This is a textbook in figured bass realization. It consists of exercises in the form of figured bass lines, together with an explanatory text.

I first drafted the exercises during my college years to supplement what I found in the then-available historical and modern publications. Joined to an explanatory commentary, they became – with the encouragement of my adviser George Houle – my M.A. thesis at Stanford University (1977). I continued to revise both text and exercises from time to time, most recently in connection with a course in continuo playing which I taught at Boston University in 2023. Over the years I offered my work to various publishers, but these had little interest in a complex publication whose readership would be limited to serious students of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European harmony. I’ve therefore chosen to publish this online, as a supplement to my book Historical Performance in Baroque Music (forthcoming from Boydell Press).

The links below will take you to the exercises and the accompanying text.

Front matter (title page and table of contents)
Introduction
Text (chapters 1-12)
Exercises (figured bass lines to be realized at the keyboard or other instrument)
Appendix (realizations of selected exercises)
Workbook (selected exercises with a blank upper stave for those wishing to write in realizations)