Lesson 7 Part 1 - Guided Practice in Counterpoint

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Escreva Como Mozart: Uma Introdução à Composição de Música Clássica

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National University of Singapore

Escreva Como Mozart: Uma Introdução à Composição de Música Clássica

243 classificações

Este curso apresenta aos estudantes estratégias para compor ao estilo de música europeia. As questões relativas à progressão harmônica, voice leading e textura são tratadas além de conceitos relevantes de composição tais como repetição, variação e elaboração. O curso tem o objetivo de oferecer um espaço criativo mesmo dentro das restrições da emulação estilística.

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Module Five

This module builds off of the concept of chord substitution that was introduced previously. However, this week we look at chords that are chromatic, rather than diatonic. Some of you may be familiar with the concept of chromaticism. Its simplest definition is the use of chords that are not part of the key of the passage in which they are used. One of the things that chromaticism helps to make possible is modulation to new keys, so sometimes people think that chromaticism is music that changes keys. That’s not completely true - although it is often the case. In Write Like Mozart we will look only at uses of chromatic harmony that do not cause modulation. (Modulation is a large topic that would take perhaps 2-3 weeks to properly cover, and we just don’t have the space here.) We will also get our feet wet with 2-voice counterpoint. We will look at writing 2:1 counterpoint, that is, 2 notes in the upper voice against 1 note in the lower voice. Counterpoint can go much deeper than this, but it is a subject on its own and also well beyond the space we have in this course. However, I did want to give some guidance in it because we will look at a Bagatelle by Beethoven this week in which he uses 2-voice counterpoint. Since this work could serve in part as a model for your own final project composition, I thought it would be good to take a bit of time to give you some insights into how to write simple 2-voice counterpoint.

Lesson 6 Part 1 - Simple 2-Voice Counterpoint12:37

Lesson 6 Part 2 - Simple 2-Voice Counterpoint12:32

Lesson 7 Part 1 - Guided Practice in Counterpoint18:40

Lesson 7 Part 2 - Guided Practice in Counterpoint17:05

Conheça os instrutores

Peter Edwards
Associate Professor
Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music

I really spent a lot of time trying to figure

out how to go about doing some guided practice and counterpoint.

That we've reached this sort of, problematic

point in the class, in terms of,

and corporation of assessments because, in the very beginning you know, there's,

there's maybe more of a clear of a sense of right and wrong in answers.

When you get to this point where we're dealing with two-to-one counterpoint.

There are so many options that it's very, well it's

essentially impossible for me to give you an assignment and

then give you a solution sheet. Because the number of

solutions would just be well it's not vast is maybe not the right word but.

But, significant number of right answers exist for any

kind of counter point a sum and I would give.

And it would rea, really require me to sit down and evaluate

things on a, on a one-to-two level which obviously in a class this size I can't do.

But then I was thinking about how we actually go about teaching

counterpoint, and what are some of

the pedagogical approaches to teaching counterpoint.

And then I remembered, well, one of the things that I, that I,

I sometimes do in class is have students submit assignments and

then we look as a class at the

student answers, and basically put these things up.

For all the students to give feedback on, and by evaluating the student work,

you learn yourself some secrets of counterpoint,

and you get better at it yourself.

So, I'm explaining all this just to clarify why, for instance, this week.

Although we spent some time on counterpoint,

there's no counterpoint in the assignment this week.

And I'm also using this as a chance

to explain why we're doing guided practice the

way we're doing guided practice, which is not

quite how we've done guided practice in the past.

So what we have here, so what I went ahead and did was.

I wrote some bad counterpoint for you, this is not

awful counterpoint, but it's filled with the kinds of mistakes that

are commonly seen when someone first sets out to

do to try their hand at writing something counterpontal.

And we have a couple of examples, and you'll see on the you know, lower down on

the page, it has some examples that are labeled,

well one labeled good, there's another one labeled better.

Notice that I don't write perfect on any

of these, just because there's always things that

you wish you could have done that maybe

the, the counterpoints didn't allow you to do.

And I think that's one thing to

realize about counterpoint, is that you don't really

always get exactly what you want, but you do the best with what you have.

So guided practice will be as follows; basically.

We'll listen to each of these fake student examples.

The first two systems here on the page.

I've provided actually recordings of these, so if

you want to listen to multiple recordings multiple times

to the, to the audio you can, so that you can really listen closely to them.

But, essentially we'll pause for you to grade and give,

not grade but to, to give criticism of these examples.

And then you should press Continue once you're

ready to follow along with the feedback that I would

give and see how you did in your own evaluation.

So let's try this first one.

Let's take a listen to it.

[MUSIC]

Well, I have to say that, you may listen

to it and say, wow, it actually sounds pretty nice.

But why don't you, and it does sound pretty nice.

But why don't you go ahead and take a couple minutes to look through it.

And see if there are any problems you may

have already spotted a couple, but look at it closely.

See if there are any problems that you spot then

press Continue and and we'll resume.

So I, I'll just play that one more time so we have it fresh in our ears.

[MUSIC]

And again, it actually sounds pretty nice.

But there are a couple of things that are a little bit problematic

when one is trying to do this kind of strict counterpoint.

The first thing I would say, to a student who wrote

this is that there's, [UNKNOWN] I'd point out the places of turbulence.

And that, that would definitely be right here in the beginning.

We get, if we just listen

back to this.

[MUSIC]

These first five notes of the first five notes.

Only two notes are, are used.

And there's just kind of fluctuating back and forth.

So, I think it suffers from a bit of turbulence.

This probably would be better off going up.

[SOUND] Like that.

That also gives us a bit more of the harmony here.

Here we ha, we get the one chord.

We get V hinted at, because we have the, the third and the fifth.

It'd be nice here to get the root and the third, clearly here the one chord.

Some of you may have said, oh well this doesn't have the root in it.

You may have suggested that as a criticism.

It's not really something to criticize because you've got so few options.

When doing one-to-one counterpoint.

And like I said before, sometimes you have to

hint at harmony rather than very, very clearly state it.

[MUSIC]

Let me put that back there so that we

can go back to the assignment that the student did.

The student quote unquote.

The fake student, also known as me.

then, okay, I've also mentioned that we want to avoid repeated notes.

So that's definitely a problem here and it's also a problem here.

This all looks pretty good.

There is only one other [UNKNOWN] for me really significant problem.

Which is here we ha, leap in the

same direction and we leap into the interval fifth.

So, this actually is [SOUND], I write it down [NOISE].

This is direct fifths we get here.

Maybe I write down some of these things [SOUND].

Repetition is a problem [SOUND].

Repetition there is a problem.

But, the positive things to say about this are

for instance, that we can very clearly hear the harmony.

The example doesn't for instance use any non-chord tones.

I actually run into that a lot.

Sometimes students think that in this one-to-one

counterpoint, you can already start using non-chord tones.

That's not the case at all.

That only starts happening in two-to-one counter point.

So, actually that's part, this is already an achievement

to be able to clearly hear the harmony.

But I think that's about all I have to say about.

This one, these are the major issues in this one.

Let's do, let's now listen to this one, and repeat the same task.

[MUSIC]

So take a few minutes.

When you're ready to to continue press Continue and then I'll

go through some of the issues that I see in this particular example.

So to have it fresh in our ears, let's play it back one more time.

[MUSIC]

In general, the, it starts off very strong.

We have this third here, then we have a third here,

and these go in contrary motion to each other to this unison.

That's very nice.

This leap up is, I think, very nice as well.

We get to hear the iv chord very clearly, because we have root and third.

This is, one, one small criticism I'd say here, is that we have this leap up

of a fourth.

It might be nice to come back down by step, or even.

By a third but, it, but to be honest, this is one of

those situations where, you know, actually it's nicer if it goes up here.

So, I would put this more as a cautionary thing.

You're leaping up by this fourth. It's a sizable interval.

You might want to think about going in the opposite direction.

It's not really a requirement but it's highly suggested.

And but nonetheless, the positive is that what we

get here is some nice, very clear contrary motion.

And a unison on this fifth scale degree, which

let's us really clearly hear the V chord there.

And that's, so that's all good.

But, this is just something to be cautious of.

Where you really start to have problems is right

in here. So there are two problems.

The first problem is this.

We leap up to this F sharp which is

the leading tone and we're in an extremely exposed situation.

Meaning if that leading tone can be resolved it should be

resolved and it can be, there's no problem to do that.

[MUSIC]

If the person had just done this, then there would be no problem.

Of course

But they didn't do that.

[MUSIC]

Let me put it back down there, then the second problem that happens

is because you go off D/F sharp, D/F sharp you get turbulence.

So

[MUSIC]

So, there's a problem here with this issue of what I call turbulence.

This is all very nice.

One criticism someone might make is that, it's quite high.

It's sort of at the limit of what you'd want to do.

It's not the end of the world. But but it's, it, it is a bit high.

And if, if you could avoid that higher register

might be, it might be a bit nicer.

It depends on what you end up with otherwise, of course.

The positive of this, though, is that we get a very clear climax.

We get a highest note in this.

So that's a very positive thing. And again, this one we can fit quite

clearly hear the harmonic progression, so that's also fairly pos quite positive.

But

I think that's all I have to say about this one.

What I'll do hear is just play it.

I say that this one's good.

I'd give this one I don't know, A minus-ish.

Let me play it, but let me say why it's good and not better.

So we take a listen.

[MUSIC]

So this is good, there's a very clear line going up to this point.

One could say that, it's a very clear line and yeah it's a very clear line.

I mean, first scale degree, second scale

degree, third scale degree, fourth scale degree, fifth.

It's a bit boring.

Might be nice to have a little twist and turn even in this beginning part.

Again, it's not bad.

It is clear and direct,

and we go from this G up to the top G.

This clear sense of direction, that's all positive, but it is something

to be aware of, it's something worth considering, whether or not there

needs to be something other than scale wise scale degree motion here.

Step-wise motion.

There is a mild bit of turbulence here as well.

Though, the thing is you don't really have

many options because you are going from the V chord

to the I chord to the VII diminished to the I.

You only have so many notes to work with.

So, I will also note this.

This is turbulent but not the end of the world.

I think this is definitely better than this one but

it is it gets a, it gets a little stuck.

I don't have the feeling that it gets really stuck, like this one does.

But it is nonetheless present.

And finally another criticism is that, this is quite high as well.

Again that give us a clear climax.

But it is quite distant from this other voice.

And it is quite high in the register.

Finally, let me play the better one.

[MUSIC]

Well this, this one, I'll go back here so we can see the good and the better.

This one gets rid of that problem that existed here.

Now, this was very clear and direct getting

in and its goal was really this note.

This one doesn't really have such long term goals.

It has much shorter term goals.

It gets here, then it jumps up and then comes back

down, and maybe its goal is this, this next note here.

This next G here.

We get a leap up of a fourth and a leap down of a third.

This is kind of a common figure.

You might suggest if possible to move by step but obviously

it's not possible because we're dealing only with chord tones right here.

So this is very common.

This is actually a nice use of consecutive leaps.

Usually you have a leap and then [UNKNOWN], a

bunch of steps, but you can also have consecutive leaps.

And but

not lots of them. Just a couple of them like you have here.

And this works out nicely, so we get the important, actually if we look

here in this bar, we get then finally all four notes of the V, VII chord.

They're just, you know, we just have two of

them presented here, and two of them presented here.

We have this nice contrary motion between

the leading tone and the fourth scale degree.

These are our tendency tones

of this, and we get very clear, outward motion from there.

One thing you could probably criticize this for is, at this point we

only get this A, it would be nice to have the F sharp.

But you don't, if you do that then again you'll have this turbulence thing.

So I would say that, you need to work to

make sure that the VII diminished six is actually heard.

If you go to do, you know, elaborate this into two-to-one counterpoint.

Otherwise I'd probably label this instead as

VI, six, four. because it probably would be heard more

more commonly as a VI, six, four passing six, four chord.

But okay, we get that, and we get this nice leap here, and

because we have this one, six, four, we can't actually step out of it.

If we just had V, then we, we could.

But we leap up into this. Note which acts sort of like a suspend,

suspension. It's the four resolving to the three, the

third scale degree and sorry the third of the V chord and then the end.

This does have a highest note.

Whether not this highest note is arguably a climax is difficult to say.

But it does

have a single highest note which is often something that

your counterpoint teacher would want to make sure you have in there.

I think this one is better than nonetheless this one

because it has a lot more nooks and crannies to it.

It's got a little bit more of a twist to it and sort of more short term.

Goals rather than this single sort of long-term goal.

And I find it more intriguing

to listen to.

Well, in the next video, we should now tackle these two-to-one counterpoints.

And what I've done, is taken this better one and done some

student versions of two-to-one realizations of this.

Two-to-one elaborations of this one-to-one counter point.

Let's pick up in the next

video with that.

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