ABSTRACT
One of the most salient features of thoroughbass is that it asks us to think of music in terms of a series of successive chords. This chapter explores the mutually symbiotic relation between through-bass practice and speculative music theory. It shows that how the thoroughbass in the Baroque era can be credited for stimulating some of the most searching theorizing of harmonic tonality in the 18th century — and beyond. Johann David Heinichen recognized immediately its value when he was in the midst of publishing his mammoth Der Generalbass in der Composition of 1728, and he hastily emended his text by incorporating notions of chordal inversion. The harmonies of the thoroughbass were thus shown to have been generated and controlled not by the bass voice, rather, by the fundamental bass. Rule of the Octave was the standard scale harmonization students would learn to play on the keyboard.
