Species Counterpoint
The method that trained Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms — and that conservatories still assign today.
What Is Species Counterpoint?
Species counterpoint is the method Johann Joseph Fux codified in 1725 in Gradus ad Parnassum ("Steps to Parnassus") — the same textbook Mozart studied as a child, that Haydn kept on his desk for reference, that Beethoven worked through with Albrechtsberger, and that conservatories still assign today.
The method works like this: a student takes a given melody called the cantus firmus ("fixed song") and writes a second melody against it, note by note. The rules governing which intervals are allowed — and which are forbidden — train the ear to hear consonance and dissonance, to move voices smoothly, and to create musical tension and release.
Unlike music theory (which names and analyzes), species counterpoint is composition practice — you write music from the first exercise. Every rule has an audible reason. Every constraint builds something in the ear that purely analytical study cannot reach.
The Cantus Firmus
Every counterpoint exercise begins with a cantus firmus — a pre-existing melody in whole notes that serves as the fixed foundation against which you write. The cantus firmus moves slowly and deliberately: it does not leap by augmented or diminished intervals, it avoids large consecutive leaps in the same direction, and it ends with a stepwise approach to the final.
These constraints are not accidental. A cantus firmus is designed to be a clear, singable line so that everything the student adds against it stands out in relief. The great pedagogical cantus firmi — from Fux, Jeppesen, Marpurg, and the Mozart-Attwood tradition — have been tested over centuries of teaching.
The Five Species
Fux organized the method into five species, each introducing new rhythmic complexity and new categories of permissible dissonance. They are learned in order — mastering one before proceeding to the next.
In first species, you write one note against each note of the cantus firmus. Every interval between the two voices must be consonant: a perfect unison, fifth, or octave, or an imperfect third or sixth. No dissonance is permitted — not even passing tones.
This austerity forces the student to internalize which intervals sound open and hollow (perfect consonances) versus full and warm (imperfect consonances) — and to move between them smoothly without producing parallel fifths or octaves, the cardinal errors of voice leading.
Second species introduces half-note motion against the cantus firmus whole notes. The note on the strong beat must be consonant. The note on the weak beat may be a passing tone — a dissonance approached and left by step in the same direction.
For the first time, motion fills the phrase. The student learns that dissonance is not an error to avoid but a vehicle — something to pass through on the way to a consonance, creating the sense of arrival that makes music feel directed rather than static.
Third species uses quarter-note motion — four notes against each cantus firmus whole note. More dissonant figures become available: passing tones, neighbor tones, and the nota cambiata (a specific four-note turning figure). The challenge shifts from interval choice to melodic shape.
With four notes per measure, the counterpoint must move purposefully rather than randomly. A student writing third species learns to hear sequences of intervals as phrases rather than as a series of independent choices.
Fourth species introduces the suspension — the single most important technique in tonal voice leading. A note is tied across the barline, so what was consonant on the weak beat becomes dissonant on the strong beat. That dissonance must resolve downward by step to a consonance.
The emotional gesture of suspension — hold, feel the tension, step down into resolution — is the basic drama of tonal music. Bach built the entire expressive language of his chorale harmonizations on this single technique. Learning to hear and write suspensions correctly is one of the most important things a counterpoint student does.
Fifth species, often called florid counterpoint, combines all four techniques freely. The student chooses when to move in whole notes, halves, quarters, or tied notes — the only constraint being that every dissonance must be treated correctly according to its type.
It is in fifth species that the student first feels like a composer rather than a student of rules. The freedom is real, but it is earned — each choice is informed by the ear training built across the first four species.
Why Is Species Counterpoint Still Taught?
The question is reasonable: why learn a method from 1725?
Because the rules of species counterpoint describe audible truths about how voices move together. They are not arbitrary gatekeeping from an earlier era. They encode centuries of European composers discovering, by ear and by writing, the conditions under which independent melodic lines can sound like one unified texture rather than a collection of competing accidents.
When you learn why parallel fifths are forbidden, you hear them — you cannot unhear them. When you learn the specific motion by which a suspension resolves, you feel the emotional arc. That hearing and feeling are what you are actually developing. The notation is a means to an end: a precise enough language to force you to commit your ear to paper.
This is why Haydn assigned the method to Beethoven. Why Mozart taught it to his students. Why Nadia Boulanger — the most influential composition teacher of the twentieth century — kept it at the center of her curriculum. The method works because it trains something in the musical ear that no amount of analysis can substitute for.
Fux and Gradus ad Parnassum
Johann Joseph Fux (1660–1741) was the Kapellmeister at the Habsburg court in Vienna — the musical epicenter of early eighteenth-century Europe. His 1725 treatise, Gradus ad Parnassum, codified the Palestrina-style counterpoint he had studied and refined across decades of composing sacred music.
Fux organized the material as a dialogue between a student (Josephus) and a teacher (Aloysius, representing Palestrina). The five-species structure was his pedagogical invention — a systematic progression from simplest to most complex that allowed any student, regardless of background, to develop genuine compositional ability through practice.
The book became the standard counterpoint textbook within decades of publication and remained so for two centuries. Copies passed hand to hand among composers the way a master craftsman's tools pass to apprentices. Mozart annotated his. Beethoven worked exercises from it. Brahms returned to it throughout his career.
How Gradus Teaches It
At Gradus, species counterpoint forms the center of Stage II — Two Voices (Steps 8–13). The curriculum follows Fux's progression, beginning with first species (Step 8) and advancing through fifth (Step 13), using historical cantus firmi from Fux, Jeppesen, Marpurg, and the Mozart-Attwood tradition.
Each stage of the curriculum includes:
- Lesson content — the theory, the rules, and the reason behind each rule, including what you should hear before you can write it
- Counterpoint Workshop — an interactive two-staff tool where you click to place notes against any cantus firmus in the catalog, with automated first-species rule-checking and Mozart-Attwood master examples available for every cantus firmus
- Maestro feedback — your personal composition professor is available in every lesson to explain why a rule exists, help you hear a specific interval, or give feedback on the line you wrote
The Counterpoint Workshop catalog includes cantus firmi from: Johann Joseph Fux, Knud Jeppesen, Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg, the Mozart-Attwood edition, Heinrich Schenker, and the traditional conservatory teaching repertoire. Mozart-Attwood entries include the solutions Mozart wrote for his student Thomas Attwood in London, 1785–86 — the only complete record of Mozart teaching counterpoint.
Begin the Method
Start with first species counterpoint in Lesson 8 — or try the Counterpoint Workshop to write directly against a Fux cantus firmus and compare your work to Mozart's own solutions.