Historical musicologyDigitalization to Reconstruct Music

19 July 2023, by Viola Griehl

Photo: ylanite/pixabay

There was a fundamental change in instrumental music around 1600: the bass line was firmly established while for harmonies there were only numbers and other symbols. The so-called “age of the basso continuo” lasted until roughly the middle of the eighteenth century. Now Dr. Juliane Pöche and Prof. Dr. Ivana Rentsch from the Institute of Historical Musicology want to ascertain the range and limits of these improvisations in a project funded by the German Research Foundation.

The basso continuo era left chords to the improvisational talents of the musicians. How can you study music that was improvised and not written down?

Due to the fleeting nature of music, anything not recorded is irrevocably lost. What makes things harder is that, despite all the musical notation, it is fundamentally impossible to write down all the relevant characteristics of a performance. To study historical notation, we therefore must have an ideal sound that we first have to reconstruct. Every effort to understand historical music practice thus relies on paratexts: notes, sketches, manuscripts, or performance directions directly integrated into the scores, information about performers and instruments, alternative voice leading, tempo, etc. 

Why is the basso continuo period so interesting for music history?

In the music of the Early Modern Period, compositional ambitions and innovations in movements combined with nuances of performance practice. Ecclesiastical music contexts were no longer relevant; it was important to brilliantly entertain certain social circles. Because people wanted to keep up with the times, the most modern innovations that the Italian music scene had to offer prevailed: major-minor tonality and the basso continuo.

In basso continuo practice, it fact only the musical scaffolding was noted; only in performance did it become a complete musical movement. Thus, notated compositions of the seventeenth century basically involved countless variations that were—regardless of whether they were performed with 2 or 21 voices—aesthetically equal. 

You will study 585 compositions and their variations and publish the critical editions. Why are you focusing on German works?

Because basso continuo practice in the German-speaking world demonstrated especially great flexibility in what was already a very variable repertoire. Not only was the bass accompaniment itself improvised, but all all parameters of a composition were up for grabs. The reason for this was the very different conditions in German music life, which was strongly shaped not least by the Thirty Years’ War.

For the digital model, we are limiting ourselves to German compositions precisely because they present the greatest methodological challenges with regard to editing and digitalizing. This means that we can develop tools within the scope of this project that can ultimately be used for the entire European basso continuo repertoire of the Early Modern Period.

To what extent did seventeenth-century technology influence the music of later centuries?

With the basso continuo, the major-minor tonality that has dominated western music until today also prevailed. It led to the dissolution of ecclesiastical modes of music, a tone row reaching back to ancient Greece.

Peculiar to the Early Modern Period, however, was the enormous flexibility in performance: the goal was to improvise ingeniously: to find the right sound depending on situation and mood. But while the major-minor tonality established itself in the long term, improvisational freedom decreased again. The reason is that the aesthetic notion of an immutable “opus” began to prevail starting at the end of the eighteenth century, which led to greater focus on the score. The primary goal of our project is to reconstruct the lost performance-related freedom.

What are the goals for the digital presentation?

Using digital means, we can account for the enormous compositional variability in performances and thus a central moment in the aesthetics of Early Modern Period music. While standard scores necessarily require a single version, digitalization will now make it possible, with the aid of a self-programmed pathway, to generate the entire range of historically reconstructed variations for every single edited composition. In line with the spirit of the Early Modern Period, this allows performers to choose the right variation for the context.