Franck Thomas Arnold (1861-1940) was an Anglo-German musicologist and bibliophile. A self-taught scholar with a day job, he is best known for his The Art of Accompaniment from a Thorough-Bass (1931), described as the finest piece of musicography ever produced in England.
Arnold was born in Rugby, Warwickshire, on 6 September 1861, third son of the Rev. Charles Arnold, an assistant master at Rugby School, and Susanna Magdalena née Mays. The family was probably bilingual. His mother had been born in Heidelberg, where his father married her in separate Lutheran and Anglican ceremonies. Arnold seems to have been proud of his German roots. [1] The Arnolds were a well-established family in Lowestoft with distinguished naval forebears; they were related to Dr Arnold of Rugby the famous headmaster. [2]
After attending Rugby and Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1886 Arnold was appointed lecturer in German Language and Literature at the University College of South Wales and Monmouth – afterwards Cardiff University – a post he held for forty years. It allowed him enough spare time to devote to his musicological pursuits. He was a keen amateur cellist. [3]
In 1887 he married Edith Maud Kelly. Their first son was given the somewhat Germanic names Karl Ferdinand Franck William. [4] He became a captain in the British army and was killed at Zonnebeke near Ypres in 1915 after German forces enfiladed his trench. [5]
Composers of the Baroque era seldom wrote out musical accompaniments. Performers were expected to improvise (realize) these to suit the occasion, guided by no more than a bare sketch called a figured bass (or thorough-bass).
A figured bass was analogous to the lead sheets used by the rhythm sections in present-day bands, but realizing a figured bass was more demanding, because tight voice leading rules constrained what realizations were acceptable. Not only did the correct chords have to be played: the middle voices of those chords had to succeed each other faultlessly according to certain rules. [7] [8]
Despite those difficulties, competent musicians acquired the art of improvising an acceptable accompaniment from a figured bass, and doing so at sight. [9] However, after the Baroque era the art was gradually forgotten. Arnold's aim was to recover it.
By teaching oneself this lost art, wrote Arnold, "an immense storehouse of music is opened which can be enjoyed in no other way". Further,
no one who has once tasted the delight of playing an ex tempore accompaniment from the figures, as the composer intended it to be played, could ever again become reconciled to dependence on the taste of [a modern] ‘arranger’. [10]
Arnold had only wanted to teach himself how to accompany from old figured basses; he had no thought of writing a book. But the rules of Baroque harmony were quite strict, and when he tried to play he found he was running into many problems, technical and artistic, to which modern textbooks seemed to supply no answers. [11]
There were thorough modern works by German authors, but these writers were scholarly historians with no particular interest in teaching modern performers how to play from a figured bass. In contrast, Arnold was a performer – talented perhaps, but amateur – who had the zeal to teach himself to be a scholar. [12]
Arnold's approach was to recover the old learning, insofar as it was in writing and had survived, and to compile a synthesis of this knowledge illustrated by many practical examples. The task took him over 40 years.
Old treatises on figured bass realization existed, but they were exceedingly rare, and scattered about Europe. Arnold made it his purpose to hunt them down and acquire them. He also sought old musical scores if they threw some light om practical problems and performing practices of the era. [3]
Over many years he amassed an important collection, which he afterward bequeathed to Cambridge University. Wrote Cambridge University music librarian Donald R. Wakeling, "Arnold in his search for a full knowledge of his subject was not content with drawing upon the resources of the libraries of Europe, but he also bought for himself all available literature and music from which he could absorb and note at leisure anything relating to thorough-bass". [3]
Describing his collection in his book (1931) Arnold himself said:
The present treatise represents the labour of many years, and its compilation would have been impossible had not the writer been fortunate enough to acquire gradually all but a very few of the works (both didactic and musical) to which reference is made in its pages. He has pleasant memories of a little shop in St Martin's Lane, long since closed, where second-hand music was sold, among which treasures were sometimes to be found... [13]
Like a true bibliophile,
Arnold not only spent freely in acquiring his books (and if a better copy of a work already in his possession was brought to his notice he often purchased it), but his loving care for his treasures prompted him to have them exquisitely bound, often in full leather with gilt tooling. The separate parts of the instrumental works are bound, some in handsome half-morocco cases, some individually; other works are brightly arrayed in roan, niger, morocco or vellum: he had an eye for colour. [14]
In 1931, despite the Depression and a thin subscription list, the Oxford University Press published his The Art of Accompaniment from a Thorough-Bass as Practised in the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries. [15] Its first sentence reads:
The first object of the present work is to give adequate information concerning the way in which the accompaniment founded on a Basso continuo, or Thorough-Bass, was actually treated during the period, extending over wellnigh two centuries [i.e. the Baroque era], when such an accompaniment was, with few exceptions, a necessary part of every musical performance, solo or concerted, vocal or instrumental.
His 'adequate' information was exhaustive: the book's 918 pages cited the works of 110 Baroque practitioners, well known and obscure, with a wealth of practical examples. [16]
William Gillies Whittaker the book's first reviewer described it as "an amazing product of prolonged investigation and accurate scholarship". [17] To R.O. Morris (then professor of counterpoint at the Royal College of Music) it seemed "certain to stand for all human time as the standard work of reference". [18] Sunday Times critic Ernest Newman said it was "the finest piece of musicography ever produced" in England. [19] Other reviewers have described it as a "classic"; [20] "this great work; [21] the standard authority; [3] [22] "likely to remain the starting point for any serious study". [23] Stanley Sadie said it was a "must have". [24] One reviewer wrote: "This famous book does not need a review". [25]
Although Arnold published other works – he wrote the article on Thorough-bass for Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians – his masterpiece was his book. [3]
A two-volume paperback edition was published by Dover Books (1965). [26] A Kindle version is available. [27]
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Figured bass is musical notation in which numerals and symbols appear above or below a bass note. The numerals and symbols indicate intervals, chords, and non-chord tones that a musician playing piano, harpsichord, organ, or lute should play in relation to the bass note. Figured bass is closely associated with basso continuo: a historically improvised accompaniment used in almost all genres of music in the Baroque period of Classical music, though rarely in modern music. Figured bass is also known as thoroughbass.
A chord, in music, is any harmonic set of pitches/frequencies consisting of multiple notes that are heard as if sounding simultaneously. For many practical and theoretical purposes, arpeggios and other types of broken chords may also be considered as chords in the right musical context.
Basso continuo parts, almost universal in the Baroque era (1600–1750), provided the harmonic structure of the music by supplying a bassline and a chord progression. The phrase is often shortened to continuo, and the instrumentalists playing the continuo part are called the continuo group.
Eugène Arnold Dolmetsch, was a French-born musician and instrument maker who spent much of his working life in England and established an instrument-making workshop in Haslemere, Surrey. He was a leading figure in the 20th-century revival of interest in early music.
Carl Friedrich Christian Fasch (1736–1800) was a German composer and harpsichordist. Born in Zerbst, he was the son of the composer Johann Friedrich Fasch. He was initially taught by his father.
Musical improvisation is the creative activity of immediate musical composition, which combines performance with communication of emotions and instrumental technique as well as spontaneous response to other musicians. Sometimes musical ideas in improvisation are spontaneous, but may be based on chord changes in classical music and many other kinds of music. One definition is a "performance given extempore without planning or preparation". Another definition is to "play or sing (music) extemporaneously, by inventing variations on a melody or creating new melodies, rhythms and harmonies". Encyclopædia Britannica defines it as "the extemporaneous composition or free performance of a musical passage, usually in a manner conforming to certain stylistic norms but unfettered by the prescriptive features of a specific musical text." Improvisation is often done within a pre-existing harmonic framework or chord progression. Improvisation is a major part of some types of 20th-century music, such as blues, rock music, jazz, and jazz fusion, in which instrumental performers improvise solos, melody lines and accompaniment parts.
An early music revival is a renewed interest in music from ancient history or prehistory. The general discussion of how to perform music from ancient or earlier times did not become an important subject of interest until the 19th century, when Europeans began looking to ancient culture generally, and musicians began to discover the musical riches from earlier centuries. The idea of performing early music more "authentically", with a sense of incorporating historically accurate performance practice, was more completely established in the 20th century, creating a modern early music revival that continues today.
Unfigured bass, less commonly known as under-figured bass, is a kind of musical notation used during the Baroque music era in Western Classical music in which a basso continuo performer playing a chordal instrument improvises a chordal accompaniment from a notated bass line which lacks the guidance of figures indicating which harmonies should be played above the bass note. Figured bass parts have numbers or accidentals above the bass line which indicate which intervals above the bass should be played in the chord. However, not all basso continuo parts from the Baroque period were figured.
Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical music, as the term "classical music" also applies to non-Western art music. Classical music is often characterized by formality and complexity in its musical form and harmonic organization, particularly with the use of polyphony. Since at least the ninth century it has been primarily a written tradition, spawning a sophisticated notational system, as well as accompanying literature in analytical, critical, historiographical, musicological and philosophical practices. A foundational component of Western culture, classical music is frequently seen from the perspective of individual or groups of composers, whose compositions, personalities and beliefs have fundamentally shaped its history.
Georg Matthias Monn was an Austrian composer, organist and music teacher whose works were fashioned in the transition from the Baroque to Classical period in music.
Denis William Stevens CBE was a British musicologist specialising in early music, conductor, professor of music and radio producer.
Giovanni Battista Somis was an Italian violinist and composer of the Baroque music era.
The Sonata in E major for flute and basso continuo is a sonata for transverse flute and figured bass composed by J. S. Bach in the 1740s. It was written as the result of a visit in 1741 to the court of Frederick the Great in Potsdam, where Bach's son Carl Philipp Emanuel had been appointed principal harpsichordist to the king the previous year. It was dedicated to Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf, the king's valet and private secretary, who, like the king, was an amateur flautist.
Herr, gehe nicht ins Gericht mit deinem Knecht, BWV 105 is a church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach. He composed it in Leipzig for the ninth Sunday after Trinity and first performed it on 25 July 1723. The musicologist Alfred Dürr has described the cantata as one of "the most sublime descriptions of the soul in baroque and Christian art".
Baroque music refers to the period or dominant style of Western classical music composed from about 1600 to 1750. The Baroque style followed the Renaissance period, and was followed in turn by the Classical period after a short transition. The Baroque period is divided into three major phases: early, middle, and late. Overlapping in time, they are conventionally dated from 1580 to 1650, from 1630 to 1700, and from 1680 to 1750. Baroque music forms a major portion of the "classical music" canon, and is widely studied, performed, and listened to. The term "baroque" comes from the Portuguese word barroco, meaning "misshapen pearl". The works of George Frideric Handel and Johann Sebastian Bach are considered the pinnacle of the Baroque period. Other key composers of the Baroque era include Claudio Monteverdi, Domenico Scarlatti, Alessandro Scarlatti, Alessandro Stradella, Antonio Vivaldi, Tomaso Albinoni, Johann Pachelbel, Henry Purcell, Georg Philipp Telemann, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Arcangelo Corelli, François Couperin, Johann Hermann Schein, Heinrich Schütz, Samuel Scheidt, Dieterich Buxtehude, and others.
A violin sonata is a musical composition for violin, often accompanied by a keyboard instrument and in earlier periods with a bass instrument doubling the keyboard bass line. The violin sonata developed from a simple baroque form with no fixed format to a standardised and complex classical form. Since the romantic age some composers have pushed the boundaries of both the classical format as well as the use of the instruments.
Herbert Richard Lambert, FRPS, was a British portrait photographer known for his portrayals of professional musicians and composers including Gustav Holst.
The six sonatas for violin and obbligato harpsichord BWV 1014–1019 by Johann Sebastian Bach are works in trio sonata form, with the two upper parts in the harpsichord and violin over a bass line supplied by the harpsichord and an optional viola da gamba. Unlike baroque sonatas for solo instrument and continuo, where the realisation of the figured bass was left to the discretion of the performer, the keyboard part in the sonatas was almost entirely specified by Bach. They were probably mostly composed during Bach's final years in Cöthen between 1720 and 1723, before he moved to Leipzig. The extant sources for the collection span the whole of Bach's period in Leipzig, during which time he continued to make changes to the score.
A Partimento is a sketch, written out on a single staff, whose main purpose is to be a guide for the improvisation ("realization") of a composition at the keyboard. A Partimento differs from a basso continuo accompaniment in that it is a basis for a complete composition. Partimenti were central to the training of European musicians from the late 1600s until the early 1800s. They were developed in the Italian conservatories, especially at the music conservatories of Naples, and later at the Paris Conservatory, which emulated the Neapolitan conservatories.
Realization is the art of creating music, typically an accompaniment, from a figured bass, whether by improvisation in real time, or as a detained exercise in writing. It is most commonly associated with Baroque music.
