Exercise

Bass 249 — Falling fifths

Bass motions and sequencesC major

Corpus id bass-249 · cite this id — it is permanent

What it teaches

The falling-fifths circle, complete: every chord in the key visited once, the upper voices binding the chain with common tones, the one diminished fifth in the bass holding the circle inside the key.

The given bass

4/4	bar 1		bar 2		bar 3		bar 4		bar 5
Bass	C3		F3	B2	E3	A2	D3	G2	C3

The given bass and its figures (C major, 4/4; ⌒ = tied from the previous note)

The model realization

4/4	bar 1	bar 2		bar 3		bar 4		bar 5
Soprano	G4	A4	D5	E5	E5	F5	G5	G5
Alto	E4	F4	F4	G4	A4	A4	B4	C5
Tenor	C4	C4	D4	B3	C4	D4	D4	E4
Bass	C3	F3	B2	E3	A2	D3	G2	C3

The model realization (C major, 4/4; ⌒ = tied from the previous note)

The strongest progression the system has, run until it comes home: each root becomes the fifth of the next, each pair of chords bound by a common tone. The diminished chord passes root-position inside the machine, its third doubled — a station of the sequence, not a chord to be handled.

At the keyboard

This realization is choral — the upper voices exceed a single hand’s span. Watch the left hand alternate falling fifths and rising fourths to stay in register — and feel the one strange leap, F down to B: the seam that keeps the circle from leaving the key. Carry it into G major, F major.

Voice-leading patterns this exercise drills

Cite this exercise

Gradus Figured-Bass Corpus, bass-249 — Falling fifths. v1.0. https://gradusmusic.com/figured-bass-corpus/exercise/bass-249

Corpus v1.0 · licensed CC-BY-4.0 · machine-readable at /api/v1/figured-bass/exercises/bass-249

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