16th Century Counterpoint - 2 Voices, 1st Species Primer

Thanks SSC. Great idea.

Jon - Please provide an easier to read version of your exercises. For example, in the first one you have cello and double bass playing octaves which I find distracts from learning the exercise - you need to hear clearly the intervals and their movement.

That doesn't make any sense. You say you need to see(hear?) the intervals but you can't because the bass is doubled?

A suggestion to those doing species counterpoint here, is that you should try to not write the interval in numbers in your exercises. You have to develop your reading to analyze these things on the spot, and also the numbers may give it too much of a "math" spin, when in reality even if it's an exercise the idea is that it has to be musical or creative in some way or another.

That is actually very true - I found myself doing the math and at some point, I was literally drawing the melodic lines based on the intervals allowed or disallowed, without hearing any music at all...

I think I'll try to have a go on the exercise without writing the intervals. Although it will probably take much longer :)

NeeHo -

In general, you have to be careful with consecutive skips - outlining a dissonance is not good even if it seems to follow the rules. So for 16th century counterpoint, if you skip up a P5 the only workable skip in the same direction following it would be a M2 or m2. You have more possibilities if you reverse direction either stepwise or with a skip. But you have to be careful your melody does not end up sounding like you are demarcating a triad. So G up to D down to B up to G and down to a D (so up a P5, down m3, up a M6, down a P4) would be following the rules but melodically quite uncommon for the 16th century style because of the melody's strong triadic nature. Knowing this helps you appreciate the revolutions in melodic writing Hadyn and later to a greater degree Mozart achieved.

Finally in the original post I did not disallow consecutive skips - because I geared it to newcomers to grasp the very basics of correct 16th century counterpoint.

Thank you ComposerOrganist.

I am trying to reduce the amount of leaps in general to make the melody smoother. So that each big leap is followed by a step in the opposite direction. I'll post the new lines when I go through them without the intervals labeled as mentioned in previous post :D

Jon - not quite - the octaves below make the counterpoint sound bass heavy so I'd prefer the better balance of just two voices. Of course I can hear the intervals but i wish to keep this thread very simple. This is 2 VOICED 1 st species counterpoint. You have examples of 2 voiced counterpoint from 1st to the 4 th species - which is admirable but detracts from the pedagogical goal of this thread - to focus only on 2 voices 1st species.

Sorry to be such a stickler.

OK,

This is the revised version of Ex1 (write soprano for cantus) and ex2 (write cantus for soprano in phrygian).

I tried to make it less arpeggiated, more balanced in terms of steps / leaps ratio. I'm not sure if these lines are better in terms of 16th century counterpoint, but they are less jumpy than my first attempts...

2009-10-18 First Species Counterpoint Revised.pdf

2009-10-18 First Species Counterpoint Revised.mid

NeeHo -

Very good. Your phrygian example is especially beautiful as you have a gentle sinuous melodic curve that has a good sense of direction and mix of intervals that do not disrupt the flow.

The first exercise is very good but I find the octave in measure 4 a bit too soon after hearing the octave in the first measure - especially as you have a fifth in measure 2. So even with a nice stepwise melody you can still have a little stiffness with just a few too many fifths and octaves over a few measures (yes even if they are not consecutive). In this case leaps in the soprano may work to your advantage - so C-G(down a 4th)-A(up a step)-E to your B(up a fifth) in the soprano. It may not have the "ideal" stepwise flow but it is a nice contrast to the predominantly stepwise movement of the remainder of the piece. This is up to you - we have reached a point past mechanics to the "art" of counterpoint.

These are very minor points I raise. Excellent job Neeho. Why not try another exercise in this species and then try 2nd species - movement in half notes.

Is it possible to use a simple folk tune or well known tune as the Cantus Firmus?

Sure - give it a try

Can I play?!

I'm new to counterpoint and horizontal thinking in general, but it's been fun giving it a go.

There's a couple of awkard sounding bits in there but I don't think I flagrantly broke (m)any rules.

Cheers,

Eric

Counterpoint.pdf

Look and sounds OK, do two more - use phyrgian cantus firmus and mixolydian cantus firmus.

Before you start figure out what are the high points of the cantus firmus, then write your own melody against it.

If nobody minds me popping in an old thread like this (it is pinned after all), I'd like to suggest literature besides Jeppesen's, which is now almost a century old.

I recommend Peter Schubert's Modal Counterpoint, Renaissance Style. His book combines actual Renaissance treatises into a fun and classroom-friendly textbook. Its approach is very practical, since Schubert is a leading researcher on improvised music in the Renaissance. However, his scope is narrow, so if you want more of what a renaissance composer dealt with, then I recommend Robert Gauldin's A Practical Approach to Sixteenth-Century Counterpoint.

Both can be pricey, so here's the least antiquated public domain book that I know of. Gauldin refers to it often.

https://archive.org/details/pdfy-j2qBlQNEn9Dm6zR5