Westergaardian Species Counterpoint Online
Invented in the early 18th century by Johann Joseph Fux, species counterpoint was one of the two pillars of music composition training in the Northern European tradition (the other being the discipline of thoroughbass). The Species Counterpoint Online project is based on the version of classically tonal species counterpoint developed by Peter Westergaard at Princeton University in the 1970s.
The pedagogical component of the project is a web-based application in which students can compose species counterpoint and test whether their compositions conform to Westergaard’s rules for linear structure and contrapuntal combination. The theoretical component is a software engine, called WesterParse. The goal of WesterParse is provide a software model of how competent listeners perceive the structure of simple tonal melodies.
