Our study of the writing of modal counterpoint will be based on the principles of sacred music as practiced during the Counter-Reformation. The works of three composers—Palestrina, Lassus, and Victoria—are especially suitable as models because, more than other composers, they embody in a consistent way the ideals of church music as approved by the Council of Trent (1545–1563) and the subsequent Commission of Cardinals on sacred music (1564–1565).
On September 10, 1562, a canon was drawn up by a committee of deputies stating in substance that at mass all things should be so ordered as to “reach tranquilly into the ears and hearts of those who hear them . . . let nothing profane be intermingled. . . . The whole plan of singing in musical modes should be constituted not to give empty pleasure to the ear, but in such a way that the words be clearly understood by all.”1On September 17 the general session banned from church music “all seductive or impure melodies,
whether instrumental or vocal, all vain and worldly texts, all outcries and uproars, that ‘the House of God may in truth be called a House of prayer.’ ” On November 11 two new cardinals (one of them, ironically, the Bishop of Palestrina) advocated allowing only monophonic music in church and the whole question had to be taken up again. Performances of contrapuntal masses submitted by Palestrina and Lassus, along with the lesser figures Jacob van Kerle and Giovanni Animuccia (Palestrina’s predecessor at the Vatican) persuaded the church fathers not to outlaw polyphonic music from the church. The Commission ended by making recommendations regarding the setting of Latin texts.
One may well ask why we today, in studying counterpoint, should concern ourselves with what a group of mid-sixteenth-century church officials thought. The answer is that, in order to understand why Palestrina, Lassus, and later Victoria composed the way they did, we need to grasp what their attitude toward composition was. The masses of Palestrina and Lassus “persuaded” the cardinals to retain con- trapuntal music in the church because Palestrina and Lassus already had the same vision of what sacred music should be as did most of the deputies to the Council: music should evoke a certain serenity, should “reach tranquilly into the ears and hearts,” and should possess the quality of objectivity. The feelings and passions of the composer, particularly his own personal reaction to the words of the liturgy, should not intrude themselves on music designed for public worship. Bach, in his B-Minor Mass, makes no secret of his personal feelings regarding the doctrine of the incarnation or his belief in the efficacy of the crucifixion and death of Christ along with his subsequent resurrection. His is a typically Baroque attitude in which music reflects and expresses strong feelings and emotions—the Dionysian aesthetic. Music of the
Counter-Reformation, on the other hand, tends more toward the Apollonian ideal of beauty, proportion, and restraint above all else. This classical attitude sometimes surprises those who expect, say, the Crucifixus of a Palestrina mass to differ substantially in quality from the Et resurrexit. It is serenity that seems to be sought above all else, but within this general quality there are, to be sure, subtle shades of light and dark. It is of particular advantage to us as budding contrapuntists that the sacred style of Palestrina, Lassus, and Victoria is so restrained and it is for this reason that Palestrina in particular has, through the centuries, been considered the composer on which modal counterpoint should base itself. His musical texture has come to be known as strict counterpoint because the dissonance treatment, the rhythmic activity, the melodic intervals, and the registral and textural sonorities are so carefully controlled. The fact that there is less freedom in this style than in any other style, earlier or later, in the history of Western music is all to the good. Fewer options mean more thought is apt to go into the making of each decision—an optimal situation for the development of a skill. For composers there is another advantage. This is a vocal style and it can provide excellent training in effective writing for the human voice.
14.2 Notation
During the first half of the sixteenth century, the sign came to be universally adopted as the standard signature for duple meter. Yet, although almost all the music of Palestrina, Lassus, and Victoria in duple meter is notated in , to perform it literally alla breve would give it an impossibly fast tempo. (The tac- tus—the beat—was always about the same: 50–60 beats per minute.) Clearly in the sixteenth century the sign came to mean alla semibreve.2This is also what the sign actually means today, although we call it
“alla breve.” There is a difference, though, since today we conceive a beat differently from the way it was conceived in the sixteenth century. A tactus then was executed by a down-and-up motion of the hand. For instance, in Example 14-1 each arrow pointing down represents the beginning of a tactus, the hand’s descent, and each arrow pointing up the second half of the tactus, the hand’s ascent.
As should be clear from Example 14-1, a sixteenth-century tactus comprised what we would think of now as two beats, a strong beat followed by a weak beat. Strong and weak beats are shown with arrows representing the downward motion of the hand on a strong beat and the hand’s upward motion on a weak beat. Of the various modern notations offered, we will be using (c) wherein the sixteenth-century note
values are halved. Although it will look like 4/4 time, we must remember that here both the strong beats of a measure are of equal strength: beat 3 is identical in strength to beat 1. The music can be notated in the same 1:2 ratio as 2/4 time with no difference in sound. By choosing to notate in 4/4 we can avoid writing ties about half the time and we will use only half as many barlines. This is the modern notation used by almost all contemporary musicologists and modern scholarly editions as well as practical per- forming editions. On the other hand, textbooks of sixteenth-century counterpoint (other than this one) regularly use notation (b) on the grounds that it looks more like the original notation. Such reasoning is beside the point. When one considers that the editions with which contemporary musicians actually come in contact have “halved” note values as in (c), it seems more worthwhile to use the same notation here. Notation (a), though used by Fux—and therefore in this study, up to this point—requires the writing of too many ties and barlines, just as a meter signature of 2/4 would do.
In short, our notation of duple time will be in 4/4, each first and third beat being equally “strong” and each second and fourth being equally “weak.” Our beats 1 and 2 are the equivalent of a sixteenth-century tactus, as are our beats 3 and 4. Our notation of triple time will be in 3/4 or possibly 3/2, sticking to the 1:2 ratio in transcribing the original notation.