Texture (music)

In music, texture is the overall quality of sound of a piece, most often indicated by the number of voices in the music and by the relationship between these voices (see types of texture below). A piece's texture may be further described using terms such as "thick" and "light", "rough" or "smooth". For example, Aaron Copland's more popular pieces are described as having an "open" texture. The perceived texture of a piece can be affected by the number and character of parts playing at once, the timbre of the instruments or voices playing these parts and the harmony, tempo, and rhythms used.

Types of texture

In musicology, particularly in the fields of music history and music analysis, some common terms for different types of texture are:

• Monophonic - one melodic voice without harmonic accompaniment (although rhythmic accompaniment may be present).
• Polyphonic - multiple melodic voices which are to some extent independent from one another.
• Homophonic - multiple voices where one voice, the melody, stands out prominently and the other voices form a background of harmonic accompaniment. If all the parts have the same (or nearly the same) rhythm, then the homophonic texture can also be described as homorhythmic.
• Heterophonic - a musical texture in which the voices are different in character, moving in contrasting rhythms. The voices may play a single melody with simultaneous variations in that melody, or they may play substantially different melodies. (Heterophony can be considered a sub-category of polyphony, or an embellished/"ragged" form of monophony, or some mixture of the two).

(Hanning, 1998, and Copland).

Although in music instruction certain styles or repertoires of music are often identified with one of these descriptions (for example, Gregorian chant is described as monophonic, Bach Chorales are described as homophonic and fugues as polyphonic), many composers use more than one type of texture in the same piece of music.

A simultaneity is more than one complete musical texture occurring at the same time, rather than in succession.

A more recent type of texture first used by György Ligeti is micropolyphony. Other textures include homorhythmic, polythematic, polyrhythmic, onomatopoeic, compound, and mixed or composite textures (Corozine 2002, p.34).

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Corozine, Vince, Arranging Music for the Real World: Classical and Commercial Aspects, 2002. ISBN 0-786-64961-5.
• Hanning, Barbara Russano, Concise History of Western Music, based on Donald Jay Grout & Claudia V. Palisca's A History of Western Music, Fifth Edition. Published by W. W. Norton & Company, New York, Copyright 1998. ISBN 0-393-97168-6
• Pearson, Paul Weston, Evolving conceptions of chamber music texture in the classical and romantic periods, CA: University of California, Santa Barbara, 1979. OCLC 34445442
• White, John David, Theories of musical texture in Western history, NY: Garland Publ, 1995. ISBN 0-815-31187-7

External links

• Hyer, Brian: 'Homophony', Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy, <http://www.grovemusic.com> Retrieved October 20, 2007.
• Frobenius, Wolf: 'Polyphony', Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy, <http://www.grovemusic.com> Retrieved October 20, 2007.
• 'Monophony', Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy, <http://www.grovemusic.com> Retrieved October 20, 2007.
• A Guide to Musical Texture with multimedia Retrieved October 20, 2007.

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