II. Counterpoint and Galant Schemas
First-Species Counterpoint
Kris Shaffer and Mark Gotham
Key Takeaways
- First-species counterpoint is a traditional compositional exercise that teaches beginning musicians to consider how to start and end melodic lines, and most importantly, how to keep them independent of each other.
- When writing in first species, follow these rules:
- Begin on a perfect unison, fifth, or octave.
- Both voices move at exactly the same rate and have no rhythmic variety (for example, all notes are whole notes).
- Harmonically, the intervals between the two voices are all consonances.
- Melodically, prefer stepwise motion and leap only occasionally. Melodic leaps of a tritone or seventh are forbidden.
- Parallel perfect consonances are forbidden.
- End with a perfect unison or octave.
- This chapter presents additional guidelines that will help in writing a successful first-species counterpoint.
Counterpoint is the mediation of two or more musical lines into a meaningful and pleasing whole. In first-species counterpoint, we not only write a smooth melody that has its own integrity of shape, variety, and goal-directed motion, but we also write a second melody that contains these traits. Further, and most importantly, we combine these melodies to create a whole texture that is smooth, that exhibits variety and goal-oriented motion, and in which these melodies both maintain their independence and fuse together into consonant simultaneities (the general term for two or more notes sounding at the same time).
In first-species counterpoint, we begin with a cantus firmus (new or existing) and compose a single new line—called the counterpoint—above or below it. That new line contains one note for every note in the cantus: both the cantus firmus and the counterpoint will be all whole notes. Thus, first species is sometimes called “one-against-one” or 1:1 counterpoint.
The Counterpoint Line
In general, the counterpoint should follow the principles of writing a good cantus firmus discussed in the previous chapter, Introduction to Species Counterpoint. There are some minor differences, to be discussed below, but generally a first-species counterpoint should consist of two cantus-firmus-quality lines.
counterpoint line either above or below. We’ve annotated each one with the interval that the counterpoint line makes with the cantus firmus. For the complete examples from Gradus ad Parnassum as exercises, solutions, and annotations, see Gradus ad Parnassum Exercises.
shows the complete exercises of first-species counterpoint from Part I of Gradus ad Parnassum. Each example sees one of the cantus firmi we’ve already met combined with a new
Beginning and Ending
Beginning a first-species counterpoint
Note that each exercise in perfect consonance. This creates a sense of stability at the opening of the line.
begins with aWhen writing a counterpoint above a cantus firmus, the first note of the counterpoint should be do [latex](\hat1)[/latex] or sol