How to study part-writing as a self-taught musician?

Question

I've recently picked up Schoenberg's "Preliminary Exercises In Counterpoint" after reading most of "Fundamentals of Musical Composition" as he indicates there and in other texts that part-writing is an essential tool of the composer. The problem I'm having is that despite understanding the rules - most of them at least, not having a teacher to correct my counterpoint exercises kinda renders the whole endeavor a bit useless (yes I'm practising, but I have no way of knowing whether I'm advancing or not).

Also on the subject of "Preliminary Exercises In Counterpoint", he mentions exercises, the book has exercises in the title, but I'm not sure if the exercise is to write on top of the examples (some seem to allow for that, some already have the counterpoint in place).

Answer 1

If you want to remain self taught, you need to embrace at least two very important ideas:

• embrace an very, very critical eye for self examination
• test all you notions of quality and correctness against extensive evaluation of the great composers and great teachers in the styles you are studying.

When it comes to part writing knowledge, one of my first questions is: how many of the Bach 371 Harmonized Chorales have you played and analyzed, and even better yet, sung the various parts?

I'm self taught too. When I make a claim about musical aesthetics or technicalities, I like to be sure I know I'm aware of that thing in the music of composers like Bach, Mozart, Chopin, or Debussy, depending on the particular style. And, for what it's worth, I do not like folk who hunt around for one cherry picked example, often applied out of musical context, to bolster a weak claim.

I think you should really develop enough knowledge of a style to be confident you know the details. Then you pick from one of many examples, or perhaps a favorite example, to illustrate a point.

So, study the scores of the greats as extensively as possible, and integrate that with textbook study and exercises.

When you do an exercise, do it not once, but 2 or 3 versions, then critique your work to select the best one, or at least to find their relative merits and faults.

One final thought: make sure you consider the reason, the why, of various musical principles. For example, "don't double the leading tone." Why? Because if a doubled leading tone is resolved properly, the two parts will move in parallel unisons or octaves. Why don't move in parallel unisons or octaves? Because it destroys the independence of the parts. Why make parts independent? Because one of the primary aesthetics of contrapuntal part writing is melodic variety between the various parts.

You don't have a teacher to guide you, so you have to dig, dig, dig to get to the deep knowledge of the subject.

Answer 2

There are several good books. I like the three by Goetschius (old but useful), "Exercises in Melody Writing," "Exercises in Elementary Counterpoint," and "Applied Counterpoint." (I'm not as fond of his other books as the annotation notation is a bit awkward.) These are available as downloadable PDFs.

Kent Kennan's counterpoint text isn't bad as are Gauldin's books on 16th and 18th-century counterpoint. Salzer's "Counterpoint in Composition" is good too. The parts on two-part counterpoint are useful in melody vs bass-line counterpoint.

Paul Harder and Greg Steinke have some programmed learning on harmony (I really liked these) so I'd recommend the book "Basic Contrapuntal Technique" but I haven't seen it yet.

Answer 3

Spend twice as much time singing one line while playing others against it as you do reading about it or simply writing lines. Do this both with your own examples, as well as from examples of music you admire.