# Great counterpoint that has nothing to do with fugues



## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

It's common to see counterpoint named as if it were a mere synonymous with fugues. Of course, counterpoint is a much more general musical skill than the ability to write fugues. And, in fact, as I mentioned many times here, I claim that a composer can show how good s/he is at counterpoint without having to write a single fugue ever.

Thus, post and comment examples of great counterpoint that has nothing to do with fugues.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Can someone explain the difference between counterpoint and polyphony for me? Perotin wrote polyphonic music, do we really want to say his music is contrapuntal?


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## Guest (Oct 18, 2018)

Mandryka said:


> Can someone explain the difference between counterpoint and polyphony for me? Perotin wrote polyphonic music, do we really want to say his music is contrapuntal?


I think they are basically synonyms, except that the term polyphony is more frequently used to refer to early music and counterpoint for music from the time of Bach and later.


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## Guest (Oct 18, 2018)

aleazk said:


> It's common to see counterpoint named as if it were a mere synonymous with fugues. Of course, counterpoint is a much more general musical skill than the ability to write fugues. And, in fact, as I mentioned many times here, I claim that a composer can show how good s/he is at counterpoint without having to write a single fugue ever.
> 
> Thus, post and comment examples of great counterpoint that has nothing to do with fugues.


I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who disputes the statement that counterpoint is not restricted to fugues.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Baron Scarpia said:


> I think they are basically synonyms, except that the term polyphony is more frequently used to refer to early music and counterpoint for music from the time of Bach and later.


In that case it's clear that counterpoint is not restricted to fugues.


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## BabyGiraffe (Feb 24, 2017)

Baron Scarpia said:


> I think they are basically synonyms, except that the term polyphony is more frequently used to refer to early music and counterpoint for music from the time of Bach and later.


No, you can compose/perform polyphonic music without being restricted to the rules of counterpoint (or any rules...). And these rules were slightly different depending on the century. That's why you can see textbooks or academic monographs on 16th or 18th, or 20th (I'm not sure if there exists such book, but the practices of various modernists and let's say Hindemith are quite different from Bach).
Rules of counterpoint guarantee that music lines sound independant, but sometimes you can't avoid breaking them and following them does not insure that your music will be considered "good". Actually, following them all the time will probably make the composition to sound "mechanical/predictable".


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

It reminds me of an idea that I’ve met that some early music just contains layers and layers of random organum added to a chant.im not sure anyone believes it any more.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Good information about the difference between music with counterpoint and music without it:











The Bach two-part Inventions and three-part Sinfonias have essentially equal interweaving lines reacting to or moving independently of each other but are not fugues. The lines are freer in how they can move and are not subject to the more exacting rules requirements of a Fugue or Canon. The independence of the lines in counterpoint means there's focus on their horizontal movement rather than their vertical harmonies... I love the Bach Inventions because of their greater freedom of independent counterpoint and sense of creative spontaneity. Fugues can be wonderful too but I find them more predictable: once you hear the start, you're expecting to hear it being mirrored somewhat exactly in the counter line, and I think that predictability is why they can sometimes be fatiguing to listen to, and I found this to be particularly true with some of Beethoven's Fugues, which can, IMO, sometimes sound strident, labored or clangorous, such as in his Hammerklavier Sonata or Grosse Fuge, or sound overly ambitious in what he expects of them. I don't think Bach or Brahms expected more of a Fugue than it could deliver in, let's say, its sense of divine order. But there are many examples of counterpoint that are not Fugues or Canons.

Bach on his Inventions and Sinfonias for students...

"Forthright instruction, wherewith lovers of the clavier, especially those desirous of learning, are shown in a clear way not only 1) to learn to play two voices clearly, but also after further progress 2) to deal correctly and well with three obbligato parts, moreover at the same time to obtain not only good ideas, but also to carry them out well, but most of all to achieve a cantabile style of playing, and thereby to acquire a strong foretaste of composition."

Mozart was also a master of counterpoint:

"Counterpoint plays a surprisingly large role in the musical language of Mozart's "Die Entführung au dem Serail". In solo material for the deep bass voice of the character Osmin Mozart suggested contapuntal relationships with other parts to give the vocal line independence from the instrumental bass. In ensemble numbers like Osmin and Blonde's duet No. 9 the composer strongly suggested a contrapuntal relationship between lines sung by antagonistic characters. In Osmin and Belmonte's duet No. 2, represented in the sources in a nearly complete sketch, Mozard used numerous contrapuntal techniques in support of the dramatic situation. Though the work was composed right around Mozart's well-known Bach year of 1782, most of the counterpoint is not particularly Bachian. But the polyphonic textures and contrapuntal thinking mark the work as stylistically connected with the composer's most mature music. Contrapuntal analysis turns out to be a useful perspective of Mozart's operatic writing."


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> Can someone explain the difference between counterpoint and polyphony for me? Perotin wrote polyphonic music, do we really want to say his music is contrapuntal?


Counterpoint and polyphony are unrelated terms and are not, in general, synonymous. Polyphony means music with more than one voice or part. It came into use at a time when it was necessary to distinguish music consisting of a single melodic line, monophony, from music with multiple parts or lines, polyphony. Counterpoint means the art of combining independent melodies into a coherent whole. When one writes counterpoint one is also necessarily writing music with a polyphonic texture. But not all polyphonic music is contrapuntal. Parallel organum, for example, is polyphonic, but does not have independent melodies.

The above is the basics. There are more subtle nuances in standard usage, however. When polyphony came into use it was meant in its most literal way to mean many voices or sounds (based on its Greek etymology). So it feels more fitting for a texture of, say, different human voices or instruments, rather than for contrapuntal piano music, where all the independent lines make the same sound (more or less). And because of its history, the term polyphony is most often heard in reference to choral music, especially earlier choral music.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

Baron Scarpia said:


> I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who disputes the statement that counterpoint is not restricted to fugues.


Of course. But my point was that many people _act_ as if it were restricted to fugues, making discussions rather narrow minded, as has been the case in recent threads about Beethoven and Chopin. Do I need to point out the examples from those threads explicitly? I'm pretty sure you already read them. And I'm not interested in subtle semantic battles about what they were trying to say behind the surface of the surface of their sayings, thank you.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

According to our dear wiki, in music, counterpoint is the relationship between voices that are harmonically interdependent (polyphony) _yet_ independent in rhythm and contour. This seems to fit Edward's example of parallel organum, where there's harmonic interdependence and different voices but no rhythmic and contour independence between them.

To me, great counterpoint were always pieces in which the composer shows great skill at producing this independency in rhythm and contour in a polyphonic piece. That's why, to me, Chopin is a _supreme_ contrapuntist, since he can achieve that even in the most riskier of cases in which the voices are part of a rhythmically steady 'chordal' accompaniment! Others need pompous 'great' fugues to show off their counterpoint, while Chopin, being a true master, can do it effortlessly in a sequence of eightnote chords. For example, here. Starting at bar 12, one sees an obvious and standard left hand harmonic accompaniment. But, being a master of economy of means, by making the bass line to go into chromatic changes, he produces an evident melodic line from that accompaniment, whose steady pulse highly contrasts with the displaced accents created by the repeated notes in the right hand. The result is a very effective, tumultuous, anxious and dramatic counterpoint, and that with only two melodic lines and no fugal escaping of a motif.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

aleazk said:


> Of course. But my point was that many people _act_ as if it were restricted to fugues, making discussions rather narrow minded, as has been the case in recent threads about Beethoven and Chopin. Do I need to point out the examples from those threads explicitly? I'm pretty sure you already read them. And I'm not interested in subtle semantic battles about what they were trying to say behind the surface of the surface of their sayings, thank you.


These people are really meaning imitative counterpoint, that's all that's going on. They've just omitted the qualification. The general concept is broarder, but fugues, canons etc are all examples of a motif which is more or less imitated, repeated, in the voices. Imitative counterpoint is clearly important in western music .


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

Mandryka said:


> These people are really meaning imitative counterpoint, that's all that's going on. They've just omitted the qualification. The general concept is broarder, but fugues, canons etc are all examples of a motif which is more or less imitated, repeated, in the voices. Imitative counterpoint is clearly important in western music .


Then why judge a composer like Chopin or Beethoven about something which was not in vogue at all at that time. Sounds anachronistic, unless you think that counterpoint is most primarily fugues.

Again, people recognize in words that counterpoint is more than just fugues, but then go and act as if the latter were the only cases of counterpoint being worth to discuss and even give a judgement on the general ability of a composer based on weighting his output in terms of an outdated form of counterpoint at the time when this composer lived.

Hey, Bach really sucked at counterpoint, he couldn't write a single Perotin style quadruple organum...


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Some prominent 20thc composers wrote counterpoint that is the opposite of the imitative (fugal) kind. A number of movements by Prokofiev, for example, culminate in the combination of themes that are completely incompatible in mood and musical characteristics. The climax in the slow movement of his 4th piano sonata, for example, is a passage where the two principal themes, a ponderous dirge-like march and a delicate lyrical theme with triplets, sound together. They don't conflict harmonically, but they don't really gel either. It's like a cinematic double exposure where the images walk through each other without touching. The second movement of his First Violin Sonata does something similar. At the climax the heroic second theme is assaulted by fragments of the harsh first theme. In fact, this kind of fusion of opposites happens all the time in his music.

Rachmaninoff was a great contrapuntal composer. He wrote excellent traditional fugues and fugatos, but more commonly he wrote _polymelody_ in which a main melody is supported by other melodies that are different but thoroughly compatible in mood. In many of his works one can follow the lines in a complex texture and find that each one has its own satisfying melodic arc.

Mahler, Strauss and Shostakovich were all masters of non-imitative counterpoint.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

I find Bartok's music in general is full of great counterpoint.






This is a really good thread by the way, some very good information.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Wagner was a master of nonfugal counterpoint, employing old techniques to modern, Romantic ends. In his "demonstration piece," the prelude to _Die Meistersinger,_ there's conscious archaism; after exploiting throughout its length a great range of contrapuntal textures imitative and nonimitative, the piece climaxes in the simultaneous sounding of its four major themes (this occurs at 6:50):






There is wonderful free counterpoint in the movement of chromatic lines in the prelude to _Tristan_, and superb mixtures of imitative and nonimitative counterpoint in the preludes and transformation interludes of _Parsifal_, where even in the more homophonic passages the part writing often attains great independence of voices. In the act one interlude, after extended passages of imitative writing and penetrating outcries glowingly orchestrated, tortured chromatic sequences at 1:45 mount up over a bass line that first descends, then ascends by half-steps, increasing the tension:






In the prelude to Act 3, the separate and often imitative voices are made to outline extreme harmonic discontinuities in an emotional narrative of anxious ambiguity, mystery, and torment:






The whole opera is a treasure trove of contrapuntal technique at the service of dramatic expression. The final few minutes of the opera consist largely of a canon on a simple scalar theme. The effect is sublimely serene, and it appropriately concludes an opera, and a composing career, in which the "music of the future" often pays surprising respect to the music of the past.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Interesting. I'm trying to understand this on a very basic level. So forgive me if I ask silly questions.
Is there any counterpoint going on in Vaughan Williams Tallis Fantasia?
I hear a lot of voices in some parts, but most of the time they are in sync and not so independent from each other rhythm-wise. For example, let's start at 10:00 leading up to the wonderful climax at 11:20 until it fades out again.




Is that counterpoint or only polyphony and chords?


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## Guest (Oct 19, 2018)

EdwardBast said:


> Counterpoint and polyphony are unrelated terms and are not, in general, synonymous. Polyphony means music with more than one voice or part. It came into use at a time when it was necessary to distinguish music consisting of a single melodic line, monophony, from music with multiple parts or lines, polyphony. Counterpoint means the art of combining independent melodies into a coherent whole. When one writes counterpoint one is also necessarily writing music with a polyphonic texture. But not all polyphonic music is contrapuntal. Parallel organum, for example, is polyphonic, but does not have independent melodies.


This doesn't quite agree with what I was taught, that polyphony means there are multiple independent voices. Multiple voices which harmonize without having independent melodies is homophony.


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## Guest (Oct 19, 2018)

DeepR said:


> Interesting. I'm trying to understand this on a very basic level. So forgive me if I ask silly questions.
> Is there any counterpoint going on in Vaughan Williams Tallis Fantasia?
> I hear a lot of voices in some parts, but most of the time they are in sync and not so independent from each other rhythm-wise. For example, let's start at 10:00 leading up to the wonderful climax at 11:20 until it fades out again.
> 
> ...


I think what you are describing can be called homophony. The most typical example of homophony would be a Bach 4 part chorale harmonization.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Baron Scarpia said:


> This doesn't quite agree with what I was taught, that polyphony means there are multiple independent voices. Multiple voices which harmonize without having independent melodies is homophony.


Polyphonic works without independent voices are indeed described as homophonic. Homophony is a subcategory of polyphony. However, homophony is commonly, and a bit sloppily, used in opposition to the broader category (polyphony) of which it is a part when one wishes to distinguish polyphonic works lacking rhythmic independence from all the other kinds. The reason for this is that the obvious opposite of homophony, _heterophony_, is used for a completely different phenomenon (for the performance of a single melody in a number of variants at the same time.)


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

The 20th century English composer Robert Simpson, while not always being completely accessible or even sensible, wrote a string of symphonies that used counterpoint. 

He was famous for having orchestral "cells" played against one another; that is, certain sections of the orchestra would play one set of music, other sections would play another, and they would play both simultaneously. 

I believe Charles Ives did similarly in his 4th symphony to such extent it required more than one conductor to perform the music.

This is, I believe, the definition of counterpoint -- note against note or one set of music played against or combined with another.

The boyhood songs "99 Bottles Of Beer On the Wall" and "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" can also be performed not as fugues or fugato but as counterpoint.

Getting back to Simpson, he composed one symphony (maybe No. 2) as a palindrome -- the same going forward as backward. It was pretty to look at the score but not necessarily successful musically, as I recall.

I don't remember where all this happened but I wrote a review of his symphonies years ago for Amazon. I'm sure I mentioned some of this there/then.


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## jdec (Mar 23, 2013)

Several examples in Mahler's symphonies. This is just one (movement 5 - Rondo Finale)...


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

An example from my go-to composer.


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