The Langloz Manuscript: Fugal Improvisation through Figured Bass (Early Music Series)

While fugue writing is a common topic studied in Conservatories today, this kind of approach to it is very uncommon. It's useful because the exercises are extremely practical; in other words, the fugues in this collection are equally as useful to realize at the keyboard as they are to write. What you have is the Baroque equivalent of a jazz chart; lots of fugues written on a single staff, with numbers to indicate the harmonic structure.What I love about these exercises is the way it helps one think contrapuntally in the context of figured bass. In modern music theory, we tend to separate the concepts of figured bass (vertical) and counterpoint (horizontal); this approach forces you to think of counterpoint less in terms of stacked individual voices (as in species counterpoint exercises) and more in terms of "decorated" chord progressions, which was life-changing for me. This is my first encounter with partimenti fugue, but shortly after I discovered very similar pieces in the misattributed-to-Bach "Precepts and Principles" as well as a handful at the end of Handel's Princess Anne lessons in figured bass.It's a shame this method isn't more popular in Conservatories, or even among music enthusiasts, these days. It's a wonderful preparatory method for anyone interested in pursuing one of the most sophisticated forms of musical improvisation. The fugues are short (approx. 30-40 bars each), which makes them very digestible. The scholarly work by Renwick is meticulous - his writing in the chapters leading up to the exercises, as well as the comments under each piece, are extremely insightful. Though I am a fan of the outmoded C-clefs, Renwick gracefully converted everything to modern (treble/bass clef) notation, making it more approachable.Warning: no index of suggested realizations (except a handful in the first few chapters), so make sure you're quite proficient at realizing figured bass before working from these. The Handel exercises from the same publisher is a good start (those do contain realizations). I didn't detract from the rating for the ridiculous price, since I it can't be helped; but I guarantee that a thorough working-out of the Langloz manuscript will make you a better musician.

This is a beautiful book from Oxford Press, with tons of illustrations of partimento fugues. This is the method by which many Baroque composers taught students composition and improvisation, and these are a set of pieces to do this with. This was the only method that Bach used, according to his sons. The book is expensive, but then it probably doesn't have a huge audience. I am currently working through it and have found it very useful and fun.

The book is very expensive, but is what I expected. It is an eighteenth century textbook, and will be of value for teaching fugal techniques to a student.