THOROUGH-BASE, the art of playing (on keyed instruments, and according to the rules of harmony) an accompaniment from figures representing chords, ouch figures being placed either over or under the notes of the instrumental base etaff: This is one of the many absurd terms employed in music, and its meaning is altogether arbitrary.
The figures used in Thorough-Base are the nine units. These repre sent certain intervals or sounds. Thus a 6 placed over a C in the base, points out A as an accompaniment : and that figure also implies two other notes attendant on it, namely, the 3rd and 8th, which are called the accompaniments of the Gth. A 6 and a 5 placed under it indi cate the intervals of the tith and 5th played together ; and also, as accompanying notes, the 3rd and Sth. The figures 3, 5, and 8, singly, or together, represent the perfect or common chord. But in Thorough Base a base note without any figure is supposed to carry a perfect chord. The chords are, as a general ntle, assigned to the right hand of the performer, and the intervals are, in most cases, counted from an octave above the figured note. This will be more clearly understood by referring to the articles ACCOUP.% NIMENT, Omni), and IlexatoNr.
The following is a tabular view of the figures used in Thorough Bate to represent chords, together with those, not written, but under stood, representing the accompaniments which, with the base, form the chords :— When other intervals are to be raised or lowered, the proper cha racters for the purpose are prefixed to them. A dash through a figure
L'S equivalent to a sharp.
The practice of figuring a base staff, whether in a score or in the part assigned to a keyed instrument, has fallen into disuse, the harmony being now fully and clearly presented to the eye of the accompanyist in notes placed in a treble staff over the base. But a knowledge of what is yet too commonly misnamed Thorough-base, that is to say, harmony, is absolutely the good musician, and very much abbreviates the labour of those who, as amateurs, only aspire to a practical skill either as vocal or instrumental performers. The rules of harmony stand in the same relation to music as those of grammar do to language.
The invention of a Figured Base (Basso Cifrato, as the Italians so well denominate it) has been stated to have taken place in 1605, and is commonly attributed to Ludovico Viadana, Maestro di Cappello at the cathedral of Mantua. But this kind of musical abbreviation was earlier 'practised, and by an English composer, Richard Deering, who, in 1597, published his Cantiones Sacra, at Antwerp, in which a figured base appears. And we have now before us Jacopo Peri's serious opera Euridke, printed at Florence in 1600, in which the base is figured throughout. Lying by us also is Caceini's Name Muaiehe, likewise printed at Florence, but one year later, and hero we find the base regularly figured.