What's the difference between voice leading and counterpoint?

[rbarata]

Maybe that's dumb question but I think both are deeply related.
Maybe the difference is only chronological being one a later/more developed stage of the other...

Thanks in advance for your replies.

[jancivil]

The term voice-leading resides in the context of given harmony; IE: you have voices of a harmony (or chord if you like) under consideration. You may be dealing with this in a contrapuntal fashion, but counterpoint in the strict sense can be independent of this consideration, you're just writing lines and the vertical aspect is a product of the linear.

[Dewdman42]

voice leading and counterpoint are very similar....

The main difference I see is that typically when you are using so called "counterpoint" methods to derive musical material, you typically do so without regard for the the underlying chords. The harmony just ends up being whatever it is, after you use counterpoint to determine counter melodies against a cantus firmus.

Voice leading on the other hand, typically deals with trying to figure out how to move from chord A to chord B. You know the harmony in advanced and you're methodically trying to voice each chord so that the various voices advance in appropriate ways.

[rbarata]

So, I'm assuming that the rules of counterpoint gave origin (or are the same) for voice leading.
I'm assuming this because, from what I know (assuming, once again this is correct), chords came after the counterpoint.

[Jafo]

Voice leading: how to make a singable melody. (Medieval monks liked to double it in fifths because it sounds cool.)

Counterpart: how to make multiple, independent, simultaneous melodies without parallel fifths. Each voice is one note of a chord. If you have parallel fifths anywhere, the voices won't be fully independent, the counterpoint guys will laugh at you, the ghost of Bach will haunt you, and your theory instructor will penalize you.

Black Sabbath: how to make a singable melody doubled on bass and guitar -- guitar in parallel fifths so that the ghosts of medieval monks do haunt you and you sound cool as all hell. For best results, the guitar should be a mahogany slab loaded with P-90 pups.

With a single voice, voice leading is just how to make it singable. In counterpoint, voice leading means that each voice has to proceed from note to note in a singable manner.

[Dewdman42]

So, I'm assuming that the rules of counterpoint gave origin (or are the same) for voice leading.
I'm assuming this because, from what I know (assuming, once again this is correct), chords came after the counterpoint.

Harmony, (i.e., chords) has existed for a long time but it got more and more sophisticated over time. Early on the monks were thinking more contrapuntally. Based on what sounds good adding extra voices against an initial melody. Those added voices create harmony or chords but initially they were very simplistic and lacked strong cadential tendencies like we are used to hearing today.

Eventually rules developed about how secondary melodies work best against the primary melody. How suspensions can be handled, when it’s best to move up or down and by how much, etc

In the early years the devils interval: tritone, was simply avoided. Equal temperament didn’t exist at first either. Eventually it did and eventually people figured out the strong cadential tendencies that come from embracing the tritone, which led to people thinking more in terms of the chord progression first and the exact voice leading as secondary, but many of the same rules considered in counterpoint are very applicable to voice leading, it’s just that with voice leading you have more of a specific target chord to end up on rather then purely letting independent voices wander around contrapuntally.

So Yes there is a lot of overlap but a bit different. Voice leading is actually more constrained because you have to figure out how to get from this chord to that chord while still observing some of those contrapuntal or voice leading rules. With pure counterpoint you don’t care what chords you end up on and so long as you’re not breaking the rules and it sounds good then the chords you end up with are cool.

In reality I like to use a little of both. Once I know the chord progression then its down to voice leading, but often times playing around with contrapuntal ideas will lead me to a chord progression or reharmonization that is more satisfying because the melodies and counter melodies are more sophisticated.

Just remember that counter point does not necessarily mean sounds-like-Bach-fugue. You can find bits and pieces of counterpoint inside phrases of all the great composers including contemporary. And there are different schools of thought about what rules make sense for different kinds of music. And you don’t have to always follow the rules every note either! Same goes for voice leading which is basically the same stuff but a bit more constrained since you have to get from chord a to chord b so you only have a few options.

[jancivil]

there are different schools of thought about what rules make sense for different kinds of music. And you don’t have to always follow the rules every note either!

What rules? There are principles to follow according to a style if you have to do that for a grade or for the money; unless you're under coercion such as this you don't have to do anything.

[jancivil]

Voice leading: how to make a singable melody. (Medieval monks liked to double it in fifths because it sounds cool.)
With a single voice, voice leading is just how to make it singable. In counterpoint, voice leading means that each voice has to proceed from note to note in a singable manner.

No, and no. Voice-leading, the term here, is inextricably tied to harmony. If there is a such thing as a single voice voice-leading, it was extrapolated from harmony considerations. Voice in this term means a voice among other parts within a harmony.

There is no such requirement for writing counterpoint per se that it be singable. It could be too difficult to sing on average if it's too virtuosic, perhaps one is writing for instruments and exploiting things in the instrument quite beside or beyond 'cantabile' qualities. It could be in an advanced vocabulary such as found in 20th century composers rather widely and difficult to sing except if the singer is extremely skilled. Now it may be said that certain principles we attend to in a part-writing course do follow from singable, particularly as these '4-parts' in a 4-part exercise refer back to chorale composition eg., JS Bach; no untoward leaps, crossing of parts, and so forth. But the definition of "counterpoint" needs no restriction as though from vocalisation (or as to parts found within harmony per se).
It indicates the idea, treat lines in a linear aspect with a certain degree of independence, actually.

[jancivil]

mystery dupe

[IncarnateX]

To me the wiki defintion of counterpoint is sufficient to describe the core of it

In music, counterpoint is the relationship between voices that are harmonically interdependent (polyphony) yet independent in rhythm and contour.

In other words it refers to the art of mixing different melodies within the same key and same modulations, thus you can still do counterpoints over a chord progression in so far that you have more than one melody in play (and the highest notes of your chord progression will constitute a melody itself to be countered, e.g. by a singer)

In its purest (theoretical) form, counterpoint would be the opposite of parallel harmonization (or playing in unison for that matter) and that is what the rules of the species are about, ime. When you learn to avoid parallels in sixths or fifths, it is not because this is a defining feature of counterpoint to avoid these in particular, but it serves educational purposes because you are thus trained to distinguish counterpoint from parallel harmonization as far as possible. In applied form, however, counterpoint and harmonization are usually mixed like in many modern types of music where you e.g. can have a figure with a bass guitar that are rhythmically different from that of the guitar and goes down when the latter goes up, while at the same time have a keyboard for chords. The purpose of the species is to learn the basics to an extent where you can do it intuitively and completely free, that is, you do not follow any rules unless you go for certain trends within styles and periods. E.g. you can let your melodies go into parallel positions for a few beats or you can let them “crash” in minor seconds or tritonus when their paths cross anyway that fits you. There are no such things as rules to it, only trends.

Edit: On a side note. If there ever was a “elitarian composer’s favorite topic”, I think counterpoint would be a great candidate. Sometimes people talk about it as some remote higher art of composition or something as mysterious as Kabbalah and not something that happens all the time in modern music. Basically, mixing melodies is quite trivial, unless you refer to the complexity or restrictions of certain trends.

Edit 2: I am not that familiar with the english term but as far as “voice leading” concerns, isn’t a categorial mistake at stake here in so far that this can refer to voice leading in both parallel harmonization and counterpoint?

[rbarata]

Thanks for all the replies.

Edit 2: I am not that familiar with the english term but as far as “voice leading” concerns, isn’t a categorial mistake at stake here in so far that this can refer to voice leading in both parallel harmonization and counterpoint?

I don't know if it's a mistake or not but I think this is the reason why I found it so confusing. I've seen the same concept (in other chapters of music theory) using different names, depending on the context, but in this one it's hard to be separated even in different contexts.

[Dewdman42]

Much of what you read in texts about voice leading is derived from counterpoint. There is a lot of overlap. Study them both.

[IncarnateX]

I don't know if it's a mistake or not but I think this is the reason why I found it so confusing. I've seen the same concept (in other chapters of music theory) using different names, depending on the context, but in this one it's hard to be separated even in different contexts.

If we take the wiki’s word for it, there seems to be a categorical mistake:

Voice leading is the linear progression of melodic lines (voices) and their interaction with one another to create harmonies, according to the principles of common-practice harmony and counterpoint.[1]

So it applies to both parallel harmonization and counterpoint, thus counterpoint is a subcategory to voice leading. You cannot oppose them to each other. You need to go one level down in categorization to get the right distinction, namely parallel harmonization versus counterpoint.

[IncarnateX]

Much of what you read in texts about voice leading is derived from counterpoint. There is a lot of overlap. Study them both.

No there is no overlab. As per definition above, both counterpoint and harmonization are subcategories to voice leading, so it is not voice leading versus counterpoint with overlabs but simply counterpoint versus parallel harmonization as two types of voice leading. Unfortunately you have made the same categorial mistake as in the title of the thread. If some textbooks tend to do the same, no wonder the OP gets confused.

[Dewdman42]

parallel harmonization is included in the practice of counterpoint. And yes there is overlap.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_leading

Voice leading is the linear progression of melodic lines (voices) and their interaction with one another to create harmonies, according to the principles of common-practice harmony and counterpoint.

An interesting article: https://www.artofcomposing.com/voice-le ... unterpoint