“Music is a language.” I instinctively speak it without understanding its inner workings. But the deceptively simple question of “why something sounds good” has always stumped me. Answering it led me to discover a lost art called counterpoint.
I say ‘discover’ because counterpoint’s heyday was in the baroque period of the 1700s, and I feel like Indiana Jones when I leaf through the pages of original tomes in the library. For me, the adventure of finding these relics is half the fun.
Counterpoint is the relationship between multiple musical voices. Sets of mathematically precise rules dictate what options sound ‘good’. An exercise in composing with these rules is like solving an intricate puzzle. Although completing it is an accomplishment, it is most satisfying when I play the exercise at the piano, as the rigidity of mathematics transmutes into the beauty of harmony. For me, it is an ultimate unification of the correctness of mathematics and the passion of the arts.
Once I set forth to compose counterpoint, the orchestra conductor at my school became my mentor, correcting my manuscripts in red ink after his classes. After I had mastered the introductory exercises, he urged me to write my own piece. I have now almost completed my own fugue for three voices. Even more stimulating than completing exercises, though, are discussions with other musicians where we argue over what rules to break in the interest of creativity. In fact, I have turned my hurried debates outside classrooms into a club where all we do is talk counterpoint. Every meeting, we set a counterpoint masterpiece on the so-called operating table and dissect it. We have about five regular members which is about the perfect size for a robust debate. If you are like us and can’t stop talking about counterpoint, here are a few interesting releases to stimulate your group discussion.
This is a tour de force of 18th century contrapuntal techniques by the master himself — Johann Sebastian Bach. After the quasi-improvisational opening and the solemn Adagio chant, an insistent and catchy theme heralds the fugue. A strong technique, such as Argerich’s, helps to clearly enunciate the dense counterpoint of the fugue.
It is well documented that baroque composers were also able to improvise counterpoint. Improvising counterpoint is the ultimate example of multitasking. To improvise, say, a fugue with four voices, one has to divide their mind into four parts: one for each voice. Since counterpoint is the rules that govern the relationships between voices, each voice has to be cross-referenced with each other voice to avoid errors. Above this level, there are the broader considerations of form and embedding the theme of the piece within the fabric of the counterpoint. It is an impossible game of Whack-A-Mole.
Lesser known are today’s contrapuntal improvisers, who toe the line between jazz and classical music. The pianists Fred Hersch, Brad Mehldau and Keith Jarrett blend 18th-century counterpoint with jazz harmonies and popular tunes.
One of the most beautiful phenomena of counterpoint is what’s known as a suspension. This occurs when a voice lingers on a note for just a bit too long, the other voices having already moved on to the next chord. There is a heart-wrenching pull as the dissonance of the clashing voices resolves into a consonant harmony. See if you can spot some suspensions in the wild in Tomaso Albinoni’s Adagio for Strings (hint: 0:58), as well as Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings (the first note of the melody as it holds over into the next chord, for starters).
