Realization is the art of creating music, typically an accompaniment, from a figured bass, whether by improvisation in real time, or as a detained exercise in writing. It is most commonly associated with Baroque music.
Competent performers of the era were expected to realize a stylistically appropriate accompaniment from a mere harmonic sketch, called a figured bass, and to do it at sight. A system that allowed much flexibility, it became a lost art, but was revived in the 20th century by scholar-performers.
To realize a figured bass by writing down the actual notes to be played was (and is) a traditional exercise for students learning harmony and composition, and is used by music editors to make performing editions.
It was rare for established composers of the Baroque era to write down realizations. With few exceptions, those that have survived are short teaching demonstrations, or else student exercises. From this exiguous material must present-day scholars seek to recover the styles of the period, which varied considerably from time to time and place to place.
Concept
Composers of the Baroque era seldom wrote out the musical accompaniment (called the basso continuo, or simply continuo). Performers were expected to realizeThe word is thus spelled in both British and American English. one to suit the occasion, guided by no more than a bare sketch called a figured bass (or thorough bass).
The figured bass consisted of a bass line written in normal staff notation, but marked with numerals or other symbols to indicate the harmonies. A short example might look like this.
Indeed the entire Baroque period is sometimes referred to as the Figured Bass period.
A basso continuo is analogous to the rhythm section of present-day jazz and popular bands; the figured bass, to the lead sheets used by such bands. However, realizing a figured bass has a challenging extra dimension. It is not enough that the correct harmonies (regarded as vertically stacked notes) be played: the notes must succeed each other horizontally according to certain voice leading rules, which in the Baroque era were quite strict.Performers are supposed to avoid consecutive fifths and octaves, duplication of the leading note, and many other pitfalls.
Ex. 1 is a short figured bass followed by one possible realization, by the composer Thomas Mace.
Execution The realizer, while usually following the harmonic scheme indicated in the figuring, has a choice on such matters as rhythmic effect, chordal spacing, ornamentation, arpeggiation, imitation and counterpoint, limited only by sound judgement and good taste, and adherence to the genre's voice leading rules and stylistic conventions — ideally, those of the composer's time and place. Ex. 2 shows four realizations of the same figured bass by the Baroque composer Francesco Geminiani.
In early Baroque the bass was usually unfigured. However, by also considering the solo part the realizer could usually guess the harmonies (Ex. 5).
Baroque era scores were riddled with copyist's or printer's errors, and sometimes an error of judgement by the composer himself. Accordingly, the realizer had (and has) to be ready to spot these and correct them. Thus, not only the figured harmonies, but even the explicit bass line can occasionally be altered. Said C.P.E. Bach:
Benefits John Butt has argued that figured bass is an instance of "purposely incomplete" notation conferring a positive advantage. Accompaniments improvised from a figured bass line can be made to suit varying circumstances e.g. tempi, instrumentation, and even the hall acoustics. Further, wrote Robert Donington: It was not from mere casualness that baroque composers preferred to trust their performers with figured bass ... It was from the high value they set on spontaneity. They believed, and modern experience confirms, that it is better to be accompanied with buoyancy than with polished workmanship. An accompanist who can give rhythmic impetus to his part, adapt it to the momentary requirements of balance and sonority, thicken it here and thin it there, and keep every bar alive, can stimulate his colleagues and help to carry the entire ensemble along. This is not merely to fill in the harmony; nor is it merely to make the harmony into an interesting part; it is to share in the creative urgency of the actual performance.
Drawbacks Since few realizations were written down, except by pupils, not many have survived; (A sonata movement by Bach — Ex. 4 — is believed to be a rare exception for this major composer.) Where one has survived, it is precious evidence on the style of that particular time and place. The notation "had this inherent defect — that no one who had not heard a composer play from his own figured bass parts could know the precise effects he produced or intended" or contemplated (for styles and performing conventions varied much, not only from country to country, but from time to time)."... the vast terrain encompassed by the periods of Monteverdi and Mozart, the national styles of Italy, France, Germany and England, and the many different types of music that flourished in these lands in the 17th and 18th centuries. Well, of course no continuo player of the Baroque ever reckoned on having to manage all this; his style already existed where he lived, as did the musical idiom of the day, and all he had to be aware of ... was, whether he was in church, opera house or court concert": (Dalton, 1971). So when these realizing traditions were lost, a passage in figured bass was a dead letter, unless it could be somehow be revived by scholarship (see below). Writing as late as 1959 Benjamin Britten said:
In actual performance Baroque era Keyboard accompaniments (e.g. harpsichord or organ) were meant to be spontaneously realized from the figured bass notation, the performer filling in the harmonic sketch as he went along. J.S. Bach wrote: Though keyboards have received most attention in the literature, there is abundant evidence the harmony was often realized by hand-plucked instruments e.g. lute, theorbo, guitar or harp (Exs. 1, 3, 5). Further, it was played chordally on the same cello that supplied the bassline; or even on the solo violin itself — by double stopping (Ex. 7). Praetorius recommended a judicious selection of trombones, regals, flutes, violins, cornetts, recorders, "or a boy may sing the top line of all".
Early operas were produced from a score containing, mostly, just the vocal parts and figured bass (as in Ex. 6, without keyboard realization); these were elaborated and ornamented by the performers .
The harmonic sketch in figured bass was only meant to be a suggestion, wrote Marc Pincherle, adding: In Georg Philipp Telemann's understanding, "There are occasions when the accompanist may not wish to sound all the notes shown in the figuring. He is just as much within his rights in leaving out part of what is figured as he is in adding to what is figured."
Professionals To realize a figured bass at sight was an expected accomplishment for any professional accompanist, an essential part of his musical training. In 1761 the nine-year old Muzio Clementi, to qualify for an organ post in Rome, passed a test where candidates were given a figured bass and told to perform an accompaniment, after which they were obliged to transpose it into various keys. A top realizer had to be a master of composition, insisted Roger North (1710): Altho a man may attain the art to strike the accords true to a thro-base [thorough bass] prescribed him according as it is figured, yet he may not pretend to be master of his part, without being a master of composition in general, for there is occasion of so much management in ye manner of play, sometimes striking only by accords, sometimes arpeggiando, sometimes touching ye air, and perpetually observing the emphatick places, to fill, forbear, or adorne, with a just favour, that a thro-base master, and not an ayerist, is but an abecedarian.
Even more demanding was partimento, in which composers were taught to improvise not just an accompaniment but a fully-fledged composition.
Amateurs In the 18th century not just professionals were expected to accompany from a figured bass. Music handbooks for amateurs proliferated, and most of these contained figured bass instructions. Handel wrote a course in realization for the daughters of George II. It taught, not only how to improvise accompaniments, but even fugues. It is on sale today.
Music publishing originated in 18th century Europe, and it did so to cater for a growing army of cultivated amateurs. "Everybody sang or played, and the experience of teaming up with others was enormous fun. Composers were more than happy to oblige by writing music that was within the grasp of these amateurs". The London publisher John Walsh — who sometimes passed off spurious pieces as and for the works of Corelli, Handel or Telemann — routinely issued his productions with figured basses. "Indeed, the chief consumers of the sonatas of Corelli and his imitators were not professional musicians but rather the gentlemen members of amateur music clubs. Walsh would have been able to count on a public of aristocratic and middle-class amateurs".
Some amateurs were outstanding, wrote Mary Cyr:One such woman was the unusually gifted Princess Anne, Handel's lifelong friend, whose continuo realizations impressed.
For fashionable young ladies who only wanted to acquire the art as a social skill, there were tutors that taught a quick pragmatic way to play a continuo — of sorts. Although not considered very elegant, a player could usually manage by arpeggiation, (illustrated in Ex. 9). The ability of some amateurs to play from figured bass, and even direct an orchestra from the keyboard, persisted into the early Classical period. In the United States, familiarity persisted farther. Not only could amateurs be found who could play from figured bass, but briskly selling tune books — of popular music — were routinely published with figured bass parts, until the middle of the 19th century.
Disuse After the Baroque era the art died out.Except among some English cathedral organists who continued to practise it up to the early 20th century: ; ; . By the time of the popular revival of J.S. Bach's music (by Mendelssohn, 1829) the performing traditions had been forgotten; musicians took no account of Bach's figured basses; they played him without a continuo realization — sometimes with grotesque results."The public was treated to a dialogue between a contrabass and a flute, or even to a contrabass monologue" (Schweitzer, 1923b). Here and there a Brahms could be found who was adept at continuo improvisation but the ordinary competent musician demanded a realized score.
In 1949 William J. Mitchell wrote: "The extemporaneous realization of a figured bass is a dead art. We have left behind us the period of the basso continuo and with it all the unwritten law, the axioms, the things that were taken for granted; in a word, the spirit of the time". That year American harpsichordist and musicologist Putnam Aldrich tried to revive the practice at a Pierre Monteux rehearsal of "absolutely authentic" Bach:
But a revival of the art of live realization was underway.
Modern revival Already in 1935 the highly successful recordings of the Brandenburg Concertos by the Busch Chamber Players had a continuo realization. Their 1948 Kingsway Hall concerts were the highlights of the London season; audiences, reported Adolf Aber, felt here, at last, was the music of Bach and Handel as it was meant to be performed. even though it had no pretence to be historically informed — just plain, unobtrusive chords on a grand piano sounded by Rudolf SerkinBest heard in e.g. the 2nd movement of Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F. which may or may not have been written down in advance.