the first time in “composed” or literate music chordal harmony functioned as a sonorous filler or
background, independent of controlled part writing). In effect, the notated line was to be played by the left
hand, and the unnotated chords by the right. It was called “continuous” because it played straight through
the composition, no matter what went on above it.
In view of the radical harmonic implications of the new style, it should be reemphasized that neither
Banchieri nor Viadana suddenly invented any new technique of accompaniment. All they did was publish
written aids to help organists do what they did anyway by longstanding “oral” tradition. Organists had
been accompanying ensembles since whenever, but previously they had to do it from the same choirbook
or part books as the other musicians. As we have already seen, organists had to be able to open a whole
set of part books in front of them on the music rack and follow them all at once (unless they went to the
trouble of writing out a spartitura for themselves, as many did). From around the turn of the century,
though, no music print was complete (or competitive) without the new laborsaving device of a separate
organ bass-book.
Eventually, the most common kind of organ part for church “concerti”—for example, the pioneering
Prima parte dei salmi concertati (“First installment of Psalms in concerted style,” 1609) by Girolamo
Giacobbi, another musician from San Petronio in Bologna—was something in between Banchieri’s
spartitura and Viadana’s basso continuo. What Giacobbi—or rather his powerful publisher, the Venetian
music magnate Antonio Gardano—supplied was a composite bass line, drawn from all the other parts,
that showed the lowest note sounding at any given moment. This new organist’s aid was informally called
basso seguente (“bass that follows”), because it tracked the progress of the vocal parts from start to
finish. By using it, the organist could accompany the whole ensemble without even seeing the other parts.
FIG. 18-5 Colophon of the Venetian music printer Antonio Gardano.
As always, the introduction of a laborsaving device inspired a backlash from those proud of their
laborious skills. Adriano Banchieri himself inveighed against his fellow townsman Giacobbi’s
publication, sneering that “soon we shall have two classes of players: on the one hand Organists, that is to
say, those who practice good playing from score and improvisation, and, on the other hand, Bassists who,
overcome by sheer laziness, are content with simply playing the Basso Continuo.”^7 Behind these petulant
words lay a profound and legitimate concern that unwritten (“oral”) traditions were about to be lost to
literate habits that carried literalism and lessened creativity as their undesirable corollary. And so they
were.
But there was no stopping the process. The mandate of the marketplace was more compelling than any
musician’s strictures, and any music publications that remained in print past the date of Gardano’s
innovation had to be fitted out with a basso seguente to remain viable. Thus the popular Viadana’s first
publication, a collection of Vespers Psalms in five parts (1588) was reissued in 1609 with a note on the