Texture (music) in the context of "James Tenney"

In music, harmony is the concept of combining different sounds in order to create new, distinct musical ideas. Theories of harmony seek to describe or explain the effects created by distinct pitches or tones coinciding with one another; harmonic objects such as chords, textures and tonalities are identified, defined, and categorized in the development of these theories. Harmony is broadly understood to involve both a "vertical" dimension (frequency-space) and a "horizontal" dimension (time-space), and often overlaps with related musical concepts such as melody, timbre, and form.

A particular emphasis on harmony is one of the core concepts underlying the theory and practice of Western music. The study of harmony involves the juxtaposition of individual pitches to create chords, and in turn the juxtaposition of chords to create larger chord progressions. The principles of connection that govern these structures have been the subject of centuries worth of theoretical work and vernacular practice alike.

Music can be analysed by considering a variety of its elements, or parts (aspects, characteristics, features), individually or together. A commonly used list of the main elements includes pitch, timbre, texture, volume, duration, and form. The elements of music may be compared to the elements of art or design.

In music, a homorhythm or homometer is a texture having a "similarity of rhythm in all parts" or "very similar rhythm" as would be used in simple hymn or chorale settings. Homorhythm is a condition of homophony. All voices sing the same rhythm. This texture results in a homophonic texture, which is a blocked chordal texture. Homorhythmic texture delivers lyrics with clarity and emphasis. Texture in which parts have different rhythms is heterorythmic or heterometric.

The term is used for compositions in which all the voice-parts move simultaneously in the same rhythm, forming a succession of chords. It may also be called chordal style, familiar style, vertical harmony, note-against-note style, isometric, and homophonic. Isometric may used to refer to music in which each vocal part has the same number of syllables, with isorythmic being used to refer to music in which each voice has the same rhythm.

Wilhelm Richard Wagner (/ˈvɑːɡnər/ VAHG-nər; German: [ˈvɪlˌhɛlm ˈʁɪçaʁt ˈvaːɡnɐ] ; 22 May 1813 – 13 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, essayist, and conductor, best known for his operas—although his mature works are often referred to as music dramas. Unlike most composers, Wagner wrote both the libretti and the music for all of his stage works. He first achieved recognition with works in the Romantic tradition of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, but revolutionised the genre through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk ("total work of art"), which sought to unite poetic, musical, visual, and dramatic elements. In this approach, the drama unfolds as a continuously sung narrative, with the music evolving organically from the text rather than alternating between arias and recitatives. Wagner outlined these ideas in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852, most fully realising them in the first half of his four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung).

Wagner's compositions, particularly in his later period, have complex textures, rich harmonies and orchestration, and elaborate leitmotifs—musical phrases associated with individual characters, places, ideas, or plot elements. His advances in musical language, such as extreme chromaticism and quickly shifting tonal centres, greatly influenced the development of classical music; his Tristan und Isolde is regarded as an important precursor to modernist music. Later in life, he softened his ideological stance against traditional operatic forms (e.g., arias, ensembles and choruses), reintroducing them into his last few stage works, including Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (The Mastersingers of Nuremberg) and Parsifal.

In music, monophony is the simplest of musical textures, consisting of a melody (or "tune"), typically sung by a single singer or played by a single instrument player (e.g., a flute player) without accompanying harmony or chords. Many folk songs and traditional songs are monophonic. A melody is also considered to be monophonic if a group of singers (e.g., a choir) sings the same melody together at the unison (exactly the same pitch) or with the same melody notes duplicated at the octave (such as when men and women sing together). If an entire melody is played by two or more instruments or sung by a choir with a fixed interval, such as a perfect fifth, it is also said to be monophony (or "monophonic"). The musical texture of a song or musical piece is determined by assessing whether varying components are used, such as an accompaniment part or polyphonic melody lines (two or more independent lines).

In the Early Middle Ages, the earliest Christian songs, called plainchant (a well-known example is Gregorian chant), were monophonic. Even into the twenty-first century, songwriters still often write songs that intersperse sections using monophony, heterophony (two singers or instrumentalists doing varied versions of the same melody together), polyphony (two or more singers or instrumentalists playing independent melodic lines at the same time), homophony (a melody accompanied by chords), or monody (a single melodic line with instrumental accompaniment) elements throughout the melody to create different atmospheres and styles. Monophony may not have underlying rhythmic textures, and must consist of only a single melodic line.

Polyphony (/pəˈlɪfəni/ pə-LIF-ə-nee) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice (monophony) or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords (homophony).

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. Baroque forms such as fugue, which might be called polyphonic, are usually described instead as contrapuntal. 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. 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. 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 musical terminology, tempo (Italian for 'time'; plural 'tempos', or tempi from the Italian plural), measured in beats per minute, is the speed or pace of a given composition, and is often also an indication of the composition's character or atmosphere. In classical music, tempo is typically indicated with an instruction at the start of a piece (often using conventional Italian terms) and, if a specific metrical pace is desired, is usually measured in beats per minute (bpm or BPM). In modern classical compositions, a "metronome mark" in beats per minute, indicating only measured speed and not any form of expression, may supplement or replace the normal tempo marking, while in modern genres like electronic dance music, tempo will typically simply be stated in bpm.

Tempo (the underlying pulse of the music) is one of the three factors that give a piece of music its texture. The others are meter, which is indicated by a time signature, and articulation, which determines how each note is sounded and how notes are grouped into larger units. While the ability to hold a steady tempo is a vital skill for a musical performer, tempo is malleable. Depending on the genre of a piece of music and the performers' interpretation, a piece may be played with slight variations in tempo, known as tempo rubato, or significant variations. In ensembles, the tempo is often maintained by having players synchronise with a conductor or with a specific instrumentalist, for instance the first violin or the drummer.

In music, homophony (/həˈmɒf(ə)niː, hoʊ-/;, Greek: ὁμόφωνος, homóphōnos, from ὁμός, homós, "same" and φωνή, phōnē, "sound, tone") is a texture in which a primary part is supported by one or more additional strands that provide the harmony. One melody predominates while the other parts play either single notes or an elaborate accompaniment. This differentiation of roles contrasts with equal-voice polyphony (in which similar lines move with rhythmic and melodic independence to form an even texture) and monophony (in which all parts move in unison or octaves). Historically, homophony and its differentiated roles for parts emerged in tandem with tonality, which gave distinct harmonic functions to the soprano, bass, and inner voices.

A homophonic texture may be homorhythmic, which means that all parts have the same rhythm. Chorale texture is another variant of homophony. The most common type of homophony is melody-dominated homophony, in which one voice, often the highest, plays a distinct melody, and the accompanying voices work together to articulate an underlying harmony.