A couple of points I wanted to add: Taneev summarizes all of strict counterpoint except for the rules of melody. 5:12 Peter Schubert describes the rules of counterpoint in terms of "hard" and "soft" rules, and I like this a lot. All these rules probably exist somewhere on a sliding scale from hard to soft, and where a particular rule exists on this scale can be discovered based on how composers treat it as the number of voices increases and observing every rule becomes less and less possible. 18:29 I should have said "2-1" not "2-3" 20:14 What follows are not so much "smaller rules" as points of clarification. 22:43 I forgot to mention that the suspended D in the top voice forms a 7-6 suspension with the middle voice as well as a 4-3 suspension with the lowest voice. A link to the English translation from 1962 by Ackley Brower from Google Books: www.google.com/books/edition/Convertible_Counterpoint/KtCcGzmw5hYC?hl=en&gbpv=0
You mentioned the book's reputation of being difficult. As Taneyev writes in the Preface, "if one uses this book as a teaching handbook, one must make sure to understand what is really important to the student and what is further examination of the topic". "if one uses this book as a teaching handbook" - this means it ain't mainly a teaching handbook, but a treatise. Therefore, one must make an effort to contextualize his reading or teaching, otherwise it will turn up chaotic. I think that's a reason why it's considered to be difficult and has a limited reputation among english-speaking theorists. According to various sources, Taneyev's own teaching in his classes at the Moscow Conservatory used to be well-organized and properly contextualized in a way that fascinated all the students, even the ones with little or no interest in music theory. So nice that you made this introductory video, and I'm so glad to hear that it's gonna be a part of a series.
For sure, a recitation of the rules of strict counterpoint can be mind boggling and an attempt to memorize them overwhelming. But I never personally thought of them as a collection of independent rules. Rather, they are helpful descriptions of what does and does not work if one is trying to write music that achieves independence of multiple melodic lines. Hence, rules about parallelism (whether of perfect or imperfect intervals) which result in the ear hearing two voices as one with doublings or rules about how to approach and leave open sounding perfect intervals versus other consonances. Anyway, so glad to have stumbled across this video. A flashback of 50 years to when I spent several years intensively studying species counterpoint. I can't think of much from my college years that was more useful and productive than that. Thanks!
These videos are important to reviving the standards of conservatories from the 19th-20th centuries. Theres currently too much emphasis on teaching people to perform canonical music, but not enough to help them create art that can be included to said canon.
this is fascinating! never heard the contrapuntal rules explained so precisely and efficiently (both by taneev and you)! thank you so much for this resource and I can't wait for the next part.
I’m just about to watch the video but first I’d like to say that it is Great that you are making videos again! Your content is excellent and extremely helpful.
"No one laughed, but I think that is because I had not instituted the proper permission structure." Amazing. Great video, my students will benefit tremendously from your channel, I'm very happy to have stumbled upon you.
almost every rule of counterpoint has exceptions. These rules are designed just to develop sensitivity to all the important aspects of polyphony. And then you can forget them and follow your ear.
A few people can look up at the end of a mathematics lecture and follow a board full of algebraic-type equations. Most can't. This is how I've always felt about strict counterpoint.( But I love the musical outcomes.) Thick individuals like me so, so, so need people like you. Many thanks
Thank you for providing an explication of this important work. My counterpoint teacher, Hugo Norden, was a friend of translator Ackley Bower, who died with the manuscript had seen its way through the publication process. Dr. Norden saw it through to completion,
I did not know that! I have read three of Dr. Norden's books and I admire them. Very concise, no matter how complex the subject matter. His book on canon in particular is one of the very few American scholarly works from that time period that is clearly Taneev inspired. Thank you for your comment!
Woah, you studied under Norden? I didn't know about his history with Ackley Bower, that's such a cool bit of information. So basically we all owe Norden a debt for even being able to read an English translation of Moveable Counterpoint?
@@JacobGran Right? I felt the same reading the counterpoint and fugue books: really concise and practically focused. The canon one's great because it covers basically all the canon types Taneyev never treats in DoC, so they really complement each other.
@@JacobGran I regret that I lost my notebooks from Norden's classes. His unpublished ideas open up all sorts of possibilities for things no one else even talks about
Christmas has come early! You are my favorite UA-camr by a wide margin, and Taneyev's approach to counterpoint has always interested me but reading his book seemed too intimidating.
13:29 Jeppesen says that the third crotchet dissonance out of four is a very special figure, its rules being 1) the four crotchets must be descending (accented dissonances always resolve downward), but uniquely 2) the fifth note must be a rising step, to complete a certain implied melodic idiom. He also says that this dissonance accompanies a cadence "99% of the time".
About voice crossing to avoid violations of parallel prohibitions. I often hear resistance to rules or hear flouting of them in the claim that you can break them after mastering them. I think these attitudes miss the point that rules are based on how music sounds. Rules are tools of prediction; do this and it will sound like this. Rules are not merit badges. They don’t confer virtue because you comply with them, they tell you what to expect about how your music will sound. If your mistake sounds like this when you do it the first time, it sounds the same on the hundredth time whether or not you “mastered” the rule by otherwise producing a thousand compliant settings. I said that to set up an observation about the synth playback of the voice crossing examples. Since we don’t hear actual linear events of voice motion, these examples still sound like parallelisms. The voice crossing isn’t apparent and the twinge of parallels is still evident. It doesn’t matter for the example! I only wish for better cultivation of listening acuity. It disappoints me when I observe working composers and arrangers fail to internalize the point that mastery of craft helps them sound better and don’t discern how neglecting predictors of unpleasant effects undermines the quality of their work.
I studied Palestrina counterpoint at university, and it must have stuck because it seemed the logical idiom to compose a 12-voice section of a piece. Soon after I decided to adopt it for all of my compositions. I like it because it knows what it is consonance and what is dissonance, and has the most coherent way to move between them. This video is yet another example of things I tortuously worked out on my own that were comprehensively dealt with in the 19th century, haha.
Matthew Marvuglio, who was dean of performance at Berklee, also studied with Norden. He called the idea of two-voice counterpoint being central as the principle diaphony.
I discovered Taneyev in 2021 and have dedicated a great deal of time to studying his two books (the one on 'Moveable Counterpoint', and the other on the 'Doctrine of Canon'). Bellermann's Rule was a real revelation to me when I first heard Taneyev articulate it! Thank you for commencing this series and exposing people to "one of the greatest musical treatises ever written'" (according to Koussevitsky in his introduction to 'Moveable Counterpoint'). Will you be covering any of his canonic theories in your summer series? His insights on infinite/perpetual canon are invaluable, and he proves that moveable counterpoint is a requirement of many forms of canon in general.
The four videos I have planned just cover the basics of the first book (except for duplicating counterpoint). Part of the motivation here was my understanding just how inadequate my earlier videos had been on the topic of canon and imitative counterpoint as I read through Taneev the last two years, but I can't re-teach that stuff without laying the groundwork first.
@@JacobGran That's understandable. To be fair, your earlier videos do cover what's expected in the 'standard' curriculum (and even my own conservatory education didn't require 10th or 12th inversion!) When I discovered Taneyev, I thought "how is this incredible work so obscure? It covers every vertical shifting possibility, AND horizontal shifting, and it lays out new terminology such as direct shift and variable interval; how has this not been incorporated into the music curriculum?" 'Inadequacy' definitely describes the way I felt, not to your videos, which I love, but towards the education I had received up to then. I have taken a hiatus from composing for the last two years to undertake this counterpoint self-study, but I do intend to return in the near future, with a clearer sense of line and motivic transformation.
@@PiersHudsonComposer Hard agree, it's a criminally underappreciated work in the anglosphere. There's been a big uptick in interest in the last couple of years though: Julian Hook and Dmitri Tymockzko's most recent books both cited Taneyev, and they're fairly big names in the more maths-y side of the music theory world. Fingers crossed we're about to see a Taneyev Renaissance (pun intended) 🤞
Forgive me for going on a nerd rant after watching only 45 seconds of your video but it spurred an impulse in me to comment. I love music theory, and learning how counterpoint was fundamental to the historical development of composition was a big revelation to me at the time, particularly because of how most contemporary musicians think in terms of chord progression in isolation. What I'm trying to say is that I'm the kind of person who likes to sit and think about how music works. I recently started to imagine intervals as having a kind of "potential energy", or something similar to how in highschool chemistry you learn about the push and pull of electrons due to the atoms trying to achieve a stable set of valence electrons. This isn't a perfect metaphor, but I hope the point still comes across. Each interval has its own sense of inertia which creates a feeling of anticipation that can either be delayed, reconciled, or subverted. I believe there is a similar principle to rhythm and phrasing in relation to the subdivision of each measure. Anyway, let me abandon this diatribe before I ramble incoherently, even more so than I already have.
Your comment is one of the MOST COHERENT things I have ever heard.! ! ! Yes, melodies suggest where they are going, as they fly, and so does each chord progression or combination have "inertia",.. but also "aspirations", which are sort of like the arc of a narrative, they know where they want to go, to reach a successful resolution, and they use their experience (of where they have been) to inform their flight. So much more interesting and inspiring than rules about what NOT to do ! And just like in chemistry, it really is like a mathematical thing. Like consider the valence of an element to figure out what it would like to combine with,... like if it has extra valence electrons it wants to join with something with a deficit of electrons in the outer shell. Maybe a noble gas is like the tonic of the key ( 1 chord ) and an oxidizing agent is like a five-seventh chord, and a two chord is kinda like a metal that seeks out an oxidizing agent ! Maybe a six chord is sorta like something that can have a covalent bond, it's valence changes with context ! That's fun to think about !
Great video. In my experience the avoidance of contrary motion to its compound concern whether they occur on strong or weak beats (avoid consecutive strong).
Hi Dr. Gran. I infer that the "Bass" as in special rules for the Bass (2:55) refers to the lowest voice of all non-resting parts, but in one of your previous videos, you mentioned that if the real Bass is stationary on any beat, then the lowest moving voice becomes the effective Bass for all moving voices. Do the two views come from different theories? Thank you very much.
Yes, you are right. I tried to be explicit as often as possible when writing the script, but sometimes I use the word "bass" to refer not to the literal bass voice but the lowest present voice. In the video on pedal points, I mentioned that Ebenezer Prout considered the effective bass to be the lowest *moving* voice (usually the tenor) rather than the lowest *sounding* voice. So even a sustained bass note, as in an organ pedal point, Prout would consider no longer the effective bass for judging the consonance of the counterpoint of the upper voices. But that is a very restrictive view that I have not encountered in other authors. Taneev had read Prout, and he did not mention this rule, so it is possible he simply did not agree. An example of perfectly good voice leading in the strict style that breaks with Prout's formulation would be a 5/4 suspension chord resolving to a 6/3 over a stationary bass, where the upper voices move in contrary motion to a fourth. Personally, I am a little torn. If this progression is sung or played on sustaining instruments, then the fourth sounds perfectly well-supported. But on a piano, for instance, the fourth tends to stick out unless the bass is rearticulated due to the lack of sustain (and also in this case the change of harmonic root).
25:50 Which dissonance is incorrectly treated? The D in the bass against the E in the middle voice? For my ear it sounds very nice actually. Sometimes the rules seem to be overly strict. Parallel fifths and octaves really stick out but other things not so much.
The D lands on a strong beat as a dissonance against the E. It can't even be construed as an accented passing tone, since it immediately leaps instead of moving in the same direction by step. Of course, these things are fair game in a free composition context, but learning the strict style helps to cultivate a sense of discretion on one's creative choices.
The example at 26:03 looks and sounds correct in my opinion... the G in the bass is a properly handled dissonance and the G in the soprano is consonant with all voices. Nice paper on canons against a cantus firmus, by the way, Jacob!
Thank you; I am going to make a video soon teaching the method in that paper. How on earth did you improvise those canons against Ave Maris Stella on your channel?! It is extremely impressive. Did you try to use the historical method, or some other way?
@@JacobGran Thank you! I independently came up with the method for my master's thesis (I can send it to you if you'd like), but after reading the historical context provided in your paper, I see I'm not the first! Basically, I memorize which "pivot tones" the canon leader can go to for every cantus firmus movement. For instance, if a bass cantus firmus goes from F to G against an octave canon, the leader needs to have the D above F so that the follower has the D above G. This works because D is consonant above F and G simultaneously
Great video on a historically under-appreciated contrapuntalist! Quick question: At around 18:29 where you said: "More specifically though, it must also not form a 2-3 or 7-8 suspension in any other combination" did you mean to say "2-1" instead of "2-3"? (If I understand correctly, the problem with the 2nd example is the D-C stepwise motion in the upper voice, forming a 2-1 suspension in the upper two voices.)
Oh my god he's finally doing it 🥳I hope this introduces many new people to Taneyev's theories. By the way, at ua-cam.com/video/MAq6tgEH91U/v-deo.html this is one of the main things I think Taneyev actually get's wrong. The idea is that suspensions into a note of resolution already sounding in another voice are "unsatisfying", with a special exception made for 9-8 suspensions against the bass. This is the also the view given by Schenker, Salzer, Aldwell, Schachter and many other modern authors. The problem is it's ahistorical and wrong. 9-8s occur in upper voice pairs all the time, as do 7-8 bass suspensions and even 2-1 suspensions into unisons. You can find a 9-8 suspension between upper voices in the first few measures of Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli lol. The OG Renaissance take is that suspensions into perfect consonances are bad (so 2-1, 4-5, 7-8, 9-8 etc.), but can be rendered tolerable if another voice is present to provide imperfect consonance with the resolution of the suspended voice. This does actually conform to usage in repertoire much more imo. Unfortunately it's much more awkward to account for in shifting combinations. It's be much more *convenient* if Taneyev were correct 😅
In which movement and in which bars do those 9-8s happen in the Missa Papae Marcelli? I haven't noticed these upper 9-8s myself, but the ear can play tricks.
@@PiersHudsonComposer Measures 7-9 of the Kyrie, check the canto and tenor, you'll see it. And yep, it's precisely because the ear can play tricks (especially in dense 6-voice textures like this) that it's easy to sell the idea that something was normative, since it's hard to verify (unless it's a *profoundly* common event). 6 voices = 15 voice pairs to check through, and we're also trained to focus on the bass pairs the most. The eyes are harder to fool.
Fascinating; I did not know this Papae Marcelli example. But I have to give some push back before I am convinced. Are these suspensions really common? 9-8 with the bass must outnumber the other kinds by a wide margin. It strikes me as going too far to say that the rule is invalid because there are counter examples, just as hidden fifths are censured by nearly every textbook (historical and modern) despite occurring all over the place. In that Palestrina example, it seems to me the tenor could not take any other note without breaking an even harder rule.
@@JacobGran that's a fair ask, and I can't exactly comment on its statistical prevalence, but I'd come from the other side: since this rule is, as far as I've been able to ascertain, a much more recent invention, and since actual Renaissance treatises already present a rule which conforms well to what you will encounter in the repertoire, why should we take this one to have any standing? With the Taneyev/Schenker rule you are starting from a notion that it's specifically the note of resolution sounding in another voice that's undesirable, and then introducing arbitrary *exceptions* for 9-8s against the bass, and 7-8s into root position triads, and often specific additional restrictions that 4-5 and 9-8 should be avoided in 2-voice texture (depending on the textbook). You essentially get one simple rule, and many individual exceptions to account for with no specific reasoning for any of them. With the Jeppesen/Schubert/Zarlino etc. rule, you have two rules that effectively explain *all* individual scenarios with no further exceptions needed. - Suspension into perfect consonance by itself is bad because of the extreme contrast of accented dissonance resolving straight into perfect consonance. - In 3+ voice texture a 3rd voice can right these suspensions by providing additional "good" suspensions into imperfect consonances, sweetening up the resolution and providing access to a bunch of new richer sonority usages. To give more weight, there are a bunch of other suspension combinations that Taneyev's rule forbids that are commonly encountered (7-8 bass suspension into 53 chords is a big one, modern texts like Harmony & Voice Leading introduce these as exceptions), and several it permits (like 4-5 and 9-8 suspensions in two-voice texture) which are not.
@@JacobGran On the topic of hidden 5ths/8ves, violations are certainly a lot less common in the outer voice pair when the soprano is leaping than elsewhere. This is something I think modern textbooks get right. "Hidden" perfects are basically a non-issue outside of the outer voice pair, and even there as long as the top voice moves by step it's generally fine. In 2-voice texture they're altogether rarer, so there is still a *slight* distinction between 2-voice norms and outer voice norms, but it's not massive. Basically I break textures into 3 voice pair categories: 1. "Lower" voice pairs: any voice + the bass. Perfect and augmented 4ths, and diminished 5ths, are contrapuntal dissonances in lower pairs. 2. "Upper" voice pairs: any pair that doesn't include the bass. Perfect and 4ths, and diminished 5ths, are consonant here if both voices form consonant intervals with the bass (they're considered "supported"). Under some rulesets they're just "consonant", irrespective of bass support. This is more common in earlier Renaissance music, and the main practical difference is that it makes passing parallel 4ths are possible, which are not really characteristic of later Renaissance texture, and definitely not in 18th c. part writing. 3. The outer voice pair. Technically a subset of lower pair, being the most exposed voices in the texture you pick up additional restrictions regarding hidden perfect consonances with a leaping sop, and much greater sensitivity towards overabundance of perfect consonances. Two voice counterpoint exercises are so important because they teach mostly the same set of norms applied to the *outer voices* in larger numbers of parts. But there's only ever one outer voice pair in a texture. As you add more voices, it's upper voice pairs that grow in number the fastest, and thankfully they're also the least restrictive. I *do* think norms are relaxed in larger number of voices, but a lot of it is just the fact there are more upper voice pairs where 4ths and tritones are consonant, and where direct 5ths and 8ves aren't a concern.
In 20:00 there is a fourth on the third measure (beetwen A and D) which is allowed in upper voices but, is it still a consonance when the lower voices aren't being played at the same time, leaving those two upper voices alone? And, is it the same rule for piano and strings, where, in the second case, the lower notes keep sounding, unlike with piano?
This is a great question. Ebenezer Prout is the only counterpoint author I know of who makes it a rule that the bass must support fourths in upper voices simultaneously with their onset. So for instance, he would consider a sustained C in the bass and two upper voices moving to a fourth between G and C later on in the measure to be unsupported in strict counterpoint. His is definitely the minority opinion on this point, as far as I am aware. Your question about instrumentation is relevant, since I do think composers are more likely to rearticulate the bass support for upper voice fourths on an instrument like a piano or harpsichord than for forces with greater sustaining power, like the organ, strings, or human voices. Berlioz points out what he considers to be orchestration errors on the part of Gluck, who composed parallel fourths for the voices while the sustaining bass did not blend with their timbre and register (I can't recall the instrument... bassoon I think). He recommended rescoring the passage with an additional part to create parallel 6/3 chords in the voices.
Great video, I have been watching it for days. I think there is a problem in the second example of 9-8 suspensions; the not allowed 2-3 suspension is a 2-1 suspension, correct me if I am wrong please. Thanks for your work!
It seems to me that many of these euphonic counterpoint rules can be determined purely aurally since trangressing these rules simply sounds 'clumsy' or 'tasteless' even. Presumably this is how these rules were first established and codified. The earliest reference to the avoidance of parallels fifths I have encountred was atributed to the advice of English composer Leonel Power (1380-1445). It is a shame Henry VIII's Reformation destroyed many of his and others pre-renaissance works (espeicially considering Henry VIII was himself an amateur composer).
Music is not just tones, but also the rhythm, texture, number pf voices. If you compose for an organ and it already is set to play 5ths, you just won't hear parallel fifths at all. If low string and high strings play parallels - you won't even notice because the brain won't connect extreme registers. If there is a lot of voices going in contrary motion, then parallel 5ths won't even be noticeable. And there are lots of ways to use parallel fifths to mimic medieval chant, for example. It all depends on what you're trying to express at the moment. What is heard is more important than what's written!
@@alexkha In a sense, these idiomatic parallelisms you describe only confirm the rules of counterpoint; they are admonished precisely because perfect intervals blend in with each other, which defies the intention of polyphonic music to have independent vocal lines and harmonic variety. In other idioms, perfect parallels in organ registration or string arrangement are a matter of creating a single 'enriched' line, rather than two lines that happen to have parallel octaves and 5ths along with other intervals (though other musical idioms do exhibit such a tendency).
@@PiersHudsonComposer exactly! "vocal" is the keyword here. Counterpoint assumes SATB voices. Once you mix in different instruments, it's a different ball game altogether!
@@alexkha Different idioms and instrumentation certainly confer different conditions, but my point is that the principles of vocal counterpoint still carry over into many other idioms such as organ or string arrangement, with parallel perfect intervals acting as singular 'enriched' lines. This confirms the principle that 'if parallel perfect intervals are used, the voices will blend in with each other, effectively becoming one voice'. The mere use or disuse of parallel perfect intervals doesn't break the dialectic.
@@alexkha Presumably these developments were a reaction against the hollow tones of the then prevalent plainsong and organ registers. A little prior to the time of Power and Dunstable there was the beginning of an English choral innovation of replacing 5ths with 3rds which quickly caught on in Continental Europe as the 'English Style'. I'm sure many organists are aware that although Organ registers can and do include 3rds (e.g. the 'Mixture' stop) they don't work satisfactorily in solo since euphonic scales rely on a mix of major and minor 3rds / 6ths. Adding a 5th interval tends to be less intrusive as one is just bolstering the 2nd harmonic which is typically quite prevalent anyway. Speaking of which it is interesting that the modern fascination with valve (tube) amps relies on a subtle boost in the 2nd harmonic - i.e. adding a hint of flattering artificial complexity to the music. The one rule of 4 part harmony I find most difficult to grasp in a euphonic sense is the avoidance of the 2nd Inversion as illustrated in Taneyev's treatise - It seems like splitting hairs as, in context, it sounds sufficiently harmonious and avoiding it restricts one's options greatly. Perhaps I am missing the point and it's just a guide in a similar sense to composers preferring contrary motion since, as a side effect, one then inevitably avoids parallel 5ths by avoiding parallel motion in general. I have read Taneyev's book previously and even started weiting a Forth program to automatically generate harmonies in the purely mathematical way he lays out. Judging by some other comments I am not the only one to think of this. Perhaps after this series I will dust it off and complete it AI music software is all very well but it is hard to tweak and refine a black box system.
In 1967, when 17, I had his text, "Convertible Counterpoint: Movable Counterpoint in the Strict Style." I got lost in Chapter 2, because of a bizarre linguistic complication: the title in the translation included the word "Indices." I asked family and friends what this word meant; no one knew! That ended at that time my exploration of convertible counterpoint. It was many hears later that the word "Indices" is an older version of "Indexes," the plural of "Index."
Some of the rules stated still makes a lot of sense to me. I studied music in the 1980s and much of what you address reminds me of what I learned back then. With the advent of time, our modern ears have begun to accept some of the voicings that were discouraged in the past. Even Beethoven has been known to say that he used parallel octaves at time. How is this addressed when studying Sergei Taneev's theories? Is strict counterpoint still valid in this case? Thanks for posting.
Part of the difficulty of that book is that it is supposed to be taught in tandem with his other book “doctrine of canon.” Without this it is very uphill battle that won’t easily reveal insights into the mechanics he’s trying to reveal. Any series you make has to take this account, as he and his students were explicit about how the information was to be presented between the 2 texts.
I agree, the first book is more of a treatise than a teaching book. If I recall correctly, he says in the preface and elsewhere that he expects teachers to pick and choose the elements they find most productive. I will definitely be eventually getting to different kinds of canons, but these first few videos will stick to the shallow end of the pool in terms of how deep the subject matter could be pursued.
@@JacobGran, if you’re interested, this video covers his theory of canon, including vertical shifting and imaginary combos. It doesn’t use a 0-based system in the interest of covering the big ideas in a short amount of time. ua-cam.com/video/xCG8jnswT-0/v-deo.htmlsi=R7y6OrXE9Jx3ioMb
The Martini example is an excellent example of the importance of rhythm and placement of otherwise forbidden voice leading from a very weak beat and then escaped by the first downbeat. DO you have a video devoted solely top rhythmn and counterpoint?
Thanks! So difficult theme, But I understood Something) One question - where is hidden octave in example on 4.57? As I know from college course - hidden octaves detected on edges voices
The English translation of Convertible Counterpoint by Ackley Brower is available on Google Books as a free downloadable PDF, and Paul Grove's dissertation, in which he translated Taneyev's Doctrine of Canon (along with excerpts of other Russian theorists that discuss things such as double canon), can be found on the University of Arizona repository website.
@Jacob Gran: Thank you for this great video! I’ve tried to find that book online. I could find it only in Russian. Has this book ever been translated into English or German? I would like to purchase it.
@@TobiasTimKlingbiel I do have a physical copy of Convertible Counterpoint published by 'Forgotten Books', but it appears to be just a cheap scan, with several diagrams and notation poorly rendered (the last horizontal exercises were completely mangled). I noticed UA-camr CGP Grey had the same issue with the publisher for another historical book, so it's not an isolated incident. Thank God for PDFs!
As @PiersHudsonComposer mentioned, the English translation by Ackley Brower ("Convertible Counterpoint in the Strict Style" Bruce Humphries 1962) is unfortunately out of print. However, it is available on Google Books as a free downloadable PDF, with legible appendices. A scan of the original Russian is available on IMSLP.org. I do not know whether there is a German version.
@@TobiasTimKlingbiel And Paul Grove's dissertation, in which he translated Taneyev's Doctrine of Canon (along with excerpts of other Russian theorists that discuss things such as double canon), can be found on the University of Arizona repository website.
Hello! I am an old musician and I am learning theory for the first time in 20 years… Would you recommend starting from the species counterpoint playlist before tackling this more complex subject? Thanks for sharing your knowledge
I would actually recommend, if you are going to use my videos, a playlist called "tonal counterpoint," especially the first five videos there. There is a book called "Counterpoint" by Knud Jeppesen that is fairly cheap that I use as a textbook with my students that I can recommend as well.
@@JacobGran Thanks! I'm already watching both, learning a lot and having fun. However I'm visually impaired, so books are always waht I like to call "adaptation point" on my studies (:
I do plan on that, yes. I would have to do a video on triple counterpoint in order to teach triple fugues, though, and for reasons that will become clear in next week's video, I need to make these Taneev videos first.
Question, let's for example take the rule "No contrary motion from perfect consonance to its compound" That means those two voices: 1. A5->E6 2. D5->A4 Their length is all half a measure (in case I'm confusing, the number indicates which octave we're in) So these are clearly illegal but what about 1.A5->D6->E6->C6 2.D5->B4->A4->E5 These are all quarter of a measure Is this legal? Because if we reduce it to half measures only it's illegal again
Correct, this is legal. Not all voice leadings can be further reduced to simpler and correct voice leadings, and the flipside is that most voice leading errors involving consecutive perfect intervals can be elaborated into correct voice leadings. It's quite common to encounter what are usually referred to "voice leading chords" - chords which arise out of a need to break up parallel 5ths or octaves. The idea of "downbeat" 5ths and 8ves makes it seem like a *bit* of a fuzzy area, but in multi-voice texture these things get relaxed more.
@@hex5499 Thank you for this answer!! I guess that's because half a measure is a bit much right? Considering multiple voices and all. Also another question, what do you think about Stephane Delplace's new book called "Musica"?
@@bargledargle7941 It's not strictly about duration in this case: you're breaking up the perfect consonances with intermediary *stable consonances* in a first species relationship. Even if it was more "diminution" like 4th species where only one voice moves, most counterpoint authors talk about how this lessens the effect of downbeat parallels. But actual note-against-note intermediary consonances? That effectively nullifies them. If *all* your downbeats are 8ves and all your upbeats are intervening imperfects then sure we'll start to pick up on an effect of downbeat parallels, but past that what you described it completely unproblematic.
@@hex5499 Hello, your answers have been very useful! I one more question if it's okay, last question! I always wanted to know how this is justified: Voice 1: F6, E6, D6, C6 Voice 2: E4, F#4, G#4, A4 It seems like it appears often, 3 dissonances in a row! What is the "algorithm" here?
@@bargledargle7941 there's various ways of reasoning around how voice leadings like this gained acceptability. The thing to understand is that this is not species texture, but the sort of thing you see in the 18th century tonal style. It's not Renaissance-kosher counterpoint, but it does have close *proximity* to voice leadings that are. One possible path to this would be for the top line to be in straight quarter notes, and the bottom line to be half - eighth eighth - quarter. This would be species texture if the first note in the top voice was a tied over note from whatever came before, although appoggiaturas make it valid without the tie in the 18th century. Your example could then arise via *rhythmic normalisation* of the lower line into straight quarters, so a kind of "rhythmic shift". These sorts of tricks start to make more sense in music that has higher level abstractions around counterpoint like thoroughbass/partimento "rules", as you can reason in terms of contrapuntal gestures prolonging chords in some standard thoroughbass rule or similar.
Ya know, as a pianist in college, the more I learn about music the less I care for it, and the less I want to talk to other people about it. It's all a big nothing.
There are no rules in music ... lots of analysis of what famous composers have done ... why do these become rules? Now if you'll excuse me I'm off to compose a suite in parallel 5ths (I'll work hard at making it not sound like a 1950s film soundtrack to Roman legions ... might be tough ...)
Well the move from 5th to 12th and vice versa can work well in 2 to 3 part if they move from weak beat to strong beats (and this is one aspect you r video I feel does NOT emphasize enough). Also as an organist I tend to be more aware of the harmonic series due to the art of registration. So in composition the 12th creates stronger overtones of thirds which the human tends to intuitively fill in, especially after hearing counterpoint that is generally more "correct". As an aside I do hope you go to mature JS Bach to help folks have a better understanding aspects that make his treatment so unique and yet sounds correct. Bach studied much Josquin so one unique characteristic of Bach's counterpoint is his reference to Renaissance modes in his music and the within a large scale major minor tonality Bach uses often creates f cross relations. Some great examples of cross relations can be found in his many great organ fugues --- a few cases being the Dorian Fugue (tends to be a bit subtler and follows more "strict" counterpoint) to a freer use of cross relations in the Great G minor/major Prelude and Fugue. Another aspect that is unique to Bach that I have observed is the extreme used of displaced voice resolutions. One excellent example is the first movement of his first Trio Sonata and others can be found in many of his slow movements from the Trio Sonatas (and of Choral Preludes you find several examples). ONe final and dramatic example of displaced voice resolution of a dissonance (with the arrival of the dissonance on a strong beat and rather extreme for its time) is the diminished 7chord played in the manuals and 2 octaves below the tonic D from the coda of the great G major fugue (from the G major/ Prelude and Fugue - BWV 541, this dramatic cadence is foreshadowed in the Prelude though at a quicker pace leading to the Codetta of the Prelude. The Fugue is harmonically extremely interesting - especially the harmonic plan and wide ranging harmonic areas Bach manages to lead us to). Here is a you tube performance with informative aspects of the structure and harmony of the work with some funny comments.
It continually amazes me, as a composer for 50 + years that all treatises or studies on counterpoint seemed to be poised like guns at composers in the crosshairs, ready to shoot down any ideas the composer has,.. with a rule, that makes the idea untenable. Wouldn't it be so much better to teach us HOW to BUILD a composition rather than how to tear it down. Let the critic of J S Bach, Johann Adolf Scheibe, study these strict rules, so that he may heap more coals on his own head as he languishes in HELL ! You know there is something wrong when Palestrina's works are cited as BAD EXAMPLES of counterpoint, while many describe his pieces as among the most perfect ever written. For those who want to WRITE COUNTERPOINT rather than develop a serious imposter syndrome complex. I will give a couple of helpful hints. Think about the harmonic series, (and sub harmonic series, made up of divisions by whole number ratios, as guide points for voice leading. Use different rhythmical divisions for different counterpoint voices, use contrary motion often, rather than parallel motion for everything other than 3rds or 6ths, if the result of breaking rules sounds really appealing, in context, always break the rule (it serves no purpose). Rules don't make music, people who love what they are doing, make music. As Peter Schickele said: " if it sounds good, IT IS GOOD ! ! ! " Don't be afraid of down beat passing tones, dominant 7ths, seconds, and 9ths, etc but keep in mind the incremental building or release of tensions. Parallel 4ths or fifths are pretty much the same (one tone is inverted by an octave). All dominant 7th chords contain tritones, ... Bach often used them generously in two part counterpoint, just be aware of where they came from and where they are going. Lavish use of diminished 7th chords, makes modulation to different keys quite workable. George Harrison of the Beatles loved them for that. Have fun !!! If You are looking for an excuse, to hate the prospect of music composition, read this guy: Taneev .....or Schenker.
I am afraid you greatly underestimate the genius of Sergei Taneyev. Listen to his one and only prelude and fugue in g-sharp minor (6minutes). Or his piano quintet op. 30. Taneyev was greatly admired by his students Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Gliere, his teachers Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky, many other contemporaries such as Koussevitzky, Glazunov, L. Auer Rimsky Korsakov, Turgenev and many others as a composer, virtuoso pianist, teacher, theoretician, ethnomusicologist as well as a man of incredible kindness, integrity and wisdom. Taneyev points out exceptions to common practice of renaissance counterpoint. Taneyev‘s approach of music is much more profound than listing rules and prohibitions. It would suffice to read his 3 page introduction to his book „convertible counterpoint“ to realize this. The afterword/ conclusion also explains a lot.
I am admittedly less than a minute in ... but ... from the point of view of a mathematician, music notation is awful. Mathematicians spend an age with notation as it eventually melds with intuition and should serve to aid further development. Music notation is an ad hoc legacy. It is something you get used rather than having a function.
This is a common sentiment I see with folks with maths-y backgrounds and usually ends up being a bunch of premature conclusions after all of 5 minutes exposure to (tonal) music theory, so I'd be interested in what your specific criticisms are. As far as I'm concerned, standard notation is excellent precisely *because* of how well it aids with the development of strong intuitions about the behaviour of notes in a tonal/modal context. It's "ad hoc" in the same way your liver is an ad hoc result of evolution, yet replacing it with a carbon filter because you know better and like the highly logical design would be naive. There is definitely music where the diatonic lens of standard notation is a hindrance though, but it's not tonal/modal-adjacent.
similar motion to a perfect consonance-hidden fifths/octaves, contrary motion to a perfect consonance from its compound, going from a diminished fifth into a perfect fifth though parallel motion. all such rules are completely and utterly useless. they are rules simply to uphold tradition and nothing else, they are easily broken by even amateurs, as they don't hold any place in real music. it's like banning going from a third to a sixth in similar motion, it is just complety redundant and is only taught because people in the past did, none of the great composers follow this rule through anything except coincidence, as they are frequently broken. I really H4-te how prevalent such rules are considering how utterly useless they are. it has nothing to do with how many voices are present, it is simply tradition created by incompetent reniassance theorists that has festered until the modern day.
^ actully maybe not a 100% as the repetition of E is pretty bad harmonically, and F would be better in the alto though that would create a 7th, which in this context would not be bad either.
A couple of points I wanted to add:
Taneev summarizes all of strict counterpoint except for the rules of melody.
5:12 Peter Schubert describes the rules of counterpoint in terms of "hard" and "soft" rules, and I like this a lot. All these rules probably exist somewhere on a sliding scale from hard to soft, and where a particular rule exists on this scale can be discovered based on how composers treat it as the number of voices increases and observing every rule becomes less and less possible.
18:29 I should have said "2-1" not "2-3"
20:14 What follows are not so much "smaller rules" as points of clarification.
22:43 I forgot to mention that the suspended D in the top voice forms a 7-6 suspension with the middle voice as well as a 4-3 suspension with the lowest voice.
A link to the English translation from 1962 by Ackley Brower from Google Books:
www.google.com/books/edition/Convertible_Counterpoint/KtCcGzmw5hYC?hl=en&gbpv=0
You mentioned the book's reputation of being difficult. As Taneyev writes in the Preface, "if one uses this book as a teaching handbook, one must make sure to understand what is really important to the student and what is further examination of the topic". "if one uses this book as a teaching handbook" - this means it ain't mainly a teaching handbook, but a treatise. Therefore, one must make an effort to contextualize his reading or teaching, otherwise it will turn up chaotic. I think that's a reason why it's considered to be difficult and has a limited reputation among english-speaking theorists. According to various sources, Taneyev's own teaching in his classes at the Moscow Conservatory used to be well-organized and properly contextualized in a way that fascinated all the students, even the ones with little or no interest in music theory. So nice that you made this introductory video, and I'm so glad to hear that it's gonna be a part of a series.
For sure, a recitation of the rules of strict counterpoint can be mind boggling and an attempt to memorize them overwhelming. But I never personally thought of them as a collection of independent rules. Rather, they are helpful descriptions of what does and does not work if one is trying to write music that achieves independence of multiple melodic lines. Hence, rules about parallelism (whether of perfect or imperfect intervals) which result in the ear hearing two voices as one with doublings or rules about how to approach and leave open sounding perfect intervals versus other consonances. Anyway, so glad to have stumbled across this video. A flashback of 50 years to when I spent several years intensively studying species counterpoint. I can't think of much from my college years that was more useful and productive than that. Thanks!
Please continue uploading stuff. You are the teacher I never had.
These videos are important to reviving the standards of conservatories from the 19th-20th centuries. Theres currently too much emphasis on teaching people to perform canonical music, but not enough to help them create art that can be included to said canon.
So glad you’re back!
this is fascinating! never heard the contrapuntal rules explained so precisely and efficiently (both by taneev and you)! thank you so much for this resource and I can't wait for the next part.
I’m just about to watch the video but first I’d like to say that it is Great that you are making videos again! Your content is excellent and extremely helpful.
Thanks for coming back!
Always wanted to delve into Taneyev's theoretical work! Thank you.
Hell yeah!!! Golden Age of Counterpoint returns
"No one laughed, but I think that is because I had not instituted the proper permission structure." Amazing. Great video, my students will benefit tremendously from your channel, I'm very happy to have stumbled upon you.
almost every rule of counterpoint has exceptions. These rules are designed just to develop sensitivity to all the important aspects of polyphony. And then you can forget them and follow your ear.
A few people can look up at the end of a mathematics lecture and follow a board full of algebraic-type equations. Most can't. This is how I've always felt about strict counterpoint.( But I love the musical outcomes.) Thick individuals like me so, so, so need people like you. Many thanks
Thank you for providing an explication of this important work. My counterpoint teacher, Hugo Norden, was a friend of translator Ackley Bower, who died with the manuscript had seen its way through the publication process. Dr. Norden saw it through to completion,
I did not know that! I have read three of Dr. Norden's books and I admire them. Very concise, no matter how complex the subject matter. His book on canon in particular is one of the very few American scholarly works from that time period that is clearly Taneev inspired. Thank you for your comment!
Woah, you studied under Norden? I didn't know about his history with Ackley Bower, that's such a cool bit of information. So basically we all owe Norden a debt for even being able to read an English translation of Moveable Counterpoint?
@@JacobGran Right? I felt the same reading the counterpoint and fugue books: really concise and practically focused. The canon one's great because it covers basically all the canon types Taneyev never treats in DoC, so they really complement each other.
@@JacobGran I regret that I lost my notebooks from Norden's classes. His unpublished ideas open up all sorts of possibilities for things no one else even talks about
Hooray! A new video!
I'm so glad I found this channel. Interesting stuff!
Christmas has come early! You are my favorite UA-camr by a wide margin, and Taneyev's approach to counterpoint has always interested me but reading his book seemed too intimidating.
Thank you for making these videos.
Awesome, I had an idea of making a video like this, but I’m glad someone else did it
13:29 Jeppesen says that the third crotchet dissonance out of four is a very special figure, its rules being 1) the four crotchets must be descending (accented dissonances always resolve downward), but uniquely 2) the fifth note must be a rising step, to complete a certain implied melodic idiom. He also says that this dissonance accompanies a cadence "99% of the time".
Yes, Jeppesen is very thorough and persuasive on this point. Taneev's example should at least be descending.
Having the time of my life watching this!
About voice crossing to avoid violations of parallel prohibitions.
I often hear resistance to rules or hear flouting of them in the claim that you can break them after mastering them. I think these attitudes miss the point that rules are based on how music sounds. Rules are tools of prediction; do this and it will sound like this. Rules are not merit badges. They don’t confer virtue because you comply with them, they tell you what to expect about how your music will sound. If your mistake sounds like this when you do it the first time, it sounds the same on the hundredth time whether or not you “mastered” the rule by otherwise producing a thousand compliant settings.
I said that to set up an observation about the synth playback of the voice crossing examples. Since we don’t hear actual linear events of voice motion, these examples still sound like parallelisms. The voice crossing isn’t apparent and the twinge of parallels is still evident.
It doesn’t matter for the example! I only wish for better cultivation of listening acuity. It disappoints me when I observe working composers and arrangers fail to internalize the point that mastery of craft helps them sound better and don’t discern how neglecting predictors of unpleasant effects undermines the quality of their work.
I studied Palestrina counterpoint at university, and it must have stuck because it seemed the logical idiom to compose a 12-voice section of a piece. Soon after I decided to adopt it for all of my compositions. I like it because it knows what it is consonance and what is dissonance, and has the most coherent way to move between them.
This video is yet another example of things I tortuously worked out on my own that were comprehensively dealt with in the 19th century, haha.
Matthew Marvuglio, who was dean of performance at Berklee, also studied with Norden. He called the idea of two-voice counterpoint being central as the principle diaphony.
the more voices the less strict are the rules
JACOB IS BACK 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
🔥
Thank you for this refreshing visit to the sacred grove.
thank you for this !
I discovered Taneyev in 2021 and have dedicated a great deal of time to studying his two books (the one on 'Moveable Counterpoint', and the other on the 'Doctrine of Canon'). Bellermann's Rule was a real revelation to me when I first heard Taneyev articulate it!
Thank you for commencing this series and exposing people to "one of the greatest musical treatises ever written'" (according to Koussevitsky in his introduction to 'Moveable Counterpoint').
Will you be covering any of his canonic theories in your summer series? His insights on infinite/perpetual canon are invaluable, and he proves that moveable counterpoint is a requirement of many forms of canon in general.
The four videos I have planned just cover the basics of the first book (except for duplicating counterpoint). Part of the motivation here was my understanding just how inadequate my earlier videos had been on the topic of canon and imitative counterpoint as I read through Taneev the last two years, but I can't re-teach that stuff without laying the groundwork first.
@@JacobGran That's understandable. To be fair, your earlier videos do cover what's expected in the 'standard' curriculum (and even my own conservatory education didn't require 10th or 12th inversion!) When I discovered Taneyev, I thought "how is this incredible work so obscure? It covers every vertical shifting possibility, AND horizontal shifting, and it lays out new terminology such as direct shift and variable interval; how has this not been incorporated into the music curriculum?"
'Inadequacy' definitely describes the way I felt, not to your videos, which I love, but towards the education I had received up to then. I have taken a hiatus from composing for the last two years to undertake this counterpoint self-study, but I do intend to return in the near future, with a clearer sense of line and motivic transformation.
@@PiersHudsonComposer Hard agree, it's a criminally underappreciated work in the anglosphere. There's been a big uptick in interest in the last couple of years though: Julian Hook and Dmitri Tymockzko's most recent books both cited Taneyev, and they're fairly big names in the more maths-y side of the music theory world. Fingers crossed we're about to see a Taneyev Renaissance (pun intended) 🤞
Forgive me for going on a nerd rant after watching only 45 seconds of your video but it spurred an impulse in me to comment. I love music theory, and learning how counterpoint was fundamental to the historical development of composition was a big revelation to me at the time, particularly because of how most contemporary musicians think in terms of chord progression in isolation. What I'm trying to say is that I'm the kind of person who likes to sit and think about how music works.
I recently started to imagine intervals as having a kind of "potential energy", or something similar to how in highschool chemistry you learn about the push and pull of electrons due to the atoms trying to achieve a stable set of valence electrons. This isn't a perfect metaphor, but I hope the point still comes across. Each interval has its own sense of inertia which creates a feeling of anticipation that can either be delayed, reconciled, or subverted. I believe there is a similar principle to rhythm and phrasing in relation to the subdivision of each measure. Anyway, let me abandon this diatribe before I ramble incoherently, even more so than I already have.
Your comment is one of the MOST COHERENT things I have ever heard.! ! ! Yes, melodies suggest where they are going, as they fly, and so does each chord progression or combination have "inertia",.. but also "aspirations", which are sort of like the arc of a narrative, they know where they want to go, to reach a successful resolution, and they use their experience (of where they have been) to inform their flight. So much more interesting and inspiring than rules about what NOT to do !
And just like in chemistry, it really is like a mathematical thing. Like consider the valence of an element to figure out what it would like to combine with,... like if it has extra valence electrons it wants to join with something with a deficit of electrons in the outer shell. Maybe a noble gas is like the tonic of the key ( 1 chord ) and an oxidizing agent is like a five-seventh chord, and a two chord is kinda like a metal that seeks out an oxidizing agent ! Maybe a six chord is sorta like something that can have a covalent bond, it's valence changes with context ! That's fun to think about !
Excellent work! Would be great to see how this "2 voice focus" works in later styles and periods.
Great video. In my experience the avoidance of contrary motion to its compound concern whether they occur on strong or weak beats (avoid consecutive strong).
I’ll come back to this in a few years
Hi Dr. Gran. I infer that the "Bass" as in special rules for the Bass (2:55) refers to the lowest voice of all non-resting parts, but in one of your previous videos, you mentioned that if the real Bass is stationary on any beat, then the lowest moving voice becomes the effective Bass for all moving voices. Do the two views come from different theories? Thank you very much.
Yes, you are right. I tried to be explicit as often as possible when writing the script, but sometimes I use the word "bass" to refer not to the literal bass voice but the lowest present voice.
In the video on pedal points, I mentioned that Ebenezer Prout considered the effective bass to be the lowest *moving* voice (usually the tenor) rather than the lowest *sounding* voice. So even a sustained bass note, as in an organ pedal point, Prout would consider no longer the effective bass for judging the consonance of the counterpoint of the upper voices. But that is a very restrictive view that I have not encountered in other authors. Taneev had read Prout, and he did not mention this rule, so it is possible he simply did not agree.
An example of perfectly good voice leading in the strict style that breaks with Prout's formulation would be a 5/4 suspension chord resolving to a 6/3 over a stationary bass, where the upper voices move in contrary motion to a fourth. Personally, I am a little torn. If this progression is sung or played on sustaining instruments, then the fourth sounds perfectly well-supported. But on a piano, for instance, the fourth tends to stick out unless the bass is rearticulated due to the lack of sustain (and also in this case the change of harmonic root).
Legend is backkkkkkkk
Might the "excuse" for consecutive 5ths at 9:48 is it creates an emphasis on the expressive scale gesture and the local maximum of the soprano?
HES BACK
25:50 Which dissonance is incorrectly treated? The D in the bass against the E in the middle voice? For my ear it sounds very nice actually. Sometimes the rules seem to be overly strict. Parallel fifths and octaves really stick out but other things not so much.
The D lands on a strong beat as a dissonance against the E. It can't even be construed as an accented passing tone, since it immediately leaps instead of moving in the same direction by step. Of course, these things are fair game in a free composition context, but learning the strict style helps to cultivate a sense of discretion on one's creative choices.
Delicious brain food, thank you!
I don't care about likes and subscriptions => LIKED AND SUBSCRIBED
I like to comment the fact that you commented the fact that you liked it
The example at 26:03 looks and sounds correct in my opinion... the G in the bass is a properly handled dissonance and the G in the soprano is consonant with all voices. Nice paper on canons against a cantus firmus, by the way, Jacob!
Thank you; I am going to make a video soon teaching the method in that paper. How on earth did you improvise those canons against Ave Maris Stella on your channel?! It is extremely impressive. Did you try to use the historical method, or some other way?
@@JacobGran Thank you! I independently came up with the method for my master's thesis (I can send it to you if you'd like), but after reading the historical context provided in your paper, I see I'm not the first!
Basically, I memorize which "pivot tones" the canon leader can go to for every cantus firmus movement. For instance, if a bass cantus firmus goes from F to G against an octave canon, the leader needs to have the D above F so that the follower has the D above G. This works because D is consonant above F and G simultaneously
I'm confused. At 06:17 we are told that the octave is between soprano and tenor. But isn't the lower F solidly in bass register? Thanks.
Great video on a historically under-appreciated contrapuntalist! Quick question: At around 18:29 where you said: "More specifically though, it must also not form a 2-3 or 7-8 suspension in any other combination" did you mean to say "2-1" instead of "2-3"? (If I understand correctly, the problem with the 2nd example is the D-C stepwise motion in the upper voice, forming a 2-1 suspension in the upper two voices.)
Yes! Thank you, I meant 2-1.
Oh my god he's finally doing it 🥳I hope this introduces many new people to Taneyev's theories. By the way, at ua-cam.com/video/MAq6tgEH91U/v-deo.html this is one of the main things I think Taneyev actually get's wrong.
The idea is that suspensions into a note of resolution already sounding in another voice are "unsatisfying", with a special exception made for 9-8 suspensions against the bass. This is the also the view given by Schenker, Salzer, Aldwell, Schachter and many other modern authors. The problem is it's ahistorical and wrong. 9-8s occur in upper voice pairs all the time, as do 7-8 bass suspensions and even 2-1 suspensions into unisons. You can find a 9-8 suspension between upper voices in the first few measures of Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli lol.
The OG Renaissance take is that suspensions into perfect consonances are bad (so 2-1, 4-5, 7-8, 9-8 etc.), but can be rendered tolerable if another voice is present to provide imperfect consonance with the resolution of the suspended voice. This does actually conform to usage in repertoire much more imo. Unfortunately it's much more awkward to account for in shifting combinations. It's be much more *convenient* if Taneyev were correct 😅
In which movement and in which bars do those 9-8s happen in the Missa Papae Marcelli? I haven't noticed these upper 9-8s myself, but the ear can play tricks.
@@PiersHudsonComposer Measures 7-9 of the Kyrie, check the canto and tenor, you'll see it. And yep, it's precisely because the ear can play tricks (especially in dense 6-voice textures like this) that it's easy to sell the idea that something was normative, since it's hard to verify (unless it's a *profoundly* common event). 6 voices = 15 voice pairs to check through, and we're also trained to focus on the bass pairs the most. The eyes are harder to fool.
Fascinating; I did not know this Papae Marcelli example. But I have to give some push back before I am convinced. Are these suspensions really common? 9-8 with the bass must outnumber the other kinds by a wide margin. It strikes me as going too far to say that the rule is invalid because there are counter examples, just as hidden fifths are censured by nearly every textbook (historical and modern) despite occurring all over the place. In that Palestrina example, it seems to me the tenor could not take any other note without breaking an even harder rule.
@@JacobGran that's a fair ask, and I can't exactly comment on its statistical prevalence, but I'd come from the other side: since this rule is, as far as I've been able to ascertain, a much more recent invention, and since actual Renaissance treatises already present a rule which conforms well to what you will encounter in the repertoire, why should we take this one to have any standing?
With the Taneyev/Schenker rule you are starting from a notion that it's specifically the note of resolution sounding in another voice that's undesirable, and then introducing arbitrary *exceptions* for 9-8s against the bass, and 7-8s into root position triads, and often specific additional restrictions that 4-5 and 9-8 should be avoided in 2-voice texture (depending on the textbook). You essentially get one simple rule, and many individual exceptions to account for with no specific reasoning for any of them.
With the Jeppesen/Schubert/Zarlino etc. rule, you have two rules that effectively explain *all* individual scenarios with no further exceptions needed.
- Suspension into perfect consonance by itself is bad because of the extreme contrast of accented dissonance resolving straight into perfect consonance.
- In 3+ voice texture a 3rd voice can right these suspensions by providing additional "good" suspensions into imperfect consonances, sweetening up the resolution and providing access to a bunch of new richer sonority usages.
To give more weight, there are a bunch of other suspension combinations that Taneyev's rule forbids that are commonly encountered (7-8 bass suspension into 53 chords is a big one, modern texts like Harmony & Voice Leading introduce these as exceptions), and several it permits (like 4-5 and 9-8 suspensions in two-voice texture) which are not.
@@JacobGran On the topic of hidden 5ths/8ves, violations are certainly a lot less common in the outer voice pair when the soprano is leaping than elsewhere. This is something I think modern textbooks get right. "Hidden" perfects are basically a non-issue outside of the outer voice pair, and even there as long as the top voice moves by step it's generally fine. In 2-voice texture they're altogether rarer, so there is still a *slight* distinction between 2-voice norms and outer voice norms, but it's not massive. Basically I break textures into 3 voice pair categories:
1. "Lower" voice pairs: any voice + the bass. Perfect and augmented 4ths, and diminished 5ths, are contrapuntal dissonances in lower pairs.
2. "Upper" voice pairs: any pair that doesn't include the bass. Perfect and 4ths, and diminished 5ths, are consonant here if both voices form consonant intervals with the bass (they're considered "supported"). Under some rulesets they're just "consonant", irrespective of bass support. This is more common in earlier Renaissance music, and the main practical difference is that it makes passing parallel 4ths are possible, which are not really characteristic of later Renaissance texture, and definitely not in 18th c. part writing.
3. The outer voice pair. Technically a subset of lower pair, being the most exposed voices in the texture you pick up additional restrictions regarding hidden perfect consonances with a leaping sop, and much greater sensitivity towards overabundance of perfect consonances.
Two voice counterpoint exercises are so important because they teach mostly the same set of norms applied to the *outer voices* in larger numbers of parts. But there's only ever one outer voice pair in a texture. As you add more voices, it's upper voice pairs that grow in number the fastest, and thankfully they're also the least restrictive. I *do* think norms are relaxed in larger number of voices, but a lot of it is just the fact there are more upper voice pairs where 4ths and tritones are consonant, and where direct 5ths and 8ves aren't a concern.
In 20:00 there is a fourth on the third measure (beetwen A and D) which is allowed in upper voices but, is it still a consonance when the lower voices aren't being played at the same time, leaving those two upper voices alone?
And, is it the same rule for piano and strings, where, in the second case, the lower notes keep sounding, unlike with piano?
This is a great question. Ebenezer Prout is the only counterpoint author I know of who makes it a rule that the bass must support fourths in upper voices simultaneously with their onset. So for instance, he would consider a sustained C in the bass and two upper voices moving to a fourth between G and C later on in the measure to be unsupported in strict counterpoint. His is definitely the minority opinion on this point, as far as I am aware. Your question about instrumentation is relevant, since I do think composers are more likely to rearticulate the bass support for upper voice fourths on an instrument like a piano or harpsichord than for forces with greater sustaining power, like the organ, strings, or human voices. Berlioz points out what he considers to be orchestration errors on the part of Gluck, who composed parallel fourths for the voices while the sustaining bass did not blend with their timbre and register (I can't recall the instrument... bassoon I think). He recommended rescoring the passage with an additional part to create parallel 6/3 chords in the voices.
@@JacobGran Thank you, your videos and explanations are very clear and helpful!
Great video, I have been watching it for days. I think there is a problem in the second example of 9-8 suspensions; the not allowed 2-3 suspension is a 2-1 suspension, correct me if I am wrong please. Thanks for your work!
3:54 why are 9-8 suspensions forbidden in upper parts?
It seems to me that many of these euphonic counterpoint rules can be determined purely aurally since trangressing these rules simply sounds 'clumsy' or 'tasteless' even. Presumably this is how these rules were first established and codified. The earliest reference to the avoidance of parallels fifths I have encountred was atributed to the advice of English composer Leonel Power (1380-1445). It is a shame Henry VIII's Reformation destroyed many of his and others pre-renaissance works (espeicially considering Henry VIII was himself an amateur composer).
Music is not just tones, but also the rhythm, texture, number pf voices. If you compose for an organ and it already is set to play 5ths, you just won't hear parallel fifths at all. If low string and high strings play parallels - you won't even notice because the brain won't connect extreme registers. If there is a lot of voices going in contrary motion, then parallel 5ths won't even be noticeable. And there are lots of ways to use parallel fifths to mimic medieval chant, for example. It all depends on what you're trying to express at the moment. What is heard is more important than what's written!
@@alexkha In a sense, these idiomatic parallelisms you describe only confirm the rules of counterpoint; they are admonished precisely because perfect intervals blend in with each other, which defies the intention of polyphonic music to have independent vocal lines and harmonic variety. In other idioms, perfect parallels in organ registration or string arrangement are a matter of creating a single 'enriched' line, rather than two lines that happen to have parallel octaves and 5ths along with other intervals (though other musical idioms do exhibit such a tendency).
@@PiersHudsonComposer exactly! "vocal" is the keyword here. Counterpoint assumes SATB voices. Once you mix in different instruments, it's a different ball game altogether!
@@alexkha Different idioms and instrumentation certainly confer different conditions, but my point is that the principles of vocal counterpoint still carry over into many other idioms such as organ or string arrangement, with parallel perfect intervals acting as singular 'enriched' lines. This confirms the principle that 'if parallel perfect intervals are used, the voices will blend in with each other, effectively becoming one voice'. The mere use or disuse of parallel perfect intervals doesn't break the dialectic.
@@alexkha Presumably these developments were a reaction against the hollow tones of the then prevalent plainsong and organ registers. A little prior to the time of Power and Dunstable there was the beginning of an English choral innovation of replacing 5ths with 3rds which quickly caught on in Continental Europe as the 'English Style'. I'm sure many organists are aware that although Organ registers can and do include 3rds (e.g. the 'Mixture' stop) they don't work satisfactorily in solo since euphonic scales rely on a mix of major and minor 3rds / 6ths. Adding a 5th interval tends to be less intrusive as one is just bolstering the 2nd harmonic which is typically quite prevalent anyway. Speaking of which it is interesting that the modern fascination with valve (tube) amps relies on a subtle boost in the 2nd harmonic - i.e. adding a hint of flattering artificial complexity to the music.
The one rule of 4 part harmony I find most difficult to grasp in a euphonic sense is the avoidance of the 2nd Inversion as illustrated in Taneyev's treatise - It seems like splitting hairs as, in context, it sounds sufficiently harmonious and avoiding it restricts one's options greatly. Perhaps I am missing the point and it's just a guide in a similar sense to composers preferring contrary motion since, as a side effect, one then inevitably avoids parallel 5ths by avoiding parallel motion in general.
I have read Taneyev's book previously and even started weiting a Forth program to automatically generate harmonies in the purely mathematical way he lays out. Judging by some other comments I am not the only one to think of this. Perhaps after this series I will dust it off and complete it AI music software is all very well but it is hard to tweak and refine a black box system.
He was a teacher of Medtner!
Btw ascendit is perfect tense here, it means ascended
I've always wondered how those composers got away with "parallel octaves" between different voices.
In 1967, when 17, I had his text, "Convertible Counterpoint: Movable Counterpoint in the Strict Style." I got lost in Chapter 2, because of a bizarre linguistic complication: the title in the translation included the word "Indices." I asked family and friends what this word meant; no one knew! That ended at that time my exploration of convertible counterpoint.
It was many hears later that the word "Indices" is an older version of "Indexes," the plural of "Index."
Some of the rules stated still makes a lot of sense to me. I studied music in the 1980s and much of what you address reminds me of what I learned back then. With the advent of time, our modern ears have begun to accept some of the voicings that were discouraged in the past. Even Beethoven has been known to say that he used parallel octaves at time. How is this addressed when studying Sergei Taneev's theories? Is strict counterpoint still valid in this case? Thanks for posting.
Part of the difficulty of that book is that it is supposed to be taught in tandem with his other book “doctrine of canon.” Without this it is very uphill battle that won’t easily reveal insights into the mechanics he’s trying to reveal. Any series you make has to take this account, as he and his students were explicit about how the information was to be presented between the 2 texts.
I agree, the first book is more of a treatise than a teaching book. If I recall correctly, he says in the preface and elsewhere that he expects teachers to pick and choose the elements they find most productive. I will definitely be eventually getting to different kinds of canons, but these first few videos will stick to the shallow end of the pool in terms of how deep the subject matter could be pursued.
@@JacobGran, if you’re interested, this video covers his theory of canon, including vertical shifting and imaginary combos. It doesn’t use a 0-based system in the interest of covering the big ideas in a short amount of time.
ua-cam.com/video/xCG8jnswT-0/v-deo.htmlsi=R7y6OrXE9Jx3ioMb
Excellent, thank you! I will have to watch this when I have time.
This is very interesting. Can you please select a sound sample which is cleaner? A lot of information is lost with the heavy vibrato sound used here.
Noted!
The Martini example is an excellent example of the importance of rhythm and placement of otherwise forbidden voice leading from a very weak beat and then escaped by the first downbeat. DO you have a video devoted solely top rhythmn and counterpoint?
Thanks! So difficult theme, But I understood Something) One question - where is hidden octave in example on 4.57? As I know from college course - hidden octaves detected on edges voices
Thank you for these videos. How do these rules differ from Fux counterpoint?
YESSS JACOB IS BACK!!!!!
In Lasso it is usually an imp consonance im contrary motion. So the fifth- octave version would still be bad.
Pardon the editorial slip in my comment - it have read "not having seen".
He’s back!
Great.....Someone have the book? Somebody could share this in PDF?
The English translation of Convertible Counterpoint by Ackley Brower is available on Google Books as a free downloadable PDF, and Paul Grove's dissertation, in which he translated Taneyev's Doctrine of Canon (along with excerpts of other Russian theorists that discuss things such as double canon), can be found on the University of Arizona repository website.
@Jacob Gran: Thank you for this great video! I’ve tried to find that book online. I could find it only in Russian. Has this book ever been translated into English or German? I would like to purchase it.
@@TobiasTimKlingbiel I do have a physical copy of Convertible Counterpoint published by 'Forgotten Books', but it appears to be just a cheap scan, with several diagrams and notation poorly rendered (the last horizontal exercises were completely mangled). I noticed UA-camr CGP Grey had the same issue with the publisher for another historical book, so it's not an isolated incident.
Thank God for PDFs!
As @PiersHudsonComposer mentioned, the English translation by Ackley Brower ("Convertible Counterpoint in the Strict Style" Bruce Humphries 1962) is unfortunately out of print. However, it is available on Google Books as a free downloadable PDF, with legible appendices. A scan of the original Russian is available on IMSLP.org. I do not know whether there is a German version.
@@JacobGran Thank You so much!
@@TobiasTimKlingbiel And Paul Grove's dissertation, in which he translated Taneyev's Doctrine of Canon (along with excerpts of other Russian theorists that discuss things such as double canon), can be found on the University of Arizona repository website.
@@PiersHudsonComposerThank You very much! This is really helpful.
Hello! I am an old musician and I am learning theory for the first time in 20 years…
Would you recommend starting from the species counterpoint playlist before tackling this more complex subject?
Thanks for sharing your knowledge
I would actually recommend, if you are going to use my videos, a playlist called "tonal counterpoint," especially the first five videos there. There is a book called "Counterpoint" by Knud Jeppesen that is fairly cheap that I use as a textbook with my students that I can recommend as well.
@@JacobGran Thanks! I'm already watching both, learning a lot and having fun.
However I'm visually impaired, so books are always waht I like to call "adaptation point" on my studies (:
Yeeeeee🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
I remember you said you would continue the series of imitative counterpoint to fugues which have more than 1 counter subject, will it come eventually?
I do plan on that, yes. I would have to do a video on triple counterpoint in order to teach triple fugues, though, and for reasons that will become clear in next week's video, I need to make these Taneev videos first.
@@JacobGran interesting, I will be watching all of them
Question, let's for example take the rule "No contrary motion from perfect consonance to its compound"
That means those two voices:
1. A5->E6
2. D5->A4
Their length is all half a measure
(in case I'm confusing, the number indicates which octave we're in)
So these are clearly illegal but what about
1.A5->D6->E6->C6
2.D5->B4->A4->E5
These are all quarter of a measure
Is this legal? Because if we reduce it to half measures only it's illegal again
Correct, this is legal. Not all voice leadings can be further reduced to simpler and correct voice leadings, and the flipside is that most voice leading errors involving consecutive perfect intervals can be elaborated into correct voice leadings. It's quite common to encounter what are usually referred to "voice leading chords" - chords which arise out of a need to break up parallel 5ths or octaves. The idea of "downbeat" 5ths and 8ves makes it seem like a *bit* of a fuzzy area, but in multi-voice texture these things get relaxed more.
@@hex5499 Thank you for this answer!! I guess that's because half a measure is a bit much right? Considering multiple voices and all.
Also another question, what do you think about Stephane Delplace's new book called "Musica"?
@@bargledargle7941 It's not strictly about duration in this case: you're breaking up the perfect consonances with intermediary *stable consonances* in a first species relationship.
Even if it was more "diminution" like 4th species where only one voice moves, most counterpoint authors talk about how this lessens the effect of downbeat parallels. But actual note-against-note intermediary consonances? That effectively nullifies them.
If *all* your downbeats are 8ves and all your upbeats are intervening imperfects then sure we'll start to pick up on an effect of downbeat parallels, but past that what you described it completely unproblematic.
@@hex5499 Hello, your answers have been very useful! I one more question if it's okay, last question! I always wanted to know how this is justified:
Voice 1: F6, E6, D6, C6
Voice 2: E4, F#4, G#4, A4
It seems like it appears often, 3 dissonances in a row! What is the "algorithm" here?
@@bargledargle7941 there's various ways of reasoning around how voice leadings like this gained acceptability. The thing to understand is that this is not species texture, but the sort of thing you see in the 18th century tonal style. It's not Renaissance-kosher counterpoint, but it does have close *proximity* to voice leadings that are.
One possible path to this would be for the top line to be in straight quarter notes, and the bottom line to be half - eighth eighth - quarter. This would be species texture if the first note in the top voice was a tied over note from whatever came before, although appoggiaturas make it valid without the tie in the 18th century. Your example could then arise via *rhythmic normalisation* of the lower line into straight quarters, so a kind of "rhythmic shift".
These sorts of tricks start to make more sense in music that has higher level abstractions around counterpoint like thoroughbass/partimento "rules", as you can reason in terms of contrapuntal gestures prolonging chords in some standard thoroughbass rule or similar.
Ya know, as a pianist in college, the more I learn about music the less I care for it, and the less I want to talk to other people about it. It's all a big nothing.
👍
There are no rules in music ... lots of analysis of what famous composers have done ... why do these become rules? Now if you'll excuse me I'm off to compose a suite in parallel 5ths (I'll work hard at making it not sound like a 1950s film soundtrack to Roman legions ... might be tough ...)
Well the move from 5th to 12th and vice versa can work well in 2 to 3 part if they move from weak beat to strong beats (and this is one aspect you r video I feel does NOT emphasize enough). Also as an organist I tend to be more aware of the harmonic series due to the art of registration. So in composition the 12th creates stronger overtones of thirds which the human tends to intuitively fill in, especially after hearing counterpoint that is generally more "correct".
As an aside I do hope you go to mature JS Bach to help folks have a better understanding aspects that make his treatment so unique and yet sounds correct. Bach studied much Josquin so one unique characteristic of Bach's counterpoint is his reference to Renaissance modes in his music and the within a large scale major minor tonality Bach uses often creates f cross relations. Some great examples of cross relations can be found in his many great organ fugues --- a few cases being the Dorian Fugue (tends to be a bit subtler and follows more "strict" counterpoint) to a freer use of cross relations in the Great G minor/major Prelude and Fugue. Another aspect that is unique to Bach that I have observed is the extreme used of displaced voice resolutions. One excellent example is the first movement of his first Trio Sonata and others can be found in many of his slow movements from the Trio Sonatas (and of Choral Preludes you find several examples).
ONe final and dramatic example of displaced voice resolution of a dissonance (with the arrival of the dissonance on a strong beat and rather extreme for its time) is the diminished 7chord played in the manuals and 2 octaves below the tonic D from the coda of the great G major fugue (from the G major/ Prelude and Fugue - BWV 541, this dramatic cadence is foreshadowed in the Prelude though at a quicker pace leading to the Codetta of the Prelude. The Fugue is harmonically extremely interesting - especially the harmonic plan and wide ranging harmonic areas Bach manages to lead us to). Here is a you tube performance with informative aspects of the structure and harmony of the work with some funny comments.
Don't much care for our likes and subscriptions ay? Try and stop me
It continually amazes me, as a composer for 50 + years that all treatises or studies on counterpoint seemed to be poised like guns at composers in the crosshairs, ready to shoot down any ideas the composer has,.. with a rule, that makes the idea untenable. Wouldn't it be so much better to teach us HOW to BUILD a composition rather than how to tear it down. Let the critic of J S Bach, Johann Adolf Scheibe, study these strict rules, so that he may heap more coals on his own head as he languishes in HELL !
You know there is something wrong when Palestrina's works are cited as BAD EXAMPLES of counterpoint, while many describe his pieces as among the most perfect ever written.
For those who want to WRITE COUNTERPOINT rather than develop a serious imposter syndrome complex. I will give a couple of helpful hints. Think about the harmonic series, (and sub harmonic series, made up of divisions by whole number ratios, as guide points for voice leading. Use different rhythmical divisions for different counterpoint voices, use contrary motion often, rather than parallel motion for everything other than 3rds or 6ths, if the result of breaking rules sounds really appealing, in context, always break the rule (it serves no purpose). Rules don't make music, people who love what they are doing, make music. As Peter Schickele said: " if it sounds good, IT IS GOOD ! ! ! "
Don't be afraid of down beat passing tones, dominant 7ths, seconds, and 9ths, etc but keep in mind the incremental building or release of tensions. Parallel 4ths or fifths are pretty much the same (one tone is inverted by an octave). All dominant 7th chords contain tritones, ... Bach often used them generously in two part counterpoint, just be aware of where they came from and where they are going. Lavish use of diminished 7th chords, makes modulation to different keys quite workable. George Harrison of the Beatles loved them for that. Have fun !!!
If You are looking for an excuse, to hate the prospect of music composition, read this guy: Taneev .....or Schenker.
I am afraid you greatly underestimate the genius of Sergei Taneyev. Listen to his one and only prelude and fugue in g-sharp minor (6minutes). Or his piano quintet op. 30. Taneyev was greatly admired by his students Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Gliere, his teachers Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky, many other contemporaries such as Koussevitzky, Glazunov, L. Auer Rimsky Korsakov, Turgenev and many others as a composer, virtuoso pianist, teacher, theoretician, ethnomusicologist as well as a man of incredible kindness, integrity and wisdom.
Taneyev points out exceptions to common practice of renaissance counterpoint. Taneyev‘s approach of music is much more profound than listing rules and prohibitions.
It would suffice to read his 3 page introduction to his book „convertible counterpoint“ to realize this. The afterword/ conclusion also explains a lot.
I am admittedly less than a minute in ... but ... from the point of view of a mathematician, music notation is awful. Mathematicians spend an age with notation as it eventually melds with intuition and should serve to aid further development. Music notation is an ad hoc legacy. It is something you get used rather than having a function.
This is a common sentiment I see with folks with maths-y backgrounds and usually ends up being a bunch of premature conclusions after all of 5 minutes exposure to (tonal) music theory, so I'd be interested in what your specific criticisms are. As far as I'm concerned, standard notation is excellent precisely *because* of how well it aids with the development of strong intuitions about the behaviour of notes in a tonal/modal context. It's "ad hoc" in the same way your liver is an ad hoc result of evolution, yet replacing it with a carbon filter because you know better and like the highly logical design would be naive.
There is definitely music where the diatonic lens of standard notation is a hindrance though, but it's not tonal/modal-adjacent.
similar motion to a perfect consonance-hidden fifths/octaves, contrary motion to a perfect consonance from its compound, going from a diminished fifth into a perfect fifth though parallel motion. all such rules are completely and utterly useless. they are rules simply to uphold tradition and nothing else, they are easily broken by even amateurs, as they don't hold any place in real music. it's like banning going from a third to a sixth in similar motion, it is just complety redundant and is only taught because people in the past did, none of the great composers follow this rule through anything except coincidence, as they are frequently broken. I really H4-te how prevalent such rules are considering how utterly useless they are. it has nothing to do with how many voices are present, it is simply tradition created by incompetent reniassance theorists that has festered until the modern day.
10:24 if I were grading these 4 bars, I'd give it a perfect 100%
it's also an interesting starting progression for an ionian piece
^ actully maybe not a 100% as the repetition of E is pretty bad harmonically, and F would be better in the alto though that would create a 7th, which in this context would not be bad either.
Ok wim
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He's back!