David Raleigh Arnold wrote:
>
> That never occurred to me because I have only used it in harmony.
> But a ninth would be represented by a 2
the figure 2 is almost always an indication of some kind of the third
inversion of a seventh chord (a so-called four-two chord) while the
figure 9 denotes a ninth chord. As I wrote in my previous posting there
*are* quite a few examples of that in the baroque litterature!!!
> if there were no seventh,
> and those dissonances would be represented by long
> appoggiature in the solo part and very probably not appear in the
> figured bass at all in the baroque performer's music. It should
> be up to the soloist to decide when to resolve those if he
> is expected to improvise, not the accompanist.
>
> Then why not write a maj7 with a trailing "M" the way the French
> do?
because typesetting thorough bass scores containing definitely
non-standard bass figure notation doesn't make any sense at all
> Much better than a delta, especially when scribbled rather than
> typeset. Of course it's not as international as a slashed 7, or
> as brief. :-)
>
> Permit me to heartily second the motion that not one second of
> time be spent on figured bass. It is only useful to the writers
> of textbooks, and, if they need software, they don't know enough
> to be writing a textbook. I argued this before with reference to
> chord parsing, to no avail. Better to fix lyrics to do it, as
> suggested.
>
Just to (if necessary) enlighten the audience: bass figuring is used for
editions of baroque chamber- and orchestral music and is almost
indispensable for that purpose - whether one preferes to publish the
scores with the figures only or to supply a proposal for a b.c.
realization, for example for harpsichord.
> It is a pity that nonsense like figured bass generates a ton of
> discussion of pretty good quality while real notation-busting
> dilemmas don't seem to. But I enjoy a p---ing contest as well as
> the next guy, and I'm not afraid of learning something
>
--
Christian Mondrup, Computer Programmer
Scandiatransplant, Skejby Hospital, University Hospital of Aarhus
Brendstrupgaardsvej, DK 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark
Phone: +45 89 49 53 01
