IV.

Teaching of Counterpoint

The writing of successful counterpoint in any style requires careful control over the individual voices and their interactions. The contrapuntal style of the 16th century has remained one pedagogical model from that time to the present day. In this music, the voices remain within a maximum compass of an octave and a fifth, and the compass of each voice lies a fourth or fifth lower or higher than that of its neighbors. Within these voices the melodies may move stepwise or by certain skips—those of a third (such as from C up to E or A down to F), a perfect fourth and fifth, an ascending minor sixth, and an octave with the larger skips used sparingly. Voices form only consonant (stable, nonclashing) intervals with one another, except in specific melodic-harmonic patterns (classified as passing tones, neighbors, anticipations, suspensions, and so forth); such patterns of dissonance (unstable, clashing intervals) are allowed only in certain clearly defined instances. Except for suspensions, such dissonances generally occur in short rhythmic values and on unaccented beats or divisions of beats. Even motion among consonances is regulated in this music, with perfect fifths and octaves arising only when two voices move by oblique or contrary motion. The rhythmic flow within individual voices is smooth, with no abrupt starts or stops, and with no short syncopations (offbeat rhythms).

Counterpoint is often taught by several species, or types of situations, a method perfected by the German composer Johann Fux in 1725 in a text that is still in use. In such teaching exercises, the basis is a cantus firmus with notes of equal duration. In first species, the counterpoint composed against this cantus firmus has one note for each note in the cantus; in second species each note of the cantus is set against two equal-length notes, and in third species, against four equal-length notes. In fourth species the notes of cantus and counterpoint are the same length, but they begin on different beats. In fifth species notes of unequal value are used in the counterpoint. See example 3.

In the 18th and 19th centuries counterpoint was composed to conform to a commonly accepted system of harmony. In the 20th century, under the influence of the German theorist Heinrich Schenker, counterpoint has come to be viewed as a basis for all tonal harmony. Schenker demonstrated that all manner of harmonies could be heard as elaborations of the interaction of voices, as in species counterpoint. In other words, counterpoint is considered the primary process; harmonies, even when an elaborate harmonic system exists, are considered one result of combining different voices in counterpoint. See Harmony.