We stay in Venice but move forward slightly to the work of the unlikely sounding Italian composer Ignazio Sieber (c.1680 – c.1757) of which – you won’t be surprised to know – very little is known, but he wrote some rather impressive recorder sonatas.
The sonatas are also very useful to demonstrate the use of the continuo and figured bass; the keyboard and the cello form the continuo – have a look at the score below.
The new(ish) concept of there being twenty-four keys, major and minor, created a problem of tuning, which Bach, in his 48 Preludes and Fugues, The Well Tempered Klavier, attempted to solve – though the problem for us is that while no-one seems sure what type of tempering Bach was advocating, everyone’s certain that it wasn’t our present-day, rather dreary, equal temperament. Here, with explanations of their nature, are three possible solutions:
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The Art of Listening 