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In music, counterpoint is a texture involving the simultaneous sounding of separate melodies or lines "against" each other, as in polyphony. It has most commonly been identified in Western music, developing strongly in the Renaissance, and also dominant in much of the common practice period, especially in Baroque music. The term comes from the Latin punctus contra punctum ("note against note"). The adjectival form contrapuntal shows this Latin source more transparently. General principles In all eras, writing of music organised contrapuntally has been subject to rules, sometimes strict. By definition, chords occur when multiple notes sound simultaneously; however, chordal, harmonic, "vertical" features are considered secondary and almost incidental when counterpoint is the predominant textural element. Counterpoint focuses on melodic interaction rather than harmonic effects generated when melodic strands sound together. In the words of John Rahn: "It is hard to write a beautiful song. It is harder to write several individually beautiful songs that, when sung simultaneously, sound as a more beautiful polyphonic whole. The internal stuctures that create each of the voices, separately must contribute to the emergent structure of the polyphony, which in turn must reinforce and comment on the structures of the individual voices. The way that is accomplished in detail is...'counterpoint'." The separation of harmony and counterpoint is not absolute. It is impossible to write simultaneous lines without producing harmony, and impossible to write harmony without linear activity. The composer who chooses to ignore one aspect in favor of the other still must face the fact that listener cannot simply turn off harmonic or linear hearing at will. Thus the composer risks creating annoying distractions unintendedly. Bach's counterpoint, often considered the most profound synthesis of the two dimensions ever achieved, is extremely rich harmonically, and tonally always clearly directed, while his lines remain fascinating. Development Counterpoint was elaborated extensively in the Renaissance period, but composers of the Baroque period brought counterpoint to a kind of culmination, and it may be said that, broadly speaking, harmony then took over as the predominant organising principle in musical composition. The late Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach wrote most of his music incorporating counterpoint, and explicitly and systematically explored the full range of contrapuntal possibilities in such works as The Art of Fugue. Given the way terminology in music history has evolved, such music created from the Baroque period on is described as contrapuntal, while music from before Baroque times is called polyphonic. Hence, the earlier composer Josquin des Prez is said to have written polyphonic music. Homophony, by contrast with polyphony, features music in which chords or vertical intervals work with a single melody without much consideration of the melodic character of the added accompanying elements, or of their melodic interactions with the melody they accompany. As suggested above, most popular music written today is predominantly homophonic, its composition governed mainly by considerations of chord and harmony; but, while general tendencies can often be fairly strong one way or another, rather than describing a musical work in absolute terms as either polyphonic or homophonic, it is a question of degree. The form or compositional genre known as fugue is perhaps the most complex contrapuntal convention. Other examples include the round (familiar in folk traditions) and the canon. In musical composition, contrapuntal techniques are important for enabling composers to generate musical ironies that serve not only to intrigue listeners into listening more intently to the spinning out of complexities found within the texture of a polyphonic composition, but also to draw them all the more into hearing the working out of these figures and interactions of musical dialogue. A melodic fragment, heard alone, makes a particular impression; but when the fragment is heard simultaneously with other melodic ideas, or combined in unexpected ways with itself (as in a canon or fugue), greater depths of affective meaning are revealed. Through development of a musical idea, the fragments undergo a working out into something musically greater than sum of the parts, something conceptually more profound than a single pleasing melody. Excellent examples of counterpoint in jazz include Gerry Mulligan's Young Blood, Bill Holman's Invention for Guitar and Trumpet and his Theme and Variations, as well as recordings by Stan Getz, Bob Brookmeyer, Johnny Richards, and Jimmy Giuffre. Species counterpoint Species counterpoint is a type of so-called strict counterpoint, developed as a pedagogical tool, in which a student progresses through several "species" of increasing complexity, always working a very plain given part in the cantus firmus (Latin for "fixed melody"). The student gradually attains the ability to write free counterpoint (that is, less rigorously constrained counterpoint, usually without a cantus firmus) according to the rules at the given time. The idea is at least as old as 1532, when Giovanni Maria Lanfraco described a similar concept in his Scintille di musica. The late 16th century Venetian theorist Zarlino elaborated on the idea in his influential Le institutioni harmoniche, and it was first presented in a codified form in 1619 by Lodovico Zacconi in his Prattica di musica. Zacconi, unlike later theorists, included a few extra contrapuntal techniques as species, for example invertible counterpoint. By far the most famous pedagogue to use the term, and the one who made it famous, was Johann Fux. In 1725 he published Gradus ad Parnassum (Step by Step Up Mount Parnassus), a work intended to help teach students how to compose, using counterpoint—specifically, the contrapuntal style as practised by Palestrina in the late 16th century—as the principal technique. As the basis for his simplified and often over-restrictive codification of Palestrina's practice (see General notes, below), Fux described five species: A succession of later theorists imitated Fux's seminal work quite closely, but often with some small and idiosyncratic modifications in the rules. A good example is Luigi Cherubini. Considerations for all species Students of species counterpoint usually practice writing counterpoint in all the modes except Locrian (Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian and Aeolian). The following rules apply to melodic writing in each species, for each part: And, in all species, the following rules apply concerning the combination of the parts: First species
Second species
Third species
Fourth species
Florid counterpoint
General notes It is a common and pedantic misconception that counterpoint is defined by these five species, and therefore anything that does not follow the strict rules of the five species is not "proper" counterpoint. This is not true; although much contrapuntal music of the common practice period adheres to the spirit of the rules, and often to the letter of them, the exceptions are many. Fux's book and its concept of "species" was purely a method of teaching counterpoint, not a definitive or rigidly prescriptive set of rules for it. He arrived at his method of teaching (or so he believed, at least) by examining the works of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, an important late 16th-century composer who in Fux's time was held in the highest esteem as a contrapuntist. Works in the contrapuntal style of the 16th century—the "prima pratica" or "stile antico," as it was called by later composers—were often said by Fux's contemporaries to be in "Palestrina style." Indeed, Fux's treatise is a compendium of Palestrina's actual techniques, simplified and regularised for pedagogical use (and so permitting fewer liberties than occurred in actual practice). Contrapuntal derivations Since the Renaissance period in European music, much music which is considered contrapuntal has been written in imitative counterpoint. In imitative counterpoint, two or more voices enter at different times, and (especially when entering) each voice repeats some version of the same melodic element. The fantasia, the ricercar, and later, the fugue (the contrapuntal form par excellence) all feature imitative counterpoint, which also frequently appears in choral works such as motets and madrigals. Imitative counterpoint has spawned a number of devices that composers have turned to in order to give their works both mathematical rigor and expressive range. Some of these devices include: Dissonant counterpoint Dissonant counterpoint was first theorized by Charles Seeger as "at first purely a school-room discipline," consisting of species counterpoint but with all the traditional rules reversed. First species counterpoint is required to be all dissonances, establishing "dissonance, rather than consonance, as the rule," and consonances are "resolved" through a skip, not step. He wrote that "the effect of this discipline" was "one of purification." Other aspects of composition, such as rhythm, could be "dissonated" by applying the same principle (Charles Seeger, "On Dissonant Counterpoint," Modern Music 7, no. 4 (June-July 1930): 25-26). Seeger was not the first to employ dissonant counterpoint, but was the first to theorize and promote it. Other composers who have used dissonant counterpoint, if not in the exact manner prescribed by Charles Seeger, include Ruth Crawford-Seeger, Carl Ruggles, Dane Rudhyar, Fartein Valen, and Arnold Schoenberg. Counterpoint in American Popular Music Irving Berlin wrote three well-known songs that were true examples of counterpoint in American popular music. They are "You're Just in Love," “Play a Simple Melody," and "An Old-Fashioned Wedding" (see the 1966 revival of Annie Get Your Gun). In literature Palestinian-American post-colonial critical theorist Edward Said, himself a pianist and music critic, wrote extensively about how literature could be contrapuntal. Sources | |||||||||||||||||
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