Texture in music is Definition and types of texture in music

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Music theory is full of interesting terms. In each era, new means of improving and individualizing music appeared, which were influenced by composers, performers, and audiences. Many genres and subgenres, styles and themes. In order not to get confused in this cornucopia, there is a classification of musical compositions by texture.

Stable musical and artistic whole

To understand further theory, you need to remember or study the very concept of musical composition. This term characterizes the integrity of the work, its concrete embodiment. Distinguishes the finished "opus" from those created in the process of people's creativity, or improvisations (for example, in jazz).

A composition always has a specific creator. The composer, who provides the sound structure, fixes the work in writing. Notations are carried out with the help of musical notation or accompanying signs. Authorship, starting from the 14th century, is preferably indicated on each created composition, if the creator is known.

The composition is stable, like a finished and well-defined work. Tonality, size, rhythm - everything is constant and does not suffer significant changes. Naturally, each work requires certain aspects of performance. This is where texture comes into play.

The concept of texture

The music industry is developing, new canons and new trends appear that affect the style, form and nature of the composition. So, the texture in music is the presentation of the material to the listener in a certain design, which will reflect the reality described by the sounds. Texture is the main link between the author's idea and its perception by other people.

The word is Latin in origin, meaning “design”, “structure”, “processing”. Texture in music is a visual definition. You can draw an analogy with the creation of a fabric product: a musical fabric also requires processing in order to become complete and complete.

What are the different options for?

Each work has a theme and a certain focus. Since the work here is solely on perception, you need to convey emotions and situations as accurately as possible. Roughly speaking, to give a clear picture.

For example, a composer writes a lullaby. There is a melody, an accompaniment, but they could just as well be used in a military song or dance composition. It is necessary to give them a coloring of calmness, silence, lightness. Therefore, jerky strokes will not be used, legato and lower sounds will be given priority. Without "squeak" and sudden movements.

Any emotion can be depicted with an instrument. Whistling flutes will best embody lightness and joy, heavy cellos can show grief and mourning, timpani and bells add epicness. Texture in music is the fruit of the author's imagination.

Basic texture classification

The most basic division, the two main types of texture in music, are characterized by the number of voices used.

• Monodic is a type of texture that uses one-voice movement. We can say that this is a “horizontal dimension”, since visually the stave shows a solid line, without branches in the form of chords. Examples can be Gregorian chant or the creativity of peoples who did not know polyphony.



• Polyphonic - a type that implies at least two simultaneously sounding voices. That is, there can be three or four melodic lines, but by no means one. And each line has its own independent melody. Polyphony is characterized by a constant number of voices, a smooth transition from one to another. The quantity will regulate the density of the composition or its "transparency" - a more rarefied sound.

There is no third?

Unlike many terms that have only two extremes, there is also a heterophonic texture here. This is a kind of “modernization” of a monodic presentation, when polyphonic techniques can be added to it for a more interesting sound. Unison singing occasionally becomes more difficulttwo-voice pattern, the melody is accompanied by a rhythm. It turns out that this is an intermediate option.

Types of polyphonic texture

Polyphony in music is called polyphony, it has a thematic and rhythmic connection of voices. In the texture aspect, it is divided into types:

1. Choral texture implies leading all voices according to one rhythmic pattern. That is, the melody moves along the same durations, without being divided into complex harmonic verticals;
2. Mensural canons, or complementary polyphony, is defined by a small layering of voices that are thematically similar but move independently. That is, only the direction of movement of the melody is indicated, in which durations can be divided into several, and the rhythm of one voice does not depend on another.
3. The multi-dark texture creates unusual textured plexuses, combines the incongruous. It became popular only at the beginning of the 20th century.
4. The texture of linear polyphony is based on several voices that do not match in rhythm and harmony. The melody is built on the successive movement of sounds of different pitches.
5. Plyphony of layers - complex polyphonic duplications that create dissonances.
6. "A dematerialized pointillistic texture that could more easily be described as 'jerky'." The main line is transmitted not in the form of a motive, but in jerky sounds with a large spread. That is, bright flashes of sound jump between long pauses.
7. The texture of polyphonic gravity is completely opposite to the previous one. It represents a full-bodied orchestral sound.
8. The aleatory effect is an element of chance. The composition is based on the "lot" method, when combinations of notes are scattered on the stave. Often, the authors record only the main reference points, from which the performer will start, and then at his discretion.
9. The texture of sonoristic effects switches attention to the transitions of tones, colors or harmonies. The brightness of the sound is transmitted by noise, a change in timbre. Sound and colorful effects are created.

Harmonization

The combination of "invoice and warehouse" is indivisible. This aspect is harmony. It involves many types of invoices, but is also divided into two main ones:

• homophonic-harmonic, characterized by a clear separation of melodic patterns: main theme, accompaniment, additional themes;
• chord, in which all sounds are of the same duration, and the texture itself is multi-rhythmic.

Types of harmonic textures

1. Chord-figurative type - chord sounds are played in turn.
2. Rhythmic type - repeated repetition of a chord or consonance.
3. Duplicates - in an octave, in a fifth, other intervals, creating a smooth movement of voices relative to each other.
4. Different types of melodic textures based on giving movement to voices. For example, auxiliary or additional sounds in chords that complicate the composition.

But this is the most general classification, the individual points of which are rarely found in isolation. That is, music is diluted with separatetechniques, stylistic features taken from different types of textures. Each era is characterized by different so-called chips.

The start of the road to versatility

The history of the development of texture in music is performance, harmony, orchestration, and most importantly, composition. Some composers have had a huge impact on the variety of textures in the works.

In the 17th century, receptions and warehouses were quite simple and very logical. A mixture of harmonic and polyphonic textures was used - polyphony with various layouts. Passages and arpeggios were popular. Arpeggiated accompaniment just created the right mood, while not pressing on the ear with the depth of heavy chords. The texture of the accompaniment in this case ideally complemented the main theme and did not need to use other means. I. S. actively used this method. Bach, for example, in the Goldberg Variations. Other composers of the Romantic era also distinguished themselves here: Georges Bizet, Giuseppe Verdi, Carl Czerny.

A kind of arpeggio "figuration" was often used by Mozart, it sounded active, cheerful and sharp. It is convenient in that it clearly conveys harmonies and creates a certain rhythm without jumps. The music of the Austrian romantic is characterized as light, sunny and unburdened precisely because of its texture. Both broken line and direct figuration were used.

Transition to bright style

As innovations were introduced, the imagination of the authors of works expanded, by the 19th century there were at least three times as many texture types. Because different typesmixed, adopted and combined details, completely new musical arrangements appeared. The harmonic warehouse became much smoother and more melodic, and expressiveness was conveyed not by the set of sounds themselves, but by their order and location.

A striking example is F. Liszt, who used mixed textural presentations in plays, for example, "Grey Clouds", and in entire cycles "Years of Wanderings" and "Poetic and Religious Harmonies". The pitch of the chords faded into the background, a texture-timbre appeared, which became widespread with Mussorgsky.

It is worth noting separately the music of Chopin, who used the piano texture. Among his favorite tricks were the octave technique and fluent playing of scales. In his w altzes (“Brilliant W altz”, W altz in A minor), he spread harmonic figurations, decomposed into long rows of sounds. Such works require high performing technique, but they are easy to listen to and perceive. In the side part of the "First Ballad for Piano", the composer fully introduced the polyphonic warehouse into the harmony.

Period of innovation

The 20th century in art marked the transition from traditional forms to completely new and non-standard ones. Therefore, this era is characterized by a departure from the harmonic and polyphonic texture. It becomes unbound, divided into layers. A wide spread of dynamics and timbres becomes a habit in the works of avant-garde artists K. Stockhausen, L. Berio and P. Boulez. Often there is a controlled aleatoric, that is, an improvised texture. It is only limitedrhythm and pitch limits. This move was supervised by V. Lutoslavsky.

Shaping played a big role, because in a torn and scattered texture it is important to maintain a coherent structure of the composition. Even if poorly distinguishable, the drawing creates an image. How to determine the type of texture in the music of the new era is an open question for art historians, since there are too many interactions and exchanges of techniques.

Emotions, emotions, emotions…

All of the above leads to the fact that the kind of texture in music directly determines the emotions and the desired response of the listener. To convey mental states, different registers are used:

• low, transmitting terrible and powerful sounds, displaying mystery or mourning (darkness, night, heavy footsteps, sounds of a locomotive, rumble of troops);
• medium, which is close to the human voice, inducing calmness and some slowness (narratives, routine, rest and reflection);
• high, stimulating and bright, depending on the instrument, it can be both cheerful and tense (screaming and screeching, trilling birds, bells, fussy movements);

Thanks to this distribution, music can set you at peace, lift your spirits, or make your hair on your head move with fear. And directly texture solution depends on the case used in the main theme.

Therefore, various types of "fabric" processing of the composition help people to feel the feelings of the composer, to draw pictures of the world in their heads, as it was in the eyes of the authors of the works. Feel the lightnessenjoying the music of Chopin, the militancy of Beethoven's opuses or the dynamics of movements of Rimsky-Korsakov. Texture in music is a communicator through eras and differences in perception.