in the other instrumental parts into their improvised chordal accompaniment. Modern editions of such music usually supply a realized keyboard part, fully written out in staff notation for a player, in place of improvisation. With the rise in historically informed performance, however, the number of performers who are able to improvise their parts from the figures, as Baroque players would have done, has increased. Notation The strings and bassoons play a realized bass part, but the chord-playing instruments often use figured bass. A part notated with figured bass consists of a bass line notated with notes on a musical staff plus added numbers and accidentals (or in some cases (back)slashes added to a number) beneath the staff to indicate what intervals above the bass notes should be played, and therefore which inversions of which chords are to be played. The phrase tasto solo indicates that only the bass line (without any upper chords) is to be played for a short period, usually until the next figure is encountered. This instructs the chord-playing instrumentalist not to play any improvised chords for a period. The reason tasto solo had to be specified was because it was an accepted convention that if no figures were present in a section of otherwise figured bass line, the chord-playing performer would either assume that it was a root-position triad, or deduce from the harmonic motion that another figure was implied. For example, if a continuo part in the key of C begins with a C bass note in the first measure, which descends to a B in the second measure, even if there were no figures, the chord-playing instrumentalist would deduce that this was most likely a first inversion dominant chord (spelled B–D–G, from bottom note of the chord to the top). History Basso continuo, though an essential structural and identifying element of the Baroque period, continued to be used in many works, mostly (but not limited to) sacred choral works, of the classical period (up to around 1800). An example is C. P. E. Bach's Concerto in D minor for flute, strings and basso continuo. Examples of its use in the 19th century are rarer, but they do exist: masses by Anton Bruckner, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Franz Schubert, for example, have a basso continuo part that was for an organist. References Baroque music Chord progressions Musical historicism