> On Feb 5, 2019, at 3:05 PM, Alain Veylit <al...@musickshandmade.com> wrote: > > One point Howard makes is that Beethoven wanted more money than Haydn because > he added both a violin and bass line. First it is a fascinating -- if down > to earth -- insight on how musicians made (or begged or haggled for) a > living. And probably still do. But it leaves me puzzled because Haydn's > Barbara Allen does consist of the voice part, a violin part and a figured > bass (the collection title indicates "in three parts") - so I guess the same > thing Beethoven claimed to provide: The equivalent of "I'll throw in an extra > topping of mushrooms on the mushroom pizza for topence more"…?
Before you go to the trouble of being puzzled, consider that It’s been years since I looked at the source material and may be mistaken about exactly what Beethoven was supplying that Haydn wasn’t. Of course, Beethoven may have been mistaken about what Thomson got from Haydn: I doubt he looked at all 214 of Haydn’t arrangements. > Two final thoughts: I think figured bass was fading out of use at that time > (early 19th century), It was a slow fade. Beethoven’s opus 86 Mass in C (1807) has a one-staff “Basso e Organo” part with figures. His Missa Solemnis (1823, published 1827) has a two-staff obbligato organ part. The latest work I can think of, offhand, with a b.c. part is Anton Bruckner’s Requiem (1849): https://imslp.org/wiki/Requiem,_WAB_39_(Bruckner,_Anton) But there are likely later ones. > yet the Barbara Allen score seems to me overly figured. I assume that > musicians proficient with continuo markings would only indicate the rather > less obvious harmonies - not every chord. (?) Some composers, Couperin for one, figured densely so as to make it foolproof. The harpsichord (in the solos)/continuo (in the tuttis) part of Bach’s Fifth Brandenburg Concerto has a lot of 6’s that seem unnecessary. I think composers or editors each brought their own attitudes about how to figure. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
