• Sign In
  • ACDA.org
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
ChoralNet

ChoralNet

The professional networking site for the global online choral community.

  • Home
  • Blog
  • ACDA News
  • Events
  • Community
    • Announcements
    • Classifieds

You are here: Home / Others / Five Greatest Things About Polyphony

Five Greatest Things About Polyphony

February 20, 2010 by Allen H Simon Leave a Comment


Jeffrey Tucker describes his first experience hearing Palestrina, and describes its top five features: 
  • There is no master/slave relationship [i.e. melody/accompaniment]
  • There is a beat but you don’t hear it
  • Each part moves independently
  • You can’t really conduct it, so it is music without a dictator.
  • It can be sung by a choir of any size.
 

Filed Under: Others

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Stephen Fuller says

    February 24, 2010 at 4:57 pm

     Recently there was an article posted entitled “Five Best Things About Polyphony.”  There is a misassumption that Polyphony and Counterpoint are one and the same.  This is very ethnocentric.  There are many forms of polyphony in musics around the world, many of them not employing counterpoint at all.  (I would include Homophony as a form of Polyphony, since “polyphonic” means “more than one.”  Other types of polyphony include Melody + Drone, Countermelody, Heterophony as well as Imitative Counterpoint. 

      There are many examples of polyphonic texture in Western choral music as well  that is not contrapuntal.  Machaut did it, and so did Haydn and Mozart, as well as 20th century composers.  Polyphony and Imitative technics (rounds, canons and fugues) are not synonymous! 
      Many current textbooks about music are shifting towards avoiding this outdated terminology.  In today’s world we should all be cognizant of musical diversity, and avoid this simplification (which implies that Western music is the only credible form of music  in the world). 
      And I still love choral music!
    Log in to Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

  • ACDA.org
  • The ChoralNet Daily Newsletter
Cantabile Youth Singers
Advertise on ChoralNet

Footer

Connect with us!

  • Home
  • About
  • Help
  • Contact Us
  • ACDA.org

Recent Blogs

  • Choral Ethics: Be Yourself, No Regrets
  • ChoralEd, the Audio Signal Chain
  • The Conductor as Yogi: Leading Towards Whole
  • Choral Ethics: Out For the Same Audience
  • Choral Ethics: Everything In Its Season

American Choral Directors Association

PO Box 1705
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
73101-1705

© 2026 American Choral Directors Association. All rights reserved.
Terms of Use | Privacy Policy