Little free counterpoint quiz

[Chris]

Fair enough, but I would have said that the Violin II part screamed out "I am a 'cello/bass line transposed up an octave and given a wrong designation!"

I would not have thought so - in fact I took the given information that it was a Violin II line as confirming that this line would not function as a bass.

Lists, lists! The source I provided gives a Free Counterpoint manual that I have never used, so I can't vouch for its quality. The two references I gave before (Lovelock and Swindale) are on the other hand tried and tested.

Yes, lists! Books are fine for explaining the why of things, but if you cannot codify this into a simple list, I question how well-defined the system is!

But before that, you should really make sure that your 4-part harmony know-how is there, because if not attempting 2-part CPC exercises might be problematic. As I said before, to do 2-part CPC you need to think in 4-part common practice harmony before writing 2-part work with 'implied' harmony.

My 4-part harmony knowledge comes from the same place as my 2-part harmony knowledge - from absorbing it from many years of listening, playing, and occasional composing. You might say I have an intuitive grasp of it with some technicalities, but I am sure to err when it comes to writing according to the official list of rules for a given period.

It's certainly the case that Bach often breaks the 'academic' rules (and his 4-part chorale harmonizations are peppered with such cases). Please do let me have a few examples for my own learning.

We didn't discuss specific examples, and I wouldn't impose further on him. But perhaps we will have the chance to discuss it further at future lessons, as I am sure that would be more pleasant for him than listening to my organ-playing!

Does your present organ teacher have the sort of lists you're looking for, by the way?

He said he had a book I could read >_>

[Chris]

This makes me want to post some quizzes of my own, though I can't think of what I could offer that would be of interest. Anyone up for a vector calculus quiz?

[Enrique]

I love mathematical analysis. I say, without rules there is no art. The fact that Beethoven ocassionally broke some of the rules, is just an example of "the exception confirms the rule". I.e., he certainly stick to the rules. Otherwise, how could he have broken them here and there. And he himself complained about not having a musical education as full as that of Mozart.

[Peter]

And Blue Baron, I shall also 'nit-pick' your effort later !

I look forward to it but freely admit I never really mastered my harmony and counterpoint beyond what I had to know at the time - I did get as far as 5th species but could never get to grips with the endless rules. I tried recently out of curiosity working through Tchaikovsky's book but got so bored with the exercises I stopped pretty early on.

[Quijote]

This makes me want to post some quizzes of my own, though I can't think of what I could offer that would be of interest. Anyone up for a vector calculus quiz?

I'll give it a go, why not. I have an intuitive feel for these things.

[Quijote]

I've decided to post annotations for Arno and Peter's workings.
This post contains Arno's in attached PDF.
Thank you Arno for playing the game!

[Quijote]

And here's the Blue Baron's.

[Sorrano]

And here is my meager effort. It should be a bit of an improvement over the previous.

[Chris]

Here's my try at the latest quiz.

[Quijote]

Here's Sorrano's working with a couple of annotations on my part.

[Quijote]

And my own humble working.

[Sorrano]

Here's Sorrano's working with a couple of annotations on my part.

On #1 I was thinking more of the iv. After seeing your example I realized that it had not occurred to me that I could have the same chord repeated for two beats.

#2 The literal pairing of notes does limit one a lot, but exercises are supposed to do that. Perhaps had I put a c instead of the e it would have been better.

Thanks for your response and I look forward to more of these!

[Quijote]

And here's Chris's working, plus several annotations on my part.

[Chris]

And here's Chris's working, plus several annotations on my part.

1. Why is this incorrectly resolved? It breaks my heart to know this is not allowed under the uncodified list of rules of of CPC
2. What's the deal with this? The e natural serves its function in the C chord and the e flat serves its function in the following F chord.
3. I knew you would hate this, and I put it in there just to stick it to the man! The man being you, in this case.
4. What's with these comments on my clashing 2nds? The function is just to create an interesting dissonance on an off beat that is immediately released on the next beat. Surely that can't be unacceptable!?
5. How can the tonality possibly be unclear? It goes from a straight F7 arpeggio to a clear E major.
6. An unfortunate byproduct of sticking it to the man.
7. This was another attempt to infuriate you, as I was certain this would be unacceptable for some reason. But you liked it? Do you realize what this means? It means I actually failed at failing

[Chris]

And now, Maestro, a couple of questions about your working.

1. You have quite a few unisons and octaves in the middle of things here. The second note of bar 1, the first note of bar 2, the second-to-last note of bar 3. I was under the impression that that was no good in this kind of counterpoint. It certainly doesn't sound very good to lock into a unison like that just for an instant. Like a resolution where there shouldn't be one?

2. Your two parts get very far apart here, as far as 2 octaves. I was under the impression that the lines should not diverge that much, not more than a tenth, unless briefly done for a good reason. No?