When a man like Alberti at last endeavored to write purely melodic music on the harpsichord alone, which by the way was wholly unfitted to sing, three methods of accompaniment were open to him. One of these was to give to the left hand, as accompanist, a counter-melody or counter-melodies, which, interweaving with the upper melody, would create harmonic progressions. Allowing him to have had the skill to do this, as Couperin or Bach had been able to do, it would not have recommended itself to him as the best way to set off the chief melody. Such a procedure inevitably tangled melody with accompaniment. Secondly, he could give to the left hand a series of chords. But owing to the nature of the harpsichord, these would sound dry and detached, with cold harmonic vacancies between; unless he chose to repeat the chords rapidly, which process was decidedly clumsy. Finally he could break up the chords into their separate notes, combine these in groups easily within the grasp of the hand, and by playing these groups rapidly over and over again, produce a constantly moving harmonic current on which his melody might float along. This is in fact what Alberti did, and this is the legitimate function of the Alberti bass, one which can no more be dispensed with from pianoforte music than the tremolo from the orchestra. It is hardly possible to believe that he invented the particular formula which plays such a part in his music. Bach had devised many methods of breaking chords so that their component parts might be kept in rapid and constant vibration. Witness alone the first and second preludes in the first book of the ‘Well-tempered Clavichord.’ In the ninth toccata of the elder Scarlatti there is an eight-measure passage of chords broken exactly in the Alberti manner. But such devices were employed by Bach and likewise by A. Scarlatti in passages of purely harmonic significance. Alberti must be among the first, if he is not actually the first, to use them to supply a simple harmonic basis for his melodies. From the almost universal acceptance of the formula in the last half of the eighteenth century one may deduce two facts: one, that a good many composers were too lazy or too lacking in natural endowment to bother with acquiring a skill in counterpoint; second, that the whole trend of music was away from the contrapuntal style towards the purely melodic. Both facts are true; but one should no more deplore the former than be thankful for the latter, to which is owing many an imperishable page of Mozart and of Beethoven. Other formulas of accompaniment in no way superior to Alberti’s were quick to make their appearance. Among them should be noticed the arpeggio figures: [Illustration: Music score] and the perhaps even more monotonous ones which one finds even in such a sublime masterpiece as the sonata in A-flat major (op. 110) of Beethoven. [Illustration: Music score]