Counterpoint

Counterpoint is the art of writing two or more melodic lines that are independently musical but combine into coherent harmony. The word comes from the Latin punctus contra punctum — note against note. It is the foundation of every fugue, every Bach invention, every contrapuntal moment in a Beethoven sonata or a Brahms symphony. Anyone serious about composition or about reading complex scores should spend at least one stretch of months working through species counterpoint.

The training method that survived from the Renaissance into modern conservatoire practice is species counterpoint, codified by Johann Joseph Fux in his 1725 Gradus ad Parnassum. Fux divides the discipline into five species, each adding a new rhythmic complication. Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven all studied Fux; the method still works because it isolates rhythmic problems and forces the student to solve them one at a time.

First species writes one note in the counterpoint against each note of a given line (the cantus firmus). Both voices move in equal whole notes; the only variable is which note the counterpoint chooses against each cantus note.

The constraints are strict: only consonances are allowed (perfect fifth, perfect octave, major and minor third, major and minor sixth — the perfect fourth is treated as dissonant when it appears against the bass), and parallel fifths and octaves are forbidden.

Second species writes two notes in the counterpoint against each note of the cantus firmus. The first half-note must be consonant; the second can be consonant or a passing tone. A passing tone is a dissonance approached and left by step in the same direction; it bridges two consonances. Second species introduces dissonance under tightly controlled conditions, and it teaches the student that dissonance is not forbidden but earned.

Cantus:        C ─────  D ─────  E ─────
Counterpoint:  E   G    F   A    G   C
               ✓   ✓    p   ✓    ✓   ✓    (p = passing tone)

Third species writes four quarter notes against each cantus note. The first beat must be consonant; the second, third, and fourth beats can be consonant, passing tones, or neighbour tones (a step away from a consonance and immediately returning). The increased rhythmic density forces the student to think about beat hierarchy: which beats carry harmonic weight, and which decorate.

Third species also introduces the cambiata — a four-note ornamental figure (consonance, dissonance, leap of a third in the same direction, step back) that dates from late-medieval practice. The cambiata bends the rule against unprepared dissonance because the leap that follows redirects the line. Renaissance polyphony is full of cambiatas; recognising them is part of reading early scores fluently.

Fourth species writes one note against the cantus but shifts it by a half-bar so that the counterpoint note is held over the bar line. The note that begins as a consonance becomes a dissonance against the next cantus note, then resolves down by step to a fresh consonance. This three-step gesture — preparation, suspension, resolution — is the suspension figure, and it is the most important harmonic event in Renaissance and Baroque writing.

1. Preparation: the note enters as a consonance.
2. Suspension: the note is held; the cantus moves; what was consonant is now dissonant.
3. Resolution: the suspended note falls by step to the next consonance.

Fifth species combines the previous four. Whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, and suspensions all appear in the same line, used flexibly according to musical sense.

By the time a student reaches fifth species the rules of the previous four are second nature; the student is now writing real counterpoint, indistinguishable in fundamentals from a Bach two-part invention. Fifth species is also called florid counterpoint because the rhythmic surface is decorated rather than uniform.

After fifth species the student moves on to two-voice and three-voice free counterpoint, then to four- and five-voice writing, then to imitation, canon, and fugue. The species ladder ends; real composition begins. But the ear and the hand have been trained, and the rules have become reflexes — which is the whole point of the species method.

Throughout all five species the underlying goal is voice independence. Each voice should sound like a melody in its own right; each voice should rise and fall on its own logic; no voice should track another voice's motion in parallel for long. Contrary motion (one voice up, one voice down) and oblique motion (one voice still, one voice moving) are preferred over parallel motion (both voices moving the same direction by the same interval).

The classic prohibition is parallel fifths and parallel octaves. Two voices moving in parallel fifths or octaves momentarily fuse into a single thicker voice — the texture loses one of its lines. Bach scrutinised every chord change for hidden parallels and rewrote them; modern composers in the contrapuntal tradition still do.

Pop music and rock tolerate parallels freely (the power chord is a deliberate parallel fifth), but in any style aiming for the sound of independent voices, the prohibition still applies.

Even pianists who never compose benefit from species training. Bach's two-part inventions, three-part sinfonias, and Well-Tempered Clavier are all written from the perspective of independent voices; if you have not internalised counterpoint you cannot voice them properly.

The same applies to the slow movements of Mozart sonatas, the fugal sections of Beethoven late quartets, and any Brahms intermezzo with three or four voices in the texture. Counterpoint is not a museum exercise — it is the language those scores are written in.