In general, polyphony is used to describe vocal music and counterpoint to describe instrumental music because those are the words composers used to describe music in their language, but it really doesn't matter which word you use. As you probably know, English is a melting pot of lots of different languages, so we ended up with both words. Polyphony has Greek roots, and Counterpoint comes from Latin. The reason we have two terms is that there are many types of music with multiple independent voices from different periods, where composers spoke different languages. If you instead played broken chords, that is also homophonic texture. Bach is probably one of the most notable composers of polyphonic music, and the height of polyphonic composition came in the Middle Ages and. For example, when you sing while strumming chords on your guitar, that is a homophonic texture. Polyphonic music is music which includes multiple melodies or voices, in contrast with homophonic music, with a single melody, and harmony, in which chords harmonize with a leading melody or voice. Those two definitions say the same thing using different words. Homophonic texture is when the main melody is accompanied by other instruments playing different rhythms and notes that support that main melody. A texture is more purely polyphonic, and thus more contrapuntal, when the musical lines are rhythmically differentiated. That means different notes and rhythms.Ĭounterpoint describes the relationship between two or more distinct voices that are harmonically interdependent but melodically and rhythmically independent. Polyphony describes musical texture formed from two or more independent melodies. These are paraphrased definitions from Wikipedia. They sound the same because they are the same. If you accompany a melody at piano with three voice block chords in the left and melody in the right they have four voices with contrapuntal relationships, but those relationships are different from the contrapuntal relationships between voices in a four-voice fugue.īoth examples have four voices with a contrapuntal relationship, but one has a homophonic texture (Melody accompaniment) and one has a polyphonic texture (fugue with 4 independent melodic voices).Įdit: Remember that descriptors of multivoice textures are broad, with fuzzy edges and overlap so if you're confused about the distinction between polyphony and homophony, it's because they're a compromise between have 9828713728176 lables for every imaginable type of texture, and only 2 (distinguishing between single voice and multivoice textures). Polyphony describes a texture that contains simultaneous, independent voices of equal importance they do not have the clear melody/accompaniment distinctions of homophony, but instead usually have independent melodic voices moving at different rates rhythmic rates to distinguish them.Ĭounterpoint describes the way voices relate to each other whether that gives rise to a polyphonic texture or not.
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