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contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent (polyphony). It has been most
commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much
of the common practice period, especially in Baroque music. The term originates from the Latin
punctus contra punctum meaning "point against point".
Contents
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1 General principles
2 Development
3 Species counterpoint
o 3.1 Considerations for all species
o 3.2 First species
o 3.3 Second species
o 3.4 Third species
o 3.5 Fourth species
o 3.6 Fifth species (florid counterpoint)
o 3.7 General notes
4 Contrapuntal derivations
5 Linear counterpoint
6 Dissonant counterpoint
7 In other media
8 See also
9 References
10 External links
[edit] Development
Counterpoint was elaborated extensively in the Renaissance period, but composers of the
Baroque period brought counterpoint to a culmination of sorts, and it may be said that, broadly
speaking, harmony then took over as the predominant organizing principle in musical
composition. The 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, earlier composers such as Guillaume de Machaut and Josquin des Prez are
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 the sum of the parts, something conceptually more profound than a single pleasing
melody.
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.[3]
3.
4.
5.
And, in all species, the following rules apply concerning the combination of the parts:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
In the following example in two parts, the cantus firmus is the lower part. (The same cantus
firmus is used for later examples also. Each is in the Dorian mode.)
In third species counterpoint, four (or three, etc.) notes move against each longer note in the
given part. As with second species, it is called expanded if the shorter notes vary in length
among themselves.
Melodic inversion
The inverse of a given fragment of melody is the fragment turned upside downso if the
original fragment has a rising major third (see interval), the inverted fragment has a
falling major (or perhaps minor) third, etc. (Compare, in twelve tone technique, the
inversion of the tone row, which is the so-called prime series turned upside down.) (Note:
in invertible counterpoint, including double and triple counterpoint, the term inversion is
used in a different sense altogether. At least one pair of parts is switched, so that the one
that was higher becomes lower. See Inversion in counterpoint; it is not a kind of
imitation, but a rearrangement of the parts.)
Retrograde
whereby notes in an imitative voice sound backwards in relation to their order in the
original.
Retrograde inversion
where the imitative voice sounds notes both backwards and upside down.
Augmentation
when in one of the parts in imitative counterpoint the notes are extended in duration
compared to the rate at which they were sounded when introduced.
Diminution
when in one of the parts in imitative counterpoint the notes are reduced in duration
compared to the rate at which they were sounded when introduced.
Linear counterpoint from Stravinsky's Octet [4] Play (helpinfo). Note the C major ostinato and
frequent dissonances and accidentals, including F#.
Linear counterpoint is "a purely horizontal technique in which the integrity of the individual
melodic lines is not sacrificed to harmonic considerations. The voice parts move freely,
irrespective of the effects their combined motions may create."[4] In other words, either "the
domination of the horizontal (linear) aspects over the vertical"[5] is featured or the "harmonic
control of lines is rejected."[6]
Associated with neoclassicism,[5] the first work to use the technique is Stravinsky's Octet for
Wind Instruments (1923),[4] inspired by Bach and Palestrina. However, according to Knud
Jeppesen: "Bach's and Palestrina's points of departure are antipodal. Palestrina starts out from
lines and arrives at chords; Bach's music grows out of an ideally harmonic background, against
which the voices develop with a bold independence that is often breath-taking."[4]
Polyphony
Voice leading
Counter-melody