Species Counterpoint breaks contrapuntal music into 5 easy to analyse parts, with the five species being as follows:. Some additional terms you may have covered when studying counterpoint include: Harmonic intervals and melodic intervals , consonance and dissonance , tritone , ligature and cambiata , similar motion , contrary motion and oblique motion.
While counterpoint has been in usage since the Middle Ages, Palestrina put it on the map in the Renaissance. The style gained even more popularity in the Baroque period, and is an era studied often when studying the technique. He worked in mathematical and melodic ways, and did not care for following the conventions of Species Counterpoint.
CompareWords Compare. What's the difference between counterpoint and harmony? Counterpoint Definition: n.
An opposite point n. The setting of note against note in harmony; the adding of one or more parts to a given canto fermo or melody n. It only takes a minute to sign up. Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search.
Aside from technical differentiation, how can you by ear differentiate these two concepts. Is it possible to judge something as harmony by ear, and determine that it was a counterpoint by theory? The basis of counterpoint point against point is melody. Harmony is evident in counterpoint which, I suppose, is what is causing the confusion.
A theory professor once told me that Harmony is a byproduct of the rules of counterpoint being used properly.
Counterpoint changed from renaissance to baroque in some significant ways. Renaissance counterpoint is often referred to as melodic counterpoint while Baroque is referred to as Harmonic counterpoint. Composers who used counterpoint renaissance period composers did not think about the harmony in terms of chords, our modern sense of harmony.
The melodic lines that were created using these counterpoint rules resulted in something that we can perceive as chords. However their focus was solely on melodies and the way they interacted. Baroque counterpoint is structurally based around chords but the focus is still on melodic interaction. One trick that is very commonly used in counterpoint is imitative counterpoint.
In this trick a melody is introduced in one voice. After the melody is completed, the same melody often beginning at the interval of a fifth above the original melody is introduced in a different voice while the first voice moves on to a secondary or counter-melody.
Listen for these types of thematic devices. The melodies will be very pronounced. Instead of hearing chords being sustained under a melodic line you will hear multiple melodies in multiple voices that come together to create a unique kind of harmony. I think the difference you would hear would be the difference in the direction and rhythm of the lines.
Counterpoint would fill in the melodic "gaps" rhythmically and harmonically. Basic harmony often lines up with the melody. Counterpoint frequently goes opposite the melody, thus its name.
Listen to some Baroque music, where counterpoint was used heavily Bach is great for this. Later periods of music still used it, but didn't rely on it so much as in the Baroque. Harmony refers only to the relative pitches of the different voices you hear sounding together in a nice way; it says nothing about the timing of the notes in the different voices. Counterpoint refers to different voices forming their own separate melodies: many of their notes are produced at different times and with different durations.
Counterpoint will in all cases that I've heard create harmony, but a lot of music with harmony only has a single voice with a melody, in which case there is no counterpoint. Polyphony is the extreme form of counterpoint where all voices sing separate melodies. In extreme cases, the melodies are actually completely different songs e. In feuers hitz and O rosa bella, from the Glogauer songbook , but even then, they are usually combined in such a way that the result is in harmony.
Of course, there are all kinds of mixtures: for instance, a canon, in which all voices have the same melody, only shifted in time. In the old days, when mr. Bach was doing his thing, harmony as we know it didn't really exsists in the same way. Ofcourse, multiple-sounding-notes are creating a harmony. But it wasn't a harmony like we hear now in pop and jazz etc Though our knowledge of music history is certainly far from complete, with many things unknown, it seems fairly clear that, as far as Western European music goes, melody came first, followed by counterpoint and finally, harmony.
Rhythm, of course, was always there--indeed, there may have been rhythm before anything else, but it was not written down. The way we encounter music in our own lives is usually quite different.
A lot of us start out by playing a few chords on guitar to accompany ourselves singing, or we start singing and then learn a few chords. In either case we encounter harmony as a series of strummed chords, which conceals its origin and fundamental nature. Historically how it came about was by composing additional music to go along with the chant of the church. This started to be written down early in the second millennium as it wasn't until the invention of the lines of the staff by Guido of Arezzo that notation became capable of notating exact pitches.
Here is what one of the earliest examples of counterpoint looked like:. There are two staves there, an upper one for a quicker moving melody, and a lower one, the original chant.
A heavy horizontal line divides them. Here is what this looks like in modern notation:. As you can see, how to notate rhythms accurately has not yet been discovered.
Here is his Viderunt Omnes performed by the Hilliard Ensemble with the score:. This is the history of music, as it was written down at least: first were the melodies of Gregorian Chant that were sung unaccompanied.
0コメント