According to Geminiani, a good accompanist should play with flexibility, style, and flair in a sensitive and appropriate fashion. Keyboard players of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were expected to be proficient on all types of keyboard instrument, from organ to harpsichord and, later, fortepiano. Today, organists engage with figured bass accompaniment in a range of circumstances, whether in solo vocal accompaniment, anthem accompaniment in a liturgical setting, or in a chamber ensemble.
Accompaniment from figured bass, whatever its context, is an art with a huge scope for interpretation, freedom, and improvisation. One way to gain an insight into the
performance practices of early music furnished with a figured (or unfigured) bass is to explore the many treatises on the art of accompaniment contemporaneous with the repertoire.

Thomas Allery looks at original source material in performance methods, in this article originally published in the RCO Journal in 2016.

This content is available free of charge to College members. To find out more about joining RCO, please click here.

Non-members with an iRCO guest account can view this content with a one-off payment of £2.49. Please enter your details below to begin the secure payment process.