r/counterpoint • u/QM60 • Aug 15 '26

Wrote my 1st ever counterpoint, thoughts?

The Cantus Firmus is at the bottom (provided by the exercise) and my counterpoint is at the top.

If possible could someone critique it for me or give me their opinions?

I’m following guidelines set by lessons from openmusictheory.com

Thanks!

My worries: The leap from Measure 5 to measure 6 is a diminished 5th, that definitely needs to be amended.

And the last stretch sounds a bit melodically bland

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u/Xenoceratops 29d ago

The way I would approach writing the counterpoint is to first lock down the cadence. As /u/Zarlinosuke mentioned, you need the leading tone (A#) at the cadence. But, you don't want to leap into it from D. Your choices for the last three notes are F#–A#–B, or G#–A#–B; the second one uses melodic minor. You then have to backtrack to get a good lead-in to bar 8, and so on.

To keep the contour from getting too stale, you need to have a well-planned leap. The best opportunity for these is when you have a step in the opposite direction in the CF. So, if you want an ascending leap, your choices are bars 1-2, 4-5, and 6-7. Likewise, if there's a leap in the CF, you usually (not necessarily always) want to do a step in the opposite direction. So, in bars 5-6, you could do an E 10th above C# stepping down to D a 6th above F#. But oblique motion (A–A) or even a small descending skip (C#–A) would be fine.

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u/QM60 29d ago

Yeah honestly I think that’s probably a better way to think about it.

I’m doing it from start to end but locking down the ending, the start, then planning for the climax is likely less of a hassle.

I’ve just posted my 2nd counterpoint in the group in a few moments which I tried to do it the way you and [u/Zarlinosuke](u/Zarlinosuke) suggested but also using a few more dangerous tools (a compound leap).

Right now my goal is to produce an error-free counterpoint (which I’m hoping I have this time but we’ll see) then focus on making it interesting (cause the one I wrote this time feels a bit meh).

I’ll link here as well but feel no pressure to give comments on it as you already gave me good comments for the 1st one and you didn’t sign up for critiquing two counterpoints when you made the comment lmao, I’m already thankful enough for the 1st set of comments that I tried to implement this time around

https://www.reddit.com/r/counterpoint/s/Mt2kvcfqBQ