Counterpoint facts for kids

Counterpoint is a special way of composing music. It's all about combining different musical lines, or "voices," so they sound good together. When music is made this way, it's called contrapuntal.

Imagine you're playing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" on the piano. If you just add some chords to the tune, that's called harmony. But if you play "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" with one hand, and at the same time, your other hand plays a completely different melody that fits well with it, that's counterpoint!

One cool way to do this is to start the "Twinkle, Twinkle" tune with your right hand. Then, a little later, your left hand starts playing the *same* tune, but lower down. This is called imitation. It's like one voice is copying another.

If the second part kept copying the first part all the way through the song, it would be called a canon. A famous example is by Thomas Tallis. If a canon can be repeated over and over, it's known as a round, like "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." All of these are types of contrapuntal music.

Counterpoint doesn't always have to use imitation, but it often does. The main idea is that each musical part, or "voice," is equally important. It's not just one main tune with other parts simply playing along. Instead, every part is a melody in itself, and they all weave together.

Counterpoint doesn't mean every note has to be played at the same time in each part. For example, one part might play longer notes while another plays shorter, faster notes.

Composers can also vary counterpoint by inverting it. This means they can swap the top part with the bottom part, and it still sounds good! When music is written so the parts can be switched around like this, it's called "invertible counterpoint."

What Does "Counterpoint" Mean?

The word "counterpoint" comes from the Latin phrase "punctus contra punctum." This means "point against point," where "point" was an old word for a musical note.

Hundreds of years ago, composers discovered how to write contrapuntal music. They often started with a main tune, called a "Cantus Firmus" (which means "fixed song"). Then, they would add one, two, or even more new musical parts to it. The more parts they added, the harder it was to make everything fit together and sound beautiful!

Music with several voices written this way is called polyphonic music. Polyphony was very popular in church music during the Renaissance period. One of the greatest composers of polyphony was Giovanni da Palestrina (1525-1594). Even today, students learning to compose music often study Palestrina's work to understand counterpoint.

Related Music Concepts

• Fugue
• canon (music)

Images for kids

• 

  Bach 3-part Invention BWV 795, bars 7–9

• 

  Beethoven Piano Sonata Op. 90, first movement bars 110–113

• 

  Beethoven, Symphony No. 9, finale, bars 116–123

• 

  Wagner Meistersinger Vorspiel bars 158–161

• 

  Mozart Symphony No. 41 Finale, bars 389–396

• 

  Gradus ad Parnassum (1725) by Johann Joseph Fux, a famous book about teaching counterpoint

• 

  An example of notes moving between a main melody

• 

  Another example of notes moving around a main melody

• 

  A third example showing notes moving around a main melody

See also

In Spanish: Contrapunto para niños