Little free counterpoint quiz

[Sorrano]

I already had.

Sorry, I did not read your post clearly and missed the bass line part. Hopefully, I will be more thorough with the exercise than with the post!

[Sorrano]

This weekend I will try and get that harmonization completed and submitted. I am looking forward to this exercise!

[Quijote]

Quijote had spoken about giving us a bass for addition of the three upper parts. And could not he give us an exercise in just four-part writing in common practice harmony? Was he not who said one must learn to walk before learning to run?

Oops, sorry about that. Still, harmonizing the melody 'top down' is an equally good exercise. Let's try this one first, and then try another one later (in a couple of weeks, I'm getting pretty busy now with the new term starting) with just a given bass. I do agree though that it's always easier to harmonize the given bass line. If I was really nasty I'd give you all just the Alto or Tenor part !

[Quijote]

Ah that's a little unfair, I only made a slight slip down to lack of effort and attention - won't you let me have my car horn tuned to Gb throughout the exercise? That should ensure some running!

Ho ho!

[Quijote]

If you are making objective judgments about whether or not the work handed in by your students is correct in the sense that it conforms to these rules, then I would expect that they should be able to be enumerated. Surely you are not checking each note of theirs against an entire book full of criteria. I would not expect the reasoning and history behind it all to be expressible in two pages, but there can't be more than a few dozen enumerable rules. There simply aren't that many combinations of things that could happen. Setting aside subjective matters, rules for syntactically correct sentences in languages can be listed in less space than that. So for that matter could all the laws of classical physics.

Clearly they can be 'enumerated' (or rather, pointed out), but in even a simple 4 or 6-bar exercise students can come up with a wide range of different mistakes ranging from the blatantly silly and unmusical to the more subtle. In a way, I am checking each note or progression against a 'body' of criteria, not that I refer to any given book, given that I have assimilated these rules and exceptions. As I would do if I were a language teacher. When a student learning English (say) as a 2nd language writes "I am going yesterday at the market" I don't need to refer to my grammar manuals to see the mistake (tense and preposition).
I can't speak for the laws of classical physics, but I find it absurd to imagine that correct syntax in any language can be set out in a couple of pages. But those product marketers with their ridiculous ads in the newspapers who promise us 'Learn to play the piano in 6 weeks' or 'Learn how to compose in only 9 weeks' and the more frequent 'Learn how to speak French in only 6 weeks!' would probably agree with you.

[Quijote]

Sorry, I'll have to take a pause there. Friends (yes, I have some!) are coming for dinner, so I'll answer your other points later, no worries.

[Sorrano]

Sorry, I'll have to take a pause there. Friends (yes, I have some!) are coming for dinner, so I'll answer your other points later, no worries.

Enjoy dinner!

[Quijote]

Enjoy dinner!

We're still waiting for one guest, so dinner is on hold, dammit!
I'll continue with my responses to our dear 'Codify-Everything-on-One-or-Two-Pages-Forgive-Me-I'm-a-Programmer-Just-Loved-the-Film-Matrix' Chris.

[Quijote]

You are presenting these quizzes not as opportunities for creating art, but as puzzles in which answers are right or wrong. A useful and interesting exercise, certainly, but if they are mechanical exercises then there must be a mechanical method for determining a correct solution.

Yes, a 'mechanical' method tempered with a contemporary, historically-aware musical intelligence confronted with an exercise in a given idiom. The exercises I have so far given are quite elementary, but even in that narrow scope there are quite a few possible workings. My students are much younger and far less musically experienced than you and others on this forum. This, at least,was my assumption. Peter (the Blue Baron) once accused me of misjudging my 'audience', but I hope that is not the case, or else my presence here would be akin to "pisser contre le vent, on mouille sa chemise".
A rough translation would be : "When you urinate in the wind, you get your shirt wet".

[Quijote]

Very well, but would you at least answer the questions I asked above regarding why your unisons were acceptable, and regarding the distance between the two lines, which I thought should not exceed a 10th except briefly for a good reason? These are gnawing at me.

Well, the thought of you chewing your knuckles urges me ever onwards and upwards...
Unisons and octaves are perfectly acceptable in certain contexts, these being perfect cadences (generally mid-phrase and final) and if approached correctly (contrary motion and harmonic context). It may annoy and flummox you, but the unisons and octaves in my working are perfectly correct.
Regarding the 'rule' of the 10th, how could this possibly be relevant in 2-part counterpoint on the keyboard or between, say, violin and 'cello? In 4-part vocal harmony that is a different matter, the 'rule' being that one should avoid too great a distance between the Alto and the Soprano, and no more than +12 (intervallic distance) between the Tenor and the Soprano.

[Quijote]

Damn, the late guest has just turned up. We're going to eat. I'll be back either later tonight or tomorrow to mop up the last points.

[Chris]

Regarding the 'rule' of the 10th, how could this possibly be relevant in 2-part counterpoint on the keyboard or between, say, violin and 'cello? In 4-part vocal harmony that is a different matter, the 'rule' being that one should avoid too great a distance between the Alto and the Soprano, and no more than +12 (intervallic distance) between the Tenor and the Soprano.

I have no idea how it could be relevant. I didn't think it made any sense in the first place. But then, I don't think half these rules make any sense. I just take them as things that developed for some reason or another, and I'm trying to follow them now in the spirit of your exercises. That's why I'm interested in a simple list of rules - so that I can check to see whether a given solution meets the criteria for correctness. There are a number of things that have surprised me here, such as being called out on unresolved sevenths, when I didn't think two eighth notes on the second half of a beat that were just making their way to the next beat would be subject to that criteria. I am looking at a Bach invention at this very moment that seems to do the same thing several times. Maybe there's some reason it's within the rules in this case. Maybe not!

[Quijote]

I am already dreading the results of this. Creating four-part harmony for a given line would be one thing, but creating something in the style of Bach is going to be far harder and far more difficult to judge than even two-part counterpoint. How many of Bach's common (but unique) techniques have to be present for it to count as Bach's style? I have listened to every note of Bach that has ever been put to record, including all the harmonized chorales, and I have studied and played some of them as well, but I doubt I would be able to create something that is convincingly in the style of Bach without years of studying specifically to do just that. And no doubt all of the other chorale harmonizations I have used that were not in Bach's style will make it harder. But I will try!

I don't agree. Whether it is 2-part or 4-part work in the common practice style (Bach up to Beethoven, very roughly speaking), there are stylistic 'fingerprints' that can be reproduced, despite the 'unique' touches that set these composers apart. This is the what the music exams that I set are about: the ability to 'distil' the 'idiom' of each composer. There is no magic, there are no easy 2-page lists; rather, it is a question of study and assimilation.
But of course I have teaching aids. One such is this : William Lovelock, The Harmonization of Bach's Chorales, Allans Music, Australia PTY, LTD, 1970. An easy, at-a-glance 'list' of the Bach basics that takes up only ... er ... 62 pages.

[Quijote]

I have no idea how it could be relevant. I didn't think it made any sense in the first place. But then, I don't think half these rules make any sense. I just take them as things that developed for some reason or another, and I'm trying to follow them now in the spirit of your exercises. That's why I'm interested in a simple list of rules - so that I can check to see whether a given solution meets the criteria for correctness. There are a number of things that have surprised me here, such as being called out on unresolved sevenths, when I didn't think two eighth notes on the second half of a beat that were just making their way to the next beat would be subject to that criteria. I am looking at a Bach invention at this very moment that seems to do the same thing several times. Maybe there's some reason it's within the rules in this case. Maybe not!

You had no idea how it could be relevant? But you chose anyway to play the recalcitrant 'give-your-teacher-hell' role anyway, or as you put : "stick it to the man"? I eat this type of student on a regular basis, and I'm paid to never be full up of it, though you can understand I prefer a more varied diet to save me from boredom. You are certainly alleviating that, I grant you! No, really, I love it when students (young or not so young) question me, and I can tell you I have many bovine students.
Maybe you could scan (with your annotations / questions) and post the Bach invention that you're studying so we can take a look at it?

[Quijote]

But about the 'rule' of the '10th' or the 'rule' of the '+12' between the Tenor and Soprano. These rules strike you as random and ill-founded?
Not at all. In vocal music (specifically), they are common-sense in terms of clarity of texture, not to mention sonority.
These rules apply a lot less in 4-part string writing, as a cursory glance at the Beethoven (and later Haydn) quartets will show you.