The Performance of Italian Basso Continuo: Style in Keyboard Accompaniment in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (review)

Abstract

The Performance of Italian Basso Continuo: Style in Keyboard Accompaniment in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. By Guilia Nuti. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007. [xiv, 148 p. ISBN-10 0754605671; ISBN-13 9780754605676. $89.98.] Illustrations, music examples, bibliographic references, indexes. This is a useful and attractive guidebook for harpsichordists who are either approaching the accompaniment of Italian vocal and instrumental music for the first time, or for the seasoned continuo player who might enjoy a refreshing tutorial after so many years of working in a personal and reliable style. Nuti has gathered a selection of source materials that will be welcomed by harpsichordists. This book offers an overview of materials that help to inform accompanying and differentiate national styles in performance. Formulating an idea of style in continuo playing is an arduous if interesting process of reading through treatises and as many prefaces as possible, extracting useful information and creating a mental database from which to carve an informed path. While leaving that work to another scholar or performer is not entirely responsible, The Performance of Italian Basso Continuo presents its information in a clear and challenging way, answering some questions and posing many more. In five chapters Nuti sketches a history of continuo playing and charts a chronological road map through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The texts from sources are given in Italian and are all translated. They are accompanied by music examples, most in facsimile. Chapters are divided into intelligent and important topics. We can come to the volume with specific questions and find evidence to help resolve problems. The section on the seventeenth century illuminates the variety of approaches to notation and options for the continuo player while taking part in ensemble works either secular or sacred, instrumental or vocal. The eighteenth century section is quite illuminating about how to play chords, to distribute them between the hands, approach issues of voice leading, and formulating an improvisation style in accompaniment. The volume concludes with a select bibliography of source material and secondary writings. Manuscript sources are given a separate listing and organized according to library locations. I have few complaints about Nuti's volume though some choices might have been made to improve its utility. The bibliography lists all works in alphabetical order. It would have been useful to separate critical sources (such as Charles Burney and Jean Jacques Rousseau) from specific treatises from music publications with important prefaces. In the chapter on seventeenthcentury playing, Nuti brings the existence of written out accompaniments for solo song to our attention. In her section on written out intavolatura accompaniments (p. 33), she focuses on Brussels MS 704 with accompaniments for songs of Peri and Caccini and suggests that these were made for unskilled players and involved the simplest of solutions. …