The success of the stupendous experiment in contrapuntal writing was so great that the composer fell in a faint amidst the applause of the audience and died less than three months afterward.
Humperdinck's splendid contrapuntal skill shows itself in a most varied use of this theme.
Contrapuntal skill is shown in the working out section.
There is decoration in the ritornelle in E flat and one feels the absence of a compensating emotion, despite the display of contrapuntal skill.
When strength and sinew are wanted in the themes, they are there, and contrapuntaladaptability is there; but they are real living themes, not ossified or petrified formulas.
The contrapuntal formulas and prosaic melodic contours, to be used so magnificently by Handel, were never allowed to harden and fossilise in Purcell's music.
One is ever conscious in Reger that he is solving contrapuntal problems in order to astonish the vulgar herd of the professors.
For all their apparent freedom, they are full of the oldest musical procedures, abound in canonic imitations, in augmentations, and diminutions, in all sorts of grizzled contrapuntal manoevers.
We feel him agonizedly straining, pushing and laboring, trying to manufacture his banal thematic material into music by the application of all the little contrapuntal formulas.
For, like Bruckner's, they appear chosen with an eye to their serviceability forcontrapuntal deformation and dissection.
Even a slight song like "Wenn die Linde blüht" is decked with contrapuntal felicities.
It is not the contrapuntal style of Handelian Opera, but it inclines rather to that of Hasse (who was trained entirely in it), to the symphonists of Mannheim, and to Mozart.
One should notice the predilection of Steffani (like the great Italians of his time) for chromaticism and his contrapuntal taste.
With what predilection does he ply all these beautiful and learned contrapuntal tissues, as in the Cara sposa from Rinaldo or the Ombra cara from Radamisto; but he ever seeks new combinations for the old form.
Principally in the duets, which have a slightly contrapuntal character.
A work of simple inspiration, in which the effect depends entirely on the melody and the rhythm, withoutcontrapuntal artifice.
The object of composers seemed to be to show mere contrapuntal learning, or to furnish singers opportunity to display vocal agility.
His labor was prodigious in spite of his frail health; and his knowledge of contrapuntal forms was such as to exact the highest encomiums from his instructors.
Without Bononcini's fire or Handel's daring originality, he represented the dry contrapuntal school of Italian music.
The visible world for him existed as a contrapuntal net-work of lines, silhouettes, contours, or heavy dark masses.
The two-and three-part contrapuntal singing which is done in the sight-singing classes is admirable for this, as the whole effect is blurred or entirely spoilt in such clear-cut work by a false entry.
The dance forms, together with very simple fugues and contrapuntal studies, and a few 'free' exercises in songs and short pieces, will be as far as the majority of children will get in the study of composition.
Sight-singing in three parts should always begin with exercises written in the contrapuntal style.
His early studies were pursued at Rome with so much enthusiasm that at the age of fourteen he had produced several important compositions of a contrapuntal character.
The culmination of the contrapuntal school and the dawn of the new era in church music came about through the labors of the pupil of Goudimel, the great Palestrina.
The contrapuntal schools had done more to educate harmonic perception than is commonly supposed.
Some have derived it from Mary, and point to the sacred madrigals, many of which were composed by all the contrapuntal writers.
Hence there is a distinct gain in smoothness of melody, and there are occasional appearances of truly expressive quality in this part of the music, even in the most elaborate of the contrapuntal compositions.
His studies in counterpoint had never been pursued beyond the rudiments, and the last engagement he made before his death was for lessons with Sechter, the contrapuntal authority in Vienna at that time.
In this and similar cases the term "species" will be understood as referring simply to the number of notes, or to the note-combinations, of the contrapuntal part or parts in question.
The Cantus Firmus is a given melodic phrase that is to receive contrapuntal treatment, that is, one or more parts are to be added above or below it.
The early practice of building polyphonic designs on a voice-part confined to a given plain-song or popular melody furnishes the origin for every contrapuntal principle that is not canonic, and soon develops into a canonic principle in itself.
All these devices are also independent of the canonic idea, since they are so many methods of transforming themes in themselves and need not always be used in contrapuntal combination.
Technical progress is visible in the greater freedom of the contrapuntal treatment, which had already been fully developed in Mozart's vocal compositions.
The contrapuntal elaboration of a theme in strict form was the groundwork of the first part, and was followed by the characteristic treatment of well-defined motifs, side by side with a free use of figures and passages.
There are also many motifs which owe their importance mainly to their contrapuntal treatment.
But the influence of the contrapuntal method reaches far deeper than well-defined and scholastic forms, just as a well-considered discourse does not consist merely in the observance of syllogistic forms.
He confined himself to a tasteful embellishment of the subject; harmonic and contrapuntal treatment was not altogether absent, but it was little more than suggested as a sort of seasoning to the music.
But there the treatment is contrapuntal throughout, here it is essentially harmonic.
This work must not be considered as a relapse into the strict forms of counterpoint, such as the canon and the fugue, but as the free development of the laws to which polyphonic and contrapuntal forms are alike subject.
The effect of the whole accompaniment consists mainly in the independence with which it contrasts with the voices, and is produced partly by effective passages and partly by skilful contrapuntal elaboration.
In the earlier work there are some beautiful harmonic effects; in the later, contrapuntal phrases sometimes occur; an animated rapid accompaniment by the violins is common to both.
Equally surely has his genius preserved him from the mistake of ascribing any absolute value to the contrapuntal method, or favouring the logical element which lies in it to the disadvantage of sensuous beauty.
I only decided that point after finishing the first part, when I saw clearly what ensemble was demanded by the contrapuntal material, the character, and structure of what I had composed.
My idea was that my symphony should be a work with great contrapuntal development, and for that it was necessary to increase the media at my disposal.
Because he has worked out certain contrapuntal and technical problems which place him in a class all by himself.
The purity of style to be found in Bach, in connection with his marvelous contrapuntal designs, should be expounded to the student at as early an age as his intellectual development will permit.
During the contrapuntal epoch her music flourished as never before or since, and side by side with the Shakespearian period in literature came an era of musical glory scarcely inferior to it.
More free in form was the motet, in which religious subjects were treated in contrapuntal fashion.
The parts were all melodic, and woven together with such great skill that they yet remain masterpieces of contrapuntal writing.
At first contrapuntal music may not seem interesting to us.
Music written entirely by the rules of counterpoint is called contrapuntal music; that written otherwise is known as free harmonic music.
As a general thing no two voices in contrapuntal writing move in the same way, each voice-part being contrasted with different note-values.
Of Bach he wrote that he believed him to have accomplished his work as "one of the world's mightiest tone-poets not by means of the contrapuntal methods of his day, but in spite of them.
Of Bach he said, 'Bach spoke in close, scientific, contrapuntal language.
It went the round of the European capitals in an unprecedentedly short time, and nowhere was it admired more than in that stronghold of contrapuntal prejudice, Germany, where its alluring melodies proved simply irresistible.
His love of ensemble is, however, not attended by any great contrapuntal knowledge.
The academic writer, steeped in his contrapuntal devices and harmonic progressions, so intent upon the orthodox resolution of his discords, is apt to produce excellent dry bones without the informing spirit.
They were singing some song in two parts, and while the one half sustained the melody the others were rolling out a fine contrapuntal accompaniment with full, resonant, and sonorous tone.
The working out of these riddle canons became a mania with Okeghem and his immediate successors; and the result was that they acquired an immense command over the technics of contrapuntal writing.
His writing is marvellous in its contrapuntal skill, which makes the apparently independent melodies of the different voice parts constantly combine in simple and lovely chords.
One would, furthermore, have to bring his mind into the state of those whose only vocal music of an artistic kind had been contrapuntal and ecclesiastical, and to whom the vocal solo was a startling novelty.
He himself, being a church composer, naturally clung to the ecclesiastic style, and in his great organ and piano fugues transferred the whole contrapuntal science of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to instrumental music.
But these concertos of Handel and Bach were in the contrapuntal style, and the genius of the sonata form was tending always toward the monophonic style.
Monteverde was a student of the old contrapuntal style, but his entire genius was out of sympathy with it.
One of these songs, "L'Omme Armee," became such a favorite that for more than a century nearly every prominent composer wrote a contrapuntal mass around it.
The Dutch musicians at first revelled in the exercise of mechanical ingenuity in the construction of intricate contrapuntal music.
The result was that these writers developed several kinds of contrapuntal writing.
But there is one notable feature of Lasso's work: it contains no parade of contrapuntal difficulties for their own sake.
His labour was prodigious in spite of his frail health; and his knowledge of contrapuntalforms was such as to exact the highest encomiums from his instructors.
That the natural bent of his genius was not in this direction is shewn by the fact that his earliest essays were marred by his lack of contrapuntal skill--absolutely the first essential.
His contrapuntal skill was amazing, his fertility and originality equally so, and everything he wrote bears the impress of a nobility of mind difficult of description.
But a musical refrain, a simple entreaty seemed ever in the air and its contrapuntal burden: "Love, love and laughter!
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "contrapuntal" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
