The Renaissance of Counterpoint - 7 October 2025

Monday 6 and Tuesday 7 October 2025
Haute école de Musique de Genève (Rue du Général-Dufour 2, Geneva Switzerland)
Organized in friendly collaboration with the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (FHNW)
Organizing Committee:
Niels Berentsen (PhD), [email protected] (HEM), David Mesquita (PhD),
[email protected] (SCB), Antoine Schneider, [email protected] (HEM)
The traditional teaching of (written) counterpoint in conservatoires has in recent decades
been supplemented, and sometimes supplanted by approaches based on improvisation. On
the one hand these methods model themselves directly on the early theorists, who—more
often than composition—describe practices of extemporized counterpoint known as “cantare
super librum” or “contrappunto alla mente”
. On the other hand, these “new old” pedagogies
also correspond to the very contemporary need to develop innovative, interactive teaching
strategies, focussed on practical musicianship skills, allowing students to learn music as a
living language.
Building on the legacy of the pioneers of this revival, such as Markus Jans and Jean-Yves
Haymoz in Switzerland, successive generations of pedagogues have developed their own
approaches, based on new insights from historical research (not seldom their own), but also
on practical experiences in the classroom and in performance. Whilst originating in
designated early music departments, these pedagogies now have also spread to “generalist”
music theory curricula in European conservatoires.
The joint study days “The Renaissance of Counterpoint”
, organized by the Haute école de
musique de Genève (HES-SO) and the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (FNNW) aim to sketch
a panorama of current pedagogies of improvised counterpoint in Europe, providing a forum
of exchange, as well as an occasion to assess the current state of the field. It will do so
through a combination of 20-minute lectures in the morning, followed by workshop sessions
for students of the HEM and the Schola Cantorum in the afternoon.