Keyboard Harmonization & Figured Bass
Reading and realizing a Baroque continuo in four parts, then at the keyboard — figures, inversions, cadential six-four, suspensions and sequences. The first licence-level course.
Bach was a formidable continuo player. In Leipzig he taught accompaniment from the figured bass alone. Around 1738 he set down for his pupils his « Precepts and Principles for play…
À retenir : Continuo is no second-rate accompaniment: it is harmony written « in code ». To read the figures is to read the harmony.
What is figured bass?
Figured bass (or thorough-bass, basso continuo) is the shorthand notation system that reigned over all Baroque music, from about 1600 to 1750. The composer writes a single line — the bass — topped with figures: these figures encode the intervals to stack above each bass note, and hence the complete harmony. A two-line staff (bass + figures) is thus enough to notate the entire accompaniment.
At the time, this figuring was realized in real time by a polyphonic instrument — the harpsichord or the organ — often doubled by a cello or a viol holding the bass line. The harpsichordist read the bass, interpreted the figures and improvised the texture of the chords: that is the realization. Continuo is the harmonic bedrock of the cantata, the trio sonata, opera and oratorio.