Read on Twitter
So, yesterday my daughter (9) wanted to hear some renaissance polyphony and I was doing a jigsaw puzzle so I said over my shoulder "write a motet." She said, "How?" like all kids do when they want YOU to do it, so I said, "Start with imitative counterpoint and go from there."
"How?" she asked, and I said, "Just like Fux does in Gradus Ad Parnassum," incredulous. She brought me some staff paper and we both stared at it, and I realized I'd never taught her how to compose from scratch in the style of Palestrina. I felt like a dope.
What kind of father doesn't teach his kid how to negotiate imperfect consonances between cantus, altus, and bassus? So I said, "How do you think it works?" She stared at the staff paper, thumbed through her copy of Gradus Ad Parnassum, and let out a big, dramatic sigh.
"Will you just compose a motet for me?" she asked. I was overjoyed: a Teaching Moment just dropped in my lap! I said, "Imitation at the twelfth is designed to one thing: establish motivic primacy. Study the parts and their ranges. Figure out what Josquin would think."
I went back to my jigsaw puzzle. She was next to me grunting and groaning trying to figure out when to raise leading tones in a hypodorian mode. I should say that chromaticism and invertible counterpoint are not things she... intuits.
Eventually she collapsed in a frustrated heap. There were tears. I said, "The incipit melody is made to be pleasing but it doesn't have any superfluous parts. Everything that moves does so for a reason." She said, "I hate you." I'm sure she believes that she does.
At this point she said, "I don't want a motet. Or a madrigal. Or a mass" and marched off. But soon she was back at the staff paper, writing unresolved dissonances and parallel fifths in her failed attempts. I'd been tempted to remind her of fourth-species counterpoint principles.
Finally she stumbled into a passage that resembled fauxbardon, with a chain of suspensions leading to a Landini cadence. She looked at me expectantly, excitedly. After six hours of trying you don't want to express too much hope.
She didn't look up. She knew the action. A little polyphony appeared. Minim by minim, she savored each hocket, each appoggiatura. Earlier she'd yelled, "My brain is fuzzy" but now she was trusting the melismas. She was elated, and the family gathered to sing her motet.
The only problem is now she wants to write one in every damn mode!
