Fundamental bass

Treatise on HarmonyJean-Philippe Rameau, 1722

• Table Explaining Essential Terms

  FUNDAMENTAL BASS, or FUNDAMENTAL SOUND. The fundamental bass cannot subsist unless it always prevails below the other parts. page 134

• CHAPTER TWO. On the Chords Assigned to Fundamental Sounds and Their Progression

  The sounds, or rather the intervals, assigned to the progression of the fundamental bass must also accompany it everywhere in the parts united with it, but with a certain restraint that we do not impose on the progression of the bass, their guide. In short,…

• Chapter six

  …cadence, since both are composed either of the same chords or of the same fundamental bass. If their chords are the same, the fundamental bass, which must descend a fifth in the perfect cadence, ascends diatonically here. If the fundamental bass is the same in…

  ▶ Fig. 46 nearby
• Chapter eighteen

  10. Whether the minor dissonance, always a seventh against the fundamental bass, is properly prepared and resolved within the prescribed progressions. Ascending a fourth equals descending a fifth here, and likewise for other equivalent intervals. Sometimes we…

  ▶ Fig. 98 nearby
• Chapter forty

  …melodic taste. If it leaps, they fear consecutive fifths or octaves with the fundamental bass, not knowing that the melody then follows the fundamental bass’s natural route. This is precisely why another bass must be composed, different from the fundamental,…

  ▶ Fig. 322 nearby
• Chapter forty-one

  In the fundamental bass’s first and second measures I see two identical progressions, A and B. I therefore reserve the progression most closely related to the cadence for the second measure, where a cadence is ordinarily felt. Here it is irregular; in the…

  ▶ Fig. 323 nearby

131 more passages in Treatise on Harmony →

• ▶ Fig. 46
  Chapter six
• ▶ Fig. 98
  Chapter eighteen
• ▶ Fig. 322
  Chapter forty
• ▶ Fig. 323
  Chapter forty-one