To sing with continuo is to glimpse the freedom and creativity of a jazz musician. Continuo playing is an improvised accompaniment to a solo line—emphasis on the word improvised. If you have ever sung a Handel or Mozart recitative with a harpsichordist, they have been making up what their right hand is doing, creating gestures, textures, and patterns that will never be the exact same way again. The fun part is that with a little knowledge, the singer can share ideas with her continuisti, shaping her own accompaniment as part of the team.
Continuo—also known as basso continuo, thoroughbass, or general bass—flourished for some 200 years between 1600 and 1800, following its development as an accompaniment for polyphonic choirs in the late Renaissance. Continuo playing most often involves some combination of keyboard (harpsichord or organ), plucked string (harp, guitar, lute, or its bass sibling, the long-necked theorbo), and a bowed bass such as the cello or viola da gamba. In the spirit of improvisation, continuo instruments are rarely specified in the score.
Improvising an accompaniment is also called “realizing the harmony” or “making a realization.” In original scores, composers would clarify ambiguous harmonies with a sharp or flat written below the bass line or, later, with numbers to indicate chord inversions, the most common number being a 6. From this system came “figured bass” notation. If you have sung Monteverdi, Cavalli, or Handel, you’ve encountered both figured and non-figured bass notation.
Continuo repertoire throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries comprises a preponderance of solo songs and cantatas. While the styles vary widely by region, the smaller forces suggest an intimate, collaborative, and flexible music making. The groundwork for opera and oratorio can be found in this repertoire, when composers began to shed the complicated polyphony of the Renaissance to explore the expressive possibilities of the solo human voice.
While the idea of improvising an entire accompaniment may seem like a near-miraculous skill, the tuning system of the time did not allow for distant key relationships or extensive chromatics. Continuo players generally find themselves playing in certain keys with common chord patterns. Especially in early seventeenth-century writing, the Neapolitan and diminished chords of the Romantic era are absent, as are key signatures with more than three or four accidentals. Instead, nuance comes from the decisions players make about the timing of the chords, how many notes to play, whether to double the solo line, what instruments should play and when, and even what harmonies to play. In no other classical style is so much responsibility given to the performer.
While most any chordal instrument can act as your solo continuo player, an ensemble of two to three players allows for real choices in color and expression. The theorbo can give edge to the organ’s sound, the harpsichord can fill out a chord with arpeggios and flourishes, and the viol adds depth and color.
“Each instrument gives what the other lacks,” says the versatile keyboardist Peter Sykes, who also opines that harpsichord and theorbo “combine to form a complete protein, like rice and beans.” In a rehearsal setting, the singer can offer ideas about instrumentation or the way a chord is played, asking for a fuller or thinner sound or different color altogether.
While continuo playing requires a basic fluency in Baroque harmony, the real starting point—the words—may seem counterintuitive. Early Baroque composers sought to re-create the way they imagined the ancient Greeks declaimed poetry. The rhythms of the words inform the pacing of the entire piece, allowing for a certain amount of flexibility from the soloist and impromptu ornaments from all performers. Following this idea, the earliest operas resemble extended recitatives.
“The most important thing is for performers to be intimately connected to the affect of words,” says Catherine Liddell, a continuo player on the lute and theorbo who has performed with the Handel and Haydn Society, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, Boston Early Music Festival, and Apollo’s Fire, among others.
“Get down underneath the text, go deeper than the translation,” she suggests. “What state of mind is the character in when he or she is reciting this poem? Why did the poet write these words?” With this in mind, it is crucial for the singer to provide the text and translation to her continuo players from the very first rehearsal. This is especially true of chamber music, but can even apply during opera and oratorio with larger ensembles, when instrumentalists might not already have the text in front of them.
Even if you never intend to make early Baroque part of your repertoire, knowing how to sing with continuo is immensely helpful for singing recitatives. Sykes notes that in rehearsals, conductors allow the least amount of time for recitatives, sometimes expecting them to be rehearsed during the break, when everyone is talking. “It drives me crazy!” says Sykes.
Sykes describes recitatives as “acting on pitch,” noting that “a good actor is always easy to follow.” While rests and timing are always flexible and should never be exactly as written on the page, the singer must “have a sense of grammar, syntax, and dramatic pacing,” he says. “It’s not a question of being helter-skelter.” The singer takes on extra responsibility for expression during sacred Bach recitatives, traditionally accompanied by the organ, which “has half as many expressive resources as the harpsichord,” Sykes says.
Tone color and dynamics are limited, and the current style is to perform the recitatives secco, with the continuo giving short chords while the singer continues the line in silence. This follows Telemann’s advice, Sykes recounts, to “avoid playing notes too long so that the listener does not become nauseated by the continuous bellowing of the organ pipes.” Sykes describes non-musical recitatives as “dumb blonde recits: pretty but no character.” He advises singers not to drag out syllables or attempt to make a line out of their part.
One way to help give shape to recitatives and early Baroque song is for singers to become as familiar with the bass line as they are with their own part. After all, those are the two elements that form the basis for the entire piece.
“Singers should know that the bass line is the only thing that was written by the composer, and that all the rest is negotiable,” says Liddell. She also points out that “some singers are used to singing their bit and the accompaniment takes place on another planet. Singers of [Baroque repertoire] need to be a lot more involved in what is going on in the bass.”
Nell Snaidas, an accomplished singer of various styles and a Baroque guitarist herself, advises singers to “think of it as not just solo singing, but a duet with the bass line. You learn to sing with the bass line as you would another voice. Then you can swell together dynamically and trade off rhythms successfully.” Practicing your part while playing the bass line, realizing the harmony if possible, is a great way to prepare.
Usually at a first rehearsal of a continuo chamber group, the entire ensemble reads a piece through and decides what chords and tonalities to play, adding figures as necessary. The choice of instrumentation can dramatically affect the character of each moment of the piece. For example, the final chord in early Baroque works is usually a major chord, even if the song is in minor. In this case, “the theorbo can add a very subtle tonality or open chord, but the harpsichord can’t finesse its volume,” says Liddell. While singers should not feel a need to dictate harmonies to their players, “suggestions like ‘That harmony is throwing me off’ or ‘Is there a way to make that chord more poignant?’ are very helpful to instrumentalists,” she explains.
One dramatic example of how realization can drastically change a piece is found in a beautiful aria at the end of Monteverdi’s Il ballo delle ingrate. The soloist sings a hair-raising lament as she is being dragged down to Hell as punishment for not submitting to her lover’s entreaties. Toward the beginning of the aria, Monteverdi sets five whole-note Cs in the bass, while the vocal line does anything but outline C major, landing on As and F-sharps. (See example on the following page.)
In the edition by the early twentieth-century Italian composer Gian Francesco Malipiero, the version most commonly found in libraries (and the version shown here), the realization minimizes the dissonances, turning the vocal line into V7 chords and changing keys to fit the melody. Creative continuisti, however, might see another choice. If all five chords are played as root position C chords, the vocal line becomes an anguished, biting expression that suits its character. The translation reads: “Ah, it is too hard, a cruel sentence and even crueler punishment. To return to weep . . .” The band can play relentless, sharply articulated C chords, opposing the singer when she lands on dissonant As on the words duro and pena, or making cluster chords around her crudel and tornar F-sharps. It’s a relief when the vocal line matches the harmony on lagrimar. The result is an expression of grief that speakers of any language will understand.
Once the players agree on harmonies and get to know the piece, performers can discuss nuances in the way chords are played in service of the text or overall mood. Suggestions such as “Can I have a stronger impetus chord there?” or “I’m trying to convey this idea, but the way you rolled that chord suggested something else” are perfectly acceptable ways to discuss affect without micromanaging each individual’s expression. The speed of a rolled chord or how many notes a player chooses to add to a chord can affect everything from mood to rhythmic character and should be discussed and experimented with as a group.
“While there is great opportunity for spontaneity,” Snaidas points out, “it can only really work if you know what the original rhythmic structure is. This is true in all music, but because the writing is so much more sparse in Baroque repertoire, it feels more acute.”
Even if you never perform with historical instruments, a basic knowledge of how editions are made can inform your performances and collaboration with an accompanist. Most classically trained pianists have not had training in continuo playing, and modern editions assume the performers will interpret the piece exactly as written. Still, fine pianists will be able to modulate their touch to reflect different word effects, or even remove voices from a chord if the singer would like a lighter texture, advises Liddell.
Take for example, the International Music edition of Purcell’s songs, long the staple of recitals and auditions. The original version of “Bess of Bedlam” and “The Plaint” were strictly continuo parts, printed with only the vocal line and the bass, lacking all of the dynamic markings and most of the articulations of the modern score. Modern performers should first take a look at what Purcell wrote, which they can find in the two beautifully printed and eminently readable volumes of Orpheus Britannicus, available in any music library. From there, you can begin the dialogue with your pianist about affect and character, weight and timing. If your pianist is not as knowledgeable about continuo as you would like, it might be time for “emergency harpsichord lessons,” as Sykes calls them. In any case, he says, if you sing early music with modern and period instruments, it is important to have the two different versions of the score handy, especially for auditions.
If you live in New York or Toronto and you’re curious enough to jam with some old-time instruments, now is a good time to introduce yourself to each city’s Continuo Collective. Both groups operate workshop style, accepting players and singers of all levels. They usually work toward a performance project or two each year and have hosted some early music luminaries in the past. If you live elsewhere, just a visit to their websites will get you up to speed (www.continuony.org for New York and www.continuo.ca for Toronto).
The New York Continuo Collective posts the very helpful resource “Seven Days to Continuo Fluency” by renowned lutenist Paul O’Dette, in which he suggests daily practice regimens of simple chords and progressions. In just seven short days, you too can have the vocabulary you need to understand the art of continuo playing. And the camaraderie and freedom you’ll feel from collaborative improvisation with friends might become so addictive that you’ll need a 12-step program just to quit.
