Each is valuable in its
place, and each has possibilities peculiarly its own, which the other
could not give. Pure counterpoint could not give us such a charming
effect as Chopin obtains in the first study of Opus 10; nor could the
plainer and more free harmonic style give us such delicate bits of
tracery as Bach has in his fugues.
If now you will take the trouble to learn two long words, later in
your study of music they will be of use to you. The first is
Polyphonic; the other is Monophonic. Both, like many other words in
our language, are made up of two shorter words, and come from another
language--Greek. In both we have "phonic," evidently meaning the same
in each case, limited or modified by the preceding part--_poly_ and
_mono_. Phonic is the Anglicized Greek for _sound_. We use it in the
English word _telephonic_. Now if we define mono and poly we shall
understand these two long words.
Mono means one, poly means many. We say _mono_tone, meaning one tone;
also _poly_gon, meaning many sides.
In the musical reference monophonic music means music of one voice,
rather than of one tone, and polyphonic music is that _for many
voices_. Simple melodies with or without accompanying chords are
monophonic; many melodies woven together, as in the Bach piece which
we have looked over, are polyphonic.
In the history of music two men surpassed all others in what they
accomplished in counterpoint--that is, in polyphonic writing.
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