Counterpoint

(entry for 9/27/2024)

In the last post we talked about Voice Leading, we now need to backtrack a bit chronologically and talk about a time in music, called the Contrapuntal Era, from where the idea of Voice Leading originated.

‘Counterpoint’ is a particular style of music, and Contrapuntal is an adjective describing that style. The basic idea of the style is to have independent ‘lines’ of music that play off against each other (‘counter to’ each other, which is where the name comes from). The adjective comes from the word ‘Contrapunctus,’ which comes from a Latin saying, “Punctus contra punctum,” which literally means “Note against note.”

What do we mean by ‘lines’? We’re talking about at least two different ‘melodies’ that co-exist with each other and that sound good together. Being aware of them as melodies, rather than harmonies, is a way of thinking about music that is called a ‘horizontal’ or ‘linear’ approach. That is, how the music sounds over time, rather than at one particular moment. (Being more aware of the sound at any given instant is called ‘vertical’ or ‘harmonic’ thinking.)

From about the year 1400 to somewhere in the mid 1600s, most musicians (especially composers) thought in linear terms. This is now called the Contrapuntal Era, which included several different sub-styles, from the motets of Palestrina, early on, to the Baroque styles of Vivaldi and Corelli. And Bach.

As was mentioned in the last post, J. S. Bach is now regarded as the primary ‘bridge’ between the Baroque (and therefore contrapuntal) style, and another, more ’vertical’ and ‘harmonic’ style, which came to be known as the Classic Style, of which the two most famous composers are Haydn and Mozart. (Beethoven started out that way too, but changed as he went along, and is one of the founders— along with Franz Schubert and Karl Maria von Weber—of the next era after the Classic, called the Romantic Era. Not that it had much to do with romance or affection, but because people found it friendlier than the rather austere-at-times Classic style, and therefore associated it with the warmth of the Mediterranean region and particularly of Rome. Rome— Romantic. Get it?!?)

In addition to being contrapuntal, the Baroque style is also rather ornate and ‘heavy.’ But Bach kept the ornate nature of it and rejected the heavy part, which is one of the reasons he is so popular today. (We are not ‘into’ heavy these days. Even so-called Heavy Metal is pretty light compared to a lot of the Baroque!)

It’s not Baroque at all, but the ‘Are You Sleeping?’ round, which we talked about last post, is a good intro to several of the concepts used in Counterpoint, so we’ll go back to that again, in a moment. 

First of all, a musical Round of any sort is also called a ‘Canon.’ (Think Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major, which is really just an elaborate round.) A round is one type of Canon. (There are other types, going by different names.) When a round repeats itself at the same pitch, it’s said to be a ‘Canon at the Unison.’ If a woman and a man are singing the round, the second entrance is probably on the same note name but an octave away. It’s therefore called a ‘Canon at the Octave.’ Depending on who is singing it, our favorite childhood round is either a Canon at the Unison or a Canon at the Octave. (Or maybe even at Two Octaves, if one of the singers is extremely young!)

Just for fun, sometime, ask a friend if they know what a Canon at the Unison is, and when they say ‘no,’ starting singing it!

But while any simple round is going to start each entrance at the same pitch-name as the one before, that doesn’t apply to all canons. There are also many Baroque examples of the Canon at the Fifth, and even other intervals can be used.

(Here’s a Canon of some sort. Not sure what interval it is. Probably a large one.)

A piece of music having long extended lines involving many Canons (of whatever interval) is called an Invention. If it has two lines, it’s called a Two-Part Invention. If three, a Three-Part Invention. (Bach wrote a ton of both of those kinds.)

But when we get to four extended lines, something interesting happens. A Four-Part Invention, if all the Canons involved are ‘at the fifth,’ is called a Fugue. There are many famous Fugues. Perhaps the most famous one of all is the second half of the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, which may or may not be by our friend J. S. Bach. It’s very much not in his usual style, which has led some Musicologists to say it isn’t his. But the original published version has his name on it, and his son Karl Phillip Emmanuel Bach (who is the subject of a later post) said it was his dad’s. That’s good enough for me.

In any event, if you haven’t listened to it yourself, you owe it to yourself to do so. You can find it online, and thousands of recordings have been made of it, so almost any classical record or CD collection will have at least one recording of it. 

Many music schools require an auditioning composition student to write, on the spot, a Fugue based on a theme they give you at the last minute. It’s hard! (Fortunately, I never had to do that, even at Juilliard.)

Another way to listen to Bach Fugues is to watch old black and white movies. The Bach D Minor work mentioned above is the on the soundtrack of many Halloween and other horror movies, the 1931 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, for one. And if you’ve ever seen the Melina Mercouri film Phaedra, and were moved by the music played on the car radio as Anthony Perkins drives toward his doom, singing along with the Pipe Organ at the top of his lungs, you can say correctly that you know the Bach Fugue in F Major very well.

And while you’re at it, listen to a good sample of other Baroque composers too. Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons is one excellent example. The aforementioned Pachelbel classic is another. And anything by Corelli, or Monteverdi, or Buxtehude will ‘round’ out your experience nicely.

But having said all that about Fugues, we need to come back to a few basic concepts of contrapuntal music: contrary, similar, and oblique motion. In order for two or more ‘lines’ of music to remain independent of each other, it’s important for them not to mirror each other too closely. In the case of a round, this is avoided by having the melody start up at different times. But if two or more ‘voices’ start simultaneously, there have to be other ways of ensuring ‘independence.’ The easiest and therefore in many ways the ‘best’ of these is contrary motion. It’s easier to show it to you than it is to tell you about it, so here are two different examples of it:

The next type of motion to consider is the oblique. In this type, one voice remains on the same note while another voice moves closer to it or away from it. Here are two examples:

Oblique motion does maintain independence, but it also is fairly boring for the voice that doesn’t move, so it’s considered a weaker form of motion than contrary.

The very weakest form is ‘similar,’ in which both voices move in the same direction. As long as the two voices aren’t parallel, meaning that they would be staying exactly the same distance apart, similar motion can be useful, provided it isn’t overdone. Here again are two examples:

And even parallel motion is OK if the intervals are 3rds or 6ths. But parallel fifths and fourths (and even worse, octaves) are strictly avoided by most composers, especially during the Baroque era, because there is hardly any voice-independence left at all.

OK: 

Bad!:

In fact, some music teachers are so accustomed to grinning as they mark as ‘wrong’ any example of parallel octaves, fourths, or fifths that the students joke about the ‘sinfulness’ of the ‘crime’ of creating dreaded Parallels! “Oh you wrote Parallels!” 

It’s almost as bad as parallel parking!

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