Counterpoint

[Bach Fan]

Could someone please explain what exactly counterpoint is? I feel that, as a Bach fan, I should know.

[MikeEdgerton]

Counterpoint (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterpoint)

Look at the song examples at the bottom after you read the description. It's going to get deeper than you'll ever want to be about a quarter way down the page.

[auteq]

Although I am not a pro by any means, I did take a couterpoint class. The laymans reponse to your question and/or my take is this:

..... before people wrote songs in chords (or at least before "music" deemed this as the method) people would write line tunes, like a tune such as greensleaves, then fill in other parts after. In Bach's, and is contemp's, case they would write a tune or take an existing tune and write different harmony lines on top or around them to fill it out. (this was not illegal back then and was even a form a flattery to the orig composer) The harmony part had certain rules or "licks" that could be put around the original note or tune, those rules are what is counterpoint.

Once you get you head around countrpoint --check out the rules for a Fugue (It is like a super crossword puzzle for music)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugue

[dcc]

Counterpoint is note against note, melody against melody musical elaboration. You can think of it as supporting a melody with another (asynchronous, equally complex) melody rather than supporting it with chords. It sounds really cool when it's done well, and rather like boring, mechanical exercises when it's done badly. Nobody did better than Bach :)

[Ted Eschliman]

These are good insights into Counterpoint. The only thing that hasn't been mentioned is despite an obvious emphasis on the horizontal (melody, line) and rhythmic variation, imitation, the best Counterpoint still effectively communicates the vertical or harmonic structure.

In otherwords, listen to Bach closely and notice that despite the genius in his melodic development and play, you can still hear the distinct chord structure--arguably without really using chords.