Species counterpoint
Teaching of counterpoint in five species.
What it means
Species counterpoint (German Gattungskontrapunkt) is a teaching method that conveys contrapuntal writing in five successive stages. The basis is a cantus firmus in equally long note values, against which the student writes one or more counter-voices. With each species, new rhythmic relations and new ways of treating dissonance are added. The method found its most influential presentation in 1725 in Johann Joseph Fux's textbook Gradus ad Parnassum, whose influence continues to this day.
Musical use
In the first species there is note against note; all sonorities are consonant, and what is practised is voice-leading, types of motion, and the avoidance of parallel fifths and octaves. In the second, two notes stand against one, and on the weak part of the bar dissonances may for the first time appear as passing notes. In the third, four notes stand against one, which makes possible passing notes, neighbour notes, and further figures. In the fourth the counter-voice is syncopated, so that suspensions arise: a note is prepared, becomes dissonant through the change of the cantus firmus, and resolves downward. The fifth, florid counterpoint, combines all the previous possibilities in free mixture.
The usefulness of the method lies in the isolation of individual problems. Instead of mastering all difficulties at once, the student practises one after the other until they have become self-evident in free writing.
Stylistically the teaching is oriented on the vocal polyphony of the sixteenth century. It is therefore not a description of all music but a school of voice-leading whose principles hold far beyond this style.
Generations of composers learned from it: Haydn taught himself the work and recommended it to the young Beethoven, who condensed it into an abstract for ready reference; Mozart owned his own annotated copy.
Performance practice
Sing your exercises before you finish them — what cannot be sung is usually faulty. Check each species first for parallels and for the treatment of dissonances. And practise at the instrument by playing the cantus firmus and singing the counter-voice to it.