The Future of Figured Bass

[claude_g_lapalme]

@snakeeyes021

2. The next thing is allowing more than just 4 figures. Now, this is where we leave the realm of engraving what is has been written in the long past and venture forward into the world of neo-Baroque contemporary composition, which is not to say that there wasn’t anybody in the Baroque that ever wrote music with more than 4 figures in a given chord, just that I haven’t found any yet (not that I’ve been looking tremendously hard).

Look no more. The first edition of Jean-Féry Rebel’s “Les élémens” includes the following figure:

But that is extremely rare …