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Counterpoint
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Better late than never! I just remembered this great vocal example from The Electric Company:
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We sang a version of this song in my grade school music class, but I think the Weavers did a little better job with it:
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David that is great, brings a smile to my face, thanks. When counterpoint is done in music really well like in these 2 videos, it tickles the brain, it’s irresistible.
Here is Bach’s famous contrapuntal Art of Fugue on guitar. He pulls off counterpoint on guitar quite nicely! Two distinct melodies on the guitar that sounds so good together. I’m not a guitarist but I think counterpoint is much harder to do on guitar than piano.
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Jung, thanks for starting a great topic. I’d heard the term “counterpoint,” but never knew what it meant. While watching the David Bennett video, I started thinking of Scarborough Fair and sure enough, he mentioned it. As David H. said, it’s like two melodies playing simultaneously that sound good together. I think that gets at the idea that each can stand on its own, but also that they somehow “fit” together.
Artists have explored the idea of what it takes to “fit.” Visual artists like David Salle will put seemingly random images side by side, forcing the viewer to come up with a narrative that encompasses both. See, for instance: https://d1dzh206jt2san.cloudfront.net/posts-images/743X483/335_1511515717JijTn.jpg
In music, the famous minimalist work, “In C”, has performers playing from a list of melodic phrases in such a way that what they are playing is almost always (but not always!) counterpoint to what others are playing. But it’s for the most part chance, leaving it to the listener to come up with a coherent whole that makes sense of it all. It’s called “In C” because all the phrases are in C Major, but also because there’s a repetitive striking of the middle C key on a piano throughout the piece, which reinforces the idea that all of this goes together. It’s clearly not everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s interesting hearing all the performers doing their own thing in a way that drifts in and out of agreement with what others are doing, occasionally at odds and occasionally reinforcing.
Edit: I had linked to a version that had a picture of the sheet music, in case anyone was interested. But it was crazy long. This is the original album version, from 1968. It’s the kind of thing John and Yoko might’ve been into…
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Thanks David! Counterpoint has always fascinated me, and really drew me to classical music after my dad showed me what it was. When it’s done right, it sounds so amazing, it’s irresistible, I don’t want it to end. Scarborough Fair is a great example. The visual counterpoint you pointed out is interesting, and I am sure if one researches it in the works of the great painters, there will be examples of it.
The “In C” is something I never heard before. As it keeps building up with each additional melodic phrase, it gets more, and more complex. It’s somewhat meditative. Thanks for sharing it.
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Jung, I thought of another great example from the visual arts. Like Scarborough Fair/Canticle, it draws its power from being sort of the same but sort of different. It’s Edouard Manet’s “Luncheon on the Grass,” where images from classical art (the nude, the bather, the still life) are dropped into a scene with two men in contemporary attire. In a sense they all go together (it’s not a Picasso abstraction in an Edward Hopper painting), but that just raises questions of what the heck is going on. Why is there a bather and why is she so large? Why is there a woman sitting nude with two clothed men in casual conversation seemingly oblivious to her? Why is she staring at the viewer, as if to force us to acknowledge her humanity? It should be as unsettling as the two lyric tracks coexisting in Scarborough Fair. This counterpoint topic has really got me thinking! Thanks again for bringing it up!
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Hi David. I am glad you find counterpoint as fascinating as I do. In that picture, I can feel a definite contrast between the two gentlemen dressed so properly oblivious to the naked woman sitting right next to them. That contrast really makes the painting intriguing.
Interestingly I did a google search on visual counterpoint, and there is a whole genre in paintings that focus on counterpoint. In visual art counterpoint is the contrast in shape, colour, texture, subject etc..
Although counterpoint is a strategy most closely associated with music, Russian-born painter Wassily Kandinski discussed using it in paintings in 1911, in his work Concerning the Spiritual in Art. And even before Kandinski mentioned counterpoint, it had been used for centuries by artists as a natural way to find balance and create emphasis in a painting.
Some people limit the definition of counterpoint in art to “opposing directional angles” and this is certainly one way to use counterpoint effectively. However, the word “counterpoint” actually means two opposing ideas working in harmony, and in art, this can come from any set of contrasting elements. It is surprising the extent to which using counterpoint can add intrigue to our paintings.“Often nature itself will give us what we need to create a counterpoint composition. In her watercolor painting, Poorhouse Road, Cathy Johnson has made use of the red barn to counter all the green in the surrounding trees and pasture.”
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Another example of counterpoint, between the guitarists here. See the crowd really get into it at the end, had the same effect on people over the ages as Bach’s counterpoint kicks in his piano or organ runs. It’s all the same, music is a wonderful thing.
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