Alright! In this segment we're going to talk about
sort of the big put-it-all-together of all those lines we've talk about - we've talked about
harmony, we've talked about melody...
now we have to put them together in some sort of meaningful way. And there are
basically three ways that we talk about doing that
in art music. The first is very simple and you will rarely hear it
done in a concert, and that's because it is fairly simple,
and that texture is called monophonic, monophonic!
Remember that mono means one and phonic means sound, so it means
one sound. Doesn't mean one instrument,
one singer, or one anything else.
It means one melody all by itself with nothing else going on.
When we get into the Medieval Period - older music -
we'll listen to Gregorian Chant and that is monophonic,
everybody is singing exactly the same thing. Doesn't matter if there are five hundred
people singing it,
it's still monophonic texture as long as everybody is singing the same melody,
even if they're singing in different octaves. So if you are a bass and I'm a
soprano and we're singing together but we're singing the same melody,
it's still monophonic. There's nothing happening except
melody. Now, as I said, you're not going to hear this much in concert because there's just not
a lot of music written
in monophonic texture that you would perform. You know there might be
exercises you would use for practice but it's not something to get out on stage and go, "Hey!
listen to this!"
So monophonic texture, you might hear
if you go to say... a cello recital. They might do some Bach suites
that are unaccompanied, so it's cello alone. It'll be mostly monophonic but a cello
can play more than one note at a time so
they can make their own harmony in there, it's not monophonic anymore. But I did
find a lovely piece by
Dmitri Kabalevsky, who's a modern Russian composer
and this is from a set of works for children from young
musicians, not necessarily children, where they're practicing different kinds of
techniques.
So we have here an entire little piece that's in
monophonic texture. It's two hands though. They're both playing exactly the same
thing so that I don't miss any notes.
So just listen. You'll see that it doesn't have much depth. You don't hear
any
contrasting sounds. Everything is the same and that'll give you an idea about
what a monophonic texture sounds like.
(playing piano)
Okay so not only there did we have monophonic texture, you also get some nice
examples of dynamic changes. So we have crescendos,
decrescendos, a little bit of slowing down,
mostly staccato with occasional legato for contrast...
thats monophonic texture. Everything's doing the same.
No harmony. Nothing for contrast. So that is the simplest form and as I said,
you're not going to see it or hear it very often. Let's go to the other extreme.
Now this is the
most complex of the forms and it's called polyphonic texture,
our second form texture. Polyphonic - poly means many,
and then phonic. So you think, wow gee, most music is polyphonic; it's got lots
of sounds.
That's what polyphonic means, right? When we're talking about polyphonic texture
what we're really talking about
is having many melodies.
And you think well okay, lots of pieces have many melodies as they go along.
Polyphonic texture - they have to happen simultaneously!
So it's more than one melody playing on top
of each other or on top of itself. Very simple example
is a round. So if you sing row, row, row your boat,
and we could sing it together but I wouldn't hear you so it wouldn't really
work particularly well for me to tell what you're doing
but you know how the piece works. So we have one group that starts,
another group that starts, and another group that starts,
and as those three... those parts keep adding, they're all singing the same melody.
So we have one melody but they're layered.
So what we have is the same melody happening
simultaneously but starting at different times,
and that's very typical of polyphonic textures. They have a melody
or we have other names for it as well, but basically it's a melody
that keep starting, and starting, and starting and sort of rolls over and over
itself,
and it can get kind of complicated listening. If you think about trying to listen to
row, row, row your boat and picking out
any one line, it's hard to do because you just heard this thing go by and
gently down the stream... oh! There it goes over there... and there it goes over there!
So polyphonic texture can be sort of challenging to listen to because
what are you supposed to listen to? Where am I supposed to be
right now? So we're going to look at an invention by JS Bach, who is
a Baroque era composer and that's the period when polyphonic text was really,
really big!
Lots of music from that period in that texture. So what we have here
is our little theme and I'm just going to play the beginning for you.
(playing music)
So that's our general idea. We have a disjunct little melody that sort of outlines
a chord,
interspersed with little scale-like passages. So... pom pom pom pom pom... that's
our little chord.
Da da da da da da da is a scale - so that's how it starts.
Then we have to add that same thing happening again, so here's the beginning!
(playing music)
See, you came in on the bottom.
(music playing) Basically the same thing.
So, so far, it's sort of like doing "Row Row Row Your Boat,"
but "Row Row Row Your Boat" is really simple and Bach's not going to do something
really simple.
He got paid money to do this. They weren't gonna pay him to do "Row Row Row
Your Boat!"
So, once it gets started, then we will have these things, we call them episodes where
we just sort of go off somewhere else.
(music playing)
Look, there's that little thing again! (music plays)
Our little old chord jumping thing in a different key!
(music playing) And here it went to the left hand.
(music playing)
And then we go to something else. (music playing)
And then we have a little place where we can breathe because so far this is all really
busy
and if you're listening to a piece of music and you think holy cow I can't find a
place to breathe in there,
it's probably polyphonic texture because that's how it tends to play out. So we've
come to a little bit of a close but we jump right back in.
(music playing)
So that's like we heard the first time
but we're in a different key now because that's what Bach likes to do
and then we have something different.
(music playing)
Here comes that little chord thing again!
(music playing)
And here it goes in the right hand! (music playing)
This parts hard so I'll make a mess up for you.
(music playing)
See there he went through the whole thing we had...
(music playing)
So he's just going through a series of chord changes with that same basic pattern,
just going through a lot of different chords.
(music playing)
(music playing) Then he does the right hand!
(music playing)
And then at the end usually they have to tie it back together because...
it's such a flurry of things usually that you don't know how to get it all
back together.
But if you're listening to that, the thing you start paying attention to is
(a few notes) or something like that. Start listening for that little fragment that
you say, okay there's that
thing coming in again. This only has two parts to it so it's a fairly simple
polyphonic texture.
Bach was an organist and so a lot of his organ music
is three parts or even four parts cause he's got two hands plus two feet that he can
do it in.
So as you're listening you start just catching that and usually they'll go
like... soprano voice, alto voice, tenor voice, bass voice,
and then maybe back up and you can hear that it moves into different
registers of the organ so you can sort of find something to latch onto.
But you start listening for the beginning of "Row Row Row Your Boat" if we were
going to go with that simple example
and that's how you can follow polyphonic texture.
You'll hear a lot of that in music from the Baroque era and you hear it again a lot in the
Modern Period.
So, there's some kind of a 200 year gap there where we don't hear much of it.
Doesn't mean it's completely gone, but it's not the predominant texture.
Alright, so we've had monophonic texture - all melody.
You've had polyphonic texture which is a lot of melody bound in on top of itself.
Most of the things you will hear in everyday life and in many concerts is
neither of those things. It's going to be what we call homophonic
texture. Homo means the same
and sound. You think well wasn't monophonic the same? Everybody was doing
the same thing.
Yes - we just like to confuse you a little bit! So what we have here is basically melody
and then something else. So it could be as simple as
my Twinkle Twinkle...
(music playing)
Melody, chords! That's very simple!
We could make it a little fancier and break up the chords!
(music playing)
So, we could break up the chords. We could do
fancier things and obviously I'm not going to do that with Twinkle Twinkle, but there are lots of
ways we could do that.
So let's look at a really famous example
by Beethoven. This is from his Moonlight Sonata which is actually
Sonata Number something Opus 27 number 2
in C sharp minor. So we have the familiar opening that everyone knows.
(playing music)
So far we haven't even had a melody. We just had this lovely series of cords
with some nice bass notes at the bottom. Now we're adding the melody.
(playing music)
So, very simple melody, if we just played...
(playing music)
you would probably be gone to sleep. You might have gone to sleep anyway because it's such a
lovely piece even if I miss a few notes.
But he sets us up with this nice little chordal structure. We know it's not melody.
We know it's just chords, it's just...
just a harmony. So we add the melody to it and it's like... "Oh...
isn't that nice how that comes together!" So that's a really
simple example of homophonic texture. You have a melody
over something that's chordal,
and you'll hear a lot of that in the Classical Period and even into the Romantic
Period.
If you have a piece of music and you're trying to decide the texture,
90% of the time you can guess homophonic and you'll be correct.
So, always think that's your go-to choice. Don't think it's going to be
something more complicated than it is. Remember that you're hardly ever going to hear
monophonic texture out in the real world.
You know, if you sing in your shower, yeah, you've got monophonic texture there unless
you've got company or you've get the radio on.
Polyphonic texture. Mostly Baroque music, so unless you're listening to that you're probably not going to hear
very much of it.
Occasionally we get a popular tune where we get a really creative composer who puts things
together that way.
But for the most part, if you're going to have to take a guess, make it homophonic.
Chances are, you'll be right!