Bach used this technique to great effect, for example in his famous cello suites. It’s even possible to simulate polyphony on a monophonic instrument - you can interleave the notes of a higher-pitched melody with the notes of a lower-pitched melody, and the ear will hear them as separate. The same is true on the guitar, though keeping the voices independent is a lot harder than on a keyboard instrument. It’s possible to play even more voices at once on the piano, as long as each line forms a coherent perceptual grouping. If you play one melodic line with your left hand and a different one with your right, that’s two voices. Your ear perceives sequences of notes that are close in pitch and time as coming from a single “voice.” Notes that are widely separated in pitch and time sound like they come from different “voices.”Ĭonsider the piano. That’s what’s happening in the Glenn Gould video above. You can also play music with multiple voices on a single instrument. In larger ensembles like orchestras, a number of instruments might play the same “voice” - for example, the viola section will act as a single entity, creating a single voice from unison. Each plays a stream of notes, one at a time. So what exactly is a “voice” outside the context of a choir? If you have a wind or string ensemble, each instrument is a separate voice. And usually, polyphony means that the different voices are all playing/singing independent lines. Over the course of musical history, the term has become more abstracted, referring to multiple “voices” played on any instrument. Originally, polyphony literally meant multiple people singing together. This is as opposed to monophony - one voice. The word is from Greek, “poly” meaning many and “phony” meaning voice.
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