q about species counterpoint

[dermichl]

was reading up on counterpoint the last days and can't find an answer to this: does species counterpoint always work against a cf in whole notes? or is it also meant to work against more vibrant cf. and if so does second species 2:1 equal in 2 sixteenths counterpoint against 1 eigth in cantus firmus?

[Gamma-UT]

Species counterpoint is only for teaching purposes - it's deliberately simplified. The whole note convention makes the lines easy to hear and separate out.

The idea is you come out at the end of the process able to write common-practice counterpoint for anything. If you then want to write first species counterpoint 32nd against 32nd, that's entirely up to you.

[fmr]

Adding a little to what Gamma-UT wrote, and to your question, yes, counterpoint of second species may be written (although it usually isn't) in sixtenths against eights. As loing as it is 2 against 1, it is still counterpoint of second species. However, as Gamma-UT pointed very well, counterpoint is not a way of making music. Think of it like the scales keyboardist pratice every day, in order to master their technique. For a composer, it's his/her scales - a way to master a particular technique, in this case, the polyphonic writing, according to the rules of the renaissance/baroque polyphony.

The aim is that, in the end, you'll be able to write/add three voices to a given bass or tenor or melody written in a varied rhythm. When you become comfortable doing this, you can consider yourself graduated in counterpoint. Bear in mind that this is just a tool. It doesn't make you necessarily a composer, but it certainly will help. All (or the vast majority, at least) the great masters of the past studied counterpoint. Mozart and Beethoven certainly did.

[dermichl]

Thanks for answering but why is counterpoint not a way oft making music? Isn't it a way oft composing polyphonic music?

[StudioDave]

Thanks for answering but why is counterpoint not a way oft making music? Isn't it a way oft composing polyphonic music?

We refer to contrapuntal music where the counterpoint is the most salient aspect of the composition, e.g. a Bach fugue. Certain musical epochs (esp. the Baroque period) focused on forms favorable to contrapuntal usage, though counterpoint is certainly present in the music of the Classical and Romantic era composers. For example, recently I've been admiring the contrapuntal writing in Haydn's quartets. Unlike the Bach fugues, the polyphony of the quartets is primarily derived from the harmonic movement (the chords), but there are plenty of neat contrapuntal moments.

Btw, I loved my counterpoint studies (Fux for the modal, Kennan for the harmonic). I consider it necessary weight-training if you want to think linearly in two or more independent parts. OTOH it's not some absolute necessity in order to create great or just plain old good music, plenty of good stuff has been written with little or no counterpoint.

Many composers have emphasized the importance of their counterpoint studies. These days it's less a guide to a way of writing in a particular style and more of a means to an increased awareness of the potential of your musical materials. That is, instead of thinking of counterpoint in terms of note-against-note or line-against-line consider it in terms of mass-against-mass, or a counterpoint of sections or timbres or ...

Best,

dp

[fmr]

Thanks for answering but why is counterpoint not a way of making music? Isn't it a way of composing polyphonic music?

Polyphony is "free counterpoint", true. But when you are writing music, you must think "beyond" the technique - counterpoint is the technique. You have to think about what you want to say and how wou should say it. The same way a pianist, when playing a concerto, is not thinking about the scales and the chords, but rather the phrases and the expressions.

You may even decide that tonality is not the way you want follow in order to express yourself, and then you have to find other way. For example, Schoenberg, Berg and Webern (the so called second Vienna school) used counterpoint techniques when writing atonal music, but the rules they followed were not the same as the ones followed by Fux in his Treaty, or by Bach in his Fugues or Chorales.

[MadBrain]

Thanks for answering but why is counterpoint not a way oft making music? Isn't it a way oft composing polyphonic music?

Fux's "Species Counterpoint" (also known as "Gradus ad Parnassum") is an exercise where you do counterpoint with very restrictive and arbitrary rules such as imposed melodies ("Cantus Firmus"), 1 against 1, 2 against 1 and so forth. This in order to get the hang of how notes resolve, how voices move around and so forth in classical music, so that later on when you write counterpoint or classical harmony in your music, you can just wing it and intuitively get good results.