CONTRAPUNTAL • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Contrapuntal

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Contrapuntal

adjective

Relating to or characteristic of or according to the rules of counterpoint.

Having two or more independent but harmonically related melodic parts sounding together. Synonym: polyphonic.

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"Contrapuntal" Quotes from Famous Books

... laughter and the sound of lutes and voices; it is seductive with the clink of goblets and the odour of perfumes: not a shadow but has its secret, or jovial or amorous or terrible: here falls a head, and there you may note the contrapuntal effect of the bastinado. But the blood is quickly hidden with flowers, the bruises are tired over with cloth-of-gold, and the jolly pageant sweeps on. Truly the comic essence is imperishable. What was fun to them in Baghdad is fun to us in ...

— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... clear and forceful, and filled with many surprising and humorous touches. Of Bach he said, 'Bach spoke in close, scientific, contrapuntal language. He was as emotional and romantic as Chopin, Wagner or Tchaikovsky; his emotion was expressed in the language of his time. Young women who say they adore Bach play him like a sum in mathematics. They find a grim pleasure in it, like ...

— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman

... how the Volkslied became fertilized by the polyphony of church-music. At the same time the music of the mass itself received an important impulse from the Volkslied. The employment of well-known popular song-melodies as canti fermi in sacred contrapuntal compositions had a very beneficial effect upon those works, inasmuch as it introduced a bit of fresh popular life into music just at the moment when it was in danger of degenerating into pedantry and triviality.[20] Possibly the ...

— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight

... absolutely precise. The two-and three-part contrapuntal singing which is done in the sight-singing classes is admirable for this, as the whole effect is blurred or entirely spoilt in such clear-cut work ...

— Music As A Language - Lectures to Music Students • Ethel Home

... second subjects there is little sign. The themes were of the formal mathematical type developed during the fugal period—a type that "worked" easily, and in a way effectively, in the fugue itself, but was unnecessary and, indeed, tiresome when contrapuntal working was not the aim and object. The endless variants on this kind of thing, ...

— Haydn • John F. Runciman