Basso Continuo

[Tetrachord]

In the first recorded cycle of Mozart piano concertos with Malcolm Bilson and Gardiner, Bilson made a point of playing along with the orchestra - I remember attending various concerts in London in which he did so.

It's interesting isn't it; why the continuo is still being used for these concerti so late in the day, as it were. I wonder if it's because the study of historical performance practice has yielded some hybrids through certain practitioners. One has to wonder exactly how it was in Mozart's day. I'm trying to find books in our local university library but am experiencing difficulty since most of the material on this subject seems to be written in German. There would be literature in electronic form but I am not able to access this because I'm not a student.

[Richard Barrett]

In the first recorded cycle of Mozart piano concertos with Malcolm Bilson and Gardiner, Bilson made a point of playing along with the orchestra - I remember attending various concerts in London in which he did so.

The "Cambridge Music Handbook" for Mozart's 20th and 21st Concertos contains a section summarising the evidence that Mozart "intended and expected the piano soloist to provide basso continuo accompaniment during the ritornellos and perhaps also during the shorter tutti passages within solo sections", which seems fairly convincing to me.

[Tetrachord]

The "Cambridge Music Handbook" for Mozart's 20th and 21st Concertos contains a section summarising the evidence that Mozart "intended and expected the piano soloist to provide basso continuo accompaniment during the ritornellos and perhaps also during the shorter tutti passages within solo sections", which seems fairly convincing to me.

Excellent!! Though why this was so remains unclear.

[Richard Barrett]

Excellent!! Though why this was so remains unclear.

I think you'd be clear if you read it. Unfortunately I don't have the book in a form that I can copy and paste from but you might be able to find the relevant passage in Google Books if you don't have access to a physical copy.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The "Cambridge Music Handbook" for Mozart's 20th and 21st Concertos contains a section summarising the evidence that Mozart "intended and expected the piano soloist to provide basso continuo accompaniment during the ritornellos and perhaps also during the shorter tutti passages within solo sections", which seems fairly convincing to me.

If so, did Mozart write a figured bass?
In practice, Mozart composed these works with a view to being the soloist himself, so if he wanted to help to kepp the orchestra playing together, this would have been a way of doing so. Structurally, it's perhaps a different matter. In Mozart's concerto-sonata form, the orchestral exposition generally has both first and second subjects in the tonic key, unlike normal sonata form, which has the second subject in a different key. It's only when the soloist enters, in the "second exposition", that things change, with a new key introduced by the soloist. To have a audible piano jangling away in the background surely detracts from this.

If there's a conductor, the unwritten "continuo" is completely unnecessary anyway.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Structurally, it's perhaps a different matter. In Mozart's concerto-sonata form, the orchestral exposition generally has both first and second subjects in the tonic key, unlike normal sonata form, which has the second subject in a different key. It's only when the soloist enters, in the "second exposition", that things change, with a new key introduced by the soloist. To have a audible piano jangling away in the background surely detracts from this.

I'm not sure why you think this, Alpie - the different treatments of tonality aren't altered by instrumentation.

If there's a conductor, the unwritten "continuo" is completely unnecessary anyway.

Except for listeners who relish the sound of an "audible piano jangling away in the background", enjoying the contrast with and to when it audibly jangles in the foreground. (And then there's the partial unnecessity of giving the soloist something to do beyond gazing vacuously into the heavens/scowling furiously at the audience/smiling benignly at the orchestra.)

[Richard Barrett]

If so, did Mozart write a figured bass?

I'm not going to copy out the entire chapter, but: "Unlike modern scores, which print the piano part in the middle of each system... Mozart placed it at the bottom of the page, directly above the cellos and basses. Moreover, by writing "CoB" (col basso) in the piano's lower stave during tutti passages, he was evidently directing the copyist or publisher to reprodice the bass line as the left hand of the solo part, and thereby to indicate that the piano was to double the bass. The addition of figures above this bass line, which was common in eighteenth-century manuscript and printed copies of the solo parts... seems to confirm that the pianist was also expected to supply a chordal accompaniment above the bass. The composer himself provided figures in the autograph score of the Concerto for Three Pianos, K242 (Piano III only), while his father added them to the autographs of some of the other early concertos as well as to Nannerl's manuscript copies of the solo parts of nine of the concertos, including K466 and K467. There is also a manuscript solo part for the Concerto in C K246, written by a copyist but with a realisation of the continuo in Mozart's handwriting."

See also the chapter "Basso Continuo in Mozart's Piano Concertos" by Ellwood Derr, in Mozart's Piano Concertos: Text, Context, Interpretation edited by Neal Zaslaw, for more detailed information.

I think the evidence is fairly conclusive, having just looked through these two chapters again.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I think the evidence is fairly conclusive, having just looked through these two chapters again.

Thanks for that. Most interesting, though I still think the only useful purpose was to keep the players together when there was no conductor. Unlike in many baroque works, scores in classical works are harmonically complete.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Thanks for that.

Most interesting, though I still think the only useful purpose was to keep the players together when there was no conductor.

Indeed - hence the word itself; the part that kept the Music going even if the orchestral players got lost - but there are "useless purposes" for a keyboard continuo in post-Baroque Music that are quite pleasant for some listeners.

[Richard Barrett]

I don't think whether something is "harmonically complete" or not is a useful criterion. Plenty of Bach's ensemble music (concertos, suites etc. not to mention when vocal ensembles are added) is harmonically complete and yet a basso continuo was present. On the other hand much of Haydn's early music is far from harmonically complete (for example all the minuets written in two parts each doubled in octaves) and yet it's believed that Haydn didn't add a keyboard continuo. Derr's article shows in considerable detail that there's much more to the function of the keyboard continuo in Mozart's concertos than just keeping players together in the absence of a conductor. I suggest you take a look at it, but in the meantime I quote: "The issue as I understand it after more than twenty-five years of invesigation is not one of continuo realisation as a harmonic filler - by far too narrow an understanding of the technique and Mozart's application of it - but rather and much more importantly as a flexible shorthand for the pianist's accompanying parts during the times when principal focus is on the orchestra... to achieve compositional completeness."

[BBMmk2]

Good luck with your lecture, Tetrachord, not my subject, I'm afraid, but hope all will be good!

[Tetrachord]

Good luck with your lecture, Tetrachord, not my subject, I'm afraid, but hope all will be good!

Thanks so much for your good wishes! Through our university library I'm borrowing that book on Mozart by Zaslaw which was referenced on this thread. That will, hopefully, explain the much later use of figured bass/continuo.

[Tetrachord]

Does anybody know if this had an 'improvised' figured bass (skeleton) or a wholly notated bass line by Handel!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bopUUj71UXo