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Counterpoint   Listen
noun
Counterpoint  n.  (Mus.)
(a)
The setting of note against note in harmony; the adding of one or more parts to a given canto fermo or melody.
(b)
The art of polyphony, or composite melody, i. e., melody not single, but moving attended by one or more related melodies.
(c)
Music in parts; part writing; harmony; polyphonic music. See Polyphony. "Counterpoint, an invention equivalent to a new creation of music."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Counterpoint" Quotes from Famous Books



... not only from a technical standpoint, but from a musical standpoint as well. He has added a new flavor to the individual masterpieces of Chopin. He has made them wonderfully clever and really very interesting studies in harmony and counterpoint, so that one forgets their technical intricacies in the beauty of the compositions. One cannot say that their original beauty has been enhanced, but he has made them wonderfully fascinating compositions despite their aggravating complications ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke

... allowed him to do exactly as he chose, simply providing competent private instruction in whatever subject the youth expressed any interest. Thus he learned Greek, Latin, the modern languages, music (harmony and counterpoint, as well as piano and organ), chemistry (a private laboratory was fitted up in the house), history and art. Now every one knows that; so far as definite acquisition of knowledge is concerned, our schools and colleges-at least in America—leave much to be desired; our boys ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps

... Those ideas that please me I retain in memory, and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this or that morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it; that is to say, agreeably to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... authorities abandon in despair. A gash of children and refuse cut straight from river to Park, it got its chief movement from push-carts of fruit and other foods, while the "wash" of five hundred families blew its banners overhead. Vendors of all kinds uttered their nasal or raucous cries, in counterpoint to the treble screams ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King

... not only knit and knot the logical texture of the style with all the dexterity and strength of prose; they not only fill up the pattern of the verse with infinite variety and sober wit; but they give us, besides, a rare and special pleasure, by the art, comparable to that of counterpoint, with which they follow at the same time, and now contrast, and now combine, the double pattern of the texture and the verse. Here the sounding line concludes; a little further on, the well-knit sentence; and yet a little further, and both will reach their solution on the same ringing ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson

... effects! In studying music as a mere matter of intellectual science, all is simple; it is only an easy chapter in acoustics. But in studying it on the side of the emotions, in studying the laws of counterpoint and of musical form, which are governed by the effect upon the ear and the heart, we find intricacy and difficulties, increased beyond our ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... of music, waxing, waning, now joined in wild symphony by the voices, now left alone to counterpoint ...
— Life Sentence • James McConnell

... a whole week, Victor granted four days, which embraced a musical evening at Mrs. John Cormyn's on the last of the days, when Nesta was engaged to sing with her mother a duet of her own composition, the first public fruit of her lessons in counterpoint from rigid Herr Strauscher, who had said what he had said, in letting it pass: eulogy, coming from him. So Victor heard, and he doated am the surprise to come for him, in a boyish anticipation. The girl's little French ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith



Words linked to "Counterpoint" :   oppose, contrast, music, polyphonic music, foil, concerted music, conflict



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