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". 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.

• Polyphonic

multiple melodic voices which are to a considerable extent independent from one another.

• Homophonic

multiple voices of which one, the melody, stands out prominently and the others form a background of harmonic accompaniment. If all the parts have much the same rhythm, the homophonic texture can also be described as homorhythmic.

• Heterophonic

two or more voices simultaneously performing variations of the same melody

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 (music) 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 polythematic, polyrhythmic, onomatopoeic, compound, and mixed or composite textures (Corozine 2002, p.34).

Sources

• Copland, Aaron. What to Listen for in Music. Published by Signet Classic, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY.
• Corozine, Vince (2002). Arranging Music for the Real World: Classical and Commercial Aspects. Pacific, MO: Mel Bay. ISBN 0-7866-4961-5. OCLC 50470629. 
• 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.

Further reading

• Hyer, Brian: 'Homophony', Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 24 September 2006), <http://www.grovemusic.com>
• Frobenius, Wolf: 'Polyphony', Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 24 September 2006), <http://www.grovemusic.com>
• 'Monophony', Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 24 September 2006), <http://www.grovemusic.com>

External links

• A Guide to Musical Texture with multimedia