In music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to music with just one voice (monophony) or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords (homophony).
Within the context of the Western musical tradition, the term is usually used to refer to music of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Baroque forms such as the fugue, which might be called polyphonic, are usually described instead as contrapuntal. Also, as opposed to the species
terminology of counterpoint, polyphony was generally either
"pitch-against-pitch" / "point-against-point" or "sustained-pitch" in
one part with melismas of varying lengths in another.[1]
In all cases the conception was probably what Margaret Bent (1999)
calls "dyadic counterpoint", with each part being written generally
against one other part, with all parts modified if needed in the end.
This point-against-point conception is opposed to "successive
composition", where voices were written in an order with each new voice
fitting into the whole so far constructed, which was previously assumed.
Although the exact origins of polyphony in the Western church traditions are unknown, the treatises Musica enchiriadis and Scolica enchiriadis, both dating from c.
900, are usually considered the oldest extant written examples of
polyphony. These treatises provided examples of two-voice
note-against-note embellishments of chants using parallel octaves,
fifths, and fourths. Rather than being fixed works, they indicated ways
of improvising polyphony during performance. The Winchester Troper, from c.
1000, is the oldest extant example of notated polyphony for chant
performance, although the notation does not indicate precise pitch
levels or durations.
Traditional (non-professional) polyphony has a wide, if uneven distribution among the peoples of the world.
Most polyphonic regions of the world are in sub-Saharan Africa, Europe
and Oceania. It is believed that the origins of polyphony in traditional
music vastly predate the emergence of polyphony in European
professional music. Currently there are two contradicting approaches to
the problem of the origins of vocal polyphony: the Cultural Model, and
the Evolutionary Model.[2]
According to the Cultural Model, the origins of polyphony are connected
to the development of human musical culture; polyphony came as the
natural development of the primordial monophonic singing; therefore
polyphonic traditions are bound to gradually replace monophonic
traditions.[3]
According to the Evolutionary Model, the origins of polyphonic singing
are much deeper, and are connected to the earlier stages of human
evolution; polyphony was an important part of a defence system of the
hominids, and traditions of polyphony are gradually disappearing all
over the world.[4]