alberti bass pattern
The ubiquitous left-hand keyboard accompaniment pattern of low-high-middle-high notes, named after Domenico Alberti, that defines the texture of Classical-era piano music.
In Depth
The Alberti bass takes a chord and plays its notes in the pattern: bottom-top-middle-top, repeated continuously. This creates a sense of harmonic fullness and rhythmic motion from a simple broken-chord pattern. In C major position, it would be C-G-E-G, C-G-E-G. The pattern is so prevalent in Classical-era music that it has become shorthand for the period's keyboard style — virtually every Mozart and Haydn piano sonata contains passages of Alberti bass. The pattern's effectiveness lies in its efficiency: it establishes harmony, maintains rhythmic pulse, and creates a gentle, flowing texture using minimal musical material. While it fell out of favor as Romantic composers developed more complex accompaniment figures, the Alberti bass remains one of the most recognizable textures in Western keyboard music. It is among the first accompaniment patterns taught to piano students and serves as a gateway to understanding how simple patterns can support melody. Its very ubiquity in the Classical period makes it a useful stylistic identifier for listeners learning to recognize musical eras by sound.
Domenico Alberti, the pattern's namesake, was such an obscure composer that almost none of his music survives — his only claim to immortality is a left-hand pattern that he used but almost certainly did not invent.