Polyphony, homophony, monophony — one melody, five settings
Five settings to listen to. The same melody runs across the top of all five; only what sits underneath turns it into monophony, homophony or polyphony.
How many voices are sounding does not yet say how a piece is built. Two voices can walk the same path, support one another, or each go their own way — and you hear the difference at once, without knowing a single technical term.
So this page shows the same melody five times over. It is note for note identical in all five pictures, checked against the sound. What changes is always underneath: nothing at all, a second voice moving in step, two sustained chords, an independent second voice, or the same melody once more in a plainer shape.
The old names describe nothing more than that. Listen to the five pictures in turn, and afterwards you need the names only for looking things up.
Monophony
The melody on its own. At no point does more than one note sound — that, and nothing else, is what the name rests on. Whether one person sings it or a hundred in unison makes no difference; only a note sounding at the same time at a different pitch makes the setting many-voiced.
Homophony
A second voice moves in the same rhythm: every attack carries both voices, neither waits for the other. This is how a chorale is written, and how a choir singing chords sounds. The melody stays audible on top because it lies higher, not because it moves differently.
Melody and accompaniment
Chords lie under the melody and change only rarely. So at a few points four notes sound at once, and in between only the melody. This is the texture of almost every song with guitar or piano: one voice leads, the rest carries the harmony.
Polyphony
The second voice starts later and then goes its own way — another rhythm, another direction, its own ending. That is what polyphonic means: not many notes, but several voices, each with something of its own to say. Its strictest form is the fugue.
Heterophony
Both voices play the same melody, the lower one plainer — it takes every second note and leaves the rest out. That is why every note below the melody belongs to the same pitch class as the note above it, and in this setting that is the test. In Japan, Indonesia and Arab music it is the ordinary case.
The five settings at a glance
Each row states what can be counted in the sound: how many notes sound at once, and what marks the texture out. The figures come from the pictures on this page, measured rather than estimated.
| Texture | Notes at once | What gives it away |
|---|---|---|
| Monophony | 1 | Never two notes at once |
| Homophony | 2 | Every attack carries both voices |
| Melody and accompaniment | up to 4 | The accompaniment strikes only twice |
| Polyphony | 2 | The second voice starts later |
| Heterophony | 2 | Below sounds the same note as above |
What tells the textures apart
In a single-voice setting no more than one note ever sounds. That is monophony — an unaccompanied song, a plainchant, a nursery rhyme sung by a whole class. Even a hundred singers in unison stay monophonic.
When two voices move in the same rhythm, the result is a chordal setting: every attack carries both voices. That is homophony in the narrow sense, the texture of the chorale. When the melody instead floats over chords that change only rarely, it is called melody and accompaniment — the texture of almost every song with guitar or piano.
When the voices go their own ways, entering at different moments and each keeping its own rhythm, the setting is polyphonic. Heterophony, finally, is the case European textbooks long overlooked: two voices play the same melody, one plainer than the other. In the music of Japan, Indonesia and the Arab world it is the ordinary case.
What sits alongside
How two voices are led together: Counterpoint. What happens when one theme travels from voice to voice: Fugue. What the distances between two notes are called: Intervals.
Music symbols · Music notation glossary
Anotona does this for you
Photograph a page of sheet music or play the melody — Anotona finds the key, engraves the notes and transposes them into any other. Free.
See AnotonaEvery note on this page is computed, not typed in — following the rule that also makes F# major spell its seventh degree E#, not F.