Counterpoint

In music, stretto essentially means the overlapping of the same melodic idea/subject in two or more voices. Stretto can thus be considered a canonic technique, although it is usually applied only to a particular passage or passages within a piece that is not itself a canon. Stretto occurs typically in fugues. Paul Walker gives the […]

The term disposizione is used in the partimento tradition to refer to a fully written-out realization on as many staves as there are parts (in score) and in the Neapolitan counterpoint tradition to refer to a counterpoint exercise to be worked out in score. See also intavolatura. See also partimento. Select Bibliography Fenaroli, Fedele. METODO PER

A voice overlap occurs when two parts proceed to their next note and when that note of the lower part is higher than the previous note of the higher part, or —as is the case on the downbeat of bars 2 and 3 in the example below— when that note of the higher part is

An anticipation is a non-chord note on a weak beat or part of a beat that anticipates the first note of the next chord. This type of embellishment occurs frequently in cadences. Select Bibliography Kennan, Kent. Counterpoint Based on Eighteenth-Century Practice — Fourth Edition (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1999). Schubert, Peter & Christoph Neidhöfer. Baroque Counterpoint (New Jersey: Pearson Prentice

An escape note, or échappée, is a specific type of incomplete neighbour note and more specifically a non-chord note on a weak part of a beat that is What Is a Consonant Escape Note (Échappée)? A consonant escape note interrupts the usual descending motion of a dissonance (usually a seventh) to its resolution by first

A neighbour note is a non-chord note on a weak beat or part of a beat between two occurrences of the same note of the same chord or of two different chords. It can be located either a step above or a step below the chord factors: What Is an Incomplete Neighbour Note? An incomplete

A passing note is a non-chord note on a weak beat or part of a beat between two different chord factors of a chord or between two different notes of two different chords. In other words, “passing [notes] connect two chord factors via stepwise motion in the same direction” (Schubert/Neidhöfer (2006), p. 40). A passing

Compound line is a technique where one written part represents two or more implied parts. This technique is characterized by arpeggiation and/or large, often ‘unmelodic’ leaps. Johann Philipp Kirnberger (1721–1783), amongst others, discusses compound line, focussing on arpeggiating per chord, and warns that the implied voice leading should be correct. According to him, the following

When several parts allow to be exchanged without causing voice-leading issues, one says that they are written in invertible counterpoint. Below you see an example of two-part invertible counterpoint, with the model in bars 1–4 and the inversion in bars 5–8:

A non-essential dissonance Dissonances are called non-essential because they don’t determine the identity of the chord, as they don’t change the type of the chord. For more information see my essay on essential dissonances, in which I also elaborate on the difference between non-essential and essential dissonances.