18th Century Counterpoint Gem

[crimson]

I stumbled upon this site while searching for info on counterpoint: 18th Century Counterpoint

It's a small "web-book" about 18th Century Counterpoint (you would have never guessed). I must say that it seems to be one of the most clearly written and compact composition texts I've ever read. Besides counterpoint, it also covers canons, fugues, and binary form dance movements. I'm sure it's not an exhaustive reference but more than enough to get you started.

[stevel]

Originally Posted by crimson

I stumbled upon this site while searching for info on counterpoint: 18th Century Counterpoint

It's a small "web-book" about 18th Century Counterpoint (you would have never guessed). I must say that it seems to be one of the most clearly written and compact composition texts I've ever read. Besides counterpoint, it also covers canons, fugues, and binary form dance movements. I'm sure it's not an exhaustive reference but more than enough to get you started.

Absolutely - what a good resource - it's funny what you can find on the net these days!

One of the failings I usually see with books of this nature is that they don't talk about the forms of music, and the ways in which counterpoint was incorporated into those forms, or even more purely contrapuntal forms - which is actually more important than the species. I'm glad the author provides some examples or real pieces with formal considerations included.

While I'm here, I want to mention something about the Species approach. It has been taught for a long time, but there are many flaws with this approach (the main one being that is abstracts counterpoint from actual music making). Couple that with the fact that the contrapuntalists we know of - 18th and 16th century masters, didn't really learn by species. It wasn't until Fux in 1725-ish that the species approach began to get a foothold (Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven all studied Fux) and then ultimately became yet another 19th century (and into the 20th and 21st) behemoth that overshadowed some other, more important considerations.

For those of you so inclined, there are two great books, both by Robert Gauldin and both titled:
Practical approach to Xth Century Counterpoint - the X is 16th (Palestrina) and 18th (Bach) styles.

He addresses the issues with the Species approach, and, for 18th century style especially, he approaches music-making as the Bachs did - I think any student would find their results will sound "much more Baroque" using Gauldin's text than when using a Species-based approach like that of Fux (which tends to produce a wierd mixture of ancient-sounding with a classical period twist that actually has no precedents in music to my knowledge).

However, even though this site uses the Species approach, its incorporation of the formal aspects helps to round it out, so it's definitely worthwhile - to get you started as Crimson said.

Thanks for the link!

Steve