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Define polyphonic in music1/6/2023 There may not be instances of harmony that play on over an extended rest in the melody, but the converse doesn't appear to be true: I'm sure there are polyphonic pieces written that keep all melodies active, sans pause, until the end. It seems like one natural heuristic for identifying polyphony, as such, would be that a polyphonic line withstands the silence of the other line(s), and a harmonic line cannot. But this "sense," as a kind of threshold between concepts, is proving difficult to pin down in more technical terms.Ī few observations: two defined melodic lines will often only imperfectly "follow" each other rhythmically - by accenting different beats, or, more strikingly, by having one line continue on while the other dips into a rest. To my ear, the hallmark of a discrete secondary melodic voice, as opposed to mere harmonic accompaniment, is a sense of independence from the primary melody. Naturally, I've heard the terms "harmony" and "polyphony" bandied about before, and I have a feel for the intuitively distinct musical phenomena they each reference, but nevertheless - if I try to explain to myself, exactly and formally, the point at which they diverge, I find myself at a loss. Amateur musician here, with scant theory knowledge.
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