Modal Counterpoint Renaissance Style

by Schubert, Peter

• ISBN13: 9780195331943
• ISBN10: 019533194X
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-12-18
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

An exceptional text for undergraduate and graduate music students, Modal Counterpoint, Renaissance Style uses a wide variety of carefully graded exercises to present guidelines for writing and analyzing 16th-century music. The only species counterpoint text that draws directly on Renaissancetreatises, it provides a conceptual framework to guide students through composition and analysis as it teaches them general structural principles. With stylistically diverse examples including not only motets and mass movements but also French chansons, German chorale settings, English canzonets,Italian madrigals, and Spanish organ hymns, villancicos, and ricercars, the book gives students a "real-life" feel for the subject. It distinguishes between technical requirements ("hard" rules) and stylistic guidelines ("soft" rules), and includes coordinated exercises that allow students todevelop their skills systematically. The concluding chapters provide the formal and conceptual building blocks for longer pieces and encourage students to understand analysis and composition as complementary activities. By the end of the book, students are writing real compositions, not just drillexercises. The text also features progressively graded exercises, historical asides that explain important topics and issues of the period, and some notes in the preface on using the book in the classroom. Combining the historical accuracy of "style-oriented" texts with the more systematic speciescounterpoint approach, this book offers a unique alternative to other methods. Now in its second edition, Modal Counterpoint, Renaissance Style integrates improvisation activities and new repertoire examples into many chapters; revises the chapter on three-part writing (Chapter 14) so that it pays more attention to rules and strategies; reworks the chapters on cadences(Chapter 10) and on writing two parts in mixed values (Chapter 11) to make them more accessible to students; incorporates clarified instructions throughout; and includes a summary of rules.

Table of Contents

Preface

Note to the Student Note to the Instructor

Introduction: Renaissance Musical Style and Notation

Mode

Introduction to Two-Part Species Counterpoint

First Species

Second Species

Third Species

Fourth Species

Mixed Values

Counterpoint with Repetition of a Motive

Motivic Variation

Cadence Formulas in Two Voices

Two Parts in Mixed Values

The Imitative Duo

Invertible Counterpoint

Three Parts

Three Parts in Mixed Values

The Three-Voice Invertible Canon

Four-Part Writing

Adding Three Parts in Mixed Values to a CF

Four Parts in Mixed Values

Composing a Whole Piece

Appendices

Text Setting

Canon Against a CF

Solmization

Sample Motive Placements

The Invertible Duo

Bibliography

Index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.