Realization (figured bass)
practice of expanding figured bass notation into a full accompaniment
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 realize one to suit the occasion, guided by no more than a bare sketch called a figured bass (or thorough bass).
“Realization (figured bass)” enters the record as practice of expanding figured bass notation into a full accompaniment. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Realization, figured and bass can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Realization (figured bass)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.