Where Did Counterpoint Come From?
Prokofiev once said, “I think we have gone as far as we are likely to go in the direction of size, or dissonance, or complexity of music. Music, in other words, has definitely reached and passed the greatest degree of discord and complexity that can be attained in practice.” Music as we know it can be extremely complex and can have many elements all interacting at the same time. How is that we are able to take it all in and discern what is happening? Better yet, how is it that we can tell that the different ideas are related and part of the same piece? Both of these questions are answered when you understand the basic concepts of counterpoint. Counterpoint is, “the technique of combining two or more distinct lines of music that sound simultaneously, esp. with an emphasis on melodic, as opposed to harmonic, progression.”Counterpoint reached its height in the 18th century, but has developed over hundreds of years and taken on many forms along the way. The goal of this paper is to show how various elements of counterpoint evolved over time as composers searched for new and innovative ways to generate musical content with cohesiveness and sophistication in an ever-changing environment. And as we will see, one of the biggest challenges to be faced is the treatment of dissonance.
Zarlino considered, “counterpoint to be that concordance or agreement which is born of a body with diverse parts, its various melodic lines accommodated to the total composition, arranged so that voices are separated by commensurable, harmonious intervals.” Part of the paradox of contrapuntal music is that it combines voices in such a way that each is independent in the same way that a hand is independent from a foot. Yet somehow they are part of the same body and work together to make up that body. A hand by itself is not a body. A body is therefore the sum of all the parts. Music in the same way is the sum or combination of ideas through sound. Rubbra said that their independence is not absolute, but relative. Counterpoint is the way in which a composer chooses to make those sounds interact. Every choice either results in a dissonance or a consonance, but often the most satisfying thing about a consonance is the dissonance which precedes it.
As far as we know, the fundamental ideas of counterpoint can be traced back to the civilizations of ancient times. One of the most indispensable forms of counterpoint is imitation where an idea is stated and then repeated back by another voice verbatim or in some sort of variation. Another way of understanding it is by the phrase, “cannon that isn’t quite.” Imitation as counterpoint exists in many primitive cultures around the world. Much of the music in Europe however was derived from a single monophonic line of music either religious or folk in setting. According to Rubbra, once Europe discovered counterpoint, music could for the first time “achieve ‘depth’ in the sense of foreground and background.” So although Europe may have been behind the times in the development of music initially, they quickly took up the call and became the leading theorists in music and advanced music to what it is today.
The etymology of the word counterpoint most likely came from the expression punctus contra punctus meaning “point against point” in the fourteenth century. This phrase came about from the physical placement of two points of ink on the page positioned adjacent to each other notating multiple pitches. Under normal circumstances multiple notes sounding together form chords. The difficulty is that counterpoint does not deal with only chords the way that a chorale does. Counterpoint deals with melodies independent from one another which happen to make chords along the way. Due to the simplistic nature of early music, it is often hard to distinguish between counterpoint and simple polyphony. In the beginning of counterpoint the two words were synonymous with one another. The first form of recorded counterpoint was parallel organum from about 900 A.D. Organum simply consisted of parallel fourths and fifths which ironically enough would later become taboo in typical music theory. Much of music is what it is because of rules put in place. These first contrapuntal compositions were no exception. Early on Hucbald, in his treatise Musica enchiriadis, established a restriction against the use of the tritone (tritonus).
Something else to take into consideration was the simple fact that most music in this time period consisted of single melodic lines. To add to the complexity of music would have been a startling change for most people. A similar comparison might be the acceptance of twelve-tone music in today’s society. Most people back then saw a single melody as perfect in itself and complete without any chords. Most music begins with a single melody anyways, and it is often referred to as the cantus firmus. The cantus firmus is seen as “melodic organization in its simplest form.” The whole concept of counterpoint would have required a new kind of listening skill. A listener would have to be able to let each line exist on its own but also be able to take in the sound of the piece as a whole. It makes sense then that early counterpoint consisted of parallel motion. The effect was essentially the sound of two identical melodies with different pitches, rather than two different melodies moving at different times. Perhaps the main problem with melodies which move in different rhythms is that the resulting chords create dissonances more frequently.
As time progressed music consisted of less parallel motion and more contrary motion. Contrary motion thus produced more dissonances which are ultimately much closer than the tritone, but still accepted nonetheless. The real foundations of counterpoint developed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries with ars antiqua. It was at this time that more formal rules began to take shape describing the treatment of dissonances. One of the first of these concrete rules said that a consonant interval had to occur at the beginning of every measure. This idea was a part of the Franconian Law. The only time this was every broken was when a suspension was carried over from a previous bar. This rule remained in tact for the most part until about 1600. Thirds and sixths were used at this time, but not on the cadences. Their uses was really more like what we might consider a passing tone, and tended to only get used when avoiding some other unwanted dissonance.
In 1477, we are introduced to the first great music theorist of modern western music. His name was Johannes de Verwere. In Latin his name is simply Tinctoris. Tinctoris was a Flemish composer who settled in Naples, Italy where he wrote twelve treatises on music. In 1477 he wrote a treatise called De Contrapuncto, in which he began to formally describe counterpoint. In his dissertation Tinctoris described an almost exhaustive list of combinations of notes which sounded “good together” to him. His second book dealt with the intervals which sounded “bad.” He then finally gets to the topic of actual counterpoint. He breaks it down into two styles. The first style is known as contrapunctus simplex in which every note in a second part is of the same value as the notes in the first part. In other words, their rhythms are the same. The second style was known as contrapunctus diminutas, or floridus. It is in this style that we start to see more independence of voices due to their differing rhythmic values. In the simple style no dissonances are allowed at all. Dissonance was allowed in the floridus style, but that was probably due to the fact that there would be passing tones which would cause almost purely incidental dissonances. Some of his developments included resolving dissonances by stepwise motion as well as resolving to a consonant chord different than the one preceding the dissonance. He also thought that a dissonance could not be held for more than one half of a measure in length. There was still a sense at this point that people could only tolerate dissonance for so long.
In the third section of his work Tinctoris established eight rules of counterpoint. The first rule stated that a piece must begin and end with a perfect consonance. The second rule was to avoid parallel fifths and fourths. The third rule made it acceptable to repeat a note. The fourth rule basically said that the counterpoint of other parts should be unaffected by the fact that a tenor line may move with large leaps. The fifth rule said that a cadence should not happen on a note that interfered with the melody. The sixth rule ironically eliminated repetition of a melodic idea in another voice. The seventh rule said that two cadences on the same note should not occur too close to one another. The eighth rule said that the piece needed to have variety and changes in rhythm, time, and imitations. Tinctoris also later went on to say that dissonances could be quitted by a skip of a third descending which was common practice with the other composers of his time such as Dufay and Ockeghem. Jeppesen points out that, “during the sixteenth century the rule concerning the stepwise treatment of dissonance became stricter.”
During all of this time most of the practices remained the same even with the addition of more voices. The rules still applied, but had to get more specific along the way. And with the addition of voices came more independence of the voices which reached a climax with the motet. The problem for many people with the motet is that the main idea was getting blurred. There were too many things happening at the same time and it was impossible to discern the most important idea. This gets back to the idea of “relative independence” mentioned earlier. As a result there was a shift back to the simplistic nature of earlier pieces. All four voices were still used, but the textures were simpler and consisted of less independence. This preference was known as the concept “la musica comuna” which probably just meant that the music was easy to understand.
Another significant development relating to counterpoint in the sixteenth century has to do with the role and mind of the composer. Around the time of the renaissance there was a shift which took place in the outlook of composers and their music. Up until this point composition was seen as a mere job. Most of the prominent composers that we have records of came out of the tradition of the church. The church needed music to use in the mass and it was the role of the composer to construct the music in the same way that an architect might construct the building. In fact, much of Gregorian chant music was based on the architecture of various cathedrals. Number and measurements were used to compose a piece. By following the common practices of that day it is actually possible to compose a piece of music for the early mass and have no idea how it sounds. It wasn’t until the dawn of the renaissance that composers first saw themselves as artists. A lot of the significant changes in that regard happened outside the context of the church. As an artist the composer had more freedom to break the rules in place as long as he could explain away his reason with some sort of artistic justification. This was very significant as it related to the use of dissonance. If a composer felt that the text required a more dissonant sonority on a given word he now had means to do so.
One such person who exemplifies this kind of attitude is Palestrina. Jeppesen mentions that Palestrina’s “attitude toward the text may have been the impelling force in the rise of the Palestrina style.” The music of Palestrina is strikingly beautiful and much closer to the sound of our modern day music from the common practice period. Grout described him the best when he wrote the following:
Palestrina has been called “the Prince of Music” and in his works the “absolute perfection” of church style. His sober, elegant music captured the essence of the Catholic response to the reformation in a polyphony of utter purity. Yet his music is also remarkably varied in its melodies, rhythms, textures and sonorities and acutely sensitive to the text, making it profoundly satisfying to hear.
Many scholars have analyzed his music and tried to figure out why it sounds the way it does. The best theory on the origin of his style comes from Hugo Riemann. Most of the music up until this point could be performed by any combination of vocalist or instrumentalists and it didn’t really matter who played what. Riemann suspects that Palestrina wrote his music with idioms intentionally impractical for voices and concludes therefore that Palestrina had specific instruments in mind while he was writing.
As with most of the Renaissance in general there was also a renewed interest in the past, and a desire to return to the roots of their ancestors, and in this case ancient Greece. Don Nicola Vicentino, a Venetian priest, published a collection of madrigals which he referred to as chromatic, built on the ancient scale forms of the Greeks. As dissonant as his music seemed to be he still followed the rule that no dissonance could last for more than half a measure. He said that “the half not as a dissonance is too prominent.” Vicentino also is the first person to write out the idea that we later recognize as an answer in a fugue. He described the rule by which the answer, which is simply a restatement of the theme, must occur a skip of a fourth above the first occurrence.
Many of the concepts used in counterpoint from the common practice period can be traced back to this time as well. These tools are most commonly known as the devices of counterpoint. One of the easiest ways to develop a piece of music which sounds cohesive all the way through is to have elements which reoccur in various forms throughout the piece. The most basic of these tools is imitation, which was mentioned before. Imitation was utilized already quite often at this point and really maxed out with the writing of cannons in which one voice is constantly imitating another voice throughout the whole piece. Composers of this time also needed ways to take a small amount of material and spin it out in various ways to get the maximum amount of content out of the smallest idea. This was especially true in the church’s mass settings due to the quantity of new music required all the time.
The next simplest tool is known as retrograde. With this tool you simply write out the theme backwards. The theme could also be flipped upside-down with inversion, or a combination of both called retrograde inversion. The duration of the idea could also be slowed in augmentation or sped up with diminution. All of these tools when combine became a quick and easy content generator for composers and are still commonly utilized today. Jeppesen made an interesting point when he wrote, “In the course of the sixteenth century, contrapuntal theory had attained so solid an organization that it was not to be cast aside casually; if necessary it could continue to exist for a time independent of practice.”
Every composer, who decides either by choice or by doing so to progress music to the nest level, builds on the concepts lain down by the composers before him. Rubbra said that, “It is perhaps the glory of Bach’s contrapuntal art that it achieves such a balance of the intuitional-improvisatory side of music-making and the ‘scientific’, built up by centuries of practice and subsequent analysis.” Bach is really considered to be the supreme embodiment of all counterpoint. As Rubbra points out, Bach finds ways to express his creativity and achieve a natural sound, yet all the while following every rule he studied until he had created something nearly perfect in every way. But ultimately Bach was not the sole source of counterpoint and the rules of music theory. As we have seen through this brief historical overview of counterpoint in music, it is apparent that each composer added on to the work or his predecessors. Much of counterpoint has also revolved around the whole idea of dissonance. When ever you have multiple notes moving in different directions you will have to confront the idea of dissonance. And perhaps the greatest challenge with musical dissonance is, pardon the pun, people’s own cognitive dissonance.
Dissonance is something that is not quite right. It’s a tension that stretches us to the point where we think it can’t be fixed, but then it gets resolved creating a marvelous consonance more satisfying than any other chord imaginable. From composer to composer over time counterpoint seems to allow for more and more dissonance to take place. The question for each composer then becomes, “how much?” But another great trial to overcome is that of the listener. People don’t like change, and when they recognize an already existing music as being complete and good, and then it is the role of the composer to show them that there is something more. The possibilities of music and dissonance through counterpoint are endless and we, as the listeners of today, have to be aware and open to the next great revolution of counterpoint and welcome it with open ears.
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Grout, Donald Jay. A History of Western Music. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1960.
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