Early Music

Since the 1970s continuo performance of secco recitative has been intensively discussed in the historically oriented field of performance practice. The trigger was the idea, probably stemming from Winton Dean, of having cadences played exactly as notated. In the Alten Handel Ausgabe, Friedrich Chrysander had notated the dominant– tonic conclusion in the recitatives as, in principle, after the beat, that is, after the singer's last note. In practice, however, performance with the singer creates the problem that in almost all endings executed with an appoggiatura a dissonance of a semitone arises. This article examines original notation in score as well as contemporary theoretical commentaries in order to determine how this might be avoided and how a more flexible continuo arrangement might be achieved.