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By Root 946 0

can be heard in the Bluegrass, "mountain music", Cajun, and Zydeco traditions. Listen for the tune to be played by two instruments (say fiddle and banjo) at the same time, with each adding the embellishments, ornaments, and flourishes that are characteristic of the instrument.

Some Middle Eastern, South Asian, central Eurasian, and Native American music traditions include heterophony. Listen for traditional music (most modern-composed music, even from these cultures, has little or no heterophony) in which singers and/or instrumentalists perform the same melody at the same time, but give it different embellishments or ornaments.

Suggested Listening

Monophony

Here is an excerpt from James Romig's Sonnet 2, played by John McMurtery.

A Bach unaccompanied cello suite

Gregorian chant

Long sections of "The People that Walked in Darkness" aria in Handel's "Messiah" are monophonic (the instruments are playing the same line as the voice). Apparently Handel associates monophony with "walking in darkness"!

Homophony

A classic Scott Joplin rag such as "Maple Leaf Rag" or "The Entertainer"

The "graduation march" section of Edward Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance No. 1"

The "March of the Toreadors" from Bizet's Carmen

No. 1 ("Granada") of Albeniz' Suite Espanola for guitar

The latest hit tune by a major pop solo vocalist

The opening section of the "Overture" Of Handel's "Messiah" (The second section of the overture is polyphonic)

Polyphony

Pachelbel's Canon

Anything titled "fugue" or "invention"

The final "Amen" chorus of Handel's "Messiah"

The trio strain of Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever", with the famous piccolo countermelody

The "One Day More" chorus from the musical "Les Miserables"

The first movement of Holst's 1st Suite for Military Band

Heterophony

There is some heterophony (with some instruments playing more ornaments than others) in "Donulmez Aksamin" and in "Urfaliyim Ezelden" on the Turkish Music page.

The performance of "Lonesome Valley" by the Fairfield Four on the "O Brother, Where Art Thou" soundtrack is quite heterophonic. (Old-style blues owes more to African than to Western traditions.)

Note

Thanks to everyone who participated in the survey! It was very useful to me, both as a researcher and as an author, to get a better picture of my readers' goals and needs. I hope to begin updating the survey results module in April. I will also soon begin making some of the suggested additions, and emailed comments are still welcome as always.

2.5. Harmony*

When you have more than one pitch sounding at the same time in music, the result is harmony. Harmony is one of the basic elements of music, but it is not as basic as some other elements, such as rhythm and melody. You can have music that is just rhythms, with no pitches at all. You can also have music that is just a single melody, or just a melody with rhythm accompaniment.

But as soon as there is more than one pitch sounding at a time, you have harmony. Even if nobody is actually playing chords, or even if the notes are part of independent contrapuntal lines, you can hear the relationship of any notes that happen at the same time, and it is this relationship that makes the harmony.

Note

Harmony does not have to be particularly "harmonious"; it may be quite dissonant, in fact. For the purpose of definitions, the important fact is the notes sounding at the same time.

Harmony is the most emphasized and most highly developed element in Western music, and can be the subject of an entire course on music theory. Many of the concepts underlying Western harmony are explained in greater detail elsewhere (see Triads and Beginning Harmonic Analysis, for example), but here are some basic terms and short definitions that you may find useful in discussions of harmony:

Harmony Textures

implied harmony - A melody all by itself (Monophony) can have an implied harmony, even if no other notes are sounding at the same time. In other words, the melody can be constructed so that it strongly suggests