ABSTRACT
EDITOR'S PREFACE: This selection may be regarded as an extension of the previous one. Together they constitute an essential contribution to the literature on compositional process in the period from about 1300 through 1450. It is precisely in this epoch that four-voice counterpoint had hitherto been rather poorly understood by musicologists, but with these two studies Apfel pointed the way to a clearer understanding of the underlying compositional principles. Both the articles and the concepts developed in them, however, have remained almost entirely outside the scope of research and pedagogy as practiced in the Englishspeaking world. It might also be mentioned that the figure of Dufay plays a larger role in this article than in any other of Apfel's studies translated in this volume.
