On 19.04.2006 dc wrote:
If you look either at Couperin's editions, or Charpentier's manuscripts, you'll see that there was no standard at all at the time. The figures were put wherever there was room for them. Above, below, or even split between above and below, which is much harder to read than having them all below. Also, they are very often ON the staff itself, which we would also find difficult to read. So I think it's a bit risky to refer to "18th century standards" (or late 17th, in the case of Charpentier) for the placement of continuo figures.
I never meant to say that there was any kind of convention for placing figures. However, in the big printing industries in Britain, Holland and Germany figures were mostly placed above the part in 18th century editions. I honestly don't know about the French, but they also had other "non-standard" practices, so I wouldn't be surprised if they did it differently.
Otherwise I believe, standard or not, figures were placed above the part in _at least_ 90% of all published music in the 18th century as far as it contained figures. Manuscripts are a different matter.
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