First Published: 2022 December 19
Prereading note: This will be rambly
As I mentioned recently, I’m really enjoying playing around in Musescore. But, I don’t like being bad at composing, especially when I’m doing it. One thing I’ve tried to do before is species counterpoint.
Species counterpoint is a set of compositional exercises that’s pretty (in)famously used in a lot of composition curricula, especially historically. Generally you begin with a whole note melody that you write a harmony to. The harmony has to follow some general rules1 such as limited leaps2, forbiddance of parallel perfect intervals, and so on. Additionally, within each species there are specific rules. There are five species3:
First Species: Whole note against whole note. In this form, you generally are only allowed “consonant”4 intervals.5
Second Species: Half note against whole note.6 Here the second note may be dissonant, but only as a step-wise passing tone.
Third Species: Quarter note against whole note.7. As before, only the first note needs to be consonant, and dissonances need to be approached and left stepwise.
Fourth Species: Suspended whole notes offset by a half note. Generally if the suspension becomes dissonant, it needs to resolve down by a step. If not, you can leap or move up.
Fifth Species: Melody against whole note.8 I think then the rules are fairly loose, though generally still consonant on first note unless suspended over.
The pedagogical resources I’ve seen generally recommend working with your cantus firmus9 both above and below the written melody for practice.
After mastering10 the five species, you can then add another voice and start over. As it turns out, that causes 55 lessons if I want to get up to three voices in fifth species against a single cantus firmus.
From a book on habits I read, it’s best if new habits can be accomplished in under three minutes. Historically, writing a single first-species line takes less than three minutes, so I’d like to try doing six days of counterpoint a week, moving lessons each week. At first, both because I want to slowly build the habit, and because I know first species with a single voice well, I will just do a single exercise. I’d like to spend the seventh day11 setting a song to four-part string arrangement, both because I like how it sounds in Musescore ,and because I want to get more practice actually writing music.
The plan is:
One Voice First Species
One Voice Second Species
...
One Voice Fifth Species
Two Voices, First and First Species
Two Voices First and Second Species
...
Two Voices First and Fifth Species
Two Voices Second and Second Species
...
Two Voices Fifth and Fifth Species
Three Voices First, First, and First Species
...
Three Voices Fifth, Fifth, and Fifth Species
If I start today, I’ll be finished near the beginning of 2024. It’s good to set big stretch goals I hear.
that are probably memorable from introductory music theory↩︎
depending on the exact style of species counterpoint, leap rules vary a lot↩︎
types of harmony line written↩︎
scare quotes necessary↩︎
P1,m3,M3,P5,m6,M6,P8 and then everything larger gets reduced down↩︎
two notes written per note↩︎
four notes written per note↩︎
use whatever from each of the other species↩︎
given melody↩︎
for whatever definition you want↩︎
Sunday, first day of the week technically↩︎