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Counterpoint (Schenker)
''Counterpoint'' (''Kontrapunkt'' in the original German) is the second volume of Heinrich Schenker's ''New Musical Theories and Fantasies'' (the first is ''Harmony'' and the third is ''Free Composition''). It is divided into two "Books", the first published in 1910, and the second in 1922. The subject matter of the work is species counterpoint. Book I is concerned with the construction of the cantus firmus and the rules of counterpoint in two voices, also referred to as "strict counterpoint"; Book II treats the cases of three- and four-voice counterpoint. Schenker thus follows the model of Fux in presenting all of the species in turn before adding additional voices. The Principles The principles of strict counterpoint constitute one of the fundamental components of Schenker's musical theory (see Schenkerian analysis). For Schenker, the study of counterpoint is the study of voice leading; in particular, contrapuntal theory is separate from and independent of harmonic theory, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
German Language
German ( ) is a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and Official language, official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Italy, Italian province of South Tyrol. It is also a co-official language of Luxembourg and German-speaking Community of Belgium, Belgium, as well as a national language in Namibia. Outside Germany, it is also spoken by German communities in France (Bas-Rhin), Czech Republic (North Bohemia), Poland (Upper Silesia), Slovakia (Bratislava Region), and Hungary (Sopron). German is most similar to other languages within the West Germanic language branch, including Afrikaans, Dutch language, Dutch, English language, English, the Frisian languages, Low German, Luxembourgish, Scots language, Scots, and Yiddish. It also contains close similarities in vocabulary to some languages in the North Germanic languages, North Germanic group, such as Danish lan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scale-steps
In Schenkerian theory, a scale-step (german: Stufe) is a triad (based on one of the diatonic scale degrees) that is perceived as an organizing force for a passage of music (in accordance with the principle of composing-out). In ''Harmony'', Schenker gives the following example and asserts that A scale-step triad is designated by an uppercase Roman numeral representing the scale degree of the root, much as in traditional "harmonic analysis" (see chord progression). Thus, in the above example (which is in G major), the G major triad that Schenker claims we perceive through the first two measures would be labelled "I". However, unlike traditional harmonic analyses, Schenker's theory is not concerned with the mere labelling of such chords, but rather with discerning hierarchical relationships among tones. For Schenker, the chords occurring in a passage need not be of equal import. As he explains: Furthermore, in terms of Schenker's mature theory, the question of whether a giv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas and achievements of classical antiquity. It occurred after the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages and was associated with great social change. In addition to the standard periodization, proponents of a "long Renaissance" may put its beginning in the 14th century and its end in the 17th century. The traditional view focuses more on the early modern aspects of the Renaissance and argues that it was a break from the past, but many historians today focus more on its medieval aspects and argue that it was an extension of the Middle Ages. However, the beginnings of the period – the early Renaissance of the 15th century and the Italian Proto-Renaissance from around 1250 or 1300 – overlap considerably with the Late Middle Ages, conventionally da ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Music Theory
Music theory is the study of the practices and possibilities of music. ''The Oxford Companion to Music'' describes three interrelated uses of the term "music theory". The first is the "rudiments", that are needed to understand music notation (key signatures, time signatures, and rhythmic notation); the second is learning scholars' views on music from antiquity to the present; the third is a sub-topic of musicology that "seeks to define processes and general principles in music". The musicological approach to theory differs from music analysis "in that it takes as its starting-point not the individual work or performance but the fundamental materials from which it is built." Music theory is frequently concerned with describing how musicians and composers make music, including tuning systems and composition methods among other topics. Because of the ever-expanding conception of what constitutes music, a more inclusive definition could be the consideration of any sonic phenomena, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fugue
In music, a fugue () is a contrapuntal compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject (a musical theme) that is introduced at the beginning in imitation (repetition at different pitches) and which recurs frequently in the course of the composition. It is not to be confused with a ''fuguing tune'', which is a style of song popularized by and mostly limited to early American (i.e. shape note or "Sacred Harp") music and West Gallery music. A fugue usually has three main sections: an exposition, a development and a final entry that contains the return of the subject in the fugue's tonic key. Some fugues have a recapitulation. In the Middle Ages, the term was widely used to denote any works in canonic style; by the Renaissance, it had come to denote specifically imitative works. Since the 17th century, the term ''fugue'' has described what is commonly regarded as the most fully developed procedure of imitative counterpoint. Most fugues open with a short ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Invention (musical Composition)
In music, an invention is a short composition (usually for a keyboard instrument) in two-part counterpoint. (Compositions in the same style as an invention but using three-part counterpoint are known as ''sinfonias.'' Some modern publishers call them "three-part inventions" to avoid confusion with symphonies.) Well-known examples are the fifteen inventions that make up the first half of Johann Sebastian Bach's Inventions and Sinfonias. Inventions are usually not performed in public, but serve as exercises for keyboard students, and as pedagogical exercises for composition students. Form Inventions are similar in style to a fugue, though they are much simpler. They consist of a short exposition, a longer development, and, sometimes, a short recapitulation. The key difference is that inventions do not generally contain an answer to the subject in the dominant key, whereas the fugue does. Two-part and three-part inventions are in contrapuntal style. Exposition In the exposition, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polyphonic
Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice, monophony, or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords, homophony. Within the context of the Western musical tradition, the term ''polyphony'' is usually used to refer to music of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Baroque forms such as fugue, which might be called polyphonic, are usually described instead as contrapuntal. Also, as opposed to the ''species'' terminology of counterpoint, polyphony was generally either "pitch-against-pitch" / "point-against-point" or "sustained-pitch" in one part with melismas of varying lengths in another. In all cases the conception was probably what Margaret Bent (1999) calls "dyadic counterpoint", with each part being written generally against one other part, with all parts modified if needed in the end. This point-against-point conception is opposed to "su ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hugo Riemann
Karl Wilhelm Julius Hugo Riemann (18 July 1849 – 10 July 1919) was a German musicologist and composer who was among the founders of modern musicology. The leading European music scholar of his time, he was active and influential as both a music theorist and music historian. Many of his contributions are now termed as Riemannian theory, a variety of related ideas on many aspects of music theory. Biography Riemann was born at Grossmehlra, Schwarzburg-Sondershausen. His first musical training came from his father Robert Riemann, a land owner, bailiff and, to judge from locally surviving listings of his songs and choral works, an active music enthusiast. Hugo Riemann was educated by Heinrich Frankenberger, the Sondershausen Choir Master, in Music theory. He was taught the piano by August Barthel and Theodor Ratzenberger (who had once studied under Liszt). He studied law, and finally philosophy and history at Berlin and Tübingen. After participating in the Franco-Prussian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Principle Of Repetition
A principle is a proposition or value that is a guide for behavior or evaluation. In law, it is a rule that has to be or usually is to be followed. It can be desirably followed, or it can be an inevitable consequence of something, such as the laws observed in nature or the way that a system is constructed. The principles of such a system are understood by its users as the essential characteristics of the system, or reflecting system's designed purpose, and the effective operation or use of which would be impossible if any one of the principles was to be ignored. A system may be explicitly based on and implemented from a document of principles as was done in IBM's 360/370 ''Principles of Operation''. Examples of principles are, entropy in a number of fields, least action in physics, those in descriptive comprehensive and fundamental law: doctrines or assumptions forming normative rules of conduct, separation of church and state in statecraft, the central dogma of molecular biology ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harmony
In music, harmony is the process by which individual sounds are joined together or composed into whole units or compositions. Often, the term harmony refers to simultaneously occurring frequencies, pitches ( tones, notes), or chords. However, harmony is generally understood to involve both vertical harmony (chords) and horizontal harmony ( melody). Harmony is a perceptual property of music, and, along with melody, one of the building blocks of Western music. Its perception is based on consonance, a concept whose definition has changed various times throughout Western music. In a physiological approach, consonance is a continuous variable. Consonant pitch relationships are described as sounding more pleasant, euphonious, and beautiful than dissonant relationships which sound unpleasant, discordant, or rough. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Counterpoint, which refers to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heinrich Schenker
Heinrich Schenker (19 June 1868 – 14 January 1935) was a Galician-born Austrian music theorist whose writings have had a profound influence on subsequent musical analysis. His approach, now termed Schenkerian analysis, was most fully explained in a three volume series entitled ''Neue musikalische Theorien und Phantasien'' (''New Musical Theories and Phantasies''), which included ''Harmony'' (1906), ''Counterpoint'' (1910; 1922) and ''Free Composition'' (1935). Born in Wiśniowczyk, Austrian Galicia, he studied law at University of Vienna and music at what is now the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna where his teachers included Franz Krenn, Ernst Ludwig, Anton Bruckner and Johann Nepomuk Fuchs. Despite his law degree, he focused primarily on a musical career following graduation, finding minimal success as a composer, conductor and accompanist. From the 20th-century on, Schenker increasingly directed his efforts towards music theory, developing a systemic ap ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Voice Leading
Voice leading (or part writing) is the linear progression of individual melodic lines ( voices or parts) and their interaction with one another to create harmonies, typically in accordance with the principles of common-practice harmony and counterpoint. Rigorous concern for voice leading is of greatest importance in common-practice music, although jazz and pop music also demonstrate attention to voice leading to varying degrees. In ''Jazz Theory'', Gabriel Sakuma writes that " the surface level, jazz voice-leading conventions seem more relaxed than they are in common-practice music."Terefenko, Dariusz (2014). ''Jazz Theory: From Basic to Advanced Study'', p. 33. Routledge. . Marc Schonbrun also states that while it is untrue that "popular music has no voice leading in it, ..the largest amount of popular music is simply conceived with chords as blocks of information, and melodies are layered on top of the chords."Schonbrun, Marc (2011). ''The Everything Music Theory Book'', pp. 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
