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Instead of being grateful for having good music presented in so many different fashions, they would only tolerate their own particular fashion: and a new Lutrin, a fierce war, divided musicians into two hostile camps, the camp of counterpoint and the camp of harmony.
Weinlig had taught him the principles of musical form as well as harmony and counterpoint, and thus made the grasping of the plan of each masterpiece an easier task; and to Weinlig the world owes a huge debt of gratitude. Richard acknowledged the debt; and after Weinlig's death in 1842 he dedicated The Love-feast of the Apostles to his widow.
Though he as yet knew but little of counterpoint and composition, his creative talent already began to assert itself, and he produced several duos and trios, as well as solo compositions, which evinced great promise, though crude and faulty in the extreme.
So we find him writing counterpoint for the sake of the learnedness and presumable respectability, rather than as a piece of expression. His compositions are overburdened and cluttered and marred by all sorts of erudite turns and twists and manoeuvers. The man's entire attention seems to have been set on making his works astonish the learned and make mad the simple.
More than that, Debussy's harmony is not, as it was with Wagner and all the German school, a fettered harmony, tightly bound to the despotic laws of counterpoint; it is, as Laloy has said, a harmony that is first of all harmonious, and has its origin and end in itself. Some of his analyses are models of clever intuition.
In spite of his remarks in Playford's book, it is plain that he looked at music horizontally as well as vertically, and constructed it so that it is good no matter which way it is considered. His counterpoint has a freedom and spontaneity not to be found in the music of the later contrapuntal, fugal, arithmetical school.
Because they are of a magic fabric, into which you can weave no facts." It was dark and he could not see her. The end of his cigarette was a bright spot in the night. The sea and the wind were the counterpoint of her voice. He felt unreal and remote and small. A tiny strand in the vast design of destiny. She got up and walked in. He did not move. "Thank you for the flowers."
And she recalled an old longing of hers to compose some musical masterpiece. For that purpose she had faithfully studied harmony, counterpoint, fugue, and musical form, had steeped herself in the works of the masters from Palestrina to Stravinsky. Yet her own creative efforts had ended in platitudes.
Here we sung several good things, but I am more and more confirmed that singing with many voices is not singing, but a sort of instrumental musique, the sense of the words being lost by not being heard, and especially as they set them with Fuges of words, one after another, whereas singing properly, I think, should be but with one or two voices at most and the counterpoint.
They are the fundamentals of good writing and of good that is, of correct thinking in music. Harmony is the art of putting tones together so as correctly to make chords. Counterpoint has to do with composing and joining together simple melodies. A modern writer on counterpoint has said: "The essence of true counterpoint lies in the equal interest which should belong to ever part."
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