The Cello Sonatas by Vivaldi are like much of the baroque repertoire in that the original score has only two lines: the melody and the bass line.

Often numbers were included indicating the chord structure to be improvised by the lutenist, viol player or keyboard player along with the bass line.

The bass line is very important. At that time, the continuo (the people playing the bass line) would include a cellist or gamba player, a lutenist and the keyboard players - sometimes both an organ and harpsichord. The composer would not indicate the instruments, but would instead note what instruments should not play the continuo part, or write tasto solo - bass line only, no chords.

The difficulty in playing works for organ and orchestra is keeping everything together for the organist. Baroque music like this concerto make it easy to stay with the orchestra, since the continuo bass line works like glue to keep everything together.

In this version the continuo part is always played by the organ pedals, with cellos added in most cases.

Organists with a firm sense of time may prefer to silence the part - if so go into the MIDI MENU on the organ and set the PD MASTER CH to OFF.

The Handel Organ Concertos are for manuals alone, and many of the early Italian organs had short pedal boards so those who choose to let the organ pedal play on its own and just play the manual parts are also playing in a historically correct manner.



Enjoy and play the music!