Introduction

My first musical piece (Suite for Virtual Pipe Organ, Op. 1) is based upon principles of twelve-tone technique and counterpoint. As for twelve-tone technique (also known as dodecaphony), I will discuss it in a later post. Now, I am going to review the history of contrapuntal music. In this article, words “contrapuntal” and “polyphonic” are used interchangeably, although some musicologists might say their meanings slightly differ. And let me highlight that this text does not claim to be comprehensive and unbiased. After all, I am not a music historian, but an amateur composer. So, the main goal is to provide one of the clues to understanding my work.

Starting point

Polyphonic music has existed among different nations and in different times. However, let us focus only on Europe and track polyphony development from the 9th–12th centuries. From that period, both religious pieces (in particular, Gregorian chants) and secular works (say, the love songs by troubadours and trouvères) have survived. Besides the music itself, there are extant musicological treatises from those days: for instance, Micrologus by Guido of Arezzo (~990 – ~1050).

The music of those times has the following properties:

  • modality,
  • monophony.

Let us discuss them one by one. Although it may sound tautological, modal music is music that is organized around mode. The scale of each mode includes 7 out of the 12 pitches in the octave. Intervals between them are distributed unevenly — either tone or semitone is between adjacent pitches from a scale. Because of that, some pitches are perceived as stable, whereas the others are perceived as unstable. In modal music, development of melody depends on gravitation of unstable pitches to stable ones. This is the characteristic property of modal music.

Even so the scale of Ionian mode is the same as that of natural major and the scale of Aeolian mode is the same as that of natural minor, similarities to tonal music are occasional. The following properties, innate to tonal music, are absent:

  • gravitation to tonic which plays the role of universal center (only nearby unstable pitches are attracted by the first scale degree in modal music),
  • the need to clarify current tonality (e.g., ending the melody on the tonic),
  • possibility to support melody with chords which make it more comprehensible.

As for monophony, it looks like the things are simpler — there is only one voice. Actually, not at all — there is only one independent voice. In particular, a male choir and a female choir could sing the same melody simultaneously and in the same rhythm, but with an octave interval. Every other consonant interval could be used instead of the octave as well, but, as a rule, at the very beginning and at the very end the interval should be equal to the octave. One of the voices does not change its pitch at first, so that the chosen interval occurs instead of the octave, and at the end also stops changing pitch, so that the last interval becomes the octave again. Moreover, at least since the 9th century there were so-called free organums in which the second voice, repeating the rhythm of the main voice, could form changing intervals. However, the second voice did not have its own full-fledged dynamics, and hence there was only one independent voice.

If one wants to listen to monophonic chants, it is suggested to start with works by Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179).

Polyphony in the Midlde Ages

Arguably, the first truly polyphonic music is attributed to Leonin (~1135–1201). In his works, there are two voices, but three and even four voices can be found in the works of his student Perotin (~1160 – ~1230). Since both Leonin and Perotin were clergymen who served at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, they and their anonymous colleagues are called the Notre-Dame school of polyphony.

Most of the pieces by Leonin and Perotin are created by adding new voices to already existing Gregorian chants. The rhythm of these new voices is often regularized. For instance, like in the metrical foot named dactyl, there may be one long note followed by two short notes and this combination of durations is repeated several times. In the context of vocal music, this technique allows replacing words with vowels and, thus, freeing the second voice from singing the text of the first voice. This is one of the earliest solutions to the problem of introducing additional voices given a single text.

In the 13th century, another way to combine multiple voices with a single text was found. It is a musical form that has been called canon since the 16th century. There, each new voice starts after some time since the start of the previous voice and then reproduces the same melody precisely up to a shift in pitch. From rigorous point of view, there is only one independent voice, but, nevertheless, it is a true polyphony, because the durations of notes that were in the original melody some time ago and are now being played by the imitating voice, may differ significantly from the current durations of the main melody. Due to this, the voices sound as if they were independent, and, as a side bonus, the piece itself seems more integrated. The price for this is an increased difficulty of writing a melody, because now harmonic considerations regarding its shifted copies must be taken into account.

If there are multiple voices, why should a piece be restricted to have a single text? The musical form where each voice has its own text is called motet. The earliest motets date back to Notre-Dame school, but later secular motets also became widespread. It might be odd, but it is not mandatory for the texts to be semantically connected. Even languages can be different — for example, one voice sings sacred text in Latin, meanwhile the other voice sings secular text in local language. The only requirement is to achieve overall musical euphony.

On the one hand, composers were interested in polyphony development, because adding new voices opened up harmonic dimension. On the other hand, Church and public opinion were not always on the side of polyphony. For example, John of Salisbury (~1110–1180) wrote that unlimited use of polyphony enervates the souls of the hearers and excites earthly passions.

Out of numerous medieval composers, let us mention Philippe de Vitry (1291–1361) and Guillaume de Machaut (1300–1377).

Renaissance and strict counterpoint

During the Renaissance, the rules of contrapuntal music writing took their final form. These rules can be divided into three groups:

  • melodic (regulate dynamics of a separate voice),
  • harmonic (regulate simultaneously sounding pitches from all voices),
  • rhythmic.

To name a few of melodic rules, there are:

  • In order to have unity, pitch must change smoothly, but, to promote diversity, occasional skips are required.
  • Stepwise move in the opposite direction is needed after each large enough skip, because it relaxes tension associated with the skip.
  • Melodic intervals that are hard to sing, are prohibited (not applicable to instrumental music).
  • Moving by more than five scale degrees without any changes in direction is prohibited, because it sounds too monotonous.
  • Melody must consist of arc-shaped segments where tension rises as the melody gets closer to the climax point and dissipates after it is passed.

As for the rules of harmony, examples are as follows:

  • Since perfect consonances sound harmonically mellow, two or more perfect consonances in a row should be avoided.
  • Direct motion to perfect consonances is prohibited, because it dilutes individuality of melodic lines.
  • Dissonances are prohibited on strong beats unless one of the notes is tied over bar.
  • Each dissonance must be properly prepared and resolved (for example, tied over bar note must be moved one scale degree down after syncopated dissonance).

In general, there is only one rhythmic rule — misalignments between rhythm and meter are not allowed. This means that a listener must be able to unambiguously define the meter from the rhythm. This, in turn, means that splitting a measure into note spans must be a set of binary splits with the span of the left part being greater than or equal to that of the right part.

You can read more about the rules of strict counterpoint in Gradus ad Parnassum (1725) by Fux or in Convertible Counterpoint in the Strict Style (1909) by Taneyev. However, it is appropriate to highlight that these rules prescribe how to write a polyphonic fragment of no more than 20 measures in length. But how are the longer pieces written? They are compiled from such fragments. Coherence between adjacent fragments is achieved with these techniques:

  • ostinato imitation — exact repetition of the same melody by a voice (in particular, repetitions of cantus firmus), whereas other voices may have new melodies,
  • stretto imitation — exact repetition of voice’s part by another voice before the original voice finishes it and transition of out-of-room imitated notes to the next fragment,
  • imitation with variation — one of the above options, but with alterations in imitating voice such as melody inversion, retrograde inversion, or changes in rhythm,
  • compound counterpoint — a group of voices is repeated with some modifications such that no rules are violated by the modified copy (unlike the previous options, multiple voices are repeated and not just one).

Compound counterpoint can be classified by applied modifications:

  • invertible counterpoint — some voices might be inverted and/or swapped with each other,
  • vertically convertible counterpoint — a pair of voices is repeated with the same shift added to all intervals between them,
  • horizontally convertible counterpoint — a pair of voices is repeated with delay in time between them.

Some composers of the early Renaissance are:

  • Guillaume Du Fay (1397–1474),
  • Johannes Ockeghem (1425–1497),
  • Josquin des Prez (1450–1521).

Further, strict counterpoint reached its highest peak in the works of the below composers:

  • Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525–1594),
  • Orlando di Lasso (1532–1594),
  • William Byrd (1543–1623),
  • Tomas Luis de Victoria (1548–1611).

Baroque and free counterpoint

At the end of the 16th century and at the beginning of the 17th century, on the one hand, the theater underwent significant development (say, Shakespeare and Lope de Vega lived at that time), and, on the other hand, the first operas were created. In contrast to sacred songs performed in obscure to most of the parishioners Latin, torrent of multiple texts in opera is not appropriate. This is one of the reasons why the upper voice became more prominent and pushed other voices to background. Particular attention to the upper voice allowed writing more expressive melodies for it, since development of other voices could be sacrificed for upper voice subtleties. However, it was not straight division into melody and accompaniment, this approach was invented later.

Meantime, tonality started to emerge out of cadential formulas (final movements creating stability and resolution). Both of these factors led to decrease in strictness of contrapuntal rules. In free counterpoint, the rules are rather guidelines and violations are allowed, especially if they are caused by tonal considerations.

By the late Baroque, tonality also became a structuring force. More complex musical forms arose due to it. For example, canon has evolved into a fugue. Similarly to canon, fugue is based on an imitation of the same melody by all voices. However, canon has only local coherence provided by stretto imitation, whereas connections between distant fragments may be absent. On the contrary, fugue has piece-level outline and parts can be separated by free from imitation intermediate episodes and codettas. All of this is made possible by modulations between keys. A new key with the same thematic material is a way to both establishing clear boundaries between parts and preserving unity of the whole piece.

A list of some Baroque composers might include:

  • Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643),
  • Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583–1643),
  • Dieterich Buxtehude (1637–1707),
  • Johann Pachelbel (1653–1706),
  • Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741),
  • Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750),
  • George Frideric Handel (1685–1759).

When Classical period superseded Baroque, contrapunctal rules were replaced with principles of tonality which are formulated in terms of chords rather than intervals. Polyphony was replaced with homophony, i.e., the texture where the rhythm of the main voice is more or less reproduced by other voices. Although contrapuntal elements continued to exist in the music of Classicism and Romanticism, a new era of polyphony development started only in the 20th century when composers decided to go beyond tonality.