Figured bass help wanted.

[Dorsetmike]

I'm currently having fun(?) copying some old scores (like 1740s) of some John Stanley sonatas of Opus 1, for Flute or violin and Harpsichord.

I've managed to get the Adagio and Allegro of No 1 into Finalé Songwriter, The Adagio went reasonably well, main problem being the figured bass.

I've downloaded some pages about figured bass from Dolmetsch and also some notes by Robert T Kelley, they don't agree completely on some aspects. The adagio as mentioned I managed to get to sound OK - up to a point - (I posted some MP3 tracks of it in the ODF to Midi thread) the original flute and bass line and a Flute and my interpretation of the figured bass.

The allegro is proving to be a bit more of a challenge, I've attached the first page as a PDF having added the numbers copied in from the original score; I've also attached a Midi file of the whole allegro, just flute and harpsichord bass line which should import into notation software.

If anyone wants to experiment and/or can give any advice that would be great. I'm hoping to get something recorded in time to post in the John Stanley 300th anniversary thread.

View attachment stanop1-1alg.mid

View attachment stanop1-1algp1.pdf

I couldn't get a slashed 6 to show so I've written that as 6/.

 

[Contratrombone64]

Mike me ol' china plate, great question. There are plenty of references to this on the net. What notation software are you using? I'd also avoid hiding chefs at the beginning of systems (but that's just personal). David hugz

 

[Dorsetmike]

Hi David,

I've managed to get the Adagio and Allegro of No 1 into Finalé Songwriter,

I can let you have the complete Adagio and Allegro as .mus files if you want to play with them, hope to have the final movement, Minuet, within the next day or so. (Then there are 7 more pieces)

In order to get the original pages into Smartscore Midi, I had to spend some time in a photo processing application in which I converted to black and white, tweaked contrast, brightness etc & removed the figuring cos that sorta screwed up the recognition, I could rework the images to add legible figuring the original was handwritten!