Syllabus

MTHY214/514

Counterpoint!

Marc Lowenstein, Instructor [mlowen@calarts.edu, B238]

Megan DeJarnett, Graduate Assistant

https://sites.google.com/a/calarts.edu/counterpoint-mt-204

GOALS

This class will study different styles used in fashioning independent musical lines against one another. We will study Modal Counterpoint, Tonal Counterpoint, and music from the 20th century that either imitates those styles or is inspired by them. The goal is not to master these styles but rather to engage with them sufficiently to understand what the technical issues are and to be open to how those techniques can be used creatively to live a slightly more contrapuntal life. Musically speaking, of course

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HOMEWORK

The schedule below should give you an idea of the scope of the weekly assignments. Notice please how much work there is. A lot. A lot a lot. A really terrifying a lot. Sadly, (or happily! [yay!]) you must finish all the assignments with spirit and with attentiveness in order to pass. This is not out of too much of a sense of sadism. It is because the only way to understand this material is to keep pushing the notes around yourself until you feel them push back in interesting directions.

Each week I will try to demonstrate an example of what I am asking for in the homework assignment. Please understand that this makes it relatively impossible to decipher my cryptic instructions on the assignments if you don’t come to class.

And because of the rather, shall we say, extreme nature of the amount of work, the following corollaries apply:

I WILL NOT GIVE INCOMPLETES FOR THIS CLASS EXCEPT IN CASES OF EXTREME PERSONAL EMERGENCY

and

YOU MUST FINISH ALL THE ASSIGNMENTS WITH SPIRIT AND ATTENTIVENESS IN ORDER TO PASS

Also, it really, really helps to check in early and often with the material you are working with. It is a delicate kind of tragedy to be told after two weeks “Well, the invention you are working on is based on a motive that is . . . unfortunate . . .do start all over again. Again.” It is, however, no tragedy at all to hear that same thing a few hours after you email me a phone pic of any material you have.

Megan and I will do our best to help. You can schedule individual times to meet with Megan, and I have office hours which I will announce soon. Also as I mentioned above, you can email me phone pics of a few measures to ask if you are on the right track. Seriously. I try to respond to those emails as quickly as I can.

In general, it helps to write these long assignments as quickly as possible. It seems paradoxical when you are just learning the stylistic techniques, but it is the best way to get the kind of overview that contextualizes and therefore supports the absorption of those techniques. Really. Write quickly. And with joy.

Oh, also -- did I mention the keyboard assignments? They are elucidated below. Don’t worry about them, but, say, do start thinking about them now-ish?

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WEBSITE

All the assignments are here on the website. I might edit them slightly as we go, but they will be current as of the week before they are due and I will always print out copies for you when it is time to hand them out. Also, the links section of the website is a very good way to familiarize yourself with some of the music we are talking about -- do use it, especially if these styles of music are foreign to you. The interwebs have a few wonderfully kooky and obsessive folk who have put scores and recordings online sometimes in very usefully systematic ways. Sadly they battle the monsters of copyright, but I will try to keep the links current.

And, If you find any other links you think are important please do leave them in the comments section of the website.

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ASSESSMENT

Don’t worry about it. Which is to say,

If you finish every assignment with a spirit of fun and exploration you will earn a High Pass

If you finish every assignment you will earn a Pass

If you barely try on every assignment but squeak through and write something on each one you will earn a Low Pass

If you don’t try on every assignment you will get a NC

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SCHEDULE

Although I will almost certainly depart slightly from this outlined schedule, here is my intention. And please note -- this schedule deliberately has fewer weeks than are in the semester in order to allow us more time -- I’m just not sure where we will need that time yet. Probably at the end to make more time for the portfolio reviews?

UNIT ONE

MODAL COUNTERPOINT

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Week One Introduction Physics and Perception. Basic principles, rules, common practices. History of style from medieval period to the early Renaissance. Basic Species counterpoint (two and three part), its uses and limitations. Basic Clef reading.

Assignment: about 40-50 examples of Species counterpoint, some in C clefs. Some examples will be experimental in terms of upending traditional rules for the sake of understanding the aesthetic effects of the very concept of ‘rules’.

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Week Two Modal Imitative counterpoint. Possible permutations. Aesthetic values. Cadential Formulas. Basic modulations. Modulatory imitation versus ‘modal’ answers. Phrase length and extensions.

Assignment: About ten very brief examples of modal imitative counterpoint. About ten examples of longer phrases in imitative counterpoint. About three examples of multiple phrases linked together.

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Week Three Three and Four Part Modal Imitative counterpoint. Tyranny of the bass. Voicings of Cadential Formulae. In-class performances and analysis of William Byrd three voice motets. Text setting.

Assignment: Three different beginnings (at least fifteen measures long) of an at least three voice renaissance-style motet.)

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Week Four Motets: Chromaticism. A wide view of contrapuntal music from 1440 to 1600. The Politics of Polyphony. Differences between early and late renaissance. Venetian School and the rise of slower, clear harmonic moves. An overview of 5-12 part modal contrapuntal writing.

Assignment: A complete Renaissance-style, texted, imitative motet of about fifty measures based on the best of your beginnings from the previous week.

Unit One Keyboard Exam:

a) Be able to play any two voices and sing the third from one of the Byrd 3-voice motets. Be able to improvise modal counterpoint.

b) Be able to play excerpts from OUP’s Preparatory Excercises in Score Reading in various C clefs. Excerpts will be given out at the beginning of the semester.

UNIT TWO

TONAL COUNTERPOINT

Week Five Review of tonal progressions and sequences. Sequences as imitative counterpoint generators. Imitative counterpoint as a kind of reharmonization. Literal versus tonally changed repetition. Phrase length and extensions. Notes leapt to and away from as chord tones.

Assignment: About ten fragments of imitative sequences + cadences, modulatory and non-modulatory. About ten short tonal and literal answers to given themes and a demonstration of their harmonic potential.

Week Six Two part inventions. The nature of specific themes and how to discern what contrapuntal implications they might have.

Assignment: Three beginnings of different two-part inventions including opening statements, modulatory sequence as appropriate, cadence, modulation, and a continuing statement.

Week Seven Fugues. Three and four part tonal Counterpoint. Extended tricks, augmentation, melodic inversion as they interact with harmony. Introduction to WTC.

Assignment: Pick the best of your two-part inventions and continue. Write eight tonal fugue subjects. Write two continuations until you have a complete exposition.

Week Eight Counterpoint invertible at intervals other than the octave and how to plan for it. More fugues. Fugues as character pieces. Extreme chromaticism.

Assignment: Finish your two-part invention. Write sequential episodes for both of your fugue beginnings. Write a fugue subject that can be demonstrated to be invertible by 10th, 12th and/or 15th.

Week Nine Still more Fugues. In-class composition. Joke fugues and canons. The Goldberg Variations and the Musical Offering.

Assignment: Revise your two-part invention as needed or suggested by comments. Continue one of your fugues demonstrating what the ‘plot’ and ‘character’ of the fugue really is

Week Ten Fugues after Bach: Beethoven. Mozart, Brahms, and Fauré. Fugues as contrasting textural intensity. The cyclical historical rebellion against counterpoint.

Assignment: Complete your fugue. Write a three page paper contrasting any two fugues we have not talked about in class.

Unit Two Keyboard Exam: Be able to play any of Bach’s two-part invention in the original key and in a key of the instructor’s choosing. This can be done at whatever tempo you like as long as it is consistent.

UNIT THREE

TWENTIETH CENTURY COUNTERPOINT

Week Eleven Cellular counterpoint that leads to serial music. Basic Twelve-Tone theory understood as counterpoint in addition to harmony. Bartok and other complementary systems. Symmetrical systems.

Assignment: Write two short (fifteen to thirty measure) pieces that rely on two different complementary contrapuntal systems.

Week Twelve Stravinsky and neo-modal counterpoint. Micro-counterpoint. Differing temporal relationships. Ligeti, Carter. Minimalism vs. Complexity from a contrapuntal POV.

Assignment: Write two short contrapuntal pieces that rely on different late-twentieth century concepts.

Week Thirteen Counterpoint in Jazz. Counterpoint in Jazz? The concept of counterpoint in non-Western music. Review of final projects.

Assignment: Edit and be prepared to present either your Modal motet, two-part invention, fugue, or expanded version of you twentieth century piece.

Week Fourteen No classes, individual exit interview and portfolio review.

Assignment: Write a four (?) page paper examining the contrapuntal content of any piece by Schoenberg, Ives, Bartok or Ligeti that was not discussed in class.

Unit Three Keyboard Exam: Be able to play a given piano piece by Bartok.