Early Basso Continuo - ca.1600-ca.1650 

Víctor Gallardo there is a great Hungarian book I was using in my solfege class at the Kodály Institute. As I said, it’s completely in Hungarian, but you won’t have too many problems understanding.

Donna Cianciosi hello Donna, what’s the name of that book? Do you have a digital copy of it? Thanks

+Therese de Goede Thanks Therese! Why do you take it that stilo recitativo means not doubling? Cavalieri constantly doubles during recitatives (only main notes of course). Gagliano write not to "riperquotare la consonanza cantata" - that is, not to repeat with the singer all the little notes one finds in a recitative; to play only the first notes is enough. This is something worth mentioning when recitative started to be notated, although kind of obvious to us. This is at least how I understands it.

+Early Music Sources So we totally agree! As you pointed out that doubling all the parts of the composition was a long standing Renaissance practice and only mentioned that Agazzari's remark related to avoiding making mistakes, it was not clear to me that you were aware of the relation between stilo recitativo and the avoidance of doubling. Of course It is just a matter of what meaning we give to terminology. What do we consider exactly as "doubling"? If Da Gagliano and Agazzari suggest not to double the solo voice, my interpretation is indeed that they simply ask not to double EVERY note. Of course they didn't ask us to avoid doubling at all costs (in the way I was trained when I was a student:-)). However, only doubling the main notes can certainly be considered as "not doubling", compared to the practices of Luzzaschi and his contemporaries.

Therese de

The finer details weren’t as important as just notating the chords themselves, and basso continuo was the way of notating chords back then. It would have just saved time and ink to not come up with a full realization

@@Ekvitarius I see. Thanks for explaining!

Wow. In 5 sentences you managed to say absolutely nothing I can agree with. In fact, if you inverted all your statements they might make some sense. In my own words: this is perfectly clear, beautifully presented, and very useful to its intended audience, and no -- interest in baroque music is NOT in decline (though the baroque period itself ended ca. 1750).