Please post here feats of Contrapuntal Ingenuity.

I have a Capriccio called "Trinitas in unitate" here by Vincenzo Ruffo that's a strict canon in 3 parts, 53 mm.

The lowest voice begins on A, the tenor on E above, then the canto (treble) on A above that.

The distance of imitation, however, varies: tenor 2 beats after the dux, and treble 3 beats after the dux.

Try to top that, but only gradually. What would be only slightly more difficult? This thread would be ruined by someone prematurely citing the pieces from the very top of the contrapuntal Parnassus.

Also, let's try to get as far as we can without mentioning Bach... (Why not? you ask -- because I started this thread and I say so!)

Besides, I'm not sure Ruffo's task was easier than anything Bach managed, considering the greater constraints on dissonance handling he had to countenance.
Then again, Bach had to contend with a more limited notion of what constituted a viable harmonic progression.
Yes, but didn't he abandon these things when contrapuntal ingenuity required it?
What are you talking about?
Well, look at the Canons in the Goldberg variations, especially the one at the 7th; or look at the Contrapunctus X from the Art of the Fugue.

We need look no further than William Byrd! In the 1575 Cantiones Sacrae occurs the 8-voice motet Diliges Dominum for which the Superius (1 and 2) is shown here:



The two singers sit opposite, and perform from the same music - one therefore singing the retrograde and inversion of the other!

The same arrangement occurs for the Contratenor, Tenor and Bassus.

So this is a complex Cancrizans canon for 8 voices - it works perfectly (of course).

Baz

Ma fin est mon commencement

My end is my beginning,
My beginning is my end,
And that's the tenor.
My third part comes round
Just three times, and then ends.

[Guillaume de Machaut]

In other words, the lowest of the three parts (marked "Tenor") is a perfect palindrome. There are two parts above it, one being identical to the other, with the exception that one of them is performed backwards.

Professor Wiki writes:

Pietro Raimondi (December 20, 1786, Rome – October 30, 1853) ... was born in Rome, and received his early education in Naples. He spent part of his early career in Genoa, and then in Sicily, where he had operas performed in Catania and Messina; however he moved back to Naples in 1820, and began a career as an opera composer there. While he was best known as an opera composer during this time, he was obsessed with counterpoint, and spent his spare time writing fugues: fugues for many voices, as well as simultaneous fugues in different keys and modes for multiple groups of different instruments. He considered this work to be experimental, and did not incorporate his experimentation, early in his career, into his operas.

Few of Raimondi's operas were successful, and as soon as he realized he was being eclipsed by Rossini, and later by Bellini and Donizetti, he changed his compositional direction from production of operas to sacred music; in that domain he had a better opportunity to indulge his love of counterpoint. He published a counterpoint treatise in 1836, around the same time as the first of his experimental compositions for multiple choruses and orchestras: from this year forward he devoted most of his energies to such creations. However he had not forgotten his previous career as an operatic composer, and made a few last attempts to achieve a success on the operatic stage.
One of the most spectacular of his experiments in musical simultaneity was his triple oratorio, Putifar-Giuseppe-Giacobbe (1848). This work was a set of three independent oratorios designed to be performed first consecutively, and then simultaneously, one of the few such experiments before the music of Charles Ives in the twentieth century. Unlike the music of Ives, however, Raimondi's musical language was conservative, even anachronistic, using only the tonal language of the eighteenth century. The parts of the oratorios were designed to fit together tightly, all obeying the standard rules of counterpoint. The triple oratorio was first performed in Rome in 1852, in a concert lasting six hours, and requiring 430 performers: according to the contemporary account, Raimondi was so overcome with the colossal sound of the three oratorios together at the end that he fainted, and the concert caused the sensation he had desired for so long. As a result of this success he was honored by the Pope, receiving from him the position of maestro di cappella at St. Peter's, a level of acknowledgement he had never achieved in the operatic realm.
Raimondi followed the triple oratorio with the composition of a double opera, one serious and one tragic, which like the triple oratorio was designed to be performed either consecutively or simultaneously. This work (Adelasia/I quattro rustici) was left incomplete at his death in 1856; however, much of the orchestration, counterpoint, and many of the scene changes had been worked out. As conceived, each opera would have served as a commentary on the other. This double opera has never been completed or staged, and along with Raimondi's other late music is an example of an experimental trend in the middle nineteenth century which was never followed up by anyone else.

There's Haydn's Symphony 47. In the third movement the music is played forwards and then backwards note for note, in four sections. The whole of the slow movement is an old organ point written in double counterpoint at the octave. No, I don't really know what that last sentence means; I just copied it from the sleeve notes, but I thought you'd like to know.

... but is it ingenious?

two!-four!-six!-eight!
whom do we ap-pre-ci-ate?!

What is hard about that is ending up with 8 voices instead of 16.