Re: Figured Bass support

[Richard Shann]

Han-Wen Nienhuys wrote:

> address@hidden writes:
>  
>
> > (a first attempt to post seemed to go into a black hole ... try again 
> > ...)
> >
> > The figured bass support in lilypond (wonderful!) is a little tricky 
> > to use
> > for three reasons:
> > 1) The figures have to be entered in the reverse order (that is a 
> > six-four
> > chord is entered <4 6>). Of course, this assumes that you do call it 
> > that and
> > not a four-six chord, but I *think* is universally so.
> >   
>
>
> In dutch, <<c' f' a' >> (absolute pitches) is called a 4-6 chord, not
> 6-4; that's what you mean, right? 

yes

> I'm not sure about the proper names
> in English.
>
> Can you do some more research to find out what is the Right Way?
yes - with classic anglo-saxon myopia I referred to the English 
nomenclature as "universal" ...
the research for the Right Way turned out to be very easy - typing "six 
four chord" into Google yielded 137 hits and  "four six chord"  yielded 
7 hits. For example:

"Six-four chord (siks for kord) A chord consisting of three notes, the 
bass note, the interval of a fourth above the bass note, and a sixth 
above the bass note. ..."
from this site
www.music.vt.edu/musicdictionary/texts/Six-fourchord.html

and likewise for "four six chord", though less common.

However, it occurs to me that I've started us thinking along the wrong 
lines here - what matters is what people who may want to write figured 
basses into lilypond will find most natural. I jumped to the conclusion 
that the reason I write 6 followed by 4 when writing out figured basses 
was because I call it a six four chord. In fact, since the figures are 
always aligned at the top there is a much stronger reason why, when 
writing out the figures you start at the top and work downwards, and 
hence why you write them out as six followed by four (to continue the 
example). If you didn't write downwards, you would have to guess where 
to start writing the figures, judging by how many figures you had to 
fill in.
This all presupposes that figured basses are indeed aligned horizontally 
at the top: I am sure this is always so, based on sampling Italian, 
French, English and German 17th & 18th c. sonatas from my bookshelf and 
thirty odd years of knocking round in early music circles. In fact, I 
think anything else would appear outlandish, because the commonest 
figures (a # or b or a six on their own) would have to be placed at some 
distance from the bass note, depending on the maximum number of figures 
to be found on any one note in the piece. A # would then frequently 
appear to be associated with some note on the next line, which usually 
either means that the editor thinks *that* note should be sharpened (or 
if ornamented, the ornament should be sharpened). (I feel perhaps I'm 
labouring the point now ...).

> I've added #'direction for the BassFigure grob, so you can the
> stacking direction. (1.7 cvs)
The default should be the normal direction else we risk creating another 
standard in figured bass notation!

Best regards,

Richard Shann