Countrapuntal Crackup

The contrapuntal section of the second movement just wasn’t sounding clear to me. The notes were acceptable, but the words tended to collide with one another and would be indistinct to a listener. I set about reworking it. The first attempt cleared up the word collision, but suffered from flowing smoothly for a few beats (e.g., bars 1-2), then rushing and clunking (bar 3).




I threw that out and started again. This version cleared up the rushing and clunking in the first 8 bars, but got muddy in bars 8-11; the entrances were clunky again. Also, the back and forth aspect of the initial entrances (bars 2-4, 8-11) were not quite working either.




Out went that version. The third try was just a mess.




It finally dawned on me that the real problem was I don’t know enough of the fundamentals of counterpoint. So I’ll set aside “A Moral Little Tale” for a while and spend some time at the feet of Johann Joseph Fux.