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I'm reading The Study of Counterpoint and I've bumped into some confusion on the first exercise. We're shown two melodies, the cantus firmus, the first note of which is E, and the counterpoint, where the first note is F. the two melodies from exercise one My confusion is that, on the very same page, it is stated that the first notes of each melody combine to make a fifth. calling the first notes a fifth But, unless I've misunderstood how to read an alto clef and a soprano clef, the first two notes are not a fifth, but are only a semitone apart. Can anyone explain this to me? Why does this exercise not only start out with a dissonant pair of notes, but then also go on to call it a fifth? Have I misunderstood something? Is it possibly because the work is so old that these clefs mean something different than I think?

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Those notes are not E and F. Although the original clefs are shown, they are replaced by the more familiar-to-modern-readers treble clefs. Thus, the notes are actually D and A — a perfect fifth. This is true throughout the edition of the book — the original exercises are re-written using treble and bass clefs.

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    Can't even work out why the C clefs are shown. Commented 2 days ago
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    It’d be good to at least mention the word incipit. Commented 2 days ago
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    @Tim to show the reader how the parts were originally notated. Commented 2 days ago
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    @phoog But we aren't shown how the parts were originally notated, are we? The notes are written relative to the new clefs so the positions of the notes on the staves have all changed from the original. I suppose we are shown just enough so that if we really wanted to reconstruct the original notation, we could. Commented 2 days ago
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    @DavidK yeah, it's not particularly critical information here. The practice is employed in some editions of Renaissance music, where the identity of the clefs used might be relevant as there are some theories suggesting that they are, but really most people who are that interested in these things ought to be using the source materials rather than a modern edition. Commented yesterday

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