A TREATISE ON COUNTERPOINT & FUGUE

Member of the French Institute; Director of the Conservatoire of Music;
Officer of the Legion of Honour, etc.

Translated, by Mrs. Cowden Clarke, from the original French, expressly for Novello's Library for the diffusion of Musical Knowledge. The musical portion has also been supervised by Mr. Josiah Pittman, Organist of Lincoln's Inn.

This work is adopted for the instruction of the classes at the Conservatoire, Paris; and of those at the Royal Academy of Music, London.

London: Novello, Ewer and Co.,
1854.

This digital edition is by Brian Bondari.

Much of what I wrote in the Preface to Counterpoint, by J. Frederick Bridge also applies to my work with Cherubini's monumental treatise. Unlike with Bridge's book on Counterpoint, which I hadn't known until I stumbled across it in the summer of 2017, I had known about Cherubini's treatise since my days in graduate school.

Though both about counterpoint, the two books are quite different. While Bridge's primer focuses almost exclusively on species counterpoint, Cherubini's work is a contrapuntal tour de force, moving beyond the species and covering nearly every imaginable type of counterpoint. Indeed, I've never seen a more comprehensive coverage of double counterpoint. What also sets apart Cherubini's treatise is the inclusion of ten full fugues, each of which has been modestly analysed so that the student can follow the construction of the work.

This digital edition is far more than a digitally typeset version of the original. While a PDF of the 1854 book is available online under the public domain, I wanted a functional version of the book that I could use in the classroom. And speaking of which, the original PDF is just a scan that some kind soul created and posted online with no attempt at updating. The format of a scanned PDF is rigid: the formatting is unchangeable, text search does not work, etc. Instead of a digitally remastered version of the original, I wanted to create a new edition that accomplished two main goals:

1. Updated structure, formatting, and vocabulary

Structure:

Formatting: This new, digital edition should display beautifully on any computer, tablet, smartphone, or e-reader. The text should flow well, images automatically change size to fit the screen, and the contents are easy to search and bookmark.

Vocabulary: Cherubini originally wrote his treatise in French. My new digital edition is based on the English translation by Mary Cowden Clark. Given that I was working from a translation and not the original language, I decided not to treat the text as sacred. In particular, Clark's translation appears to following the original French as carefully as possible, leading to some long, tortured sentences full of numerous commas, semicolons, and colons. Indeed, I was surprised to discover many instances of what – at first – looked like a long paragraph, yet this lengthy sentence, to my astonishment, contained only one grandiose sentence! To this end, I have worked to reduce the complexity of these sentences for the sake of clarity and reduced potential confusion.

Since the translator was English, I have also taken the liberty to update some of the musical vocabulary to make the text more readable by American audiences. For instance, if you see a reference to a crotchet ¹⁾ or semibreve ²⁾, I have added footnotes (as demonstrated here) that provide the American musical equivalent.

2. Updated musical examples, complete with media players:

Updated musical examples: Here's the fun part. There are nearly 500 musical examples in this book, many of which would thoroughly confound 21st Century music students. The simple reason for this is that nearly all them originally utilized an alto clef, a tenor clef, or both. Rarely have I encountered a student could comfortable sight-read a four-part musical example containing four different clefs: treble, alto, tenor, and bass. For better or worse (probably worse), this is a skill that has been lost over the centuries.

Every musical example in this new, digital edition now utilizes only treble and bass clefs. Ironically, by transcribing all of Cherubini's examples into these two “standard” clefs, my own familiarity and efficiency with the alto and tenor clefs has improved beyond my wildest dreams.

Digitizing all the musical examples also provided me the opportunity to clean up some issues with the original scan, such as notes that were difficult to read.

Media players: The main advantage, however, is in the addition of media players beneath each musical example. Textbooks on music, even so-called “modern” ones, lack the ability to play the musical examples straight from the page. Usually the process of hearing a musical example in a textbook involves fumbling with a CD/DVD, logging into a specific web portal from the publisher, or just giving up and searching YouTube.

No longer. Now students can study an example and listen to it straight from the page. There's something satisfying about a 100+ year-old textbook in the public domain receiving a modern facelift, both in looks and in function. Indeed, this feature gives it a significant advantage over newer sixteenth-century counterpoint texts, at least from a functional perspective.

The best way to access this book on a computer, tablet, or smartphone is to view the online version, which will automatically adjust to fit your screen. Start here with the Table of Contents.

You can also read this book by downloading an EPUB, which is viewable on an e-reader (Nook, Kobo, etc) or on any computer/smartphone/tablet with an e-book app. The EPUB format supports audio, but your individual e-reader may not, so I cannot make any guarantees as to the functionality of the e-reader version. I have personally tested it with Apple iBooks, and it works fine.

EPUB download: Counterpoint_Bridge.epub (52 MB)

Naturally, my best thanks are due to Sir J. Frederick Bridge for the 1878 version of his text, without which this new edition would not be possible. Additionally, I express my gratitude to my friend Jonathan Kulp at The University of Louisiana at Lafayette, who served as the inspiration for this project. ³⁾ Thanks, Jon!

And finally, I am also thankful for my wife Katrina's enduring patience and kind replies of, “Yes, Daddy is still working….” in response to our kids' endlessly repeating question:

Is Daddy still playing on the computer?

~ B. B. B.

Trinity University,
San Antonio, Texas
August, 2018.