Species Counterpoint, Explained for Beginners
The five species, what each one teaches, and why composers have learned this way for three centuries.
By Maestro
Counterpoint is the art of writing two or more melodies that sound good together while each stays a satisfying melody on its own. Species counterpoint is the classic way of learning it, and it remains one of the most effective ways to learn to compose at all.
What is species counterpoint?
Species counterpoint is a method of learning to combine melodies in five graded stages, called species. In each one, the student writes a new melody against a given one, called the cantus firmus, and each species adds a new rhythmic problem to solve. By the fifth, the student is writing flowing, varied lines that use everything learned before.
The method was set out by the Austrian composer Johann Joseph Fux in Gradus ad Parnassum ("Steps to Parnassus"), published in 1725. It is written as a dialogue between a teacher and a student, and it shaped the training of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, among many others.
Why learn counterpoint one species at a time?
Because it isolates one problem at a time. A beginner trying to write a whole piece must think about melody, harmony, rhythm, and form all at once. Species counterpoint removes most of those decisions. The cantus firmus supplies the structure in steady whole notes, and the rhythm of the new line is fixed by the species. What remains is the essential craft: how two lines move against each other, and how dissonance creates and releases tension.
First species: note against note
One note in the new line for each note of the cantus firmus.
- Every interval must be a consonance: a unison, third, fifth, sixth, or octave. In two-voice writing, the fourth is treated as a dissonance.
- Begin and end on a perfect consonance (unison, fifth, or octave).
- Never move in parallel fifths or octaves, where both voices move the same way and land on the same perfect interval again. The two lines briefly stop sounding independent.
- Prefer contrary motion, with one voice rising as the other falls. It keeps the lines distinct.
- Move mostly by step, with an occasional leap balanced by a step back the other way.
First species teaches the foundation: which sounds are stable, and how two voices keep their independence.
Second species: two notes against one
Two half notes in the new line for each whole note of the cantus firmus.
- The note on the strong beat must be consonant.
- The note on the weak beat may be dissonant if it is a passing tone, approached and left by step in the same direction.
This is the student's first controlled use of dissonance: a brief tension that passes immediately.
Third species: four notes against one
Four quarter notes against each whole note.
- The first note of each bar is consonant.
- Dissonances on the other beats move by step, as passing tones or neighbor tones (a step away from a note and back again).
Third species builds fluency. The new line has to keep moving, and the student learns to shape a longer melodic contour.
Fourth species: suspensions
The new line is shifted by half a bar, so each note is tied over the bar line.
- When the tied note becomes dissonant against the new note in the cantus firmus, it is a suspension. It must have been consonant when it was first sounded (the preparation), and it resolves down by step to a consonance.
- Above the cantus firmus, the classic suspensions are 7–6 and 4–3. Below it, 2–3.
Fourth species is where music starts to ache and sigh. A suspension holds onto something the harmony has moved past, then lets go.
Fifth species: florid counterpoint
Everything combined: whole, half, quarter, and tied notes, and a few eighth notes, mixed freely in one line. The goal is a melody that sounds natural and expressive while obeying all the earlier principles. It is the closest the method comes to composing outright, and the bridge to writing without the exercise's limits.
Is species counterpoint still worth learning?
Yes. It is still taught in university music programs because nothing else teaches voice leading as directly. The habits it builds, independent lines, purposeful dissonance, and melodies that rise and fall with shape, carry into every style, from chorales to film scores to songwriting.
It is also a very good way for younger students to begin composing. The constraints that seem strict to an adult are freeing to a beginner. A child doesn't have to decide everything, only the next good note.
Where Gradus fits
Gradus takes its name from Fux's book, and species counterpoint is at the heart of how Gradus teaches composition. Students work through all five species with a counterpoint workshop that plays every line back and explains, note by note, what works and what to fix. Younger children meet the same ideas through a gentler picture: notes that are "friends" and notes that argue.
You can try species counterpoint, read more about counterpoint at Gradus, or look up species counterpoint and parallel motion in the Gradus dictionary.