An exceptional text for undergraduate and graduate
music students, Modal Counterpoint, Renaissance Style
uses a wide variety of carefully graded exercises to
present guidelines for writing and analyzing
16th-century music. The only species counterpoint text
that draws directly on Renaissance treatises, it
provides a conceptual framework to guide students
through composition and analysis as it teaches them
general structural principles. With stylistically
diverse examples including not only motets and mass
movements but also French chansons, German chorale
settings, English canzonets, Italian madrigals, and
Spanish organ hymns, villancicos, and ricercars, the
book gives students a "real-life" feel for the subject.
It distinguishes between technical requirements ("hard"
rules) and stylistic guidelines ("soft" rules), and
includes coordinated exercises that allow students to
develop their skills systematically. The concluding
chapters provide the formal and conceptual building
blocks for longer pieces and encourage students to
understand analysis and composition as complementary
activities. By the end of the book, students are writing
real compositions, not just drill exercises. The text
also features progressively graded exercises, historical
asides that explain important topics and issues of the
period, and some notes in the preface on using the book
in the classroom. Combining the historical accuracy of
"style-oriented" texts with the more systematic species
counterpoint approach, this book offers a unique
alternative to other methods. Now in its second edition,
Modal Counterpoint, Renaissance Style integrates
improvisation activities and new repertoire examples
into many chapters; revises the chapter on three-part
writing (Chapter 14) so that it pays more attention to
rules and strategies; reworks the chapters on cadences
(Chapter 10) and on writing two parts in mixed values
(Chapter 11) to make them more accessible to students;
incorporates clarified instructions throughout; and
includes a summary of rules.
|
|