Re: Chord-Leading

On Sat, 29 Nov 2003 04:02:36 GMT, nightingale <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

>Homophony
>
>Polyphonic music in which all melodic parts move together at more or 
>less the same pace. A further distinction is sometimes made between 
>homophonic textures that are homorhythmic (ex.1) and those in which 
>there is a clear differentiation between melody and accompaniment

I have a real problem with this definition, because it is misleading.
The fact is, nearly 1000 years ago or thereabouts, nearly all music
became "polyphonic", in the sense that monophony went out of fashion,
and it has remianed so to this day.  For this reason, calling this or
that music polyphonic just because more than one pitch sounds at one
time became obsolete.  At some point, as shown in the three references
I provided, the word "polyphony" forked into polyphony and homophony,
to distinguish  music constructed with independent voices from that
constructed with melody and accompaniment. So when one hears that a
texture is polyphonic, it should mean to them more than that the music
has more than one voice -- it should mean that the music is not
homophonic or monophonic.