Sixteenth-Century Counterpoint Guide

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Sixteenth-Century Counterpoint Study Guide:
A Complete Outline of Rules and Style Guidelines
Robert T. Kelley
September 2000 – January 2001

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Note: This is not a tutorial, and cannot serve to replace classroom instruction in modal Renaissance counterpoint. It is intended to function as a review resource for students preparing for an exam or for anyone needing to brush up on their skills.

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1. The Modal System
   • Notation and Metric/Rhythmic Conventions
   • The Dodecachordon, the mode system in use during the 16th Century
   • 16th-Century Polyphonic Mode Usage
   • Avoidance of the Tritone and Musica Ficta
   • The Clausula Vera
2. Melodic Writing and Text Setting
   • Melodic Idioms
   • Text Setting Guidelines
3. Consonance and Dissonance
   • The Consonant and Dissonant Intervals
   • Intervallic Analysis Technique
   • The Permitted Types of Dissonance and Their Use (in two voices)
   • Consonance and Dissonance in Three- and Four-Voice Textures
4. Imitative Counterpoint
   • Species Counterpoint
   • Head-Motive Technique
   • Canon
   • Cantus Firmus Technique
   • Familiar Style
   • The Motet, the Mass, and Parody Technique
   • Polychoral Style
   • Extended Chromaticism

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Bibiography

Fux, Johann Joseph, tr. Alfred Mann and John Edmunds. The Study of Counterpoint, from Gradus ad Parnassum. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1971.

Gauldin, Robert. A Practical Approach to Sixteenth/Eighteenth-Century Counterpoint (2 separate volumes). Prospect Heights, Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc., 1995. (Short volumes with good information.)

Schubert, Peter. Modal Counterpoint Renaissance Style. Oxford University Press, 2007.

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