Musicianship 1A — Week 7 Lecture

Melodic Principles of Part Writing:

The Outer Voice Framework
(Turek Chapter 10)

Voice leading derived from counterpoint, which literally means 'point-counter-point' or 'point
against point' or 'note against note'.

The rules of counterpoint comprise a theorised system for composing music. Counterpoint is
primarily concerned with writing multiple melodic lines. It takes into account the consonance
or dissonance of intervals formed by simultaneously sounding notes, and much of so-called
species counterpoint concerns rules of setting up and then resolving dissonances. In
counterpoint the dissonances and consonances are conceived of in terms of intervals, not in
terms of 'chords' or ‘harmonies’ as such. A strong sense of functional harmony—with
emphasis on vertical chords (which we label with Roman numerals) didn't really become
prominent until well into the 19th century. Even then – as now in many musical contexts –
music is composed with strong reference to the basic rules of counterpoint which haven’t
changed all that much in 300 years.

‘Species’ counterpoint. Notion of five 'species' introduced by Joseph Fux in landmark treatise
Gradus ad Parnassum (‘Steps to Parnassus’, published 1725) which, through the guise of a
dialogue between teacher and student, lays out the rules for composing in the style of
Palestrina (1525-1594), who was regarded as one of the greatest exponents of polyphonic
choral writing of the late Renaissance.

Five 'species' of contrapuntal writing outlined by Fux

First species Note against note, or 1:1 counterpoint
Second species Two notes against one, or 2:1 counterpoint
Third species Three or four (or more) notes against one
Fourth species Presuming a cantus firmus written as a series of semi-breves, the
second voice is offset by a minim, setting off a series of
accented suspensions occurring on the first (strong) minim of
each bar, resolved on second (weak) minim.
Fifth species A mixture of the first four species; also referred to as ‘florid’
counterpoint.
See examples of each of the five species, based on a single cantus firmus, on the next
page.
 Examples of first-fifth species counterpoint
(from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterpoint)

NOTE: Audio for each of the following examples is provided in MyUni

First species:

Second species:

Third species:

Fourth spicies:

Fifth species:
Palestrina, as all composers during the Renaissance, worked in a modal context. Beginning
around 1600, composers started moving more towards the Major/Minor Tonal harmonies
familiar to us even today. Many later theorists (including Turek) have adapted the main ideas
of Fux to a Tonal context exemplified in the work of J.S. Bach (1685-1750).

The four main topics covered in Turek Chapter 10 are

⚫ Melodic principles of voice leading
⚫ Motion between voices
⚫ Note-against-note counterpoint (first species)
⚫ Writing two notes against one note (second species)

The assignment we’re working up to in our course will involve exercises which require you to
add 3 voices to a given cantus firmus, and demonstrate good voice-leading involving all 4
voices. The voices are presumed to be 4 vocal parts: soprano, alto, tenor, bass.

Before talking about counterpoint, Turek sets out 6 basic principles for writing good melodic
lines. These include
1. Vocal ranges (Ex. 10-1) gives ranges of each voice
2. Motion: Each voice moves primarily by stepwise motion
3. Chromatic intervals to avoid (augmented second; but also augmented 4th/diminished 5th)
4. Leaps:
5. ‘Sensitive’ tones (a.k.a. 'Tendency' tones): In the course of your melodies, resolve
‘sensitive tones’ by letting them do what they ‘want’ to do:
⚫ Leading tone: resolves up by half step to the tonic
⚫ Chord sevenths: resolve down by step--resolves down by half-step in major;
resolves down by whole-step in minor.
⚫ paired ^6 and ^7 in minor keys: raise them when moving upward to the tonic; lower
them when moving downward to the dominant
6. Counterpoint: Create strong/distinctive counterpoint between the outer voices by using
contrary and oblique motion where possible.

Turek considers four types of motion between voices:

The remainder of Chapter 10 is devoted to discussion of the possibilities of good 2-part
contrapuntal writing using 1:1 (first species) counterpoint and 2:1 (second species)
counterpoint. Students should read through, listen to, and play these examples on their own.

A fair chunk of the discussion of 1:1 and 2:1 counterpoint refers to different simple settings of
'Plasir d'amour' (1784) the well-known song by the Italian composer Martini (lyrics by de
Florian), which has been performed by countless classical and folk singers up to the present,
subsequently arranged for orchestra by Berlioz (1859), and which provided the basis for the
song 'Can't Help Falling In Love' (composed by Peretti/Creatore/Weiss), which was most
famously recorded by Elvis Presley in 1961 and subsequently covered by countless pop
singers since.

In the lecture we look at the 1:1 and 2:1 settings of the Martini tune as found in Turek
examples 10-5, 10-6, 10-7, and 10-12, and discuss some of the differences in each
successive example.

These examples are collated on the next page. The audio for each excerpt is available in
MyUni alongside the lecture notes.

Examples in Turek Chapter 10 based on the main melody of Martini’s ‘Plasir d’amour’
In the last part of the lecture, we listened to (watched) two performances of the Plasir
d’Amour melody + counterpoint.

These included a performance of the original song in French by the operatic soprano
Kathleen Battle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMxkLWBx3RM

We also looked at a bit of the pop song ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love’ by Elvis Presley in Blue
Hawaii: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roh2vIM_EAA

Apart from differences in the texts and instrumentation of these two performances, you will
also note that the contrasting ‘B’ section of ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love’ is completely different
from the comparable contrasting section in ‘Plasir d’Amour’.

Two further renditions of ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love’ may be found on YouTube. These
include:

The version by Swedish pop group A Teens, as used in the 2002 Disney film Lilo and Stitch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10LyncJlJpE
The use of harmony is stripped-back in this arrangement in order to feature melody and
dance rhythms, yet the basic first species counterpoint is still present here.

An arrangement by the a cappella group the Pentatonics:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSkHIv7GhOM
This version features thickened, jazz-influenced harmonies, but again, the basic counterpoint
of the original melody by Martini is still intact.
We might ask what aspects of the Martini song has made it so successful for well over 200
years. The answer relates to a combination of a ‘good melody’ and ‘good counterpoint’ and
(in this case) a simple 2-part counterpoint which is easily adaptable to varied musical styles
and harmonic settings.