The peculiarities of the keyboard accompaniment ad libitum and General Bass in the light of the formation of the German-Austrian concertmaster school

The relevance of the proposed research lies in the process of formation, development and specification of concertmaster schools in different countries, which has not yet been disclosed in Russian and foreign musicology. In the proposed article, the author refers to the initial stage of crystallization of German-Austrian concertmaster art. The object of research is the concertmaster school in Germany and Austria. The subject of the research is the practical forms of the existence of keyboard accompaniment ad libitum and General Bass. The objectives of the research are to reveal the specifics of keyboard accompaniment ad libitum and General Bache in connection with the formation of German-Austrian concertmaster art; to analyze the manuscripts of master clavists available in open sources who specifically studied this type of performance; to introduce new information from German-language treatises, tablatures and archival sources about the creative and pedagogical activities of keyboard players into Russian musicology. The main research methods were: anthropological, historical-archival, comparative-analytical, a set of methods of performing analysis in their interaction according to the objectives of the study. For the first time in Russian musicology, a number of names of German and Austrian musicians who made a significant contribution to the development of concertmaster art at the initial stage of its formation are being introduced into scientific circulation. The author has found and analyzed a number of treatises and tablatures that reveal the specifics of keyboard accompaniment ad libitum and General Bass. It is proved that ad libitum accompaniment, which is based on an improvisational character, imposed a number of additional "conditions" on the keyboard player for its successful implementation: such a musician had to be able to skillfully build a polyphonic texture in the process of making music together, master the means of dynamics, depending on which voices and/or instruments he was playing music with; be able to transpose and read fluently from a sheet. The specifics of General-Bass accompaniment and its differences from basso continuo and basso numerato are determined. The conclusions of the study make it possible to better understand the essence, content and national characteristics of the German-Austrian concertmaster school, the foundation of which was laid in the XV-XVII centuries.

school, concertmaster, ad libitum, General-Baß, Germany, Austria, performance, music pedagogy, treatise, ablature