![]() Homophony could also be what theorists call rhythmic unison. If you’re playing a duet with your friend and you’re singing the melody while they’re playing a bass guitar, that’s homophony because one voice is more important than the other. If two musicians played a duet, a theorist may consider it either homophony or polyphony but which is it? The distinction has to do with the importance of the voices. Homophony and polyphony both have two or more voices happening at the same time. Hundreds of years ago when music was chanted in unison, that was often monophonic. (unless you count the sound of the water as a voice) When somebody plays a trumpet on stage without any accompaniment, that’s monophony. When you sing your favorite song in the shower, you’re making monophonic music. You might know from science class that mono means one and in this case monophony means one voice. Monophony doesn’t ignite much controversy. Here is a beautiful rendering of an example of polyphony: The words used to describe these textures are Monophony, homophony, and polyphony. Another device used has to do with texture. Sometimes it’s fast, other times it’s slow. Sometimes music is loud, sometimes it’s soft. You know that what makes music unique is the different ways that the tools of the composers are mixed together. Monophony? homophony? polyphony? Or is it all bologna? Just like performing, there are a fair amount of questions left up to the person analyzing the music. Most classically trained musicians have a large degree of knowledge on both sides. There are performers and there are theorists. Having knowledge of both makes both professionals better at what they do. If engineers spent their days seeing the cars come to the shop, they would see the practical shortcomings of their design and be able to fix those problems in later models. If mechanics had some engineering knowledge, they would be better mechanics. Think of it this way: In the automotive world, there are mechanics who actually service vehicles and engineers who design and analyze how a car is put together.Įach side may think they’re more important than the other but in reality, both are essential. Music theorists spend all of their time studying the nuts and bolts of music. If you decide to study how music is constructed, you’ll enter the world of music theory. Such a perspective considers homophony as a sub-type of polyphony.Monophony, homophony, polyphony – or is it all bologna? The term polyphony is also sometimes used more broadly, to describe any musical texture that is not monophonic. This point-against-point conception is opposed to "successive composition", where voices were written in an order with each new voice fitting into the whole so far constructed, which was previously assumed. In all cases the conception was probably what Margaret Bent (1999) calls "dyadic counterpoint", with each part being written generally against one other part, with all parts modified if needed in the end. Also, as opposed to the species terminology of counterpoint, polyphony was generally either "pitch-against-pitch" / "point-against-point" or "sustained-pitch" in one part with melismas of varying lengths in another. Baroque forms such as fugue, which might be called polyphonic, are usually described instead as contrapuntal. Within the context of the Western musical tradition, the term polyphony is usually used to refer to music of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Bach's " Fugue No.17 in A flat", BWV 862, from Das Wohltemperierte Clavier (Part I), a famous example of contrapuntal polyphony. ![]()
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