Dissonant counterpoint

Carla Colletti

I have a student working with Charles Seeger's dissonant counterpoint, and she's looking for sources that give information beyond a simple mention, description, or summary of the technique.  Can anyone point us in the right direction?  

Thanks!

 

Stan Kleppinger

Carla: John Spilker has written (and presented at an SMT conference, I believe) about the "origins" of dissonant counterpoint pedagogy in Henry Cowell's teachings. See "The Origins of 'Dissonant Counterpoint': Henry Cowell's Unpublished Notebook" in Journal of the Society for American Music 5, no. 4 (2011).

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-society-for-american-music/article/origins-of-dissonant-counterpoint-henry-cowells-unpublished-notebook/4E390BDFAD746E0C4E6741A70E2CF996

Stephen Soderberg

One good approach would be to study the scores of Ruth Crawford Seeger while reading Joseph Straus' excellent study The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger. Her contributions to Charles Seegers' work in compositional theory were so great that it would be difficult to sort them apart. She put dissonant counterpoint & other avant-garde techniques emerging in the 20s-30s into actual practice – and, of course, her music is outstanding.