct kinds of problem. First, that certain situations (notably cadences) demand progressions so standard that the composer did not trouble to specify them; second, that the composer has sometimes required the soloist to ‘contradict’ the implied harmonies, giving rise to a harmonically ambiguous situation. Monteverdi's Vespro della Beata Vergine and Orfeo bristle with examples of these problems, which are not always solved in modern editions. On the one hand, assumed cadences (especially the 4–3 progression) may be missed, and on the other the continuo instruments may be given harmonies reconciling the bass to the vocal line instead of vying with it.

Early continuo parts differ in some particulars from later practice. When accidentals are the only ‘figures’ above the bass line, for example, they are often used to indicate 6 and 6 as well as 3 and 3, and here ambiguities may arise, for some of the early typefaces (especially Venetian) did not always distinguish clearly enough between and 6. Moreover, some secular scores supply compound figures above 9 (10 being an octave and a 3rd, 11 an octave and a 4th, etc.), a practice that may reflect the special requirements of lutes and chitarroni. Such compound figures indicate the actual pitch of the note required, not merely its harmonic position. Peri used figures up to 11 (Euridice, 1600), Cavalieri up to 18 (Rappresentatione, 1600), and Caccini up to 14 (Nuove musiche, 1601/2/R). In 1626 J. Staden wrote that ‘figures 9 to 14 are rare, as they should be’, and it was not a practice that became widespread, despite its useful precision (ex.4).

The facility with which a player might learn to recognize the harmonies required in a given situation without ‘understanding’ the reasons for them seems to have led many composers and theorists to warn against figured bass playing. In fact, however, this ability is not easy to acquire, and the theorists' objections should not be taken too literally; they must often have been motivated by a kind of guild-master’s suspicion of new techniques. Thus Banchieri (1609/R) distinguished between figured bass players and those who had mastered score-reading and improvisation, but (except in the simplest, slowest choral music) the former is unlikely to have shown no elements of the latter. As Niedt (1700–21) implied in his fables of ignorant village musicians, German organists continued to be brought up on tablature and its realized harmonies, and this system was easier than one with unrealized harmonies. Roger North wrote of the comparison between figured basses and written-out parts:

the old masters would not allow the liberty of playing from a thro-base figured, as harpsichords of late have universally practised, but they formed the organ part express; because the holding out the sound required exact concord, else the consort would suffer; or perhaps the organists had not then the skill as since, for now they desire only figures.

He went on to recommend that an organist should play from score, not for the better understanding of the harmonic theory of a piece but rather so that he could then extemporize more practically, ‘embellishing his play’ and putting ‘somewhat more airey’ into his realization. On the other hand, earlier sources like the Batten Organbook (GB-Ob, c1630), containing English anthems in short score, give unfigured bass lines which are found realized in other sources with an invention not easily reconcilable with standard continuo principles.

Basically, early continuo style implied simple harmonies, at least in sacred music. Fergusio (Motetti, 1612) considered that not all chords need be played by the organist, but only those necessary to help the singer, while Werckmeister (1698) implied that figures often served merely as a kind of warning – that a bass figuring requiring both a 4th and 5th warns the player that what the voice is singing cannot be accompanied by a common chord.

It can be assumed that by about 1675 most Italian organists were accompanying from bass lines, albeit sparsely figured ones. The continuo came early into Germany through close links between some German courts and Italy. It was an essential ingredient of the new concertato style which was taken up with enthusiasm by a number of Lutheran courts such as Dresden and in the principal churches of larger urban centres such as Danzig. Spain had close political links with Italy, and although there are no Spanish discussions of the continuo before the late 17th century, the practice of supporting polyphony with a basso seguente on the organ had been adopted by the early years of the century. At the same time, large accompanying groups of guitars, harps, lutes and theorbos were employed in secular festivities, as in equivalent Italian events, and Spanish players could build on a tradition of accompanied song reaching back to Mudarra's songs with vihuela (1546).

England and France, with their own strong native traditions, proved less immediately receptive. The earliest publication with continuo by an English composer is a collection of two- and three-voice motets by Peter Philips (Gemmulae sacrae, 1613). But this was published in Antwerp, in the area of the Spanish Netherlands where other, similar publications appeared around this time. The earliest example of an English ‘thorough basse’ is probably that for Tallis's 40-part motet Spem in alium, which seems to have been written in response to Striggio's, possibly in 1571. But accompaniment on the organ from unfigured or figured basses remained unusual for some decades into the 17th century, although a few printed collections of domestic sacred music have continuo parts for organ (Martin Peerson's Mottects, 1630 and William Child's First Set of Psalmes, 1639). Organ parts for consort music were initially (in the 1620s and 30s) either an unfigured bass, or a bass and cantus part; otherwise they were more or less fully written out almost up to the time of the Restoration, and only in the 1660s did thoroughbass parts become common. English lute songs, on the other hand, began to move from fully written-out tablature accompaniments to thoroughbass after the publication in London of the Italian theorbist Angelo Notari's Prime musiche nuove (1613), though the basses of English songs up to around 1670 were rarely figured.

The French were yet slower to take up the practice, in spite of the artistically successful visit by Caccini and his family to the French court in 1604–5. Some adumbrations of continuo practice may been seen in airs of the court musicians Pierre Guédron (Troisième livre, 1617), where the lute is used to support a dramatic dialogue, and Antoine Boësset, whose VII Livre (1630) includes a five-part air with a ‘basse continue pour les instruments’. But these are rare moments, and the air de cour of the first half of the century typically had a fully written-out lute part in tablature. Only with the sudden popularity of the theorbo for accompanying the voice in the 1660s did the basse continue become normal for airs and dialogues. The concertato manner was quicker to influence composers of sacred music for the royal chapel such as Thomas Gobert, an admirer of Monteverdi, whose Antiennes récitatives (lost) were perhaps the first French use of the continuo. French musicians had ample opportunity to admire the latest Italian fashions in the 1640s when Cardinal Mazarin was importing great numbers of Italian singers and instrumentalists for his operatic enterprises. But the first Parisian publication with continuo was by the Dutch diplomat and connoisseur Constantijn Huygens (Pathodia sacra et profana, 1647), and it was not until Henry Du Mont's Cantica sacra (1652) that one was provided by a professional composer resident in Paris.

A great variety and richness of continuo instrumentation prevailed throughout the 17th century. Nonetheless, certain repertories tended to have standard groupings, such as harpsichord and cello for Italian cantatas from the 1690s, and organ and theorbo or archlute – a combination recommended much earlier by Monteverdi (letter, 1611) – for Corelli's sonatas and Kuhnau's cantatas. An English visitor to the Venetian opera in 1714 commented on the ‘lutes, theorbos and harpsichords which accompany the voices with marvellous exactness’. This not only describes a specific instrumental combination but confirms the fact that the opera composer was still throwing the weight of the accompaniment on to the continuo group. In ensembles with many instruments (operas, concerted church music) the keyboard player had light improvisatory duties, and the harmonies became sparse, to judge by Rousseau’s reports of the Italian opera in Paris (1753). But the sources suggest that practices in chamber music were different, as might be expected, particularly in solo sonatas and cantatas. While continuo players were adding a few thin chords to opera buffa, they were concocting rich, complex and extravagant harpsichord or organ parts in their performances of Italian solo cantatas.

The rise of the obbligato sonata – one for solo instrument in which the harpsichordist's right hand has a solo line as important as the soloist's – is a particularly interesting development. The best examples are among the earliest, those of J.S. Bach for violin, bass viol or flute, but the idea was widespread by about 1750 in all centres of galant music. Most such sonatas contain stretches of unfigured bass; only in other spheres, like organ trio sonatas, did composers (even Bach) consistently rely on three obbligato melodic parts. Conversely, even the most galant sonatas in this tradition (for example those by Georg Benda, Sammlung vermischter Clavier- und Gesangstücke, 1780–87) give to the harpsichord right hand complete themes, answering the soloist in the dominant, in fact behaving in traditional fugal style. The written-out accompaniment in the Largo of Bach's Flute Sonata in B minor (bwv1030, ex.5) appears to lead without a break to the complete, unfigured accompaniments of Classical piano and violin sonatas, for example those by Mozart; but they belong to different traditions. Bach sometimes wrote a kind of worked-out continuo part – note, for example, how the right hand plays something more lively as the soloist rests, a technique advocated by countless theorists – whereas Mozart composed pieces rather like piano sonatas with obbligato violin (see Accompanied keyboard music).

Two developments in the early decades of the 18th century brought in trends which were ultimately to undermine the figured bass as a practical system. The first, in reaction to the ever increasing sophistication of harmony which was leading to ever more complicated figurings, was Rameau's formulation of the fundamental bass (1722), an attempt to reduce the growing complexities of chord formation to a logical system. This ushered in decades of argument in which this theoretical concept was held in opposition to the figured bass as a means of understanding composition (see Generalbass). The second was the new light and graceful style introduced after 1710 by Neapolitan opera composers such as Leo, Porpora and Vinci. Clear textures and harmony based on the primary triads joined with the symmetrical phrase groupings of dance music to form a galant style that was cultivated initially in vocal music, but rapidly infected the instrumental genres of sonata and concerto. From the 1730s the presence of a chordal continuo in ensemble music became less a matter of course, as had long been the case in ensemble dance music. Some works dispensed with keyboard accompaniment altogether (Mattheson, Das neu-eröffnete Orchestre, Hamburg, 1713), and others neglected to give the keyboard a figured bass part (certain French string chamber music, c1735). If a figured bass part were provided, some composers directed the keyboardist to play Tasto solo for long stretches (e.g. Handel's organ part for Alexander's Feast, 1736), or else theorists offered that advice in their treatises (Avison, 1752). Several later German theorists (Daube, 1756; Petri, 1767) objected to the provision of a basso continuo in trios and quartets, and, indeed, by 1750 the participation of a keyboard continuo was exceptional in smaller chamber groups; it played no part in Haydn's string quartets, and we should not assume that figured bass parts in string quartets of about 1770 by Vanhal and others necessarily imply keyboard accompaniment. On the other hand, bass lines with figures, or such directions as col basso in the opening ritornellos of Mozart's piano concertos, appear from contemporary accounts to direct the soloist-director to accompany the ensemble with chords based on the bass line of the keyboard part, perhaps simply to hold the ensemble together.

While it is possible that a col basso direction in a score is simply an indication to the copyist to include the bass line in the piano part, the balance of evidence suggests that Mozart and his pupils played continuo accompaniments in the tuttis when performing with full orchestra. The symphonies, on the other hand, demonstrate the disappearance of the continuo as orchestration became more sophisticated. The earlier ones have the traditional composite part for all the bass instruments, including harpsichord or organ colla parte. Later ones separate this into its elements (bassoons with separate obbligato parts, cellos and basses divisi at least part of the time in most movements), so moving on from the old idea of the common basso continuo and making keyboard accompaniment dispensable. Beethoven provided a figured bass part for the tuttis of all his piano concertos (with the exception of the middle movement of no.4). Not only did he expect it played, but he treated it more fully than did either Haydn or Mozart. Playing in tuttis was a form of direction practised also by Hummel, and probably by Mendelssohn and Chopin as well, but by the mid-1830s both soloists and leader were relinquishing control to the baton conductor.

In the larger chamber or concert halls in Europe during two centuries there was of course no consistent practice regarding the direction of the music. Sometimes the continuo player functioned as director; sometimes there was a more specialized conductor, who did nothing else. In many cases the first violinist directed irrespective of whether or not he was a virtuoso soloist (C.P.E. Bach referred to this practice); in such cases the continuo player filled in the harmonies. In other music, both sacred and secular, a maestro di cappella led the group and would not have degraded himself by playing a keyboard instrument. Haydn at Eszterháza (from 1766) probably directed from the violin (otherwise the ‘Farewell’ symphony would have to end with a keyboard solo), but composers at London concerts about 1790–1800 directed from the piano, playing from the bass throughout, as Haydn is reported to have done in his London symphonies.

The places where direction from the keyboard and the chordal continuo lasted longest were the theatre and the church. Mozart speaks of directing operas from the keyboard (‘Dirigiren beim Clavier’), and Rossini and his contemporaries ‘presided at the pianoforte’, on which they presumably accompanied the recitatives. Although recitativo semplice ceased to play a part in serious opera after the 1820s, it continued in use in revivals of opere buffe through the 1850s and 60s (Donizetti's Il campanello, 1835, is the last of his operas to use it). The figured-bass treatises published in Vienna by Albrechtsberger and others point to the continued practical use of the continuo in church music. Bruckner's early masses still call for organ continuo, and the figured organ part for his Requiem (1849) reflects the traditional concept of the continuo group set against obbligato string and wind parts. For works such as oratorios to be performed in the concert hall there was a tendency to write out organ parts, including those for revivals of 18th-century choral works (as Mendelssohn did for Handel's Solomon, Israel in Egypt and Joshua, and Brahms did for Saul). It is not clear when this began, but in most countries it was established by 1820 or perhaps earlier; as soon, that is, as a composer could assume that the organist would use a published organ reduction (for example in English oratorios from about 1750). For works performed in church (motets, etc.) the continuo tended to be realized by the organist.

Continuo

4. Instruments.

From the beginning of the continuo period, the organ was specified or understood as the instrument for church music, many parts from 1600 to 1800 being labelled ‘basso per l'organo’ or simply ‘organo’. In some countries, organs were forbidden during Lent (or at least during Holy Week); hence the payments for harpsichord in S Marco, Venice, for Palm Sunday Passions (1656, etc.), and title-pages of such works as Francesco Milleville's Pompe funebri … delli matutini la sera nella settimana santa … co'l basso continuo per lò clavicembalo, tiorba ò simil'instromento (Venice, 1624). Many 17th- and 18th-century organs in Italy were provided with a harpsichord manual for use in Holy Week. In German court chapels, some organs had a set or more of harpsichord strings, and the organist may have used these for accompanying recitative. Certainly in the extra-liturgical oratorios, Passion stories, etc., the evangelist might be accompanied by ‘a large or small organ, or also a harpsichord, lute or pandora, according to his choice’ (Schütz, Historia der Auferstehung, 1623) or according to what was available. Some larger German churches (like the Thomaskirche, Leipzig, c1680–1780) kept a harpsichord, probably in the organ gallery at the west end. Pictorial evidence suggests that lutes sometimes played with the organ in church, at least on larger occasions (as in John Weldon's Divine Harmony, 1716) and perhaps often in the more aristocratic churches (in the English Chapel Royal after the Restoration two theorbos were sometimes used as part of an accompanying group with the organ). Evidence suggests that from at least the 1550s many larger Spanish churches had one or even two harps for use during services. The harp never lost its popularity in Spain during these two centuries, and skill in accompaniment was at least as highly prized as solo playing. In church music there are generally separate parts for harp and organ, the harp(s) playing in all items, the organ only in tuttis. Harpists were evidently expected to play florid, prepared accompaniments since they were all permanent members of the establishment, well paid and with plenty of time for preparation.

Exactly how the organ was played changed from period to period and area to area. The lesser organo pleno of the highly standardized single-manual Italian organ, being specially suitable for continuo purposes, must have contributed to the popularity of continuo. Stops were drawn discreetly; both Viadana (1602) and Gasparini (1708) recommended that full choral passages be accompanied by large chords, played by hands and feet, rather than by the drawing of extra stops. Registrations implied in contemporary organ tutors (Costanzo Antegnati, L'arte organica, Venice, 1608; Banchieri) vary, as they do in Monteverdi's Vespro della Beata Vergine, from Principale (Open Diapason alone) to 8.4.2 Principals and so to organo pleno (full Diapason chorus, no reeds, but 16' in bigger churches). German theorists seem always to have allowed greater variety, as did their instruments themselves. Praetorius (2/1619) advised the organist to prepare two manuals, one louder than the other, and to play the bright registrations in a more lively manner than the quiet. Recitative should ideally be accompanied by a quiet Gedackt or 8' Stopped Diapason (Schütz, Historia der Auferstehung, 1623) and pedals can be colourfully registered (for example 8' Posaune, 8' Oktave and 5¹/₃' Quinte) when several instruments are accompanying concerted music (Samber, 1704–7). German theorists also began to be more specific about pedals, Samber advising 16' ranks in tutti passages, and later writers such as Mattheson (1731), C.P.E. Bach (1753–62) and Adlung (2/1783) assuming that the pedal played the bass part unless it was too difficult for the feet, in which case it was played on a manual with a 16' stop. It is characteristic of the period when continuo traditions began to decay that some later writers (Schröter, 1772) should suggest that the organ could take over obbligato solo lines in the style of contemporary flute sonatas, while others advocated thick combinations of 8' and 4' stops (Bédos de Celles, L'art du facteur d'orgues, 1766–78).

Organs were sometimes to be heard playing continuo in places other than churches, notably in 17th-century Italy, where the organ was used in the continuo of instrumental chamber music much more than the harpsichord or other instruments. Positive organs based on 8' or 4' principals, regals, table organs and claviorgans (a combination of table organ and harpsichord) were much more common than one might expect, and the specification of organ continuo by no means necessarily implies da chiesa use. The organ was also favoured in English and German consorts, in the oratorios of the mid- and late 18th century (London, Paris, Vienna) and – more exceptionally – in the sumptuous opera productions of the 17th century (see Organ, §V). Little organi di legno (small single-manual organs of a rank or two of closed and open pipes) are specified by such composers as Monteverdi (Orfeo, 1607) and such theorists as Barcotto (c1640), while Mace (1676) continued to think the organ the most suitable instrument for consort music, except when the piece is ‘airy, jocund, lively and spruce’ in which case he thought harpsichord better. Many German sources give the impression of the organ (full-sized or positive) as being unrivalled for keyboard continuo playing, and its style certainly influenced the realization of figured basses in the piano tutors of the late 18th century – rather as if idiomatic harpsichord continuo had been completely bypassed by many German performers between 1600 and 1800.

In his discussion of the rich array of instruments of accompaniment in early 17th-century Italy Agazzari (1607) explained that his instrumental categories depended on whether or not an instrument was capable of playing the bass. Foundation instruments such as organ and harpsichord were capable of playing the bass line and also chords above, accompanying as it were ‘on the bass’. Some ornamentation instruments, such as the violin and the spinet, were too high in pitch to play the bass line (the early 17th-century spinetta was at 4' or quint pitch); some, such as the lirone, cittern and guitar, were incapable of playing ‘perfect harmony’ because their re-entrant tuning put many triads into 6-4 position. These accompanied ‘over the bass’. Some instruments, such as the lute, theorbo and harp could take either role. Melodic bass line instruments were used to make good deficiencies: a trombone (played quietly) could supply the bass for a 4' organetto, and Praetorius (1618) recommended a bassoon for this purpose.

The chitarrone, which first appeared at the Florentine intermedi of 1589, was the prime instrument for accompanying monodic song, its quasi-antique name alluding to the kithara, the instrument of Apollo. Other instruments mentioned in publications include the harpsichord, lute, guitar (from the 1620s) and double harp. On the whole, a single instrument was considered sufficient, and melodic bass instruments such as the bass viol or violone were not used in this repertory. Around 1600 the term tiorba began to be used for the chitarrone (Cavalieri); the earlier term fell out of use by the 1640s. Melodic bass instruments were more usual in stage works (Monteverdi's Combattimento (1624) uses a contrabasso da gamba along with the harpsichord throughout) and became particularly important with the development of the cello from the 1680s. The rise of the latter encouraged elaborate obbligato bass lines in opera and cantata arias in which the new generation of virtuosos such as Francesco Alborea (‘Franciscello’) could shine. But the combination of harpsichord and cello was not common in Italy before the last decade of the 17th century.

The archlute, a normal-sized lute with extra bass courses, was more agile than the larger theorbo, though with a less sonorous bass. Both were used not only for chordal accompaniment, but also as purely bass line instruments. The combination of two violins with chitarrone/theorbo was favoured for dance music and chamber sonatas, where the plucked string was preferred to other bass instruments such as the bassoon as giving ‘spirit’ to the violins (Francesco Turini, Madrigali, libro III, 1629). Much ensemble dance music in the 17th century did not involve any chordal continuo. After about 1635 these extended lutes became principally bass line instruments in Italy. The theorbo continued to be used in conjunction with the organ in the graver style of church music. But the archlute, like the cello, came to the fore in the 1680s with the introduction of silver-wound strings which increased the strength of its bass notes without impairing its agility. The best known manifestations of this new and brilliant use are Corelli's church sonatas op.1 and op.3 (Rome, 1681, 1689) where the archlute is an alternative to the violone (in this case a cello with the part demanding considerable agility in the upper range). Multiple plucked string instruments were used in the continuo of large concerto orchestras at the end of the century, with several harpsichords, theorbos and harps in the tutti, but just one harpsichord or theorbo in the concertino group (print of Bernardo Pasquini's Applausus musicale, in C. Schoor, Festa celebrata in Roma, 1687; Georg Muffat, Ausserlesene Instrumental-Music, 1701).

Of other bass line instruments, the bass viol fell from favour in Italy before 1650, although some members of the family such as the six-string contrabass with A' or G' of the lowest string (playing sometimes at 8', sometimes at 16' pitch) were among the instruments that went under the general heading of violone. This term on its own usually meant an instrument at 8' pitch in Italy, with the 16' four-string contrabasso tuned in 4ths appearing in larger orchestral groupings in the later part of the century. A continuo group of two harpsichords, sometimes with theorbo, or harpsichord supported by cello and double bass (documented in numerous theatre plans and illustrations), crystallized for opera after 1700. Many sonata title-pages until well into the 18th century specified harpsichord or violone/cello as alternatives rather than in combination, in which case the cello may have played a partially chordal continuo. It is not clear precisely how this worked in practice since the evidence for chordal continuo on the cello dates from the later 18th century. Given the very full and dissonant Italian style of harpsichord accompaniment, the difference in sound between these alternatives would have been very marked.

In the early part of the 17th century a dulcian was used as the bass of a wind or brass group. Because of its agility it developed a virtuoso solo repertory, and this made it a possible alternative to the theorbo as a bass line instrument (Cavalli, Musiche sacre, 1656). Late in the century the refined French bassoon was exported all over Europe, used for solos or as the bass of a trio with two oboes. It became a standard component of the bass line with the cello and double bass in the early Classical orchestra (Haydn, letter, 1768). The trombone is rarely mentioned in publications after about 1650; after the decline of its natural consort partner, the cornett, it was used in Rome and in some German centres as the bass of a trumpet ensemble.

Much of German practice closely mirrored that of Italy. Early in the 17th century Praetorius made the main Italian writings on the new monodic and concertato styles available in German, and many German composers were trained in Italy. Not only the Catholic south, which naturally looked to Italy, but many of the Lutheran courts of the centre and north, notably the Dresden of Schütz, looked to Venetian models, and after mid-century to Rome, where Carissimi was maestro di cappella at the Collegio Germanico. Fewer courts (notably Hanover and its dependencies, and Schwerin) looked to France, though there was a general tendency to look to that country for dance music. The German wish to absorb and combine the best features of both styles is summed up in the careers, music and writings of Froberger and Georg Muffat.

In north German church music the harpsichord was sometimes used with the organ as an additional part in tuttis (as continuo parts in the Düben collection (S-Uu) imply), and even occasionally alone. More common as a second accompanying instrument was the lute or theorbo, usually with the organ rather than alone, and playing throughout, not just with the ripieno. The largest centres naturally had the most elaborate instrumentations. In the Dresden of Heinichen and Zelenka (c1710–30) the (Catholic) court chapel employed a continuo group of two or more cellos, bassoons, violoni and theorbos, though the theorbos fell out of use in the 1730s after the arrival of Hasse. The harpsichord was used only in works in the modern style in Holy Week (Lamentations, oratorios, passions) when the organ was silent. Less extravagantly funded centres used more modest resources: Bach in Leipzig regularly used one or two cellos and occasionally a violone to reinforce the continuo line, while his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, in Halle used organ alone for most of the continuo line in his church cantatas. The evidences for the use of the harpsichord in Bach's church music can be argued in various ways, but he would not have been going against traditional German practice in using it occasionally either in conjunction with or separately from the organ. He himself directed the funeral music for the Queen and Electress Christiane Eberhardine from the harpsichord (1727).

The violone at 16' pitch was used at times: Praetorius called for it in Polyhymnia (1619); one was bought by the Marienkirche, Lübeck, in 1672; and it was particularly recommended by M.H. Fuhrmann (Musicalischer-Trichter, 1706) to give weight to ensembles in large buildings. As in Italy, the bassoon appeared from the early stages, for example in Schütz's Psalmen Davids (1619). Later it was used in stile antico choral fugues to double the vocal bass when oboes doubled the upper voices. In the 18th century it was used for the continuo in many movements without other reeds being present, and also occasionally in recitativo semplice. Fuhrmann regretted the disappearance of the old 16' bombardone (bass shawm) and its replacement by the bassoon at 8' pitch. The earliest instance of a double bassoon being specified in a work is Georg Österreich's Actus funebris (1702), reinforcing the possibility that the bassono grosso for which Bach provided a part in the St John Passion was at 16' pitch.

In England strong native traditions of lute and viol playing influenced the continuo. The theorbo, introduced in the second decade of the 17th century, remained an important accompanying instrument until well into the 18th. It was mentioned until about 1730, but after 1700 it was overshadowed by the more fashionable archlute. As in France, the lute fell out of use towards the end of the 17th century, its place as a popular accompanying instrument being taken by the guitar. A specifically English instrument for song accompaniment was the bass viol. A number of Elizabethan and Jacobean prints include accompaniments for bass viol alone, some elaborately chordal and in tablature, some just a bass line (Robert Jones, Second Booke of Songs and Ayres, 1601). The airs of Corkine's Second Book (1612) look like continuo songs with melody and bass line, but some were to be sung to the viol alone. Later prints often give lute or viol as alternatives: John Playford's Select Musicall Ayres (1652), for example, are ‘to sing to the Theorbo, Lute, or Basse Violl’. Those less skilled could simply play the bass line, but Playford's Musick's Recreation on the Lyra Viol (1652) and Simpson's The Division-Violist (1659) show that chordal and even contrapuntal techniques were widely used, perhaps by skilled players even in accompaniment. The harpsichord was rarely mentioned for song accompaniment before the Restoration. Its use for accompaniment was probably introduced by foreign musicians brought to England by the later Stuarts: Pepys heard G.B. Draghi sing to the harpsichord in 1667, but this was not common before 1680. Chamber organs were standard in consort music, and no doubt accompanied in other contexts although not usually specified. Parts began to be expressed as continuo lines, rather than being written out, from the 1650s.

Keyboard instruments hardly figured in early 17th-century court masques, in which chordal accompaniments were played, as in the French ballet de cour, by large numbers of lutes. Theatrical works after the Restoration continued to be influenced by French practice, by then that of Lully, with a chordal continuo group accompanying the voices; dances and symphonies were played by the string group alone, without continuo. After 1700 fashion swung decisively in favour of Italian opera, with its standard complement of one or two harpsichords to accompany the recitativo semplice, and a continuous bowed bass of cello and probably double bass. The group of cello, two harpsichords and archlute that P.-J. Fougereux heard accompanying the recitative in a Handel production of 1728 would have been fairly typical. Handel also used the harp (Esther, Saul, Alexander Balus), and it became very fashionable for song accompaniment in both England and France in the later 18th century. A harpsichord continued to appear in London orchestral lists up to 1791, after which the pianoforte took its place.

The practice of the continuo did not become common in France until after 1650 and at first was associated with church music (Du Mont, Cantica sacra, 1652), which was more open to Italian influence than secular vocal music. The main instrument was naturally the organ, but works of M.-A. Charpentier, for example, occasionally also called for harpsichord or theorbo. The theorbo, which must have been known in France from early in the century through visiting Italian musicians and French musicians returning from England, came suddenly into fashion around 1660, apparently thanks to the lutenist and viol player Nicolas Hotman. Its first recorded use by Lully is in the Ballet d'Alcidiane (1658). Bénigne de Bacilly, in the standard vocal tutor of the era (1668), wrote that neither harpsichord nor bass viol had the theorbo's grace in accompanying the voice. He also noted that at that time the harp had fallen out of use in France: Lully used it exclusively for entrées of Spanish character, in conjunction with guitars (Les muses, 1666). The vogue for Italian sonatas and cantatas that began in the 1690s brought with it the standard combination of keyboard and string bass (Brossard, 1703; François Couperin, Leçons de tenébres, 1713–17), with either the cello or bass viol preferred depending on how much one adhered to the Italian faction. Some cantata arias (for example by Clérambault) are completely Italianate in form and style, but require the seven-string bass viol on the virtuoso bass line, an example of the union of French and Italian elements sought by composers of the generation of Couperin. After about 1720 the Italian influence predominated, including the typical Italian combination of violin and cello (as an alternative to the harpsichord) favoured by French violinists such as J.-B. Anet and J.P. Guignon.

French ensemble dance music written for violin-family instruments in the early 17th century seems not to have involved any chordal instruments, judging by the many surviving contracts for groups of musicians. Lavish court entertainments, on the other hand, frequently used massed instruments of all sorts, particularly lutes. In his stage works Lully divided the orchestra into two components, each with a clear function: the petit choeur accompanied the vocal airs and ensembles, linking them into a seamless sequence; the grand choeur played the overture, symphonies and dances. The grand choeur (in five parts, notionally played by 24 violin-family instruments, sometimes doubled by woodwind, though listings and accounts vary) did not have a chordal continuo and the bass line was unfigured. There is no exact description of the petit choeur of Lully's time, but a list for the Académie Royale de Musique in 1704 gives two solo violins, harpsichord, two theorbos, two bass viols and three bass violins; another for 1712–13 adds two transverse flutes and has one less each of bass viol and bass violin. A double bass was added, probably to the grand choeur only, around 1700 and was used initially for representations of storms and subterranean rumblings, as popularised by the storm in Marais' Alcione (1706). The theorbos had disappeared by 1733, and the bass violin by 1750. The remaining chordal instrument, the harpsichord, was gradually less used during Rameau's career and by the time of Gluck's Paris operas in the mid-1770s it was no longer listed in the orchestra.

Continuo

5. Playing techniques.

(i) Keyboard instruments.

(ii) Plucked-string instruments.

(iii) Bowed-string instruments.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Continuo, §5: Playing techniques

(i) Keyboard instruments.

Precisely what the gravicembalo players contributed to the solo and ensemble pieces of the 1589 Florentine intermedi will never be known; nor is it at all certain how much composers or copyists expected contemporary church organists to add for the performance of an English anthem or a Spanish motet. Such organists did not in principle contribute an indispensable part to the harmony or texture of the piece. But the first set of rules for continuo players (Viadana's Concerti, 1602) accompanied a volume of music in which the continuo part was indeed indispensable for the completion of the work. The famous set of twelve rules is therefore particularly instructive. A short paraphrase of their conjectured meaning is:

Such rules do not inform the organist what to play, and the choice remains wide, from simple block chords to thinner, more contrapuntal textures (ex.1). Generally speaking, however, the style of the realization depends on the function of the continuo instrument. Did it play alone? Was the music sacred or secular? Did it fill in the harmony or add colour? In some motets for few voices by Viadana and his contemporaries in Italy and elsewhere (such as Praetorius) the organ supplies the lines that might be expected to belong to other voices; in lute songs and monodies, the lute or chitarrone gives a harmonic background (ex.2); in instrumental or vocal consorts, the bowed or plucked string instruments supplying Agazzari's so-called ornamentation did so in ways suggested by the nature and technique of the instrument concerned (ex.3); in ensembles of several choirs, contrast of technique and timbre between continuo instruments is required; and so on. When Roger North, speaking of broken consorts in the middle of the 17th century, wrote:

But I must allow that the attendance of instruments of the arpeggio kind, which rattle plentifully, as harpsichords, archlutes and above all the pandora, give a fullness as well as elegance to the sound and thereby attract an attention. It is to my knowledge within the memory of man, that in the celebrated consorts divers of the pandoras were used…

the function of the extra continuo instruments in such an ensemble is clear, and hence what they play is implied. A harpsichord adding an ornamental part to a consort should play differently from one alone accompanying a voice, whatever the style or period of music concerned.

Theorists necessarily concentrated on correct harmony, and their examples are only too frequently explications of harmony rather than idiomatic realizations for a particular instrument. But straightforward harmonizations are often found to suit a particular style (like Schütz’s recitative), or a particular instrument (such as a small organ or fortepiano), or a particular function (for example the piano directing the tutti of a Mozart concerto). Thus when Agazzari realized a bass line in a simple chordal manner, organists should appreciate that it suits very well church music of the period, with or without other accompaniment, especially in Italy and Germany (ex.6). Such interpretation naturally served as an obvious model for theorists writing either predominantly for organ (Praetorius, Werckmeister, etc.) or more theoretically, for no particular instrument (Locke, Blow, etc.). Four parts, especially with a gap between the hands, could also serve to accompany a violin solo, for example in the violin sonatas of the 1620s or the later fully-fledged concertos (ex.7). Even if the copyist did not intend this as a literal accompaniment, it would suit the organ with an 8' Principale registration. On an Italian harpsichord, it would be better to put the right hand down an octave. A more inventive organ style is hinted at by certain Italian authors such as Penna (1672) who liked the organist to ‘accompany the dissonances with their consonances’ (to play suspensions and resolutions together). Severe though some of the resulting clashes must have been, such habits were also suggested by Roger North when he talked of ‘mixing’ the chords, playing ‘together continually such sounds as a descanter would scarce allow of’. The effects were reserved for fuller ensembles and are in practice often justified by the very simplicity of the harmony in so much vocal music of the 17th century.

Where music-making was still under the influence of Italian arias and cantatas (e.g. English publications c1790) or retained old styles and forms (Protestant and Catholic Germany), continuo can be assumed to have been played in the old manner, though somewhat simplified. Such simplification might have taken the form of elementary harmonies, following the voice discreetly in arias. Only occasionally did a treatise suggest an idiomatic organ style, less extravagant than the harpsichord's (e.g. Penna, 1672); the first to deal with the subtleties of harpsichord accompaniment was probably Saint-Lambert's Nouveau traité of 1707, a book soon followed by similar ones by Gasparini (1708), Heinichen (1711) and their imitators.

Judging from the practice of Georg Muffat (c1699), organ accompaniment in the South German/Italian tradition in the later 17th century encompassed a variety of textures: three parts (two in the right hand); four parts (two in each hand); and a variable full texture of four and more parts (two or more parts in each hand). These probably relate to Agazzari's instruction to thin or fill out the texture according to the number of voices being accompanied. By 1730 four-part harmonies (with three parts in the right hand) were given as the realizations of figured-bass lines in all theory books except, occasionally, one written by an Italian: Manfredini's (1775) gave five. A large collection of realized continuo parts from the circle of C.P.E. Bach (D-Bsb Mus.ms.theor.348) uses this four-part texture for works from Corelli's Sonate a tre op.1 (1681) to trios by J.G. Graun (c1760), including the St John Passion of J.S. Bach and overtures of Handel. This is a student work, but may be seen in the light of Daube's (1756) description of three playing styles: 1) simple, with closely connected right hand chords and all chord factors present; 2) natural, which adjusts this strict manner to be more melodious and like a composition; and 3) complex (‘die künstliche oder zusammengesetzte’), similar to the elaborated (‘manierlich’) accompaniment given by Heinichen (1728), or the concertante patterns of Mattheson's Exemplarische Organisten-Probe (1719). Daube noted that J.S. Bach excelled at the third style. The simple style was the common teaching method of the 18th century, from which one could branch out into idiomatic organ or harpsichord accompaniment. In practice good professional harpsichordists probably played, as Quantz (1752) recommended, a nuanced accompaniment with texture varied to enhance the musical effect of the moment. This is probably what Daube had in mind for his natural style, a style which according to Löhlein (1765) was only for those with experience of composition and the sensitivity to do it properly. Löhlein also tells us that by his time the complex manner had gone out of fashion.

Four-part texture has remained the most usual in the academic teaching of harmony, and most sources explain the rudiments of harmony rather than the subtleties of harpsichord accompaniment. Nevertheless, four-part harmonies were useful in several respects: they suited the new piano better than did the older harpsichord arpeggios; they matched the traditional four-part layout of sacred vocal music; and they suited the nature of the galant styles in which an elaborate melody required simple chords below.

From a study of the small treatises by Penna, A. Scarlatti, Pasquini, Gasparini, Geminiani, Pasquali, Antoniotto, Manfredini and several anonymous authors, it is possible to build up a picture of the mature Italian harpsichord continuo style. In the large orchestra described by Agazzari and Praetorius the harpsichord and spinet divided the foundation and ornamental functions, both subsequently taken by the harpsichord. If it were alone accompanying (‘maintaining the harmony’, in Roger North's phrase), the harpsichord would need to be played in a restrained manner, except perhaps when the voice or solo instruments were silent. North distinguished between the two functions of the harpsichord when he wrote:

For an accompanying part which is to maintain the harmony, to trill, and upon the low notes whereon it most leans, unless it be upon a little ritornello or solo, is senseless and destructive to the musick. But that is the fault of our English masters who, accompanying a voice, will clatter trills at the bottom to make one wild…

By 1711 and 1728 Heinichen and those he influenced in north and central Germany (Mattheson, Kellner, Daube) were issuing extended models or written-out examples for harpsichord players to show where and how ornaments could be added to the realized harmonies, how to improvise melodies and imitations and how to ‘break’ chords. According to Geminiani (1756–7), the art of accompanying on the harpsichord ‘chiefly consists in rendering the Sounds of the Harpsichord lasting, for frequent interruptions of the Sound are inconsistent with true melody’. Such approaches contrast strangely with, for instance, contemporary French chamber music, in which the harpsichord was often given an almost effetely discreet part to play. The influences behind the advice of Geminiani and Heinichen were the Italian theorists and players of about 1700, musicians used to little Italian harpsichords with two 8' registers requiring rich harmonies and constant repercussion, ornamentation and the like if they were to sustain their sound usefully for a singer. A good example of the Italian approach is to be seen in the frequent explanations of harpsichord acciaccaturas, familiar from the solo sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti but once equally familiar in harpsichord continuo playing. According to the anonymous Regole piu necessarie et universali per accompagniare il basso continuo (MS, 1720, I-Rli, Mus P15), the simplest progressions could be treated with these little crushed notes (ex.8), as could whole arias (ex.9). Gasparini and others wrote of such acciaccaturas as if they were best suited to recitatives, as they surely are; but it is clear from many sources that they were more generally a part of the ‘mature Italian style’. For example, Geminiani (A Treatise of Good Taste, 1749) wrote of the player that:

In accompanying grave Movements, he should make use of Acciaccaturas, for these rightly placed, have a wonderful Effect. No performer … should flatter himself that he is able to accompany well till he is Master of this delicate and admirable secret which has been in use above a hundred years.

This attribute that would disqualify it in the most up-to-date circles of Paris and Berlin. But as important are the suggestions from French theorists that in many contexts chords were realized very richly; that they were fancifully arpeggiated with little crushed notes slipped in, and that the bass was sometimes doubled in order to take advantage of the new rich sonorities from low notes added shortly before to French harpsichords (ex.10).

The Italians and those they influenced obviously knew two distinct styles of continuo playing on the harpsichord: one very rich, the other simple. The one was filled with acciaccaturas and obviously led some players to distort the composer's original bass line, as in Antoniotto's version of a passage from one of Corelli's violin sonatas (op.5 no.1; ex.11). One can understand Le Cerf's complaint in 1704 that ‘usually all that is heard in Italian music is a continuo accompaniment varied without respite, the manner of decorating the chords often taking the form of arpeggios and figurations’. The second was that employed in the quick recitativo semplice of the new light operas – short, simple chords below a parlando vocal line, much admired by Rousseau in the middle of the century. Rousseau reported hearing only the bass played in such music, without chords, but Rameau (1760) recommended quick arpeggios. Rousseau's distinction between the French and Italian styles raises the question of the accompaniment of recitative. Certain areas of this difficult subject will always remain obscure – for instance, how keyboard players accompanied recitative in the operas of Monteverdi, Lully and Rossini. The music by such composers as Schütz and Handel is less open to conjecture, since in both cases the performing tradition to which it belongs is better understood. In practice, however, the finer points of style in recitative playing amount to knowing how richly to play and whether to spread and repeat the chords, how quickly to play them, and when to leave the voice unsupported. The recitatives in Monteverdi's Orfeo include some of the most confident and well-developed progressions in 17th-century harmony; their very inventiveness and beauty demand simple chords from the organ and harpsichord. It is also clear from the vocal style that there should be a distinction between the sections accompanied by organ and those by harpsichord. A suggested realization requiring both approaches is given as ex.12.

Lully's harmony is on the whole much simpler than Monteverdi’s, and this may imply a greater freedom for the player. However, French sources are so scanty that all we know is that by 1660 the French had learnt how to adapt the rich, broken-chord, low-tessitura harmonies of Baroque lute music to the harpsichord; this style of basse continue was demonstrated by D'Anglebert (1689). At the other end of the scale, evidence for accompanying Rossini's recitative is also scanty but probably because chords were played so plainly and quickly as to require no special explanation. When Gasparini wrote (1708) of recitative that ‘the more its dissonances can be played full and doubled, the better will be the effect’, he was referring neither to the old aristocratic operas nor to the new opera buffa, but to the standard cantata and opera seria style. Yet as late writers (C.P.E. Bach, Pasquali, Löhlein, Kollmann, Türk) saw, the changing mood of recitative was one of its chief features, and the player had to help to distinguish between a text ‘common, tender or passionate’ and one full of anger or abrupt surprise (Pasquali, 1757; see ex.13).

Some of the problems facing the conscientious continuo player are highlighted by the work of J.S. Bach, himself a fine performer and one open to a vast range of influences. The written evidence concerning Bach's own playing is contradictory and must be understood as representing him in different roles. Contemporaries spoke of his invention. Mizler von Kolof (Musikalische Bibliothek, i/4–6, 1738) wrote that:

Anyone who wants to have the right idea about what refinement in continuo-playing and very good accompaniment mean need only trouble himself to hear our Kapellmeister Bach here who plays every continuo to a solo in such a way that it might be thought an obbligato piece with the right-hand part composed previously.

J.F. Daube (1756) reported that:

A lifeless piece was inspirited by his very skilful accompaniment. He could bring in imitations with his right or left hand so cleverly, or introduce a counter-subject so unexpectedly, that listeners could not believe that it had not been very carefully pre-composed. He did not nevertheless neglect his duty of supporting the harmony …

In a letter to Forkel (c1774) C.P.E. Bach wrote:

Above a thinly figured continuo part set in front of him, and knowing that the composer would not object, [he converted trios] into complete quartets, astonishing the composer …

These concern performances of chamber music, apparently instrumental. J.C. Kittel (Der angehende praktische Organist, 1801–8) commented on his style in church music:

One always had to be prepared to see Bach's hands and fingers suddenly mingle with the hands and fingers of the keyboard-player and … fill out the accompaniment with masses of harmony …

– a description, surely, of a rehearsal rather than a public performance. The obbligato harpsichord part for one aria from Amore traditore (bwv203) exemplifies the remarks of these commentators. It is a very rich and extravagant accompaniment written in a manner theoretically possible to improvise but in fact more complex than the obviously Italianate figurations in (for example) Handel's cantata Ah! Che pur troppo è vero; it goes well beyond the later techniques of the composers of obbligato works.

But both the written evidence and the keyboard accompaniments in the works for flute (bwv1030–32), violin (bwv1014–19) and voice (bwv203) compare strangely with the evidence of Bach the figured bass pedagogue – the teacher who dictated plain directions in the Clavierbüchlein for Anna Magdalena Bach (1725), borrowed the grammarian rules from Niedt’s Musicalische Handleitung (1700–17; copied c1738), taught his pupils strict four-part thoroughbass (according to Forkel) and, it seems, had one of his pupils (H.N. Gerber) realize the harmonies of a violin sonata by Albinoni in the plainest texture of four-part chords. Another of his pupils, Kirnberger, harmonized the bass from the trio from the Musical Offering in the same simple way (c1781).

Such distinctions between Bach the skilful performer and Bach the careful teacher must reflect the case of many a composer from Viadana to Albrechtsberger; they must also reflect to some extent the difference expected of a player realizing a continuo accompaniment in theatre or chamber music and the organist playing harmonies in church. But even in Bach's chamber music there are not many opportunities for extravagant style. The kinds of composition that C.P.E. Bach reported him as ‘improving’ were perhaps the meagre galanteries of the 1740s, or at least second-rate music that not only admitted of an extra new part but very likely required it for interest. In his own violin sonatas, for example, Bach left the player very little scope for any extemporization – a few simple chords here and there, contrasting with the worked-out obbligato lines.

The secular cantatas call for a more extravagant style in the recitatives, as well as a harpsichord on which to play them. Players would do well to distinguish in this way between the sacred and secular versions of those cantatas known in both forms. Such works as the flute sonatas with figured bass (bwv1033–5; 1033 is of dubious authenticity) are as Italianate in form as they are in detail (for example the Corellian influence in the first movement of bwv1035), and a harpsichord realization should perhaps reflect this in the richness of its parts, the generally low positions of the hands, the arpeggios, acciaccaturas, etc. Other movements in the chamber works, like the fourth of bwv1033, are more French, hinting at the thin textures that were to become popular, requiring the pretty treble tone of a good French harpsichord (ex.14). In these pieces the harpsichordist alternates between obbligato solos for right hand and simple three- or four-part chords for the stretches of figured bass; and these two functions were to become common in the sonatas of the Berlin school. Often the figures need not be realized but are there, as in Corelli, only to show the implied harmony.

There are several problems in accompanying Bach's church music, and the solutions appear to be controversial, or at least may apply only to one or another period in his output. The possible role of the harpsichord has already been mentioned. If the organ, with a cello for recitatives and a double bass for choruses, is the usual instrument for the continuo in the cantatas and passions, what did it play? The extant harmonization of part of an aria from Cantata no.3, in the hand of C.F. Penzel, who studied at the Thomasschule (1749–56), follows the familiar pattern of three-part chords for the right hand on every main beat. But even here, if the aria is conceived as a lively, rather tortured piece, too many chords are supplied: the harmonization seems merely to demonstrate progressions for young players. Nevertheless, the mass of theoretical evidence suggests that four-part chords are correct in such continuo parts; moreover they should be played legato, with notes common to two consecutive chords held over, the whole forming a quiet support on, for example, an 8' Diapason stop. In a Bach aria with obbligato instrument, the organist can add little in the way of interesting imitations; in one without an obbligato instrument, the bass line usually contains the theme, in which case the organist's right hand should not detract from the melody being played by a more melodic instrument (that is, the cello). If the introductory bars are a bass line against which the theme of the aria fits contrapuntally (as often happens in Handel), it is tempting to bring in the aria theme against it; but composers rarely gave such opportunities to the harpsichordist. In any case, the whole tradition of arias without obbligato instruments, whether Italian and secular or German and sacred, was against counter-melodies from the organ once the voice had begun.

A further problem concerns the figuring, for if an organist takes the trouble to realize all the figures of the bass of a Bach aria a doubling of the voice or obbligato instrument will result. Much evidence from both early and late figured bass theorists suggests that doubling the voice was not frowned upon, but in the case of Bach's continuo parts it is not clear why they are so copiously figured. The composer himself rarely figured or wrote out the part, and it may be that the organist or one of Bach's pupils figured them for reference from the composer's full score. Perhaps the figures helped the organist to play the harmonies complete, or to know what to leave out, or were useful only in rehearsal. Or perhaps they were added merely to indicate what the upper parts were playing. Doubling the voice part is sometimes effective for a few passages in an aria, although many singers dislike it; but it is seldom necessary to help singers in recitative by touching their next note, though this was advised by such theorists as D.G. Türk.

A third problem in performing Bach's church music concerns German recitative accompanied by organ. Türk, a typical organist brought up in the central German tradition, writing in 1787, thought it a special requirement of organists that they play the chords in recitative short, however they were notated; and some theorists writing about the harpsichord said the same (ex.15). This leaves the singer quite free and allows the words to be heard distinctly. Evidence suggests that the practice became increasingly common during the 18th century; some authors recommended that players lift their hands if the sound of the organ became irksome during a long note (Heinichen, 1711; Mattheson, 1731) and some issued firm directives that the organist should usually play chords short (C.P.E. Bach, 1762; Petri, 1767). Nevertheless it is not clear where in J.S. Bach's work recitatives are to be played in this fashion, nor whether the bass line itself should also be cut short. Petri, Schröter, G.P. Telemann and C.P.E. Bach suggested that the bass should be held by the keyboard (perhaps also by the cello) but Türk and others did not. Like Handel in his secular Italian cantatas, J.S. Bach frequently varied recitatives within a work by writing long held notes at some points, short notes (with rests) at others; surely, therefore, the composer did not expect chords in all recitatives to be shortened uniformly. The practice may have become established in the 1730s, judging by the detached bass notes written in the parts for the revival of the St Matthew Passion in about 1736; or perhaps the notation merely confirms what had long been customary in practice. In the recitative of Peri, Monteverdi or Schütz, sustained organ tone brings out the contrast between simple triadic harmonies and the quicker, more lyrical line of the soloist; but late Protestant cantatas demand different treatment, as does late opera buffa recitative. Despite their differences, church cantatas and opere buffe require short chords in recitative for the same reason: the texts of both need maximum clarity, whether biblical or mannered buffa patter. For this reason even Schütz in his last oratorios considered there need be no accompaniment at all for his quasi-plainsong recitatives. Close attention to style could well lead the conscientious player today to think there may have been a distinction intended between recitatives dealing with meditative, pious texts (Bach's chorale cantatas, the cycles of 1723–5, etc.) and those directly quoting biblical narrative (the Passions, the Christmas Oratorio and Ascension Oratorio, etc.): in the former, perhaps, the chords were held, in the latter played short.

A fourth problem in Bach's sacred music concerns the manner in which perfect cadences at the ends of phrases or sections are intended to be performed. Most players find it as difficult to follow the singer as to find the correct chords; but players should never delay the bass line while under the stress of sight-reading, pursuing a fast singer, inventing suitable figurations below an obbligato instrument, etc. In the recitatives of chamber cantatas, players should let the singer finish the vocal cadence before playing the instrumental one (G.P. Telemann, 1733–4). But Heinichen (1728) wrote that, in the opera house, the harpsichordist’s delayed cadence may hold up the action; and he is supported by Telemann, who specified differences between recitative in chamber cantata and in opera (ex.16). In bar 4 of ex.16 there is no sign to delay the cadence, and harmonically no delay is needed even though use of the conventional vocal appoggiatura results in a temporary clash. But in bar 9, as in many passages in J.S. Bach's church cantata recitative, not delaying the cadence results in a harmonic clash with the final vocal phrase. That this did not trouble composers, however, is quite clear from arioso recitatives where the accompaniment is written out (ex.17) and further examples are found in other genres, such as Handel's operas and oratorios. The tonic–dominant clash at such cadences is often inaudible in quick operatic recitative, with a non-sustaining harpsichord in a large theatre; but not in slower church recitative accompanied by organ. However, such clashes agree closely with the Italian-English ‘mingled harmonies’ of the late 17th century and could well lead one to suppose that the problem is again chronological – the later the recitative, in theatre, chamber or church (in that order), the more likely it is that the composer expected the final perfect cadence to be delayed until the voice had finished. Bach's Leipzig cantatas occur at a period in which practices seem to have been changing in an important respect for continuo players. The practice of telescoping cadences began to be abandoned by Neapolitan opera composers in the 1720s, and by 1755 it had practically ceased. Not even in a single genre by one composer, therefore, can a blanket solution be applied.

Continuo, §5: Playing techniques

(ii) Plucked-string instruments.

Much of the instruction given in writings and tutors is concerned with the elements of harmony and applies generally to continuo playing. Agazzari (1607) tells us that a knowledge of counterpoint in such matters as dissonance treatment and where to put major or minor 3rds or 6ths has to be taken for granted. Bianciardi's Breve regola (1607) for playing from an unfigured bass was designed for ‘every kind of instrument’. Most of Delair's tutor for accompaniment on the harpsichord and theorbo (1690) concerns the basics of notation and figuring common to both instruments.

The novelty of early 17th-century Italian monody and its basis in a lively interaction of music and literature produced detailed information about the style and technique of accompaniment of that period. As well as verbal prescriptions, there are also many accompaniments for monodic song with a part for chitarrone/theorbo realized in tablature. According to Agazzari (1606, 1607), the lute, harp, theorbo and harpsichord when playing as foundation instruments should concentrate on supporting the voice with full and sonorous harmony; they should play loudly or softly according to the number and quality of the voices, the place and the work; and they should not spoil the singer's passaggi or expression of emotion by restriking the strings too often. When playing as instruments of ornamentation they can exploit their individual character. To the lute belongs a ravishing inventiveness and variety, with soft and loud, slow and fast effects, and imitations in different registers, all embellished with groppi, trilli and accenti. In the consort the theorbist should play full, gentle chords, restriking them and running lightly over the diapason courses – which are the particular glory of this instrument, and when the singer pauses put in little right-hand ornaments (trilli, accenti muti).

No doubt the experience and subtlety required for good monody accompaniment explains why there are so many tablature realizations for lute or chitarrone in manuscript. They are of variable quality; most useful as guides are the printed realizations by Flamminio Corradi (1616), J.H. Kapsberger (Libro I di villanelle, 1610, Libro III di villanelle, 1619) and Bellerofonte Castaldi (1622). From these some general conclusions may be drawn: the accompaniment was in the tenor range, below the voice, though it often doubled the vocal part; the bass line was played completely and the bass note repeated when the chord changed on a tied note (an instruction given by Giulio Caccini); unfigured 4–3 suspensions and passing notes were routinely added at cadences, but the dominant 7th chord was sparingly used, seemingly for special expressive effect (Monteverdi associated it with the pain of love); accompaniments were simple, with an almost total lack of motivic figuration and counterpoint, and wholly subservient to the voice; variety of chording was cultivated, from two to five parts, with sparing use of breaking and repeating chords; there was no particular concern for the contrapuntal rule banning parallel 5ths and octaves (Vincenzo Galilei, Dialogo della musica antica, 1581, had particularly attacked this rule as belonging to the convoluted counterpoint which monody aimed to supplant with natural declamation).

A feeling for French theorbo style can be acquired from the solo works of Robert de Visée and others. There are unmeasured preludes in elaborate Style brisé, but the dance music is simple in texture, generally melody and bass with subtle accentuation by means of a discreet and variable addition of chords. The most useful tutors are by Delair (1690) and François Campion (1716, 1730). Delair addressed the problem of inversions created by the re-entrant tuning by directing that the bass note always be played first in a chord or put into the lowest octave of the instrument, a practice used in all theorbo repertories. The problem that chord factors do not come out in regular order in a spread can be solved by irregular fingering patterns. Guitar strum technique was sometimes used in solo music for lute and theorbo (tirer et rabattre) and no doubt was also used as appropriate in accompaniment: Visée was a virtuoso of both instruments, and Campion recommended aspiring theorbists to start with the guitar.

In England in the earlier 17th century the change from fully worked tablature accompaniments for lute or theorbo to thoroughbass was gradual, with both systems existing side by side for several decades; thus there are many models for style. For the later part of the century the most important discussion is Mace's chapter on theorbo accompaniment (1676). Mace listed many different handshapes (positions) for chords. He also dealt with ways ‘to Amplifie your Play’ by breaking chords at cadences; some of his 21 examples are in the French style brisé, some more elaborate. He also gave examples for decorating bass scale passages by breaking the chords (ex.18). These appear in the abstract, without a part to accompany, and they are more elaborate than existing tablature accompaniments. However there are arrangements for harpsichord of vocal pieces by Purcell which use a style brisé, arpeggiated texture in the accompaniment.

The guitar became very popular in Italy from the 1620s, particularly for song accompaniment, where it was often paired with the harpsichord. Its primary technique was strumming (Battuto; typical guitar dances such as the chaconne and the folia are based on strum patterns), but plucking (Punteado, pizzicato) in imitation of lute technique was added by G.P. Foscarini in his first three books (c1630). Guitar tutors commonly give scales with handshapes for chords on each degree. The most sophisticated version of this is Nicola Matteis's ‘Universal Scale’ showing how to construct chords on each degree of the chromatic scale (1682), and the principle culminated in Campion's formulation of the règle de l'octave in 1716 (see Regola dell'ottava). Matteis's tutor is the most useful since he goes well beyond information for beginners, covering style and interpretation as well as technique and providing copious examples of realization. The guitar again became popular in Italy, France and England early in the 19th century, particularly through the works of Ferdinando Carulli, which included L'harmonie appliquée à la guitarre (c1825). For further information, see Guitar, §4.

For the harp, Agazzari (1607) gave the best description for the Monteverdi era. As a foundation instrument it played as the lute, theorbo and harpsichord; as an ornamentation instrument the arpa doppia (double-strung harp), being as good in its upper as in its lower register (unlike the chitarrone, for example, which is at its best in its lower), used its entire range, with sweet plucked notes, responses between the hands, trilli etc., and the player aimed at good counterpoint. This matches closely the style of the arpa doppia part of ‘Possente spirto’ in Monteverdi's Orfeo. Some 13 of 220 monodic song publications between 1601 and 1635 mentioned the harp, as opposed to over 100 that mention the chitarrone. A number of 18th-century Spanish tutors dealt with the harp, notably Torres (2/1736) who cited a number of harpsichord examples of spread chords with dissonant additions from Gasparini (1708). Elsewhere, tutors purporting to deal with harp accompaniment, such as those of Honoré Garnier (1767) and P.-J. Meyer (2/1772), dealt only with the basics of four-part harmony, as for the keyboard, and said nothing about style. We must assume that harp continuo had much in common with keyboard continuo, though with some similarities to theorbo technique in flexible voicing and the spreading of chords. The one definitely characteristic technique of the late 18th century was, naturally enough, arpeggiation in song accompaniments (as in the very popular ‘Nel cor più mi non sento’ from Paisiello's L'amor contrastato, also known as La Molinara, 1788) which became a cliché of 19th-century drawing-room ballads.

Continuo, §5: Playing techniques

(iii) Bowed-string instruments.

The Lirone originated as a low-pitch version of the lira da braccio, and so was essentially a chord-playing instrument. Caccini and Striggio played it without a supporting bass instrument, but according to Praetorius it did not play the top or bottom parts and so needed a discant and bass with it. This is presumably why Agazzari put it with the instruments of ornamentation, even though improvising florid counterpoint was not part of its nature. Its 9 to 14 strings on the fingerboard, with two to four drone strings, and almost flat bridge, together with a cleverly designed re-entrant tuning, meant that it could play four- or five-part chords across the fingerboard. Agazzari (1606) said that, like all viols, it should be played clearly and sonorously, using the whole bow, and that care should be taken that the parts follow the rules of counterpoint.

The 16th-century fashion for the lira da braccio was probably the inspiration for chordal accompaniment on the viol. The first printed example, in tablature, is in Ganassi dal Fontego's Lettione seconda (1543) where the instrument plays mainly two-part chords with an occasional three-part one at cadences. It was no doubt the successive waves of Italian viol players employed by the English court who brought the technique to England, where it attained its greatest flowering. Early 17th-century manuscript and printed tablature accompaniments such as those by Tobias Hume (1605) are much more sophisticated than Ganassi's, with variety in chording and some style brisé effects, and provide models for the continuo realization of contemporary thoroughbass parts. A problem with the viol is that chords of more than two notes have to be spread (this is probably why the Italians developed the lirone), which may impede the rhythm. Simpson (The Division-Violist, 1659) and Mace (1676) recommended emphasizing the lowest note; Mace also recommended exploiting the continuing resonance of open strings in the bass to sustain the harmony. Simpson often included extended chordal passages in his divisions, but Mace, in demonstrating how a viol can accompany itself, used a brisé texture (as do his theorbo examples), more so than one would normally expect in a continuo accompaniment.

In France there are references to chordal continuo playing in prefaces to solo viol publications (Machy, 1685; Marais, 1689, 1701), but few technical details, even though chordal viol playing reached a very high level there. In two chapters on accompaniment in his Traité (1687) Jean Rousseau discussed how to finger chords to make them more resonant. Chords should mostly be played with generous bow strokes, and smoothly connnected like an organ, though some movements are ‘beaucoup marquez’; ornaments in the solo part should be imitated in the bass if the same motive appears there. In Germany, a collection of arias by Jakob Kremberg (Musicalische Gemüths-Ergötzung, 1689) gives melody and figured bass, and also tablature for four fretted instruments including the bass viol. The tablature versions are really for solo performance, intabulating the melody and bass, the latter often transposed up for playability, with fuller chords on main beats. Chordal playing was an important part of a distinguished German viol tradition which lasted into the second half of the 18th century, the best-known continuo example being the written-out accompaniment in the recitative ‘Mein Jesus schweigt’ in the J.S. Bach's St Matthew Passion. It may have been for a German violist in Rome that Handel wrote chordal continuo parts in the cantata Tra le fiamme (probably 1707) and the oratorio La Resurrezione (1708). In numbers involving the viol he provided a few bars of fully written out three- or four-part chords or arpeggiated texture at the opening and continued the part as a figured bass.

Considering how frequently the cello is prescribed as an alternative to the harpsichord in sonatas, there is surprisingly little contemporary instruction for it. The earliest tutor (Corrette, 1741) gave fingerings for chords and exercises for arpeggiating chords, but said nothing specific about chordal continuo playing. Corrette did, however, refer to the practice of playing division elaborations of the bass line, for which there is much evidence. The fullest 18th-century description was given by J.B. Baumgartner who devoted four chapters of his Instructions de musique (1774) to accompaniment, covering recitative, cadences, standard progressions, etc. Chords in recitative were played short (‘avec un coup sec’), in from two to four parts, and with the bass frequently put down an octave to allow a four-note chord. Standard progressions were in two parts, the added part being constructed from 3rds, 4ths or 6ths above the bass, with fuller chords at cadences. There is evidence for harmonic additions of this sort in the bass parts of sonatas by Tartini and Boccherini. The practice of chordal accompaniment in recitative was discussed in many 19th-century tutors starting with the Méthode compiled by Pierre Baillot and others (1804). It long survived in opera buffa and was used (according to Bernard Shaw) for a performance of Federico and Luigi Ricci's Crispino e la comare in London as late as 1891.

Continuo, §5: Playing techniques

BIBLIOGRAPHY

primary sources

modern studies

Continuo: Bibliography

primary sources

L. da Viadana: Cento concerti ecclesiastici (Venice, 1602; Ger. and Lat. trans., 1613)

A. Banchieri: L'organo suonarino (Venice, 1605, enlarged 4/1638/R1969 with introduction by G. Cattin)

A. Agazzari: Del sonare sopra 'l basso (Siena, 1607, 2/1608); Eng. trans. in Strunk (1950/R), 424–31

F. Bianciardi: Breve regola per imparar' sonare sopra il basso con ogni sorte d'istrumento (Siena, 1607); ed. R. Haas, Musikwissenschaftliche Beiträge: Festschrift für Johannes Wolf, ed. W. Lott, H. Osthoff and W. Wolffheim (Berlin, 1929/R), 48ff, and V. Gibelli, Antiquae musicae italicae studiosi (Milan, 1965)

A. Banchieri: Conclusioni nel suono dell'organo (Bologna, 1609/R, 2/1626 as Armoniche conclusioni nel suono dell'organo; Eng. trans., 1982) [2/1609 includes A. Agazzari: Copia d'una lettera, 1606]

G. Diruta: Seconda parte del Transilvano (Venice, 1609)

M. Praetorius: Syntagma musicum, iii (Wolfenbüttel, 1618, 2/1619/R)

J. Staden: ‘Kurzer und einfältig Bericht für die jenigen, so im Basso ad Organum unerfahren’, Kirchen-Music (Nuremberg, 1626)

G. Sabbatini: Regola facile e bene per sonare sopra il basso continuo nell'organo, manacordo o altro simile stromento (Venice, 1628, 3/1669)

C. Monteverdi: Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi … libro ottavo (Venice, 1638)

A. Maugars: Response faite à un curieux sur le sentiment de la musique en Italie (Paris, c1640); ed. J. Heuillon (Paris, 1991, 2/1992); Eng. trans. (Geneva, 1993)

H. Albert: Anderer Theil der Arien (Königsberg, 1640)

A. Barcotto: Regola e breve raccordo per far render agiustati (Padua, c1640)

J.A. Herbst: Arte prattica & poëtica (Frankfurt, 1653) [incl. trans. of W. Ebner, as Instruction zum General-bass, pp.43–7]

N. Fleury: Méthode pour apprendre facilement à toucher le théorbe sur la basse-continue (Paris, 1660/R)

B. de Bacilly: Remarques curieuses sur l'art de bien chanter (Paris, 1668/R, 4/1681; Eng. trans., 1968)

H. Grenerin: Livre de théorbe (Paris, 1668)

A.M. Bartolomi: Table pour apprendre facilement à toucher le théorbe sur la basse-continue (Paris, 1669)

L. Penna: Li primi albori musicali per li principianti della musica figurata (Bologna,1672, ?5/1696)

M. Locke: Melothesia or Certain General Rules for Playing upon a Continued-Bass (London, 1673/R)

G. Sanz: Instrucción de musica sobre la guitarra española (Zaragoza, 1674/R)

T. Mace: Musick's Monument (London, 1676); facs. with commentary and transcr. by J. Jacqot and A. Souris (Paris, 1958/R)

Perrine: Table pour apprendre à toucher le luth sur … la basse continue (Paris, 1679)

N. Matteis: The False Consonances of Musick: Instructions for Playing a Thorough-Base upon the Guitarre, or Other Instruments (London, 1682)

J. Rousseau: Traité de la viole (Paris, 1687/R); Eng. trans. in The Consort, xxxiv (1978), 302–11 [pt i]; xxxvi (1980), 365–70 [pt ii]; xxxvii (1981), 402–11 [pt iii]; xxxviii (1982), 463–6 [pt iv]

D. Speer: Grundrichtiger Kurtz-Leicht-und Nöthiger Unterricht der musikalischen Kunst (Ulm, 1687, 2/1697/R)

Kurtzer jedoch gründlicher Wegweiser (Augsburg, 1689, ?8/1758)

J.H. D'Anglebert: ‘Principes de l'accompagnement’, Pièces de clavecin, i (Paris, 1689)

D. Delair: Traité d'accompagnement pour le théorbe et le clavessin (Paris, 1690/R; Eng. trans., 1991)

A. Werckmeister: Die nothwendigsten Anmerckungen und Regeln, wie der Bassus continuus oder General-Bass wol könne tractiret werden (Aschersleben, 1698/R, 2/1715)

F. Couperin: Règles pour l'accompagnement [c1698]; ed. P. Brunold, Oeuvres complètes (Paris, 1933)

G. Muffat: Regulae concentuum partiturae [c1699] (MS, A-Wm); ed. H. Federhofer, MSD, iv (1961)

J. Boyvin: ‘Traité abrégé d'accompagnement pour l'orgue et pour le clavessin’, Second livre d'orgue (Paris, 1700, 2/c1705; Dutch trans., c1710)

F.E. Niedt: Musicalische Handleitung (Hamburg, 1700–21; Eng. trans., 1989)

J. de Torres y Martinez Bravo: Reglas generales de accompañar, en órgano, clavicordio y harpa (Madrid, 1702, enlarged 2/1736)

S. de Brossard: Dictionaire de musique (Paris, 1703/R, 3/c1708/R); ed. and trans. A. Gruber (Henryville, PA, 1982)

J.P. Treiber: Der accurate Organist im General-Bass (Jena, 1704)

J.B. Samber: Manuductio ad organum (Salzburg, 1704–7)

G. Keller: A Compleat Method for Attaining to Play a Thorough Bass, upon either Organ, Harpsichord, or Theorbo-Lute (London, 1707)

M. de Saint-Lambert: Nouveau traité de l'accompagnement du clavecin, de l'orgue (Paris,1707, ?2/1725; Eng. trans., 1991)

J. Blow: Rules for Playing of a Through Bass upon Organ & Harpsicon (MS, GB-Lbl Add.34072) [ed. in Arnold, 1931]

F. Gasparini: L'armonico pratico al cimbalo (Venice, 1708, 6/1802; Eng. trans., 1963)

B. Pasquini: Regole de Sig. B.P. (MS, I-Bc D 138, ii)

J.D. Heinichen: Neu erfundene und gründliche Anweisung (Hamburg, 1711)

S. de Murcia: Resumen de acompañar la parte con la guitarra (Madrid, 1714/R)

A. Scarlatti: Regole per principianti (MS, c1715, GB-Lbl Add.14244, ff.46v–52)

F. Campion: Traité d'accompagnement (Paris, 1716/R)

L.-N. Clérambault: Règles d'accompagnement (MS, 1716, F-Psg 2374)

J.F. Dandrieu: Principes de l'accompagnement du clavecin (Paris, 1718; Eng. trans., 1972)

J. Mattheson: Exemplarische Organisten-Probe im Artikel vom General-Bass (Hamburg, 1719)

Regole piu necessarie et universali per accompagniare il basso continuo … liuto o gravicembalo, 1720 (MS, I-Rli Mus P15)

Regole per accompagnare sopra la parte (MS, I-Rli Mus R1)

J.-P. Rameau: Traité de l'harmonie reduite à ses principes naturels (Paris, 1722/R; Eng. trans., 1737); ed. and trans. P. Gossett (New York, 1971) [accompaniment, in bk 4]

E.G. Baron: Historisch-theoretische und practische Untersuchung des Instruments der Lauten (Nuremberg, 1727/R; Eng. trans., 1976, as Study of the Lute)

J.D. Heinichen: Der General-Bass in der Composition (Dresden, 1728; partial Eng. trans., 1966)

F. Campion: Addition au traité d'accompagnement (Paris, 1730/R)

J. Mattheson: Grosse General-Bass-Schule (Hamburg, 1731; Eng. trans., 1734)

P. Prelleur: The Modern Musick-Master (London, 1731/R)

D. Kellner: Treulicher Unterricht im General-Bass (Hamburg, 1732, ?8/1796; Swed. trans., 1739; Dutch trans., 1741)

L. Gervais: Méthode pour l'accompagnement du clavecin (Paris, 1733)

G.P. Telemann: Singe-, Spiel- und Generalbass-Übungen (Hamburg, 1733–4/R1983 with introduction by G. Fleischhauer)

J. Mattheson: Kleine General-Bass-Schule (Hamburg, 1735/R)

J. Mattheson: Der vollkommene Capellmeister (Hamburg, 1739; Eng. trans., 1981)

F. Geminiani: Rules for Playing in a True Taste (London, ?1739, ?2/c1745)

G.A. Sorge: Vorgemach der musicalischen Composition (Lobenstein, 1745–7)

F. Geminiani: A Treatise of Good Taste in the Art of Musick (London, 1749/R1969 with introduction by R. Donington)

C. Avison: An Essay on Musical Expression (London, 1752, 2/1753)

J.J. Quantz: Versuch einer Anweisung die Flöte traversiere zu spielen (Berlin, 1752/R, 3/1789; Eng. trans., 1966, 2/1985, as On Playing the Flute)

M. Corrette: Le maître de clavecin pour l'accompagnement: méthode théorique et pratique (Paris, 1753/R)

C.P.E. Bach: Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen, i (Berlin, 1753/R, 3/1787/R), ii (Berlin, 1762/R, 2/1797/R); Eng. trans. of pts i–ii (New York, 1949, 2/1951)

F.W. Marpurg: Handbuch bey dem Generalbasse und der Composition (Berlin, 1755–8/R, suppl., 1760/R, 2/1762/R [vol. i only]; ed. and trans. D.A. Sheldon, 1989)

J.F. Daube: General-Bass in drey Accorden (Leipzig, 1756)

F. Geminiani: The Art of Accompaniment (London, 1756–7; Fr. version, 1754; It. trans., I-Bc)

N. Pasquali: Thorough-Bass made Easy, or Practical Rules for Finding and Applying its Various Chords (Edinburgh, 1757, ?4/c1790; Fr. and Dutch trans., 1760)

J. Adlung: Anleitung zu der musikalischen Gelahrtheit (Erfurt, 1758/R, 2/1783)

C.F. Clément: Essai sur l'accompagnement du clavecin (Paris, 1758)

P. della Casa: Regole di musica … per suonare il basso continuo, & per l'arcileuto francese, e per la tiorba (MS, 1759, I-Bc EE.155)

G. Antoniotto: L'arte armonica (London, 1760)

J.-P. Rameau: Code de musique pratique (Paris, 1760/R)

G.B. Martini: Regola agli organisti per accompagnare il canto fermo [1761] (I-Bc I 51)

P.-J. Meyer: Essai sur la vraie manière de jouer de la harpe (Paris, 1763, 2/1772)

G.S. Löhlein: Clavier-Schule, oder Kurze und gründliche Anweisung zur Melodie und Harmonie (Leipzig,1765, 9/1848)

H. Garnier: Nouvelle méthode pour l'accompagnement du clavecin et … de la harpe (Paris, [1767])

J.S. Petri: Anleitung zur practischen Musik (Lauban, 1767, enlarged 2/1782/R)

A. Bemetzrieder: Leçons de clavecin et principes d'harmonie (Paris, 1771)

[J.F.] Heering: Regeln des Generalbasses (MS, 1771, D-Bsb Mus.theor.348)

C.G. Schröter: Deutliche Anweisung zum Generalbass (Halberstadt, 1772)

G.M. Telemann: Unterricht im Generalbass-Spielen auf der Orgel (Hamburg, 1773)

J.B. Baumgartner: Instructions de musique théorique et pratique à l'usage du violoncelle (The Hague, 1774)

J.A. Hiller: Anweisung zum musikalisch-richtigen Gesange (Leipzig, 1774)

V. Manfredini: Regole armoniche (Venice, 1775, 2/1797)

J.M. Bach: Kurze und systematische Anleitung zum Generalbass (Kassel, 1780)

E. Miller: A Treatise on Thorough Bass and Composition (Dublin, c1780)

J.P. Kirnberger: Grundsätze des Generalbasses (Berlin, c1781)

J.-J. Rousseau: ‘Accompagnement’, ‘Récitatif– accompagné, mesuré’, Encyclopédie méthodique, ed. N.E. Framery and P.L. Ginguené (Paris, 1782–1832), vols.xiii, xiv

D.G. Türk: Von den wichtigsten Pflichten eines Organisten (Halle, 1787, ?2/1838)

D.G. Türk: Kurze Anweisung zum Generalbass-spielen (Leipzig and Halle, 1791, enlarged ?4/1841)

J.G. Albrechtsberger: Kurzgefasste Methode den Generalbass zu erlernen (Vienna, c1791, enlarged 2/1792; Eng. trans., 1815)

P. Tomeoni: Regole pratiche per accompagnare il basso continuo (Florence, 1795)

M.P. King: Thorough Bass Made Clear to Every Capacity (London, c1796, 2/c1810)

J.B. Mayer: Complete Instructions for the Harp … to which is added … Principles of Thorough Bass (London, [c1800])

A.F.C. Kollmann: A Practical Guide to Thorough-Bass (London, 1801)

J.F. Fröhlich: Vollständige theoretisch-praktische Musikschule (Bonn, 1810–11)

F. Carulli: L'harmonie appliquée à la guitarre (Paris, c1825)

Continuo: Bibliography

modern studies

MGG2 (J.-A. Bötticher and J.B. Christensen)

H. Goldschmidt: ‘Die Instrumental-Begleitung der italienischen Musikdramen in der ersten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts’, MMg, xxvii (1895), 52–62, 65–72

H. Goldschmidt: ‘Das Cembalo im Orchester der italienischen Oper der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts’, Festschrift … Rochus Freiherrn von Liliencron (Leipzig, 1910/R), 87–92

O. Kinkeldey: Orgel und Klavier in der Musik des 16. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1910/R)

H. Quittard: ‘Le théorbe comme instrument d'accompagnement’, BSIM, vi (1910), 221–37, 362–84

Max Schneider: ‘Der Generalbass J.S. Bachs’, JbMP 1914–15, 27–42

Max Schneider: ‘Die Begleitung des Secco-Rezitatives um 1750’, Gluck-Jb 1917, 88–107

L. Landshoff: Über das vielstimmige Accompagnement und andere Fragen des Generalbass-spiels’, Festschrift zum 50. Geburtstag Adolf Sandberger (Munich, 1918), 189–208

Max Schneider: Die Anfänge des Basso continuo und seiner Bezifferung (Leipzig, 1918/R)

A. Toni: ‘Sul basso continuo e l’interpretazione della musica antica’, RMI, xxvi (1919), 229–64

G. Schünemann: ‘Matthaeus Hertel's theoretische Schriften’ [Kurze Anweisung, 1669], AMw, iv (1922), 336–58

J.M. Müller-Blattau: Die Kompositionslehre Heinrich Schützens in der Fassung seines Schülers Christoph Bernhard (Leipzig, 1926, 2/1963)

R. Haas: ‘Das Generalbass-Flugblatt Francesco Bianciardis (1607)’, Musikwissenschaftliche Beiträge: Festschrift für Johannes Wolf (Berlin, 1929), 48–56

F.T. Arnold: The Art of Accompaniment from a Thorough-Bass as Practised in the 17th and 18th Centuries (London, 1931/R)

H. Keller: Schule des Generalbass-Spiels (Kassel, 1931, 5/1967; Eng. trans., 1965/R)

E. Ulrich: Studien zur deutschen Generalbass-Praxis in der ersten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts (Kassel, 1932)

H. Neemann: ‘Laute und Theorbe als Generalbassinstrumente im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert’, ZMw, xvi (1934), 527–34

H. Neemann: ‘Die Laute als Generalbassinstrument’, Zeitschrift für Hausmusik, iv (1935)

A. Schering: J.S. Bachs Leipziger Kirchenmusik (Leipzig, 1936/R)

F. Oberdörffer: Der Generalbass in der Instrument-Musik des ausgehenden 18. Jahrhunderts (Kassel, 1939)

A. Mendel: ‘On the Keyboard Accompaniments to Bach's Leipzig Church Music’, MQ, xxxvi (1950), 339–62

O. Strunk: Source Readings in Music History (New York, 1950/R)

J.A. Westrup: ‘The Continuo in the “St Matthew Passion”’, Bach-Gedenkschrift, ed. K. Matthaei (Zürich, 1950), 103–17

M. Schulz: ‘Francesco Corbetta und das Generalbass-spielen’, Mf, iv (1951), 371–2 [discusses the use of the guitar in 1670]

N. Fortune: ‘Continuo Instruments in Italian Monodies’, GSJ, vi (1953), 10–13

R. Stephan: ‘Über das Ende der Generalbass-praxis’, BJb 1954, 80–88

L. Cervelli: ‘Del sonare sopra 'l basso con tutti li stromenti: note sugli strumenti usati in Italia per la realizzazione del basso continuo’, RMI, lvii (1955), 125–35

M. Garros: ‘L'art d'accompagner sur la basse-continue, d'après G.G. Nivers’,Mélanges d'histoire et d'esthétique musicales, offerts à Paul-Marie Masson, ii (Paris, 1955), 45–54

W. Kolneder: Aufführungspraxis bei Vivaldi (Leipzig, 1955)

H.H. Eggebrecht: ‘Arten des Generalbasses im frühen und mittleren 17. Jahrhundert’, AMw, xiv (1957), 61–82

F. Oberdörffer: ‘Über die Generalbassbegleitung zu Kammermusikwerken Bachs und des Spätbarocks’, Mf, x (1957), 61–74

P. Badura-Skoda: ‘Über das Generalbass-Spiel in den Klavierkonzerten Mozarts’, MJb 1958, 96–107

B. Britten: ‘On Realizing the Continuo in Purcell's Songs’, Henry Purcell, 1659–1695, ed. I. Holst (London, 1959), 7–13

J. Wilson, ed.: Roger North on Music (London, 1959)

G. Kirchner: Der Generalbass bei Heinrich Schütz (Kassel, 1960)

W. Bergmann: ‘Some Old and New Problems of Playing the Basso Continuo’, PRMA, lxxxvii (1960–61), 31–43

L.U. Abraham: Der Generalbass in Schaffen des Michael Praetorius und seine harmonischen Voraussetzungen (Berlin, 1961)

J. Eppelsheim: Das Orchester in den Werken Jean-Baptiste Lullys (Tutzing, 1961)

J.A. Westrup: ‘The Cadence in Baroque Recitative’, Natalicia musicologica Knud Jeppesen oblata, ed. B. Hjelmborg and S. Sørenson (Copenhagen, 1962), 243–52

G.J. Buelow: ‘The Full-Voiced Style of Thorough-Bass Realization’, AcM, xxxv (1963), 159–71

R. Donington: The Interpretation of Early Music (London, 1963, 5/1992)

E. Hanley: Alessandro Scarlatti's Cantate da Camera: a Bibliographical Study (diss., Yale U., 1963)

S. Sørenson and others: ‘Der Generalbass um 1600’, IMSCR IX: Salzburg 1964, 201–11

A. Mann: ‘Eine Kompositionslehre von Händel’, HJb 1964–5, 35–57

H.M. Brown: Instrumental Music Printed before 1600 (Cambridge, MA, 1965)

T. Dart: ‘Handel and the Continuo’, MT, cvi (1965), 348–50

D. Heartz and others: W.A. Mozart: Thomas Attwoods Theorie- und Kompositionsstudien, Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke, x/30/1 (Kassel, 1965)

G. Rose: ‘Agazzari and the Improvising Orchestra’, JAMS, xviii (1965), 382–93

S. Garnsey: ‘The Use of Hand-Plucked Instruments in the Continuo Body: Nicola Matteis’, ML, xlvii (1966), 135–40

G. Rose: ‘A Fresh Clue from Gasparini’, MT, cvii (1966), 28–9

F. Oberdörffer: ‘Neuere Generalbass-studien’, AcM, xxxix (1967), 182–201

D. Arnold and N.Fortune, eds.: The Monteverdi Companion (London,1968, 2/1985 as The New Monteverdi Companion)

S.H. Hansell: ‘The Cadence in 18th-Century Recitative’, MQ, liv (1968), 228–48

P. Williams: ‘The Harpsichord Acciaccatura: Theory and Practice in Harmony, 1650–1750’, MQ, liv (1968), 503–23

P. Williams: ‘Basso Continuo on the Organ’, ML, l (1969), 136–54, 230–45

P. Williams: Figured Bass Accompaniment (Edinburgh, 1970)

H. Burnett: ‘The Bowed String Instruments of the Baroque Basso Continuo (c1680–c1752) in Italy and France’, JVdGSA, vii (1970), 65–91; viii (1971), 29–63

D.A. Sheldon: ‘The Transition from Trio to Cembalo-Obbligato Sonata in the Works of J.G. and C.H. Graun’, JAMS, xxiv (1971), 395–413

E.H. Jones: ‘The Theorbo and Continuo Practice in the Early English Baroque’, GSJ, xxv (1972), 67–72

S. Buetens: ‘Theorbo Accompaniments of Early Seventeenth-Century Italian Monody’, JLSA, vi (1973), 37–45

R. Donington: A Performer's Guide to Baroque Music (London, 1973)

L. Pike: ‘The First English Basso Continuo Publication’, ML, liv (1973), 326–34

H. Haack: Anfänge des Generalbass-Satzes: die ‘Cento Concerti Ecclesiastici’ (1602) von Lodovico Viadana (Tutzing, 1974)

E.H. Jones: ‘“To Sing and Play to the Base-Violl Alone”: the Bass Viol in English 17th-Century Song’, LSJ, xvii (1975), 17–23

W. Dean: ‘The Performance of Recitative in Late Baroque Opera’, ML, lviii (1977), 389–402

W. Hancock: ‘General Rules for Realising an Unfigured Bass in Seventeenth-Century England’, Chelys, vii (1977), 69–72

I. Horsley: ‘Full and Short Scores in the Accompaniment of Italian Church Music in the Early Baroque’, JAMS, xxx (1977), 466–99

M. Abbado: ‘Con quali strumenti si dovrebbero eseguire le sonate per violino e basso’, NRMI, xii (1978), 157–65

L.F. Tagliavini: ‘L'armonico pratico al cimbalo’, Francesco Gasparini: Camaiore 1978 [Quaderni della RaM, vi (1981)], 133–55

P. Allsop: ‘The Role of the Stringed Bass as a Continuo Instrument in Italian Seventeenth-Century Instrumental Music’, Chelys, viii (1978–9), 31–7

J.A. Sadie: ‘Bowed Continuo Instruments in French Baroque Chamber Music’, PRMA, cv (1978–9), 37–49

G. Darmstadt: ‘Kurz oder lang? Zur Rezitativbegleitung im 18. Jahrhundert’, Musik und Kirche, l (1980), 130–34

J.A. Sadie: The Bass Viol in French Baroque Chamber Music (Ann Arbor, 1980)

G. Sadler: ‘The Role of the Keyboard Continuo in French Opera 1673–1776’, EMc, viii (1980), 148–57

D. Collyer: ‘Continuo Playing in Seventeenth-Century Music’, Heinrich Schütz e il suo tempo, ed. G. Rostirolla (Rome, 1981), 259–72

J. Congleton: ‘“The False Consonances of Musick”: Nicola Matteis's Instructions for the Playing of a True Bass upon the Guitarre’, EMc, ix (1981), 463–9

P. Holman: ‘Reluctant Continuo’, EMc, ix (1981), 75–8

W. Kolneder: ‘Der Generalbass in den Triosonaten von Purcell’, Heinrich Schütz e il suo tempo, ed. G. Rostirolla (Rome, 1981), 283–99

K. Mason: ‘François Campion's Secret of Accompaniment for the Theorbo, Guitar, and Lute’, JLSA, xiv (1981), 69–94

E. Platen: ‘Aufgehoben oder ausgehalten? Zur Ausführung der Rezitativ-Continuopartien in J.S. Bachs Kirchenmusik’, Bachforschung und Bachinterpretation heute, ed. R. Brinkmann (Kassel, 1981), 167–77

W. Braun: Der Stilwandel in der Musik um 1600 (Darmstadt, 1982)

M. Cyr: ‘Basses and basse continue in the Orchestra of the Paris Opéra 1700–1764’, EMc, x (1982), 155–70

N.M. Jensen: ‘The Performance of Corelli's Chamber Music Reconsidered’, Nuovissimi studi corelliani, ed. S. Durante and P. Petrobelli (Florence, 1982), 241–51

E. Pohlmann: Laute, Theorbe, Chitarrone: die Instrumente, ihre Musik und Literatur von 1500 bis zur Gegenwart (Bremen, 5/1982)

H.E. Samuel: The Cantata in Nuremburg during the Seventeenth Century (Ann Arbor, 1982)

J.W. Hill: ‘Realized Continuo Accompaniments from Florence c1600’, EMc, xi (1983), 194–208

K. Hochreiter: Zur Aufführungspraxis der Vokal-Instrumentalwerke Johann Sebastian Bachs (Berlin and Kassel, 1983)

R. Müller: ‘Basso ostinato und die “imitatio del parlare” in Monteverdis “Incoronazione di Poppea”’, AMw, xl (1983), 1–23

W. Kolneder: Schule des Generalbassspiels (Wilhelmshaven, 1983–4)

T. Carter: ‘On the Composition and Performance of Caccini's Le nuove musiche (1602)’, EMc, xii (1984), 208–17

L.F. Ferguson: ‘The Classical Keyboard Concerto: some Thoughts on Authentic Performance’, EMc, xii (1984), 437–45

S. Gerlach: ‘Haydns Orchesterpartituren: Fragen der Realisierung des Textes’, Haydn-Studien, v (1984), 169–83

R. Müller: Der stile recitativo in Monteverdis Orfeo (Tutzing, 1984)

J.B. Christensen: ‘Zur Generalbass-Praxis bei Bach und Händel’, Basler Jb für historische Musikpraxis, ix (1985), 39–88

R.d'A. Jensen: ‘The Guitar and Italian Song’, EMc, xiii (1985), 376–83

D. Möller: ‘Zupfinstrumente in G.F. Händels dramatischen Werken’, Gitarre und Laute, vii/6 (1985), 24–7

B.A. Daw: ‘Alessandro Scarlatti's Continuo Realization of Da sventura a sventura (1690)’, Early Keyboard Journal, iv (1985–6), 51–60

G. Dixon: ‘Continuo Scoring in the Early Baroque: the Role of Bowed-Bass Instruments’, Chelys, xv (1986), 38–53

D. Möller: ‘Zur Generalbassbestzung in den Opern Georg Friedrich Händels’, Göttinger Händel-Beiträge, ii (1986), 141–54

D.E. Monson: ‘The Last Word: the Cadence in recitativo semplice of Italian opera seria’, Pergolesi Studies, i (1986), 89–105

D.E. Monson: ‘Semplice o secco: Continuo Declamation in Early 18th-Century Italian Recitative’, Pergolesi Studies, i (1986), 107–15

G. Morini: ‘Cenni sul basso continuo in Italia nel XVII secolo’, Studi corelliani IV: Fusignano 1986, 261–74

T. Carter: ‘Music Publishing in Italy, c1580–c1625: some Preliminary Observations’, RMARC, no.20 (1986–7), 19–37

T. Borgir: The Performance of the Basso Continuo in Italian Baroque Music (Ann Arbor, 1987)

L. Dreyfus: Bach's Continuo Group (Cambridge, MA, 1987)

S. Hackl: ‘Generalbassspiel auf der Gitarre’, Zeitschrift für Musikpädagogik, xii/41 (1987), 58–62

N. North: Continuo Playing on the Lute, Archlute and Theorbo (London, 1987)

K.J. Snyder: Dietrich Buxtehude (New York, 1987)

L.K. Stein: ‘Accompaniment and Continuo in Spanish Baroque Music’, España en la música de occidente, i, ed. E. Casares Rodicio, I. Fernández de la Cuesta and J. López-Calo (Madrid, 1987), 357–70

H.J. Marx: ‘The Instrumentation of Handel's Early Italian Works’, EMc, xvi (1988), 496–505

T. Szász: ‘Figured Bass in Beethoven's Emperor Concerto: Basso Continuo or Orchestral Cues?’, Early Keyboard Journal, vi–vii (1988–9), 5–71

G. Bégou: ‘Un autre aspect de l'accompagnement: la réalisation de la basse continue à la viole de gambe et au violoncelle’, Aspects de la musique baroque et classique à Lyon et en France, ed. D. Paquette (Lyons, 1989), 53–72

H.M. Brown and S.Sadie, eds.: Performance Practice: Music after 1600 (London, 1989)

J.T. Johnson: ‘The Rules for “Thorough Bass” and for Tuning Attributed to Handel’, EMc, xvii (1989), 70–77

E.H. Jones: The Performance of English Song, 1610–1670 (New York, 1989)

K. Mason: The Chitarrone and its Repertoire in Early Seventeenth-Century Italy (Aberystwyth, 1989)

J. Rifkin: ‘Ein Dokument zum Doppleaccompagnement im 18. Jahrhundert’, BJb 1989, 227–9

P.J. Rogers: Continuo Realization in Handel's Vocal Music (Ann Arbor, 1989)

N. Zaslaw: Mozart's Symphonies: Context, Performance Practice, Reception (Oxford, 1989)

H. Federhofer: ‘Zur Generalbasspraxis im 19. Jahrhundert’, Musik und Kirche, lx (1990), 1–10

J. Milhous and C. Price: ‘Harpsichords in the London Theatres, 1697–1715’, EMc, xviii (1990), 38–46

P.J. Rogers: ‘A Neglected Source of Ornamentation and Continuo Realization in a Handel Aria’, EMc, xviii (1990), 83–9

B. Stockmann: ‘Der bezifferte Generalbass von C.Ph.E.Bach zum Credo der h-moll-Messe J.S. Bachs’,Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach und die europäische Musikkultur des mittleren 18. Jahrhunderts, ed. H.J. Marx (Göttingen, 1990), 451–8

J. Webster: ‘On the Absence of Keyboard Continuo in Haydn's Symphonies’, EMc, xviii (1990), 599–608

T. Kohlhase: ‘Anmerkungen zur Generalbasspraxis der Dresdner Hofkirchenmusik der 1720er bis 1740er Jahre’, Zelenka-Studien I: Marburg 1991 [Musik des Ostens, xiv (1993)], 233–40

A. Lawrence-King: ‘The Harp as a Continuo Instrument in Early Italian Opera’, Historical Harps, ed. H. Rosenzweig (Dornach, 1991), 133–44

N. Schwindt-Gross: ‘Begleitung in Mozarts Mannheimer und Pariser Sonaten für Klavier und Violine’, MJb 1991, 699–707

D. Stevens: ‘“…the Harmony more Magnificent”: how the Organ as Continuo Lost its Role’, MT, cxxxii (1991), 627–31

P. Allsop: The Italian ‘Trio’ Sonata from its Origins until Corelli (Oxford,1992)

J.B. Christensen: Die Grundlagen des Generalbassspiels (Kassel, 1992)

L.R. Dragone: ‘François Campion's Treatise on Accompaniment’, Theoria, vi (1992), 135–62

J. Steele: ‘Continuo Accompaniment for Full Voices … in the Music of Peter Philips’, Aspects of Keyboard Music, ed. R. Judd (Oxford, 1992), 140–54

U. Wolf: Notation und Aufführungspraxis: Studien zum Wandel von Notenschrift und Notenbild in italienischen Musikdrucken der Jahre 1571–1630 (Kassel, 1992)

J.-A. Bötticher: ‘Generalbasspraxis in der Bach-Nachfolge: eine wenig bekannte Berliner Handschrift mit Generalbass-Aussetzungen’, BJb 1993, 103–25

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