section_path: Musical style/Counterpoint
section_name: Counterpoint
paragraph_text: Counterpoint
  
  Another characteristic of Bach's style is his extensive use of counterpoint, as opposed to the homophony used in his four-part Chorale settings, for example. Bach's canons, and especially his fugues, are the most characteristic of this style, which he did not invent but contributed to so fundamentally that he defined it to a large extent. Fugues are as characteristic to Bach's style as, for instance, the Sonata form is characteristic to the composers of the Classical period.
  
  These strictly contrapuntal compositions, and most of Bach's music in general, are characterised by distinct melodic lines for each of the voices, where the chords formed by the notes sounding at a given point follow the rules of four-part harmony. Johann Nikolaus Forkel, Bach's first biographer, gives this description of this feature of Bach's music, which sets it apart from most other music:
  
  If the language of music is merely the utterance of a melodic line, a simple sequence of musical notes, it can justly be accused of poverty. The addition of a Bass puts it upon a harmonic foundation and clarifies it but defines rather than gives it added richness. A melody so accompanied—even though all the notes are not those of the true Bass—or treated with simple embellishments in the upper parts or with simple chords used to be called "homophony". But it is a very different thing when two melodies are so interwoven that they converse together like two persons upon a footing of pleasant equality. In the first case, the accompaniment is subordinate and serves merely to support the first or principal part. In the second case, the two parts are not similarly related. New melodic combinations spring from their interweaving, out of which new forms of musical expression emerge. Suppose more parts are interwoven in the same free and independent manner. In that case, the apparatus of language is correspondingly enlarged and becomes practically inexhaustible if, in addition, varieties of form and rhythm are introduced. Hence, harmony becomes no longer a mere accompaniment of melody but rather a potent agency for augmenting the richness and expressiveness of musical conversation. To serve that end, a simple accompaniment will not suffice. True harmony is the interweaving of several melodies, which emerge now in the upper, now in the middle, and now in the lower parts.
  
  From 1720, when he was thirty-five until he died in 1750, Bach's harmony consists of this melodic interweaving of independent melodies, so perfect in their union that each part seems to constitute the true melody. Herein, Bach excels all the composers in the world. At least, I have found no one to equal him in music known to me. Even in his four-part writing, we can, not infrequently, leave out the upper and lower parts and still find the middle parts harmonious and agreeable.