During the Romantic period, counterpoint again had two sides. One side was the retrospective, in which various composers looked back to the early masters, such as Palestrina and Bach, and tried to imitate their styles. On the other side, the Romantic composers were using counterpoint to combine small melodic fragments, called motives, as well as leitmotifs, motives with meaning beyond that of the music itself.
Franz Schubert used motives contrapuntally in the accompaniment line to balance the interest of the vocal part. Robert Schumann and Hugo Wolf used this technique even more. In the operas of Giuseppe Verdi and the music dramas of Wagner, the voices would often imitate speech, while the dramatic and emotional themes were present in the motives of the orchestra. Hector Berlioz, Richard Straus, and others often used the technique of setting two previously heard motives against each other, creating a complex example of counterpoint.
Arnold Schoenberg took this technique farther in the twentieth century, especially in his tone works. The great composers of the Romantic period used counterpoint to combine various motives, manipulating the emotions and meanings involved in the music. The twentieth century also involved glances backwards, towards the masters of Renaissance and Baroque counterpoint; however, the primary movement was the use of counterpoint of polytonality and of tone colors.
Many composers used the technique of separating the voices into isolated sections, each of which are relatively static. Another technique is to set up counterpoints consisting of contrasting tone colors. Elliott Carter, in Double Concerto , set up two groups of instruments, one with a piano, one with a harpsichord, and each with corresponding distinctive tone colors, harmonic intervals, and note combinations.
In even later compositions, the instruments are separated and contrasted visually and spatially as well as musically. In the twentieth century, counterpoint was taken even farther, being used to combine different tonalities and tone colors.
Species counterpoint is in this sense the grammar school of classically tonal music. Westergaardian Species Counterpoint Online has two components: one pedagogical, the other theoretical. And we have a sense of how the notes function in the melodies: some notes are stable points, others are transitional, leading from here to there; some seem to have a sense of finality, and others do not.
The main melody you hear first is called the cantus firmus , or fixed voice. This voice forms the basis of the contrapuntal composition, meaning a composition made with counterpoint.
The cantus firmus is then often repeated throughout the piece, sometimes in different voices or with a slightly different rhythm or melody, and the other voices are formed in relation to that first, fixed melody. For example, in the previous section, we mentioned that melody comes first when writing a piece of counterpoint and that each individual voice has to work independently as a melody and not just as a harmony to a different voice.
Multiple other rules in counterpoint deal with the intervals between simultaneous notes in different melodies. Basically, an interval is the difference in pitch between two notes, and we measure them in how many letters apart they are. In counterpoint, the intervals you most want between notes in different melody lines are 3rds and 6ths.
The second most popular intervals, especially at the beginning and end of a piece, are 5ths and octaves. The intervals used the least in counterpoint are 4ths , 2nds , and 7ths. Although its popularity lessened after the death of J. Bach, contrapuntal writing in music has continued to be important in all subsequent eras. All the Classiscal "Greats" such as Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven studied counterpoint in depth, and for many of these composers the use of counterpoint became increasingly signficant as they developed as composers.
Both Mozart and Beethoven chose to employ more contrapuntal textures in their later music, than in their more youthful compositions. Music which uses counterpoint is called either "contrapuntal" or "polyphonic". The two terms are usually used fairly indiscriminately, although there is a fine distinction between their meanings.
A large work like a movement from a symphony will usually not be totally "polyphonic" - that is, it will employ several different textures, and will be in part homophonic a melody plus an accompaniment , and at times contrapuntal using several simultaneous melodies. The polyphonic music of Palestrina pictured was held in very high regard throughout the Renaissance and well into Baroque times.
Several text books were written, trying to pinpoint how Palestrina crafted his counterpoint, so that others could emulate his wonderful style. By the 18th century, the basics of counterpoint had been pared down to a beginner's "step-by-step" method, which was eventually called "species counterpoint", "species" meaning "types".
This method was, and still is, seen as entry-level path towards writing larger, more complicated contrapuntal works.
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