ivebeenorbited....i don't think the piece of music you used counts as being contrapuntal. its mostly a harmonic scalar transformation in one voice...ie mostly homophonic (except for some parts at the end). i think u will find the piece of music right after it on your cd or playlist better qualified as polyphonic contrapuntal. punctus contra punctum implies disntinct voices (in dialectic relationship if u want)..as opposed to music where all voices are subservient to harmony, adding up to give resonance and richness to the same progression of harmony. even playing contrapuntal music on the piano or organ differs as testified by the 'eccentric' example of glenn gould. physiologically, piano playing typically foregrounds the right hand over the left hand, the upper scale melody lines over the bass, the basso continuo...a clear crisp linear foreground over an atmospheric harmony-bass/baseground. i think that the classical and romantic period were pretty oblivious to the contrapuntal way of thinking that doesnt treasure the melody above all else (contrapuntal music does have melody, but its far from the linear melody u can hum say from ur favourite mozart serenate...i think to some extent contrapuntal music is more of a studied abstraction of musical harmony and structure where interest is not focused on the art of creating a melody (a melody is always the extrovert film of music, the user-friendly apect of it) but rather on a self referential hermetic study. Continuing from above, the appropriateness of glenn gould's eccentric playing -the "pure finger technique" over the normal way of playing with more central wrist/arm/body control added to the ambidextrous playing ability (away from the piano, he was left handed)- was a phsyiological partner for contrapuntal music...each note, each finger equal and on par with the other...a musical form of atomism. in contrapuntal music, in parallel to gould's playing, there is a less dictatorial central control played by melody..rather melody is capture in fragments, deffered, developed, ever shifting.

WTF??? That's like saying blimp, broken rib, broken thigh, oranges, tangerines.

Ha ha ha ha ha. Me rikey blimp, broken rib, broken thigh, oranges, tangerines.

Also like saying cuff link, pencil, erasable ink pen, glue, rubber cement.

Ok, who's next?

Preferably someone who actually knows enough about music AND architecture to frame this discussion???

In the meantime I give you Viktor and Rolf Store

thanks for your video ivebeenorbited. Although I will have to agree with noctilucent: the piece you chose is not fugal but a prelude. But I think your video is getting the point across nevertheless.

To put it less didactically, polyphonic, fugal, counterpoint are multiple 'melodies' or 'voices' (Bach was not a melodious composer like Schubert and Beethoven strictly speaking) individually different from each other but put together form a 'harmonizing' singular piece. Some of his work, from memory, had up to eight voices; a truly remarkable achievement. The great contrapuntal players had the ability to have complete hand independence (a requirement of any decent pianist) but could give equal strength to all parts: bass and melody, left and right.

So if you look at the structure or styles of contrapuntal and romantic (melodic) and relate them back to architectural composition there is an interesting discussion. If we take Koolhaas's 'Bigness' where the parts that make the whole not only exist within it but are 'seen' as autonomous but are committed to the whole.

"Where architecture reveals, Bigness perplexes; Bigness transforms the city from a summation of certainties into accumulation of mysteries. What you see is no longer what you get." SMLXL

Gesture or dialogue……

noctilucent / ogden - thanks for your feedback, but isn't the prelude an 'accessible', stripped-down version of counterpoint... a preview maybe, where the two melodic lines have not separated enough as in the fugue that follows? ogden / i see where you're going with Koolhaas's 'Bigness'--have you been to the Seattle library? the atrium is a perfect example of an open-and-enclosed public space where it is easier to grasp the parts than the whole, yet we understand it as a whole.