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Class Notes for Counterpoint Class Notes for Counterpoint Richard R. Randall Department of Music University of Massachusetts, Amherst Fall 2007 i Preface and Acknowledgments This book is designed to provide you with a solid foundation in counterpoint. Our department’s belief is that counterpoint is something that should be part of our every- day music making. It is a way to hear music. It is way to understand music. UMass is unique among music programs in that we teach counterpoint in the first semester of a five semester core curriculum. At other schools, the subject, if taught at all, is often relegated to an elective. I would like to acknowledge the influence of Heinrich Schenker’s Kontrapunkt(1910) and Felix Salzer and Carl Schachter’s Counterpoint in Composition(1969) in preparing these materials. In addition, I would like to thank my counterpoint teacher, Miguel Roig-Francoli. Most importantly, I owe a great deal of thanks to my teaching colleagues Jessica Embry, Adam Kolek, Michael Vitalino, Daniel Huey, and Sara Chung for their hard work, insightful suggestions, and generous help in preparing this text. ii Introduction What is Counterpoint? Lat.: contrapunctus,fromcontra punctum:“against note.” (Fr. contrepoint ; Ger. Kontrapunkt; It. contrappunto) Counterpoint is a broad term for interacting yet independent voices. Since the earliest forms of polyphony, musical textures have been made up of multiple “lines” of music (or “voices”) that combine to form vertical sonorities. Studying counterpoint teaches us how to recognize and understand those lines. Counterpoint is the essence of what we call “voice leading.” The vertical aspect of music is described as “harmonic.” The horizontal aspect of music is described as “melodic,” or “linear” when talking about individual lines and “contrapuntal” when talking about how those melodies interact with each other. Counterpoint is not a style or a genre. It’s not even a compositional technique. It’s a principle that is the foundation of much of the music we listen to and perform. The next time you are in chorus, orchestra, wind ensemble, or any other multiplayer group, try listening to a different part while performing your own. The interplay of your part with your neighbor’s is counterpoint. We will study counterpoint using the “species” approach. This approach comprises five species1 or levels. This approach was codified by Johann Joseph Fux in his Gradus ad Parnassum2,firstpublishedin1725.Fuxdidnotinanyway“invent”counterpoint or its teaching. Nevertheless, his species approach was pedagogically groundbreaking 1You may remember from biology that “species” is the most specific level in the classification of living things. It’s interesting to think about all of the counterpoint species as being different, yet still members of the same family or genus. 2The title translates to Steps to Parnassus.ParnassuswasthehomeoftheGreekgodMusesand became known as the home of poetry, music, and learning. iii for its conciseness. It became basic training for many musicians, including giants such as Beethoven, Mozart, Mendelssohn, and Brahms. The principal point of the species approach is to learn how to control dissonance. The first species allows no dissonance. The second permits metrically unaccented dissonance in the form of passing tones. The third presents dissonance as passing tones and neighbor notes. The fourth teaches us how to control metrically accented dissonance in the form of suspensions. The fifth species is often called “free counterpoint” and can broadly be described as a combination of the preceding four species. We focus on species one through four partly because of time constraints, but also because fifth species borders on (or embraces) 16th century stylistic composition, which is not particularly beneficial to your education at this point. Why Study Counterpoint? “All musical technique is derived from two basic ingredients: voice leading and the progression of scale degrees.” —Heinrich Schenker The primary reason for studying counterpoint is to train and to develop your ears and mind, so that you can aurally engage in fundamental musical actions and develop your musical intuition about these actions. Have you ever heard a piece of music and had the feeling that you “knew where it was going to go?” This is musical expectation or intuition. One thing you will learn in this course is that notational symbols really hide more than they make explicit. What do notes on a page tell us? Essentially they tell us when and where to put our fingers and when to press, pluck, bow, or blow. They define physical actions. This is not music—neither are the sounds your instrument makes. (If your cat walks on the piano, is that music?) Sounds become music when we interpret them, infer relations between them, or simply understand that they are working together to form something greater than themselves. Many of you may understand what I am talking about, but you don’t have a way to verbally describe these experiences—something you will need to do quite often in the professional world. One of the most important features of music theory is that it allows us to talk to each other. It is a common language with which we can discuss some very important features of the music that surrounds us in our daily lives. Moreover, music theory provides a way to get beyond the notes by describing the relationships that literally make music.Mustwealways experience music “theoretically?” No. Of course not. There is a time and place for everything. However, music theory has iv been around as long as music itself and, for better or for worse, it has played an indispensable role in its development and evolution—the two are inseparable. The theory of counterpoint is not a theory of composition. While you will fre- quently compose examples during the course of our study, it behooves you to keep this important distinction in mind. This is not to say, however, that your composed examples ought not to be musical. They should be. The more attention you pay to achieving musicality in your examples, the greater and more rapid your development as a sensitive, thinking musician will be. The study of counterpoint follows a logical path. We restrict ourselves to exercises that focus on one or two musical problems at a time. Once solutions are mastered and internalized, we introduce new problems in a cumulative fashion. The final result is a complex musical texture in which you understand why every note is where it is and where every note is going. It is not enough to know the notes and chords; we need to go farther and learn to understand the relations between them. We do not exist in isolation. Over the span of a thousand years, Western composers have learned to control the simultaneous and successive combinations of musical tones. Our subject of study here at UMass embodies topics and issues that have engaged musicians, performers, teachers, and composers for millennia. AGeneralConsideration The study of counterpoint (and of music theory in general) is cumulative. This means that what we learn in week two still applies in week ten. Moreover, you likely won’t be able to do the work in week ten unless you have a solid command of the material from week two. Because of this, descriptions of techniques and concepts are more detailed at the beginning of the text and become shorter and more to the point as the text progresses. For example, in the first week of study we will spend a good deal of time learning how to write good melodies. Later in the semester, writing good melodies is not the goal, but is rather the first step in a larger project. It will be assumed that you can write a good melody and therefore it won’t be explained again. You can always refresh your memory by looking back at an earlier part of the text. Remember: Your understanding of material tomorrow depends on your understanding of material today. v Contents Preface and Acknowledgments i Introduction ii 1TheCantus Firmus 1 1.1 Discussion.................................. 4 1.1.1 Melodic Consonance and Dissonance . 4 1.1.2 Contour and the Climax . 4 1.1.3 StepsVersusLeaps......................... 5 2FirstSpeciesinTwoandThreeVoices 6 2.1 Contrapuntal Motion . 8 2.2 TwoVoices ................................. 9 2.3 Steps for Writing a Good Counterpoint . 11 2.4 ThreeVoices ................................ 12 2.4.1 The Cadence in Three Voices . 14 2.4.2 Special Considerations for Three-Voice CTP . 14 3SecondSpeciesinTwoandThreeVoices 16 3.1 TwoVoices ................................. 16 vi 3.1.1 Guidelines.............................. 18 3.2 ThreeVoices ................................ 19 4ThirdSpeciesinTwoVoices 20 4.1 TwoVoices ................................. 20 4.2 The Double Neighbor . 23 5FourthSpeciesinTwoandThreeVoices 24 5.1 TwoVoices ................................. 26 5.2 ThreeVoices ................................ 26 1 Chapter 1 The Cantus Firmus Lat.: “fixed melody.” (Ger. fester Gesang; It. canto fermo.) The term cantus firmus is Latin for fixed melody or song. Its plural is cantus firmi.ThetermismostoftenassociatedwithmedievalandRenaissancemusicand represents a pre-existing melody used as the basis of a new composition, but it is also associated with the teaching of counterpoint. Traditionally, the origin of cantus firmi is plainchant (sometimes called “Gregorian” chant). Composers of the Renaissance would take a cantus firmus and write one or more complementary melodies (coun- terpoints) against it. It is this idea of each note of one voice part (i.e. a“point”) against (i.e. “counter”) another voice part that gives rise to what we think of as “counterpoint.” We will begin our studies by learning to write cantus firmi.Sinceit has its origins in plainchant, a cantus firmus is vocal and not instrumental in nature. This doesn’t mean that you can’t play it on your instrument. It means that when you write a cantus firmus,youmustwriteitidiomatically for the voice. (I can play lots of things on the guitar that I can’t sing, but everything I can sing I can play easily on the guitar.) In fact, being able to easily sing your cantus firmi (and later, your counterpoints)isagoodwaytocheckyourwork.
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