III.

History

Counterpoint in Western music arose in the late medieval period as composers took a preexisting melody, called a cantus firmus (Latin, “fixed melody”), and added one or more parts against it. Over several centuries composers gradually learned to create independent melodies that fit well with one another harmonically and rhythmically. Contrapuntal techniques were perfected in the 16th-century golden age of polyphony. In the music of Palestrina, Lasso, and others, each voice is a well-formed melody; the use of imitation is persistent; and between voices, both rhythm and motion are carefully controlled. The cool, classic perfection of the polyphony of this period has never been equaled, and the style has remained a basis for instruction in counterpoint.

Counterpoint flowered again during the first half of the 18th century in the music of J. S. Bach, the German-English composer George Frideric Handel, and others, but it did so under the harmonic demands of the newly developed major and minor keys. In the classical and romantic periods (late 18th and 19th century), composers turned to the more direct emotional expression afforded by combining melody with varying harmonic accompaniments; counterpoint was considered a learned craft, relegated mostly to developmental passages.

Interest in counterpoint underwent a resurgence in the 20th century, manifested partly in imitations of older styles (neoclassicism) and partly in new ways. The late 19th-century disintegration of the system of tonality based on major and minor keys led in the 20th century to greater freedom from earlier harmonic norms. As a result, in 20th-century music the individual parts in contrapuntal textures are freer to pursue their own melodic tendencies.