On Saturday 29 April 2023
the Royal Conservatory of Brussels and its baroque cello class organized their first Symposium on
The Performance Practice of the Italian Basso Continuo on the Cello
Saturday, April 29th
Moderator: Marc Vanscheeuwijck
Embedded Files
Video recordings of the presentations from the Symposium are now available!
Click on the name of the speaker to view them
The symposium was concluded with a round table discussion with the speakers of the day
How did Italian cellists play their continuo in the Baroque and Classical periods?
Were they limiting themselves, as is the case today, to play the notes of the bass line as written? Did they also try to realize this basso continuo taking into account their own instrumental specificities? And if so, when and how did they do so?
Together with a number of scholar-cellists, we have tried to take stock of this specific research, and to provide answers to these questions, both in terms of historical information and practical application.
Introduction to the conference: thoughts about the importance of understanding a bass line harmonically.
Secco recitative accompaniment practice by cellists today
For the past thirty years, many cellists and musicologists, including several speakers at this conference, have been researching recitative accompaniment and bassline realization practice by cellists in earlier times. This talk discusses the results of a questionnaire sent to 249 professional continuo-playing cellists around the world in 2020, investigating current performance practice of secco recitatives, including issues such as instrumentation, seating plans, rehearsal protocol, and above all, their attitudes about harmonic realization and extemporaneous improvisation. Which cellists today are most likely to play more than the printed bass note, in what settings and how do they approach this task?
“Corelli op5 ‘Violino e violone o cimbalo’?” 25 years on
Researching French cello methods as an undergrad during the 1980s I kept coming across references to the practice of realising figured bass on the cello – something I was struggling to learn on the piano. Soon, for me learning harmony “at the fingerboard” was easier than at the keyboard. Forty years, an Early Music article, and many performances and recordings later, including a "dialogue" with the Bach Suites, I am still promoting this approach and teaching these techniques. Nowadays Nicholas Cook’s ‘composer-improvisor-performer’ paradigm makes this “practice as research”: what is the future for improvised chordal accompaniment on the cello?
Teaching Baroque Music today: How to integrate Basso Continuo Performance in the Pre-academic Curriculum?
Playing a bass line of 17th- or 18th-century music requires several aptitudes. These capacities are mainly taught in academic studies and pre-academic teaching usually follows a curriculum in building, beside the musical development, a traditional instrumental cello technique. Even though the manual capacities are still in progression, I propose with examples from my Cello Method (published in 2017) ways to integrate Basso Continuo Performance into the teaching courses of young students aged 12-16 years.
Thoroughbass Realization and Improvised Solo Practices on the
Cello
One of the most striking characteristics of the earliest cello treatises is that so many of them give instruction in thoroughbass realization. Internationally influential Italian partimento pedagogical practices and popular 18th-century German composition treatises clearly demonstrate that thoroughbass practice served as a foundation of both written composition and improvised solo performance. While these sources were primarily aimed at keyboard players, there is good reason to believe that well-trained musicians would have employed similar techniques when improvising on the cello. In this paper, I will discuss my approaches to re-creating such practices.
The Art of Accompaniment on the Cello in Baroque Italy
Today in the continuo section usually polyphonic instruments improvise, while melodic basses strictly follow the line. Some recently discovered specific Neapolitan partimenti for cello show that partimento, at that time often called also ‘the art of accompaniment’, included also cellists. Indications for improvising on low strings can also be found in other various sources concerning the cello, as well as in repertoire for viola da gamba. This survey will trace a specific way of realizing the continuo in a contrapuntal way on the cello, according to the sources.
Listening to Recitative from the Cello
"Giuseppe dall’Oglio, the great violoncellist ... took care, with his beautiful tone, to support the singers with some big chords and, thus, to keep them on pitch." Or, "why I play chords in recitative, how it's not why I started playing chords in recitative, and how I rely on my colleagues to support me." Much of this presentation is concerned with my last question, in particular the composition, placement, and layout of the continuo group. With a few nods to history, I reflect on where my practice is now, what I listen to whilst performing, and why my practice has evolved in this direction.
Continuo Realization on the Cello: a Method for Learning and Teaching.
It has been almost two years since we have proposed a new way to teach and learn basso continuo on the cello at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, by using a method I started to write in 2020. In this talk I will present this method, with a systematic construction that allows the cellist to realize ex tempore in two or three voices an unfigured bass, and to add a simple melody to it. We will see how this method will profoundly change the way historical cello is taught at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, opening the pathway to a more global reflection.
Contact : Marc Vanscheeuwijck : marc.vanscheeuwijck@musiqueancienne.be
Hervé Douchy : herve.douchy@musiqueancienne.be
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