figured bass realization
The practical skill of improvising a full keyboard accompaniment from a bass line with numerical chord symbols, essential to Baroque performance practice.
In Depth
Figured bass realization is the art of reading a bass note with its numerical figures (indicating intervals above it) and improvising a complete keyboard part in real time. A simple "6" means play a first-inversion triad; "4/3" indicates a second-inversion seventh chord. The performer must supply appropriate voice leading, doublings, and ornaments while following the style conventions of the period and responding to the other musicians. This was the standard method of keyboard accompaniment throughout the Baroque era (roughly 1600–1750). Every professional keyboardist was expected to realize figured bass fluently. C.P.E. Bach wrote an influential treatise on the subject. The skill has been revived by the historically informed performance movement, with harpsichordists and organists in period ensembles realizing figured bass in concert. The study of figured bass remains central to music theory curricula because it develops practical harmonic thinking — understanding chords not as abstract symbols but as living, voiced sonorities with directional momentum.
C.P.E. Bach wrote that his father J.S. Bach could realize a figured bass so magnificently that listeners thought it was a fully composed piece — the improvised accompaniment was as rich as any written-out score.