There is another reason why the meaning of counterpoint should be explained and the difference between counterpoint and harmony be made clear to the reader now. Nearly all the early music, the music that preceded Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, and that sometimes is to be found on recital programs, is contrapuntal--written in counterpoint. As I have said before, it would be much easier to start with the sonata form, with harmony instead of counterpoint, for of the two harmony is the simpler. But we must "face the music"--the music of the old contrapuntal composers--and the best way to do this is to explain what harmony and counterpoint are and wherein they differ.
A melody or theme is a rational progression of single tones. Here is the melody or theme with which Beethoven begins the familiar "Moonlight Sonata":
It is a melody, but it does not constitute harmony, for harmony is the rational combination of several tones, as distinguished from the rational progression of single tones which constitute melody. But when Beethoven adds an accompaniment to his theme and it becomes:
the passage also becomes harmony, since it is an example of the rational combination of several tones. As has often been pointed out in books on music, and probably often will have to be pointed out again, because as a mistake it is to be classed with the hardy perennials, melody is not harmony, but only a part of it. When, however, a composer conceives a theme or melody he usually does so with the purpose of combining it with an accompaniment that shall support it and throw it into bold and striking relief. Composers of the contrapuntal school, on the other hand, conceived a theme, not for the purpose of supporting it with an accompaniment, but in order to combine it with another or with several other equally important themes. That, in a general way, is the difference between harmony and counterpoint.
In harmony, then, or, more strictly speaking, in music composed according to the harmonic system, of which the "Moonlight Sonata" is a good example, the theme, the melody, stands out from the accompaniment, which is subordinate. Counterpoint, on the other hand, rests on the combination of several themes, each of equal importance. This is the reason why, when there is a fugue or other complicated contrapuntal work on the program of a pianoforte recital, the average listener is apt to find it dry and uninteresting. His ear readily can distinguish the themes of a sonata, which usually are heard one at a time and stand out clearly from the accompaniment, but it has not been trained to unravel the themes of the fugue as they travel along together. Counterpoint, the term being derived from the Latin _contra punctum_, which means point against point or note against note, when complicated, as in a fugue, is about the most elaborate kind of music there is, and a person who is unable to grasp a fugue may console himself with the thought that, excepting for the elect, it is a pretty stiff dose to swallow at the very beginning of a recital.