Mus 232,233,420 • Class Reference Materials
[This reference page is constantly updated! • Last update: 4/18/99]
Mus 232,233,420 • Class Reference
Materials
[This reference page is constantly updated! • Last update:
4/18/99]
• "Music and the Rules"
• "Why Study Counterpoint"?
• "An Important Perspective for the Study of Harmony"
As a student you may have been told, "You have to know the rules before you
can break them."
What does this mean? What is a rule in music? How can you break it if it is a rule?
Do composers follow rules in writing music?
Every music library is filled with books containing great numbers of dos and don'ts–mostly
(it must seem to a student) the latter. On what authority can such directives
be issued? The fact that a well-known writer or musician has stated a rule does not
guarantee the validity of the statement.
We maintain that the only authority is the music itself. We learn by observing what
happens in pieces, then by generalizing about them. We hope our generalizations are
inclusive enough and consistent enough so that we do not have to study every piece
of music ever written before we can extrapolate the norms of compositional procedure.
For composers do not follow rules; the rules are abstractions of what composers have
already written.
Although these observations about how pieces work are called rules, they are actually
closer to instructions of a "how to do it" nature. The term theory is
often applied to this study; it consists, in fact, of a mixture of a little theory
and a lot of practice. Much of the time it is a practical investigation of how sounds
are organized into a coherent, artistic whole.
Rules fall into two categories. One category involves the basic operations that make
a piece of tonal music intelligible, that govern the relation to the tonic, that
shape phrases, sections, pieces. These are embodied in archetypes, which lie beneath
the surface of every piece. The other category consists of rules that grow out of
aesthetic choices. These choices express norms of melodic shape, the relation of
dissonance and consonance, independence of voices. Since the norms of various styles
may differ on some of these points, these rules may prove to be more relative than
absolute. In tenth-century music the 3rd is a dissonance; not too much later, it
is a consonance. The two lower voices in a Bach chorale will not move in parallel
octaves, but in a Haydn string quartet they may very well do just that. If you want
your piece to sound like Lasso or Bach, you should avoid parallel 5ths, but if you
want your music to sound like Debussy or Hindemith, parallel 5ths are a means to
that end.
If generalizations about a piece of music are accurate, what sense does it make to
break the rules? None. The problem stems from the formulation of rules that have
little to do with real music and that, at best, represent an attempt to keep beginning
students from getting involved too soon with problems that are beyond them. This
is part of the reason for the artifical distinction between harmony and counterpoint.
What we are attempting here is to face the problem squarely by setting forth the
basic principles of tonal coherence from the beginning, making no "rules"
that have to be broken later on. One of the fascinating aspects of tonality is that
the same principles work in the small detail and in the large view, in simple music
and in the most complex. If the rules embody these principles, there is no way to
break them. The statement "the exception proves the rule" is nonsense.
The exception disproves the rule.
Composers do not follow rules. Nor do composers rely on sheer inspiration. Their
minds are filled with ways of putting notes together, the norms of composition in
their day. They use those norms in the same way that we utilize the norms of today
in speaking and writing words. We think of what we want to say and we say it; the
resulting sentence has a subject, an object, a verb, at the least. Composers also
use their grammatical norms to convey their thoughts.
Finally, the fact that many rules derive from aesthetic choice makes us realize that
different musics may have different sets of rules. We are studying the music of Western
Europe and America since the Middle Ages. No less organized is the music of other
cultures, which we are just beginning to study in the rapidly growing discipline
of ethnomusicology. Anyone who has examined the art music of India knows that it
is highly codified. The patterns of Javanese gamelan music are precisely arranged.
The intricacies of African drum music bespeak an extraordinary degree of organization.
Each has its own rules, which define the style and make it possible to hand down
a living tradition from one generation to another.
For centuries music students have been trained in the techniques
of counterpoint. In a society that deeply respected tradition, that fact alone would
have carried great weight in persuading music teachers to continue teaching the subject.
But in today's world, mere force of habit is hardly a compelling reason for maintaining
an educational practice.
Any intelligent answer must begin by defining the term. But writers on music are
notoriously careless about terminololy. We hear about sixteenth-century counterpoint,
about Bach counterpoint, about harmonic counterpoint, about modal and tonal counterpoint.
We hear about counterpoint as a discipline or as a means of expression, as training
for composers or as irrelevant for composers but essential for theorists. Is there
a definition that will guide us?
In the middle of the sixteenth century a distinguished Italian musician, Gioseffe
Zarlino, wrote a treatise on music, Istituzioni armoniche (Venice, 1558),
considered a milestone in the development of musical thought. The third section of
the book, "Counterpoint" offers many insights into the musical practice
of the time. Zarlino finds the origin of the word in the Latin punctum contra
punctum, "a note against a note." More generally, he means line against
line. Yet that definition is not complete enough to cover even the exercises in Zarlino's
book, for nowhere does line move against line without regard for the sounds that
are heard simultaneously. On the contrary, Zarlino himself gives the most careful
attention to the matter of consonance and dissonance, by which the relationship between
lines is governed. A definition of counterpoint, then, must include both the
linear aspect and control of the simultaneities. It is the art of combining lines
in relation to each other.
Composers and theorists after Zarlino built on the foundations he had laid. Not everyone
agreed with all of his theories, but his approach to counterpoint was widely studied
and emulated. Meanwhile, the language of'music was changing radically. Only fifty
years after the first edition of Zarlino’s book, Monteverdi was talking about the
older style, the "first practice", as against the new style, the “second
practice." Before long, the invention (or rediscovery) of monody and the development
of figured bass, the concerted style, opera, and the many innovations of the Baroque
had made the music of Zarlino's time seem very old-fashioned. Yet Counterpoint
was taught as if nothing had changed since the death of Palestrina in 1594. In retrospect,
the reason is not hard to find. Although the style of secular and some sacred music
had indeed changed considerably, Music in the Catholic Church remained bound
to the great traditions of the Renaissance and the Counter-Reformation. Even composers
who wrote for the Protestant worship felt obliged to study the "learned style."
Composers who were busy writing operas and concertos still felt the need for training
in the old manner of writing, arid what was called counterpoint provided that training.
The classic formulation of the discipline saw the light of day in 1725, when Johann
Joseph Fux published his Gradus ad Parnasum. A skillful composer himself,
Fux organized the problems of combining lines in a systematic way, isolating the
various techniques the better to master them. Breaking the subject down into manageable
pieces had been attempted before, but Fux did it better. He put his exercises into
a logical sequence, starting with the simplest and moving systematically to the more
complex. As a result, counterpoint is everlastingly associated with his name. Identifying
the relationship between consonance and dissonance as the critical element in the
combination of lines and realizing that rhythm was closely bound up with dissonant
usages, Fux defined five types or species of counterpoint exercises. They are:
first species: note-against-note consonance;
second species: two notes against one, using Ps;
third species: four notes against one, using Ps and Ns,
fourth species: same as third species, plus using SUSs;
fifth species: florid counterpoint, using all rhythms and all dissonant usages.
In each exercise Fux has the student write a melody or melodies against a given melody,
the cantus firmus. The use of a given melody, in itself was hardly new. As
a compositional procedure, it dates back to the beginnings of Western polyphony.
Zarlino was only one of many who had prescribed such an exercise, using chant as
the given melody. But chant, no matter how beautiful, can pose many problems that
confound the issues. Fux's instinct for proceeding from the simple to the complex
led him to write short, clear melodies that are more appropriate for pedagogical
purposes than chant, although they can be criticized on both stylistic and structural
grounds.
By setting up specific exercises that organized the study of both pitch and rhythm,
Fux was able to write a treatise of enormous value to students of the art. Bringing
together teaching methods of proven usefulness, he presented them in a methodical
way. His Gradus is a self-instruction book; written, like many such books in the
past, in the form of a dialogue between teacher and student, it. is still very much
worth reading today.
For Fux, of course, the entire method was a means to a somewhat limited end. All
he intended to do was to show a systematic way of learning how to write like Palestrina.
One wonders how much of Palestrina's music Fux actually knew. The music of the Renaissance
was largely unknown until it was rediscovered in the late nineteenth century,
and whatever such music Fux heard, he heard through ears that were attuned to the
late Baroque and the emerging style galant.
It is only a hundred years since the rise of the discipline of musicology, which
has led to the discovery of so many buried treasures. Fresh publications of older
music and much valuable research have made it possible to study that music in a more
sympathetic way, which means that musicians have begun to make a serious effort to
hear older music in its own terms rather than as something that could be dismissed
as a "precursor." In the twentieth century the Danish scholar Knud Jeppesen
defined the language and practice of Palestrina in detail in his monumental book
The Style of Palestrina and the Dissonance (1927). Jeppesen was able to point
out just how far Fux had been mistaken on many stylistic matters, and to show that
the image of Palestrina's style that had been projected by Fux's 1725 book was wide
of the mark. Subsequently Jeppesen wrote a counterpoint book which did, in a scholarly
and thoughtful way, just what Fux had thought he was doing.
The remarkable thing, from our point of view, is that Fux actually accomplished something
quite different from what he intended. In many ways it was something far more important.
For in defining the species of counterpoint, In pinpointing the interrelationships
of consonance and dissonance, in making specific the ways in which rhythm interacts
with pitch structures, Fux articulated many of the basic factors that make tonal
music work. The reasons that Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms, and many others
found Fux so valuable had nothing to do with Palestrina, but had everything to do
with their own music. In trying to explain how to write like Palestrina, Fux managed
to explain instead some of the fundamental processes of musical motion. Therein lies
his importance for us. In one way Fux may be likened to Columbus, who sought India
and found the New World.
Most of what Fux formulated applies not only to the music of one composer to one
period, but to all tonal music. The processes exemplified by the species can be seen
at work not merely in the music of the sixteenth century, but in the music of the
fifteenth century as well, and the seventeenth, and Fux's own eighteenth, and up
to and including tonal music written today. What, then, is sixteenth-century counterpoint?
It seems to mean the emulation of the personal style characteristics of one composer.
But unless we are to study each great composer separately, it is essential that we
define a counterpoint for all centuries. That will demonstrate what all composers
have in common-which is to say that it will define the norms of tonal music. Without
a clear codification of what has been the normative procedure, the study of music
gets bogged down in a quagmire of details, devoid of underlying conceptual basis.
With the aid of such a formulation, however, it becomes possible to approach any
new piece of music in a systematic way; with specific tools and skills, one can both
understand what gives the piece coherence and unity and relate it to other pieces.
The theorist who first saw the possibility of applying Fux's ideas on a broader scale
was the Viennese Heinrich Schenker (1868-1935). A practical musician as well as a
highly original thinker, Schenker assimilated the species concept into his own comprehensive
theory about the structure of tonal music. As you have observed in one piece after
another, beneath even the most elaborate musical surface the listener may project
a framework, the tonal structure, which can be expressed as note-against-note consonance
or something close to it. The structural framework is revealed by making a synopsis
of the pitches, emphasizing the importance of the bass and soprano (because the music
does), and using the process of reduction, one of Schenker's many contributions.
That reductive procedure resembles nothing so much as the species, but in reverse
order. The composer synthesizes while the theorist analyzes. Schenker applied the
concept of structural levels to music, and also demonstrated how each level was elaborated–prolonged,
as he called it–into the next. Schenker's work has been carried on by Felix Salzer,
among others, who has successfully applied the concept of directed motion to music
of both earlier and later epochs than Schenker. Salzer's Structural Hearing (1952)
is an excellent exposition of Schenker’s ideas in English.
Counterpoint, then, is the art of combining lines in relation to one another. This
relation is managed by the interaction of consonance and dissonance. The lines generate
intervals that are heard simultaneously. These intervals make up the chords that
are one aspect of the vocabulary of tonal music. Most chords in a piece are contrapuntal
chords, whether the piece is a chorale or a fugue. The great difference between a
chorale and a fugue is in the use of musical space–which is to say texture. But to
call one "homophonic" and the other "contrapuntal" is to miss
the point that they are both the product of lines moving through time. Our definition
of counterpoint, taking a broad view, includes most of what is taught in courses
called "Harmony." We maintain that to make sense, a pedagogical approach
should start with musical motion, not with isolated moments frozen for purposes of
labeling.
For music exists in time. Lines, melodies, rhythms, even chord progressions move
in the temporal dimension, not on paper. A systematic and musically valid method
of studying the way music moves through time is precisely what we have called counterpoint.
The application here is broader in scope than traditional counterpoint, even though
it is firmly rooted in that tradition. That counterpoint must be dry and meaningless
is not an inevitability; it is simply a bad habit. If counterpoint is used to study
musical motion, both broad and detailed, it becomes a two-edged tool. For it is both
a key element in the analysis of music and also the basis for acquiring the skills
of tonal composition. As such, it is essential to every person who is seriously interested
in studying the art of music.
One would suppose that, by now, the study of tonal harmony would be passè, After
all, traditional harmonic tonality, with its wide, attendant vocabulary of chords,
has become more diffused and of a broader scope through the compositions of the impressionists
of the late nineteenth century and the atonalists of the early twentieth century.
The impressionists-Debussy in particular-created an expression of the conception
of tonality through the use of non-tertian chords and nonfunctional streams of chords,
as well as by the expansion of tonal frontiers. By the end of the first decade of
the twentieth century, Arnold Schonberg had shown in works such as Pierrot Lunaire
that expressive music could indeed be created without resorting to either traditional
tonality or tertian harmony. The dodecaphonic, or twelve-tone, system was designed
to effectively negate any lingering influences of traditional harmonic practices.
This system, as employed by members of the second Viennese School (Webern and Berg,
in addition to Schonberg), as well as by countless others during the succeeding decades,
led to a large body of music, including many highly expressive works.
Harmonic music, however, is still with us. Far from being dead, it is alive and well.
Most of the music heard through mass media, and practically all commercial music,
is based on traditional harmonic practices'. This is true, also, of music performed
in churches and studied in schools. Even concert and recital programs reveal a stubborn
adherence to the standard repertoire, with the inclusion of only an occasional nontonal
work. There is, of course, the all-too-rare program devoted exclusively to advanced
music. Unfortunately, such programs have little impact, considering the overwhelming
amount of more traditional music heard.
What accounts for the persistence of traditional music? Reasons can only be stated
as speculation. A few follow:
1. There are those who would point to the "natural" basis of harmonic music.
Because the natural harmonic series is a phenomenon of nature, the generation of
chords by thirds and the relation of roots to the tonic according to precepts derived
from the series can be seen not only as being ordained by nature, but also as possessing
special moral sanction.
2. Perhaps because most people in our society, from birth, have heard little other
than harmonic music, preference is given to the familiar; choice is made on the basis
of conditioning, which produces an inertia of values.
3. Music in which tones bear relatively simple acoustical relations to one another
is easier both to sing and to apprehend. Much folk music, for example, displays preference
for limited range and relatively small intervals, as well as emphasis on the perfect
fourth and fifth-intervals which have special tonal significance.
4. It is apparent that the expressive resources of tonal music have not been exhausted.
The rapidly changing styles of commercial music demonstrate that fresh draughts of
musical expression still remain to be drawn from the well of harmonic resources.
Rationale aside, harmonic music clearly constitutes the bulk of what is heard by
our society at large. It also dominates the music studied and performed by students
in our schools of music. These realities justify the continued study of tonal harmony.
And the time is not yet in sight when this study will be without meaning and thus
disappear from the standard music curriculum.
The two basic parameters of music are temporaI and sonic (time and sound).
With respect to the sonic parameter, two principal methods of organization have evolved
in Western music: counterpoint (linear) and harmony (chordal). The technique of counterpoint
developed much earlier than the concept of harmony as an independent musical principle.
From about the beginning of the tenth century to nearly 1 600, the chief organizing
principles were related to counterpoint. But from the beginning, the effect of voices
sounding together was recognized as an important factor. This is evidenced by the
changing preferences for intervals during the course of musical evolution.
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