Required of Composition majors; open to advanced students in other majors. An intensive course devoted to studying the contrapuntal nature of music. Counterpoint is treated here not as a historical, style-based study, but rather as a fundamental controlling force in the syntax of Western music. The class is designed as a rigorous seminar with weekly written assignments on topics ranging from species to fully invertible counterpoint, and from canon to fugue. Concurrently, works from the Middle Ages through the 20th century will be analyzed for their underlying contrapuntal organization.