This texture can be described as Melody and Accompaniment. In this form, whilst the accompanying parts do not follow the same rhythms as the lead melody line, their overall purpose is to provide an underlying harmony and accompaniment to the melody.Īs a result, they are often considered to be forming a “same-sounding” texture – hence they can be considered to be homophonic. However, is is also not strictly homophonic as the rhythms of the piano part do not exactly match the vocal line. In this example a piano has been added to the solo vocal line so it is clearly not monophonic. Have a listen to this version of Silent Night by the acapella group Pentatonix: This type of homophonic texture is technically known as homorhythmic because all of the rhythms of the accompaniment match the rhythms of the lead melody line. One voice/part plays/sings the melody, whilst the others act as a harmonic accompaniment. In a strictly homophonic texture, the parts or voices move “in step” with one another rather than having contrasting rhythms. You can see from the diagram below that an accompaniment (green shading) has been added underneath the melody (blue line) to form a homophonic texture: The definition of homophony comes from the Greek (homo-phonic), literally meaning “same-sounding”. This brings us to our next texture: Homophony

It is no longer monophonic as it now has an accompaniment. However, if the singing is accompanied by an instrument, a band or an orchestra (as it usually is when a national anthem is being sung at the start of a sports match), or if some singers start to harmonise the melody then the texture becomes more complicated. You can see this clearly from the sheet music: The crowd are all singing in unison with no accompaniment and so it is a monophonic texture.

It is extraordinary how much emotion Debussy creates with just a solo melody line: Have a listen to this performance of Debussy’s “Syrinx” for solo flute.

Some composers have written entire pieces of monophonic music for solo instruments. Monophony is the oldest type of music (it was the only type of music performed in Ancient Greece) and was the form of music used in early church plainchant and Gregorian Chant music. Have a look at this visual diagram of a monophonic texture (the blue line is the solo melody): The definition of monophonic music is taken from the Greek (mono-phonic), literally meaning “one sound”.Ī monophonic texture has a single line of melody without any harmony or any other form of accompaniment. Let’s start with the simplest musical texture to define and describe – monophonic. The 4 different textures that I am going to explain will help you describe what each of the different parts are contributing to the overall sound. Whilst this is technically true, it is a very basic description and we need to try to be a bit more detailed in the language we use to describe texture in music. People often struggle to find the right words to describe musical texture and so you will often hear people describing the texture of a piece of music as being “thin” if there are not very many instruments playing and “thick” if there are lots of instruments playing. In this lesson we will look at definitions and explanations for each musical texture in turn. There are four music textures that you need to understand: Musical Texture refers to how different layers of a piece of music are combined to produce the overall sound.

Polyphonic texture music definition