Continuo Playing According to Handel: His Figured Bass Exercises (Early Music Series)

This book was published in 1990, well before the recent advances in the studies of partimento, schemata, and bass motions. One could learn continuo playing from these basses, and that is Leadbetter’s approach. But Handel was using the German school of partimento, in order to teach his students how to improvise/compose.Leadbetter also remarked on page 16 that Handel’s arrangement of how he taught the “circle of 5ths” and its inversions is strange. But this makes sense from the partimento/bass motion perspective. What would be considered inversions to today’s musical audience were considered completely separate bass motions to musician’s in the 18th century. They could be taught in a different order and it wouldn’t make a difference because they weren’t using the “fundamental bass” concept that Rameau introduced into music theory. This is, after all, a book about figured basses, not a book on modern Roman numeral analysis. These basses show how people like Handel and Bach thought about music, which is different from how this music is traditionally taught for the last 150 years.One could learn figured bass from this book, but I think you can get more out of it with an understanding of partimento theory. What would be more useful is for someone to write a book about Handel’s basses from a partimento perspective.

The quality of the binding is cheap, paper used is almost like construction paper and the ink almost bleeds into the paper itself creating spider marks/hairline absorptive runs (as if the ink was sucked up by the paper and spider cracks formed via the black ink - pretty bad/poor/low quality printing). this book has been around for so long now I wonder why a PDF isnt availablebut what matters most are its contents.still its over priced, $7.95 would be far more reasonable. Perhaps Ill scan, create a PDF and upload.

I love the content, but I had to pay at the copy place to have them cut off the binding and make it spiral so it lays flat on my keyboard. Now I can actually use the book!

I'm glad to know that this book is available. Now I know how one of the great continuo players would teach it!

A real treasure. My students love this.

Christmas present for my nephew...it was exactly what he wanted

Very well edited and narrated compendium of Handel's exercises. Used this with great success to learn continuo.

Don't bother. The answers to the exercises are inconsistent with the exercise instructions.

Colección de ejercicios que elaboró Haendel para aprender a armonizar un bajo cifrado, un clásico. Lo estoy usando para estudiar contrapunto barroco. Especial interés tienen las suspensiones y secuencias de suspensiones.

The book contains a lot of important ideas regarding continuo composition and partimento criteria.However, as in other similar books, I have not found a practical explanation of the meaning of the numbers below the notes, with an exposition about how the abbreviated notation is developed into the other accompanyment notes which are to be understood. In ornamentation treaties both the abbreviation and the meaning are put in an index and even exercises with solutions are proposed, what majes understanding easier.

Il libro è proprio quello che cercavo ! Spedizione veloce, tutto OK. Peccato che non esista una versione in lingua italiana !

Ejercicios simples pero muy eficaces. Palabras las justas, y ejemplos claros y directos. La caja de trucos de la armonización barroca se abre delante de tus ojos, tus oídos y tus dedos.

A very well written, structured approach to practical figured bass. The given exercises have model answers which is most useful. Strongly recommended.