alberti bass
techniquesal-BEHR-tee BASS
A left-hand keyboard accompaniment pattern that breaks a chord into a repeated sequence of low-high-middle-high notes, creating a gentle, flowing texture.
The Alberti bass is named after the Italian composer Domenico Alberti (c. 1710–1740), who used it extensively, though he did not invent it. The pattern takes a chord and arpeggiate it in the order: lowest note, highest note, middle note, highest note — repeated continuously. This creates a simple but effective accompaniment that suggests harmonic fullness while maintaining rhythmic motion. In C major, the pattern would be C-G-E-G repeated.
The Alberti bass became ubiquitous in Classical-era keyboard music. Mozart and Haydn used it constantly in their piano sonatas, and it appears throughout Beethoven's earlier works. Clementi's piano method books treat it as a fundamental technique. While it fell out of favor as accompaniment patterns became more sophisticated in the Romantic era, it remains one of the most recognizable textures in Western keyboard music and is still taught as a foundational left-hand pattern in piano pedagogy.
Domenico Alberti, the pattern's namesake, was actually a minor composer whose music is almost entirely forgotten — his immortality rests solely on a left-hand pattern that bears his name.