Heterophony

[Mandryka]

In fact there's a great deal but it's to be found in music that's notated monophonically rather than with polyphonic music, in which the voices have a different kind of relationship. In the 1970s Thomas Binkley released two volumes of chansons by Machaut, one concentrating exclusively on monophonic songs and the other on polyphonic ones. In his notes IIRC Binkley remarks that the polyphonic music requires a relatively strict approach to realisation so that the relationships between the voices are clear (he likens this to contemporary fixed-media compositions), whereas the monophonic music (which he compares with more "aleatoric" works) allows the addition of drones, improvised heterophonic elements and so on. The same kinds of considerations apply to mediaeval music more generally. Heterophony was surely present, but didn't need to be notated (in fact would in some ways have been impossible to notate with the notations then in use).

I enjoy quite a lot of Binkley’s work, and those Machaut recordings were probably the first medieval music I ever heard.

Anyway, how about this texture (warning - it’s gorgeous)

[Joseph K]

BTW - Serial Apologist, this is the African music I had in mind that I mentioned over on the jazz thread. I post it here because I think there is some heterophony, as well as some microtonality.

[Serial_Apologist]

BTW - Serial Apologist, this is the African music I had in mind that I mentioned over on the jazz thread. I post it here because I think there is some heterophony, as well as some microtonality.

Thanks! I guess you'll have seen my rather belated reply to your questions of my previous post on the jazz thread, as well as the much longer reply to Ian, which (not unusually for him) he has not replied to!

[Joseph K]

Thanks! I guess you'll have seen my rather belated reply to your questions of my previous post on the jazz thread, as well as the much longer reply to Ian, which (not unusually for him) he has not replied to!

Yes - I've seen it - not much further to add, though. I agree with your criticisms of Ian's ideas.