YEARBOOK OF THE ALAMIRE FOUNDATION

CHANGE AND CONTINUITY IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY TEXTBOOKS ON SIXTEENTH-CENTURY COUNTERPOINT
to a very varying degree. Although most are real textbooks exhibiting exercises and
assignments, some are studies of a predominantly stylistic and analytical nature, the
contents of which are not arranged into a pedagogical progression. For example, this
is the case in Samuel Rubio’s work from 1956 and Herbert Andrews’from 1958, both
having more the character of a description of style and technique than of a textbook
as such.
The question of teaching method dominates the methodological statements of
the books – and the published reviews 8 – to a degree almost making this issue the
most important. In Johann Joseph Fux’s famous textbook, Gradus ad Parnassum
(1725), species counterpoint – with its roots going even further back to treatises of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 9 – was given a fixed form, which proved to
be predominant within the teachings of counterpoint until the beginning of the twentieth
century. In 1922 Reginald Morris, though, directed a severe critique on the old
method, launching his famous dictum that the result when following the strict rules
would be “a purely academic by-product, Music that never was on sea or land”. 10
Instead, he argued for a more freely arranged educational method with a much closer
connection to the actual repertoire. This so-called ‘direct approach’ was taken up
especially by English-speaking writers such as Arthur Tillman Merritt (1939),
Gustave Soderlund (1947) and Herbert Andrews (1958), establishing what Thomas
Christensen has called the ‘historicist school’as opposed to the old ‘idealist school’, 11
a division of counterpoint pedagogy into two basic approaches characteristic of the
majority of twentieth-century textbooks.
Although most of the authors profess to be ardent supporters or just as ardent
opponents of the system of the species, a sharp distribution into species- and nonspecies-books
cannot always be made. 12 Some of the works actually fall somewhere
in between, for example Harold Owen’s book of 1992, in which the author applies a
so-called ‘quasi-species approach’, 13 and Gilbert Trythall’s book of 1994, which in
its first part presents “a modern species approach to two-voice modal counterpoint”
8 For example, T. CHRISTENSEN, review-article on the textbook by Robert Gauldin (1985), in Journal of
Music Theory Pedagogy, 1 (1987), pp. 105–114; M.H. WENNERSTROM, review of six textbooks (among
others the works of Thomas Benjamin (1979), Robert Gauldin (1985) and Harold Owen (1992)), in Music
Theory Spectrum, 15 (1993), pp. 235–240; D.L. MANCINI, review of Owen (1992), in Journal of Music
Theory Pedagogy, 8 (1994), pp. 209–219.
9 Cf. C.V. PALISCA, art. Kontrapunkt, (par. 3–4), in L. FINSCHER ed., Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart,
2nd rev. ed., Sachteil, 5, Kassel – Basel, 1996, cols. 604–618, especially cols. 606–607, 611–612. C.
DAHLHAUS, art. Counterpoint, (par. 13), in S. SADIE and J. TYRRELL eds., The New Grove Dictionary
of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., London, 2001, 6, p. 563.
10 REGINALD O. MORRIS (1922), p. 2.
11 CHRISTENSEN, review-article on the textbook by ROBERT GAULDIN (1985), pp. 105–106.
12 In the Appendix (A Chronology) an asterisk is applied to the textbooks predominantly adherent of the species
approach.
13 HAROLD OWEN (1992), p. x.
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