Texture

Texture is the way in which individual musical lines interact within a musical work. Texture describes the complexity of a musical composition. There are different types of texture:

Monophony. Monophonic music has only one melodic line with no accompaniment.

 «Girls and boys come out to play» from Teledmus

Polyphony. Polyphonic music has several melodic lines. Types of polyphony:

• Drone. The simplest way to add harmony to a melody. The melody is played alog with a note fixed in pitch.

 Pericote. Asturian bagpipe

• Heterophony. Two or more voices simultaneously performing variations of the same melody. It ca be considered as a type of complex monophony.

«Good souls» from Curlew River by Benjamin Britten

from «Maintaining identity» Anthony Brandt. www.cnx.org

• Homophony. Is a texture in which two or more parts move at the same time, together in harmony. A homophonic texture is also homorhythmic.

If ye love me, by Thomas Tallys

from Wikimedia.org

• Melody-dominated homophony (also called accompanied melody). It has one clearly melodic line and all other parts provide accompaniment for the lead voice.

Moonlight Sonata. Beethoven
 from Wikimedia Commons

• Counterpoint. The combination of two or more independent melodies played at the same time. Parts move with rhythmic independence (contrapuntal texture).

Fugue nº 17 by J. S. Bach
 from Wikimedia Commons