Customer Reviews

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

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I cannot understand why this book is not better known. It is probably the best keyboard harmony book available. The book contains a method written by one of the world's greatest composers, George Frideric Handel. There are extensive and useful commentaries by the editor, David Ledbetter. Handel's figured-basses are all works of arts. If you practice these pieces and realize the parts with some sense of art, you will have a well-balanced composition. Unlike so many keyboard harmony and thoroughbass exercises, these basses by Handel reveal so much about how to design a musical composition and the basses themselves warrant carefully study. Four things are achieved through practicing these pieces: 1) an intuitive understanding of keyboard harmony-voicing and voice leading, 2) an understanding of musical composition, 3) a mastery of continuo playing, and 4) the acquiring of a virtuoso keyboard technique. Buy this book and devote hours to mastering it. It is a treasure chest of musical wisdom.

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