Counterpoint II
In last month’s column, I discussed teaching the playing of contrapuntal music on keyboard instruments, focusing on ways of conceptualizing counterpoint that might be interesting and useful to students without being intimidatingly technical or complicated. This month I want to continue that effort. I will also discuss ways of unraveling contrapuntal textures, to help students understand those textures and feel comfortable playing them.
A contrapuntal piece is, fundamentally, a piece that is in voices, and, as I wrote last month, the concept of voices in keyboard music is both elusive and powerful. The concept of voices in, for example, a vocal quartet or a wind trio is not the least elusive. Each singer or instrument is capable of producing one note at a time and thus playing or singing a melody. When a voice is temporarily silent (i.e., has rests), then the musician carrying that voice is still present, not singing or playing, but representing those rests. The concept of voices at a keyboard instrument is elusive because, conceptually, each voice clearly does not emanate from its own source—a consciousness, a person, an instrument—and, practically, because voices can cross and become confused with each other, or blend together in a way that sounds like chords.
Of course, there are certain cases in which a keyboard instrument can clarify or solve at least the practical side of this problem: two-voice counterpoint in which either the voices don’t cross or, better, are played on different sounds, that is, different keyboards; or three-voice counterpoint in which each line is clearly on a different sound, that is, two manuals and pedal. It is possible that one reason for the greater prevalence of clearly contrapuntal music during the harpsichord era, as opposed to the piano era, was the availability of two-manual domestic keyboard instruments. However, this was probably only a minor reason, since those larger instruments were the exception in most times and places, and the vast majority of contrapuntal keyboard music was indeed written to be played on one sound.
The abstract nature of contrapuntal voices in keyboard music is probably one of the sources of its particular emotional and philosophical power. When a musical voice is heard that is clearly a person—a singer or an instrumentalist—then there is a sense of personal communication that helps to define the character of the listening experience. This personal communication may be, in a way, illusory. (I recall a famous discussion by a prominent opera singer some years ago of how during an intense scene in a opera she was most likely—while singing—thinking about what kind of pizza to order later on!) However, it still shapes our reaction to the music. In keyboard counterpoint, while the overall piece may seem to come from one place—the performer and at one remove the composer—each voice on its own comes from somewhere that is abstract and anonymous. Thus a listener can fill in a sense of where the voices are coming from, and what meaning or emotional content this sense of where they come from conveys. This will be, for different listeners, emotional or philosophical or religious in nature, or something that can’t be pigeonholed. In any case it is not something that needs to be—or, most likely, even can be—defined or described in words.
The relevance of the above discussion to the work of a student wishing to begin studying keyboard counterpoint—and to his or her teacher—is probably twofold. First, it is a reminder that indeed keyboard counterpoint has its conceptual and historical origin in vocal and instrumental counterpoint. This can help develop a basic sense of what a “voice” is. Second, and perhaps even more important, it is a reminder that keyboard counterpoint, whatever its origins, is its own thing with its own power and meaning. It is not (musically, even if it is historically) derivative, and it should not be considered inferior. Attempts to determine anything—technical or interpretive—about how to play keyboard counterpoint by direct analogy with singing or with playing instruments should be taken with a grain or two of salt. Of course, such analogies are useful and should be considered, along with all other possible sources of ideas and inspiration, such as dance, bird songs, any and all genres of music, the rhythmic feeling of walking through the woods, or bicycling, or swinging a golf club, or one’s heartbeat. But it should not be assumed that playing contrapuntal music on keyboard instruments is a never-quite-as-good substitute for something else.
(Of course I mention this because we are often told, or at least somehow absorb the idea, that the human voice is the best instrument, or the “only perfect” instrument. Again, it is wonderful to draw both inspiration and, sometimes, concrete interpretive ideas from singing. But it is crucial not to practice, play, and perform always looking over one’s shoulder in case there is a singer back there who could be doing the same thing better!)
So, as I mentioned briefly last month, I believe that the best way to introduce a student to the idea of voices in contrapuntal keyboard music—with the above caveats—is to make the analogy to individual sung or played musical lines. A contrapuntal voice is a musical line, or melody, that could in theory be produced by a singer or by someone playing a melody instrument. A voice in a keyboard piece can exceed the range of a vocal part or of any given instrument: it should be made clear to the student that neither very wide range nor extravagant leaps are rare or problematic in keyboard counterpoint. (Again, I mention this because it does arise as a concern. If a student comes to understand the concept of a contrapuntal voice by analogy with a sung voice or line, then a keyboard line that exceed the bounds of what a singer can do might seem to be illegitimate. This can lead students to worry inaccurately and unnecessarily that they are making mistakes in their analysis of the voice structure of certain pieces. This is another of those things that seem obvious to those who have worked with it for a long time but that is not necessarily clear to anyone who has not studied it yet.)
The first practical step in introducing students to playing music written in voices is to ask the student to play individual voices—melodies—starting with ones that are easy to find, that is, that do not have to be teased out of a complex texture. These can in principle be anything: voices taken from simple contrapuntal pieces, coherent melodies from pieces that are not otherwise contrapuntal, songs (classical or popular), lines from instrumental pieces that are not officially for keyboard instruments, hymn tunes, etc. The purpose of doing this is to reinforce what a contrapuntal voice is, and to give students (in particular their ears more than their fingers) a chance to become more deeply accustomed to following melodic lines. Learning, playing, and listening to pedal lines is also a good idea at this stage. These can be extracted from pieces, and it is of course perfectly OK to learn a pedal line without going on to learn the whole piece. It will just be a leg up if the student ever happens to want to come back to that piece.
The appropriate next step is for the student to play one melody while listening to another. An ideal way to do this is for the student to have learned one voice of a two-voice piece, say a Bach Two-part Invention, or a bicinium by Scheidt or Sweelinck, and to play that line while the teacher plays the other line. On organ, this can be done with various registrations creating various kinds of balance, all the way from the student’s line predominating enough that the teacher’s line is no distraction at all, through a nice even balance, to the point where the student’s line is almost drowned out, and following it is a challenge.
(This exercise is of course aimed primarily at students who are beginners at playing contrapuntal music. However, it is not a bad refresher exercise for anyone, at any level of experience. This is probably true of most of what is being discussed here.)
There are two parallel next steps, which can be done in any order, or essentially at the same time.
The first of these is to ask the student to work on some two-voice counterpoint: a Bach Two-part Invention, or anything else that has that structure to it. Technically, all else being equal, this is the easiest kind of counterpoint to play, simply because there are fewer notes than in a three- or four-voice piece. Conceptually, it is easiest—and the best starting place—because with each hand playing one voice, the physical, dance-like connection between the musical line as a concept and the act of playing that line is the most direct. (This connection is also very direct and compelling when playing a contrapuntal voice on the pedals.) It is extremely important that the student practice each separate hand/voice until it is, by itself, second nature. The act of putting the two voices together should be well prepared enough to feel natural and easy. Ample practicing of separate hands is usually (probably always) a good idea, with any music. In this case, it is important in particular because the student’s main task when putting the two hands together—that is, playing the whole two-voice texture—is to listen well. It is important that the physical side of playing not demand so much concentration as to distract from the listening.
The next step is to work on extracting contrapuntal voices from textures of three or more voices: that is, at first, not playing them, but just following them. The basics of knowing which voice is which are not always obvious to someone who has not yet done much of this kind of work. It is fine to start this process with something as basic as a traditional four-part hymn setting. In that type of writing, it should be quite clear from a combination of placement of notes on the two staves, stem direction, and musical sense which notes belong to which voice. These are the same things that ideally should (and usually do) make the voices clear in the score of a more complicated contrapuntal piece. Next could come slightly more elaborate and challenging hymn-like pieces, such as the Brahms Es ist ein Ros’ or the Vierne Épitaphe, and after that three- and four-voice fugues. The point is to find pieces in which there is not a one-to-one correspondence between voices and staves. The exercise can be done by having the student go through and point to all the notes of a given voice, or highlight voices in different colors, or actually write out the separate voices on separate staves. The point is simply to practice discerning which notes in a complicated texture belong to which voice.
(I should mention that there are certainly students who are beginners in actually playing contrapuntal keyboard music, or who feel that they need systematic work in that area, but who, perhaps because of theoretical study or something in their background, really don’t need to go through the process described in the last paragraph. That is, they know perfectly well how to discern what the voices are in any texture. This is wonderful, and no one should be made to do anything that they don’t need to do. The point is to make absolutely sure that everyone knows, without its seeming to be any sort of bother or obstacle, how to follow the voices in any contrapuntally constructed score. If a student says that he or she can already do that, then the teacher’s job is just to make sure that this is true, in a friendly and discreet way, and go on!)
The final step, and in a sense the most important, is for the student to work on a three- or four-voice contrapuntal piece by first learning each voice separately, then practicing all possible pairs of voices, then putting the whole texture together. In the course of doing this, the student can also begin a motivic analysis of the piece. For this purpose, I advocate avoiding technical terms, even basic ones such as “subject,” “countersubject,” and “answer.” Instead of using those terms, I ask students simply to look for and notice anything and everything that happens more than once. This often leads to a more thorough and nuanced analysis than would arise by applying technical terms to various motifs. It is also usually quite interesting to do. Next month I will take all of this up in detail.
