Monday,

April 2, 2012

Musical Texture Review

1. What is the instrumentation of the following ensembles? String Quartet: Woodwind Quintet: Brass Quintet: 2. Tessitura is a fancy word for: 3. Match: Monophony Mash-ups Homophony Mary Had a Little Lamb Heterophony Funky Turkish Music Polyphony Adele, Someone Like You 4. Identify which accompanimental device you hear from the following list: Alberti bass Ostinato Walking bass Chordal accompaniment Chordal homophony/texture 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

many melodies in mellifluous multiplicity Canon, canonic: a device in counterpoint in which a melody in one voice (or part) is imitated exactly by one or more other voices, which normally begin after the first voice and overlap with it...you know what this is...Are You Sleeping, Row Your Boat, etc. Counterpoint, contrapuntal: according to The Oxford Companion to Music, counterpoint is the coherent combination of distinct melodic lines in music, and the quality that best fulfills the aesthetic principle of unity in diversity...for music to be truly contrapuntal there must always be a balance between independence and interdependence. In other words, counterpoint refers to music composed of multiple melodies, sometimes leading and sometimes following, capable of standing alone but always working together. Imitation: the repetition by one voice of more-or-less the same phrase or motive found in another. Imitative polyphony: polyphony in which the melodic lines are similar to each other, showing similar shapes and deriving material from the same motives. Nonimitative polyphony: polyphony in which the melodic lines are markedly different from each other, showing contrasting shapes and deriving material from contrasting motives. Fugue, fugal imitation: a contrapuntal composition in which the voices enter successively in imitation of each other, the first voice entering with a short melody or phrase known as the subject. When all the voices have entered, the exposition is over. Then comes an episode or passage of connective material leading to another entry or series of entries of the Subject, and so on until the end of the piece, entries and episodes alternating.

Musical Texture Polyphony