Fifth species — florid counterpoint

Florid counterpoint: all the species at once, in the mixture a real melody would use — halves, quarters, ties and their suspensions, an occasional pair of eighths — each figure still governed by its own species’ rule. The art is no longer in obeying any single constraint but in the economy of the mixture: variety of movement without restlessness, dissonance spent where it tells, and a line that reads as melody rather than exercise. Fifth species is the bridge out of the method: the last exercise before writing is simply writing.

The synthesis exercise: it certifies that the four disciplines can coexist in one singing line, which is the whole point of having separated them. Florid writing over a cantus firmus is also the direct ancestor of the chorale prelude, the division, and the obbligato line — anywhere one voice flowers over a slower one.

• Changing note values so often that the line sounds restless — variety is the means, not the goal.
• Using a figure outside its own species’ law, as if the mixture suspended the rules instead of combining them.
• Spending the fastest motion early so the line has nowhere to grow.
• Placing eighth notes anywhere but in passing pairs on weak quarters.
• Losing the melodic arc — a florid line still wants one climax and a stepwise close.

• Johann Joseph Fux, Gradus ad Parnassum (1725), Liber secundus, fifth species (florid counterpoint) — The synthesis of the four disciplines into one free line.
• Luigi Cherubini, Cours de contrepoint et de fugue (1835), Fifth species, two-voice counterpoint — The Conservatoire’s florid species, with the same warnings about restlessness.