considering them. Remember that surprises and departures from the expected
can become fulcrums in your composition that can lead you into new key
modulations and new melodic interactions. Sometimes the hardest thing to
do is to find somewhere for your composition to “go.” There are few more
effective and natural sounding transitions than those that evolve from your
melodies’ interactions with themselves.Counterpoint.................................................................................................
Strictly speaking, we have already been working with counterpoint in the last
few examples. Counterpoint is when two or more melodies with different rhyth-
mic phrases occur at the same time. If and when they bump into each other,
they share tonality. Fugues are good examples of counterpoint. J. S. Bach’s
two-part and three-part inventions are well worth listening to in this regard.
Prior to Bach, most music of the 15th and 16th century was contrapuntal and
counter-melodic. Tonal music didn’t really take hold until a little later.When working with counterpoint, you don’t have to restrict yourself to a single
motif being worked at different times and places in several voices. You can
introduce entirely different melodies for each voice. Later, you can switch
them or develop them in any way you like.One musical school of thought works on the premise that in music there are
only melodies. What we call chords are just groups of melody notes that
happen to be played together. This can be a good compositional approach.
You can just write several melodies that work together. At places where sev-
eral melody notes sound together, your music will arrive at some tonal defini-
tion that could be called a chord, but you don’t have to think in terms of
chords, necessarily.Figure 16-6 shows an example of two different melodies working together to
create a very definite sense of tonality. You can hear the underlying chord
progression, even though there are never more than two notes sounding
together at the same time.Back in the 17th century, the English composer Henry Purcell wrote several
pieces of music called catches, which were basically extended “rounds.” Most
of these catches were drinking songs whose lyrics were usually about sex,
drinking, and/or music (“sex, drugs, and rock and roll” has been around
longer than you may think). The catches would start with a voice singing a
melody. After eight or sixteen measures, another voice would start at the
beginning, as the first voice continued along. Another eight or sixteen mea-
sures later, a third voice would start. The actual melody would keep changing
over the entire piece, and the tonality of the piece would remain intact even
when the melody overlapped itself.202 Part IV: Orchestration and Arrangement