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Polyphony (/ p ə ˈ l ɪ f ə n i / 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 or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ().
Dissonant counterpoint was originally theorized by Charles Seeger as "at first purely a school-room discipline," consisting of species counterpoint but with all the traditional rules reversed. First species counterpoint must be all dissonances, establishing "dissonance, rather than consonance, as the rule," and consonances are "resolved ...
Virgil Thomson [16] lists the "raw materials" of music in order of their supposed discovery: rhythm, melody, and harmony; including counterpoint and orchestration. Near the end of the twentieth century music scholarship began to give more attention to social and physical elements of music. [17]
Polyphonic or Counterpoint or Contrapuntal: Multiple melodic voices which are to a considerable extent independent from or in imitation with one another. Characteristic texture of the Renaissance music, also prevalent during the Baroque period. [8] Polyphonic textures may contain several PMs. [5]
Another crucial distinction between Renaissance and Baroque writing is its texture: the shift from contrapuntal polyphony, in which all voices are theoretically equal, to monody and treble-bass polarity, along with the development of basso continuo. In this new style of writing, solo melody and bass line accompaniment were now the important ...
In music theory, contrapuntal motion is the general movement of two melodic lines with respect to each other. In traditional four-part harmony, it is important that lines maintain their independence, an effect which can be achieved by the judicious use of the four types of contrapuntal motion: parallel motion, similar motion, contrary motion, and oblique motion.
Descant is a type of medieval polyphony characterized by relatively strict note-for-note counterpoint. It is found in the organum with a plainchant tenor (i.e. low voice; vox principis), and in the conductus without the requirement of a plainchant tenor.
In music, an invention is a short composition (usually for a keyboard instrument) in two-part counterpoint. (Compositions in the same style as an invention but using three-part counterpoint are known as sinfonias. Some modern publishers call them "three-part inventions" to avoid confusion with symphonies.)