Texture: music symbols explained

18 symbols and terms, each explained in a sentence or two — the same dictionary the free Artform score reader uses when you tap a marking on a real score.

Monophony

One line and nothing else. A tune sung alone.

Homophony

A tune with accompaniment: one line leads and the rest supports. Most songs, and most piano music.

Polyphony

Several independent lines at once, each worth following. Bach's usual habit.

Counterpoint

The craft of writing those independent lines so they fit. Polyphony is the result; counterpoint is the doing of it.

Imitation

One line copies another a moment later. The start of every canon and most fugues.

Canon

Strict imitation all the way through. Row, Row, Row Your Boat is one.

Fugue

A subject stated alone, then answered by each voice in turn, then developed. The most demanding thing counterpoint does.

Obbligato

A part that is not optional. Written out and required, as opposed to something a player might improvise.

Heterophony

The same tune played simultaneously in slightly different versions. Common outside Western music and rare inside it.

Antiphony

Two groups answering each other from different places. Built into Venetian church music, and into every call and response since.

Drone

A note held underneath everything, unchanging. Bagpipes, hurdy-gurdies and half of modern film scoring.

Doubling

The same line played by more than one voice or instrument, often an octave apart. It thickens without adding a new part.

Register

Which part of the instrument's range a line sits in. The same notes an octave up are a different colour, not just a higher pitch.

Tessitura

Where a part mostly lives, as opposed to the extremes it touches. A singer's comfort is decided by tessitura, not by the top note.

Melody and accompaniment

The plainest homophony: one line to be heard, everything else supporting it. Balancing the two is most of what piano practice is.

Contrary motion

Two lines moving in opposite directions. The clearest way to keep them sounding independent.

Parallel motion

Two lines moving the same way by the same distance. Parallel fifths were forbidden for centuries precisely because they fuse two voices into one.

Imitative texture

Voices entering one after another with the same idea. The opening of any fugue.

The rest of the dictionary