If there is something difficult in this work of the Organisten-Probe, I will have to admit that it could be the fifteenth example of the middle class and this twelfth of the upper class.

Most of the present example's difficulty lies without doubt in the unfamiliar or supposedly unfamiliar clefs: because of that the high F and the high alto clef have been chosen on purpose in order that a diligent player will become even more experienced in those allegedly uncommon keys and clefs.

The best warning that can be given to good friends in the present occasion is primarily that they take care of certain leaps, of which there are many in the first, third, fourth and fifth measure etc., for they are not common octaves as they occur daily and a lot of times but they are slightly further apart as you find them often on gambas.

Secondly I point to the beginning of the second part of this test piece and imploringly ask you to take care and to ignore everything else. Only seconds are written above the notes, nothing more. An apprentice that moved up from the middle class to the upper class has to know himself if the implicated fourth needs to be major or minor according to the nature and quality of the harmony and of the key to which it belongs. If regarding the melody the key does change, the required figures are usually clearly written above and where they are not written above they can be left away quite rightly since the player needs to know the characteristics and nature of the key, which is the only thing we are looking for here. Between ourselves I want to enlighten that to the fifth note in the second measure of the mentioned second section belongs the major fourth (4+) in order to avoid a so-called false-relation in voice leading, which would arise between plain g and the g flat.

Even though a sixth is written above the last note of the third crotchet in the fifth measure of the second section one cannot conclude that it is played at precisely that place, but context and elegance require this sixth to be played on the previous note. This anticipation has been mentioned previously already, but it is to be assumed that one does not like to go back so far in order to look for the remark and its cause. In the different places of the same sort in this test piece it is the same case.

In the seventh measure of the last section an invention is found that is developed for some measures and, after an interluding alternation of little secondary motives, comes in the fourteenth measure. In those sequences and jumps it should be noted that they do not require any more art than playing on each crotchet a single chord given either by the nature and characteristics of the key or by the figures. This means that this single chord is played always on the first note of every crotchet and not on any of the three following notes.

For the reasons already given in the fourth paragraph, one shall notice the eleventh measure of the second section of this test piece and the 22nd and 23rd measure of the same section too, so that everything is accurate regarding the written figures. Especially in a test one shall choose to take care for the third measure before the end and if there is no hesitating and stumbling, the player shall be praised. Presumably on the first note of the mentioned measure there will be some hesitation, I know it from experience; and if others consult experience, they will find this statement true. But everything is put so naturally and in a way that once the reasonables are told how it is like they understand it easily and right away. If only some will confess that they did not get it right and understood it quite differently. Nothing is prescribed here to those who know it and who are able to.

Although this key is seldomly the root of a piece or of an aria (yet there is no lack of printed examples as we saw in the respective place in the middle class), pieces in F minor modulate often into their third scale degree, bA: That is, why a thorough-bass player necessarily has to be well-versed in this key as well, even if it is not the piece's tonality but only a related key. One shall study and look once more at the aria of Marcello on p. 356, which will prove the correctness of the said.

Yet why do I talk so much of F minor? The daily and common C minor modulates often into bA, its natural sixth. To prove that can serve, among thousands of other things, a particular cantata of the Capell-Meister Handel, which is not printed but in many people's hands and which is well-known. It is called Lucretia and its first words are O Numi eterni etc., from which one will likely know it. The second aria of this cantata has, immediately at the beginning of the B section, the following modulation:

Those few notes of an aria in C minor include the G Sharp or A flat and one who does not know and practise them as their own tonalities will not be able to play the given one and a half lines correctly. By now there are more examples of this kind than one may count.

We need to say a word about the use of the sixth and fourth, since for some non-Greeks it might seem shocking. This is it: that when an eager legalist finds the sixth and the fourth now and then in somewhat exceptional places and not according to the old way, he will be asked for the goodness to ascribe a good intention to it, which primarily aims to make the student more experienced and steady. Someone who wants to do well in horsemanship is known to get on a wild and unordered horse from time to time, too. The same here. I could have changed it easily and proceeded more legally than the oldest counterpointist of the spartanic school. Yet the legality of Emerepes counts by far not as much as the one of Iustinian: which also tolerates things falling away or being added. Regarding the sixth and the fourth I am almost devoted to the opinion of Aristoxenus which is still accepted and exercised among the Greeks and I have because of the combination with the sixth a special esteem for the poor fourth so that I do not completely estimate it equal to all the other dissonances but sometimes I allow it a safe conduct.