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Figured bass - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2/7/15 6:45 AM

Figured bass
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Figured bass, or thoroughbass, is a


kind of musical notation in which
numerals and symbols indicate intervals,
chords, and non-chord tones, in relation
to the bass note they are placed above or
below. Figured bass is closely associated
with basso continuo, a historically
improvised accompaniment used in
almost all genres of music in the
Baroque period, though rarely in modern
music.
Other systems for denoting or
representing chords include [1] plain staff
notation, used in classical music; Roman
numerals, commonly used in harmonic
analysis; [2] macro symbols, sometimes
used in modern musicology; and various
names and symbols used in jazz and
popular music.

Melody from the opening of Henry Purcell's "Thy Hand, Belinda",


Dido and Aeneas (1689) with figured bass below ( Play , Play
with figured bass realization).

Contents
1 Basso continuo
2 Figured bass notation
2.1 Numbers
2.2 Accidentals
3 History
4 Contemporary uses
5 See also
6 Notes
7 Further reading
8 External links

Basso continuo
Basso continuo parts, almost universal in the Baroque era (16001750), provided the harmonic structure of
the music. The phrase is often shortened to continuo, and the instrumentalists playing the continuo part, if
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Figured bass - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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the music. The phrase is often shortened to continuo, and the instrumentalists playing the continuo part, if
more than one, are called the continuo group. The titles of many Baroque works make mention of the
continuo section, such as J. S. Bach's Concerto for Two Violins, Strings and Continuo in D Minor.
The makeup of the continuo group is often left to the discretion of the performers, and practice varied
enormously within the Baroque period. At least one instrument capable of playing chords must be included,
such as a harpsichord, organ, lute, theorbo, guitar, regal, or harp. In addition, any number of instruments
which play in the bass register may be included, such as cello, double bass, bass viol, or bassoon. The most
common combination, at least in modern performances, is harpsichord and cello for instrumental works and
secular vocal works, such as operas, and organ for sacred music. Typically performers match the
instrument families used in the full ensemble: including bassoon when the work includes oboes or other
winds, but restricting it to cello and/or double bass if only strings are involved. Harps, lutes, and other
handheld instruments are more typical of early 17th-century music. Sometimes instruments are specified by
the composer: in L'Orfeo (1607) Monteverdi calls for an exceptionally varied instrumentation, with
multiple harpsichords and lutes with a bass violin in the pastoral scenes followed by lamenting to the
accompaniment of organo di legno and chitarrone, while Charon stands watch to the sound of a regal.
The keyboard (or other chording instrument) player realizes a continuo part by playing, in addition to the
indicated bass notes, upper notes to complete chords, either determined ahead of time or improvised in
performance. The figured bass notation, described below, is a guide, but performers are also expected to
use their musical judgment and the other instruments or voices as a guide, and experienced players often
incorporate motives found in the other instrumental parts. Modern editions of such music usually supply a
realized keyboard part, fully written out for a player, in place of improvisation. With the rise in historically
informed performance, however, the number of performers who improvise their parts, as Baroque players
would have done, has increased.
Basso continuo, though an essential structural and identifying element of the Baroque period, continued to
be used in many works, especially sacred choral works, of the classical period (up to around 1800). An
example is C. P. E. Bach's Concerto in D minor for flute, strings and basso continuo. Examples of its use in
the 19th century are rarer, but they do exist: masses by Anton Bruckner, Beethoven, and Franz Schubert,
for example, have a basso continuo part for an organist to play.

Figured bass notation


A part notated with figured bass consists of a bass-line notated with notes on a musical staff plus added
numbers and accidentals beneath the staff to indicate what intervals above the bass notes should be played,
and therefore which inversions of which chords are to be played. The phrase tasto solo indicates that only
the bass line (without any upper chords) is to be played for a short period, usually until the next figure is
encountered.
Composers were inconsistent in the usages described below. Especially in the 17th century, the numbers
were omitted whenever the composer thought the chord was obvious. Early composers such as Claudio
Monteverdi often specified the octave by the use of compound intervals such as 10, 11, and 15.
Contemporary figured bass may be summarized as follows:
For diatonic triads:

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Figured bass - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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root position = blank or 53


1st Inversion = 6 or 63
2nd Inversion =

6
4

For 7th chords:


root position = 7
6
5
= 43

1st Inversion =
2nd Inversion

3rd Inversion = 2 or 42

Numbers
The numbers indicate the number of scale steps above the given bass-line that a note should be played. For
example:

Here, the bass note is a C, and the numbers 4 and 6 indicate that notes a fourth and a sixth above it should
be played, that is an F and an A. In other words, the second inversion of an F major chord is to be played.
In cases where the numbers 3 or 5 would normally be understood, these are usually left out. For example:
is equivalent to

and both imply the following chords

although the performer may choose which octave to play the notes in and will often elaborate them in some
way rather than play only chords, depending on the tempo and texture of the music.
Sometimes, other numbers are omitted: a 2 on its own or 42 indicate 642, for example.
Sometimes the figured bass number changes but the bass note itself does not. In these cases the new figures
are written wherever in the bar they are meant to occur.

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When the bass note changes but the notes in the chord above it are to be held, a line is drawn next to the
figure or figures to indicate this:

The line extends for as long as the chord is to be held.

Accidentals
When an accidental is shown on its own without a number, it applies to the note a third above the lowest
note; most commonly, this is the third of the chord. Otherwise, if a number is shown, the accidental affects
the said interval. For example, this:

is equivalent to this:

Sometimes the accidental is placed after the number rather than before it.
Alternatively, a cross placed next to a number indicates that the pitch of that note should be raised by a
semitone (so that if it is normally a flat it becomes a natural, and if it is normally a natural it becomes a
sharp). A different way to indicate this is to draw a bar through the number itself. The following three
notations, therefore, all indicate the same thing (that A should be played even though A would normally
be played in this key signature):

When sharps or flats are used with key signatures they may have a slightly different meaning, especially in
17th-century music. A sharp might be used to cancel a flat in the key signature, or vice versa, instead of a
natural sign.

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Figured bass - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Example of Figured Bass in context. Taken from Beschrnkt, ihr Weisen, by J.S.
Bach (R. 47/69). Play

History
Improvised organ accompaniments for choral works were common by the late 16th century, and separate
organ parts showing only a bass line date back to at least 1587. In the mid-16th century, some Italian
church composers began to write polychoral works. These pieces, for two or more choirs, were created in
recognition of particularly festive occasions, or else to take advantage of certain architectural properties of
the buildings in which they were performed. With eight or more parts to keep track of in performance,
works in polychoral style required some sort of instrumental accompaniment. They were also known as
cori spezzati, since the choirs were structured in musically independent or interlocking parts, and may
sometimes also have been placed in physically different locations.
It is important to note that the concept of allowing two or more concurrently performing choirs to be
independent structurally would or could almost certainly not have arisen had there not been an already
existing practice of choral accompaniment in church. Financial and administrative records indicate the
presence of organs in churches dates back to the 15th century. Although their precise use is not known, it
stands to reason that it was to some degree in conjunction with singers. Indeed, there exist many firstperson accounts of church services from the 15th and 16th centuries that imply organ accompaniment in
some portions of the liturgy, as well as indicating that the a cappella-only practice of the Vatican's
Cappella Sistina was somewhat unusual. By early in the 16th century, it seems that accompaniment by
organ at least in smaller churches was commonplace, and commentators of the time lamented on occasion
the declining quality of church choirs. Even more tellingly, many manuscripts, especially from the middle
of the century and later, feature written-out organ accompaniments. It is this last observation which leads
directly to the foundations of continuo practice, in a somewhat similar one called basso seguente or
"following bass."
Written-out accompaniments are found most often in early polychoral works (those composed, obviously,
before the onset of concerted style and its explicit instrumental lines), and generally consist of a complete
reduction (to what would later be called the "grand staff") of one choirs parts. In addition to this, however,
for those parts of the music during which that choir rested was presented a single line consisting of the
lowest note being sung at any given time, which could be in any vocal part. Even in early concerted works
by the Gabrielis (Andrea and Giovanni), Monteverdi and others, the lowest part, that which modern
performers colloquially call "continuo", is actually a basso seguente, though slightly different, since with
separate instrumental parts the lowest note of the moment is often lower than any being sung.
The first known published instance of a basso seguente was a book of Introits and Alleluias by the Venetian
Placido Falconio from 1575. What is known as "figured" continuo, which also features a bass line that
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Placido Falconio from 1575. What is known as "figured" continuo, which also features a bass line that
because of its structural nature may differ from the lowest note in the upper parts, developed over the next
quarter-century. The composer Lodovico Viadana is often credited with the first publication of such a
continuo, in a 1602 collection of motets that according to his own account had been originally written in
1594. Viadanas continuo, however, did not actually include figures. The earliest extant part with sharp and
flat signs above the staff is a motet by Giovanni Croce, also from 1594.
Following and figured basses developed concurrently in secular music; such madrigal composers as Emilio
de' Cavalieri and Luzzasco Luzzaschi began in the late 16th century to write works explicitly for a soloist
with accompaniment, following an already standing practice of performing multi-voice madrigals this way,
and also responding to the rising influence at certain courts of particularly popular individual singers. This
tendency toward solo-with-accompaniment texture in secular vocal music culminated in the genre of
monody, just as in sacred vocal music it resulted in the sacred concerto for various forces including few
voices and even solo voices. The use of numerals to indicate accompanying sonorities began with the
earliest operas, composed by Cavalieri and Giulio Caccini.
These new genres, just as the polychoral one probably was, were indeed made possible by the existence of
a semi- or fully independent bass line. In turn, the separate bass line, with figures added above to indicate
other chordal notes, shortly became "functional," as the sonorities became "harmonies," (see harmony and
tonality), and music came to be seen in terms of a melody supported by chord progressions, rather than
interlocking, equally important lines as in polyphony. The figured bass, therefore, was integral to the
development of the Baroque, by extension the classical, and by further extension most subsequent
musical styles.
As part of the new galant style in the mid-18th century, with its emphasis on lighter and more varied
textures, orchestral music dispensed with the basso continuo, and solo-with-accompaniment textures
increasingly featured fully written-out accompaniments. By the second half of the 18th century, figured
bass was almost entirely eliminated, except in sacred choral music, where it lingered until well after 1800:
Beethoven's Mass in C major (1807), for example, has a figured bass part.
Many composers and theorists of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries wrote how-to guides to realizing
figured bass, including Gregor Aichinger, Filippo Bonaffino, Friedrich Erhard Niedt, Jean-Philippe
Rameau, Georg Philipp Telemann, C.P.E. Bach, and Michael Praetorius.

Contemporary uses
It is also sometimes used by classical musicians as a shorthand way of indicating chords (though it is not
generally used in modern musical compositions, save neo-Baroque pieces). A form of figured bass is used
in notation of accordion music; another simplified form is used to notate guitar chords. Today the most
common use of figured bass notation is to indicate the inversion, however, often without the staff notation,
using letter note names followed with the figure, for instance, if the harmony were a C major, with the bass
note a G, it would be written
; with an E in the bass, it would be written
(this is different from the
Jazz notation, where a C6 is the chord C-E-G-A, i.e., a C major with an added 6th degree). The symbols
can also be used with Roman numerals in analyzing functional harmony, a usage called figured Roman; see
chord symbol.

See also
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Unfigured bass

Notes
1. ^ Benward, Bruce; Marilyn Nadine, Saker (2003), Music: In Theory and Practice, Vol. I (Seventh ed.), : McgrawHill, p. 77, ISBN 978-0-07-294262-0.
2. ^ Schoenberg, Arnold (1983), Structural Functions of Harmony (Seventh ed.), London: Mcgraw-Hill, pp. 12.

Further reading
Schick, Kyle (2012) "Improvisation: Performer as Co-composer," Musical Offerings: Vol. 3: No. 1,
Article 3. Available at: http://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/musicalofferings/vol3/iss1/3

External links
Figured Bass Symbology (http://www.robertkelleyphd.com/figuredbass.htm) by Robert Kelley
Chords that the (major) scale degrees (in the bass) can imply
(http://www.robertkelleyphd.com/scaledegrharm.htm) by Robert Kelley
Theory and Practice of the Basso Continuo (http://theoryofmusic.wordpress.com/2007/11/23/theoryand-practice-of-the-basso-continuo/) by Barry Mitchell
Historical sources on the subject of basso continuo - Viadana, Agazzari etc (http://www.bassusgeneralis.org/)
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Categories: Accompaniment Bass (sound) Musical notation Musical terminology Tonality
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